The Infinite. Patience Agbabi
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He disappeared, reappeared on the spot, his whole body blinking! Big Ben whooped, the whole class started muttering in amazement and my eyes went too big for my head. It was like leaping for a split second. How did he do it? ‘When I was a kid,’ he said, ‘I leapt before I could walk. For real. Too much energy with no place to go. Doc said ADHD and prescribed medication. But the meds didn’t work so I got sent specialist school to help me.’
‘One of my peer mentors said,
“You’re a bomb ready to blast, spar.
Channel that energy, you’ll go far.”
‘I put my energy into rhyme. When I started rapping, I leapt all over the stage. Here, there, everywhere. There was this brother called himself Einstein after the genius professor that hatched nuclear energy. Einstein said, “You ain’t just MC, you’re MC2.” He didn’t just mean a rapping MC. He named me after the formula: E=MC2. E’s Energy, M’s mass, C’s the speed of light. The most hyper MC on the planet.’
I’ve heard of the original Einstein. He had the best rhyming name ever. He wasn’t a Leapling with The Gift but he must have had one in his family to get that surname. MC2 is a brilliant name because it means lots of different things at the same time.
Mrs C Eckler thanked MC2.
‘Now Seventh Year, I know you have lots of questions.’
I put my hand up immediately and she peered round the room. ‘Yes, Elle.’
I stood up. ‘Doesn’t MC also mean Mixer of Chronology? That’s what it said online. And Master of Ceremonies?’
‘Yeah. Maestro. Elle, isn’t it? And Microphone Commando in hip hop and any other meaning you wannit to mean,’ he said. ‘I don’t wanna confuse no one. But words are my specialisation. I like what they can do.’
‘If you’re a criminal, you are a liar because you don’t want to get caught. So you could be lying to us now.’
I sat down, embarrassed. That didn’t come out the way I wanted. I was happy and scared at the same time. I loved the way he made words sound like music but I didn’t trust him. He was a criminal. He must have told lies to escape the police.
‘I ain’t a crim no more, Elle. An’ I never told lies. When they caught me, I told the truth. I had to go back in time and replace everythin’ I’d stolen so I didn’t mess up history and vice versa.’
By messing up history, he meant you had to be careful when you went back in the past in case you swatted a fly and Hitler ended up winning World War Two. We did that in Sixth Year. I stood up again.
‘Is it a poem about vices like greed and gluttony?’ My voice was speaking before I could stop it.
‘No.’ He blinked. ‘Vice versa’s same as the other way round. I also had to find all the watches I’d sold in the past and bring them back to the present.’
‘Did you kill anyone?’
Mrs C Eckler brought her eyebrows down to her eyes. I think she was cross. But I had to know whether he was bad or mega bad. He smiled.
‘Never killed no one. Live by the knife, die by the knife.’
I remember wishing he didn’t talk in riddles. What had knives got to do with it if he never killed anybody? Big Ben put his hand up.
‘If you killed your dad in the past, will you die?’
‘As I said . . .’ He scrunched up his eyebrows. ‘I never killed no one. But you’re right. You wouldn’t exist if you killed your dad. Your dad wouldn’t meet your mum and hatch you. It would be a time paradox. Heard of the Grandfather Paradox? Same thing. Don’t think it’s ever happened.’ He looked at Mrs C Eckler, who cleared her throat.
‘Could you say something about the work you do NOW?’
But before MC2 had time to respond, Jake said: ‘Did you ever steal watches from the future?’
Trust Jake to ask this. He’s always in trouble and I think he was asking for criminal tips rather than to learn from someone else’s mistakes.
‘Yes and no.’ More riddles. ‘I committed crimes but my action’s bin erased. The future ain’t fixed like the past. You can change it.’
I liked that idea. If you do something stupid in the future, you get another chance and another and another to make it right. You get an infinite amount of chances until it becomes the present. Then it’s the past and you can’t change it any more.
I think MC2 liked that idea as well. He seemed to double in size.
‘Now,’ he said, like he was punching a hole in the present, ‘I work for the Time Squad.’
I heard someone whisper, ‘Thought it was the Rhyme Squad,’ and Mrs C Eckler turned her head but she couldn’t see who it was.
‘We fight crime on the time-line. Mostly respond to SOS texts,’ he continued. ‘SOS is code for HELP. If an Anachronism’s bin committed, usually someone’s bin attacked or their life’s in danger. We get there ASAP. Most texts come from the future.’
‘Why?’ Jake again. There’s no hope for that boy.
‘There’s bin an upsurge of eco-crimes since the millennium. Peeps starting to realise they can make big cash from it. Easier to hide stuff in the future. You don’t mess up history; you’re less likely to get caught. Mostly smuggling. Meat, ivory, extinct animals. Toxic waste. The odd murder. Murderers get life imprisonment. Ad infinitum. Don’t mean 20 years, means you’re locked up till you drop down dead an’ they bury you in the prison vaults.’
We all did what-big-eyes.
‘How can you work in that job when you used to be a criminal?’ Maria, and she didn’t put her hand up. Sometimes she goes out of turn in a high jump competition, gets disqualified and swears in Portuguese. She hates rules.
‘They gave me a choice.’ He looked round the room and everyone was holding their breath to see what he’d say next. ‘Work for us or go Young Offenders Unit. I made the right choice.’
I stood up. ‘How old are you?’ Mrs C Eckler gave me another look.
‘15. And a bit. Lost count on my travels.’
We gasped. You’re supposed to stay in full-time education till you’re 18.
‘I’m based in 2048. Different rules. If ya got talent, age don’t matter.’
Mrs C Eckler cleared her throat as if to make an announcement. ‘In Term four, there’ll be a Leapling trip to 2048 where you’ll have the chance to stay at the Time Squad Centre.’ Class noise. ‘It will be the last opportunity before it moves years. As you know, the future is always in flux. But we can only take four pupils. You have to earn it. I’ll be assessing you on Effort the next two terms and make a selection based on that.’ It all went quiet. There’s fourteen of us. ‘Yes, Ben.’
A three-second pause. Big Ben often pauses if you ask him a question, like he’s translating it into English. It’s the autism. You need to give him time to process. ‘If you wanted to report a crime . . .’ He paused again. ‘An Anachronism. What number do we text?’
MC2 scrunched his eyebrows again. ‘2000,’ he said. ‘Easy to remember. But text me now, an’ your names, so you got Time Squad number on your memory. An’ I got yours.’ He took a massive silver phone out of his bag. ‘If you come next year, you’ll get a Chronophone. Can text past, present, future. Your TwentyTwenties should work normal.’
Mrs C Eckler gave him another mega smile. ‘It’s usually against school rules to use phones in lessons but this is a very special occasion. Please do as MC2 says.’
I took out my phone, which is white, and renamed it TwentyTwenty in my head because