Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (10 page)

The letters on it refracted the hallway lights like the surface of a DVD.

“Just Patrick's fine,” said Patrick, steering his eyes to the official's homely, wide-jowled, heavily made-up face. The man, pleased by this reply, had broken into a fit of laughter that made Patrick think of a drowning person gasping for air.

“Shall we go to class now, Magister Dorkenlaffer?” asked Kempton.

“Of course, of course!” He regained his breath and gestured for the boys to follow. Patrick noticed that in addition to the man's peculiar habit of leaning forward, when he turned, his shoulders and head all moved together—like he had a board strapped to his back.

“What's wrong with him?” whispered Patrick as the teacher lurched sideways, pushing open a door that creaked as if its hinges hadn't been oiled in twenty years.

“What?” asked Kempton.

“What's wrong with him?” repeated Patrick. “He, um, walks a little funny.”

“Freak triking accident,” replied Kempton a little too loudly for Patrick's comfort. “Broke his back. He's still partially paralyzed from the waist up.”

Patrick followed Kempton and the teacher into a dimly lit classroom. He was pretty certain you couldn't be paralyzed from the waist
up
and made a mental note to raise the issue when there was a better opportunity to talk. Now clearly wasn't the time—far too many people were staring.

 

CHAPTER 18

Adept Intercept

Novitiate Frank Kyle, one of the 120 remaining candidates for Earth's coming Deaconry, slowed his Mercedes to observe the activity at 96 and 102 Morningside Drive.

His dash-mounted BNK-E continued to scroll texts and to squawk calls from emergency responders regarding the missing child at the first house and the old man with the heart attack (exactly three hundred cubits away) at the next.

“Microparticle detection app, tau setting,” he said to the air.

“Transcense levels approaching three parts per million,” replied a female-inflected voice.

He smiled and pounded his fist on the goat-leather steering wheel: he was first-to-scene, which meant the mission was
his
. All he had to do now was execute the operational orders to eliminate the visitor, and do so discreetly. And that shouldn't be a problem. A single enemy combatant operating here without any support network didn't stand much of a chance.

He punched the accelerator pedal and—without breaking the speed limit—drove off. All he had to do was spiral outward from this location. Now that he'd found the insertion point, the trailhead, he had just to keep an eye on his chemical detectors and he'd find the creature's path. The residue from the transcense—the unique, unstable substance that had fueled the enemy combatant's journey here—would leave a faint but detectable trail for the next two dunts (about five “hours” as the locals would say).

He would find it and kill it and, in so doing, achieve a significant piece of mission experience to separate himself from the other 119 novitiates and boost his chances of becoming one of the final twelve, the new leaders of Earth. None of his peers would be able to deny that—however easy this mission proved to be—he'd have been the one who had put an end to the enemy's first known attempt to disrupt Earth's coming Purge, and the glorious Reboot to come.

 

CHAPTER 19

Intro to Modern Chemistry

From behind fifteen neatly arranged desks, fifteen pairs of luminous eyes studied Patrick as if he were some sort of space alien although, of course, it was they who more resembled bug-eyed Martians.

“Class,” said Magister Dorkenlaffer. “As you know, we have a very special guest today. For only the second instance in Ith's history, an
Earthling
is among us, and
our
class has the profound privilege of hosting him!”

Fifteen hands shot into the air as Patrick tried to keep his face from going any redder than it already was.

“I need not remind you to be on your very best behavior and to accord him—
Patrick Cudahy Griffin
—every courtesy. He is a stranger and deserves your alpha-level interpersonal protocols at all times. Now, questions, and— Nevis! Do you require a time-out? You know there is no personal videography permitted in classrooms! Shocking!”

A slight, towheaded boy in the third row dropped his binky to the desk and slumped down in his seat, eyes lowered as he received the big-eyed staring treatment from his peers.

“Yes, Timar?” said Magister Dorkenlaffer, pointing to a copper-skinned boy in the front row.

“Is he related to Rex?”

Magister Dorkenlaffer turned to Patrick. “Are you related to Rex?”

“Who's Rex?” asked Patrick.

“He doesn't know who Rex is!” a girl yelled from the back of the room.

“Oh, dear,” said Magister Dorkenlaffer, adjusting his brass-buttoned shirt collar. “Umm, Rex was, you know, the first Earthling, umm, emissary … Surely you are familiar with
Doctor Rex Abraham
?”

“He arrived here on Ith fifty yies ago,” offered Kempton.

Patrick shook his head.

Magister Dorkenlaffer cleared his throat. “Of course there are differences between Patrick's world and ours. Now, Kempton Puber, would you please show our guest to his seat?”

Patrick followed Kempton to two vacant desks in the first row.

“The important thing at this juncture,” said the teacher, reading from his handheld screen, “is that we all recognize the significance of our Earth brother's arrival and are eager for him to become an integral member of society. To that end,” he said, “Patrick Cudahy Griffin, you will please let us know if there's anything we can do to help you in
any
way, or—on the other hand—if there is anything we are doing that makes you uncomfortable that we should therefore
stop
doing.”

“Does this mean there will be another Pandemic?” blurted a girl with the most elaborately bejeweled cornrows Patrick had ever seen.

“Bilma!” said Magister Dorkenlaffer. “I don't believe you were called on to ask a question and
of course
there is not going to be another Pandemic. You know modern science has made such a thing
statistically
impossible.”

The girl seemed somewhat abashed but fired off another question anyhow.

“And will he die before very long, like Rex did?”

“Bilma, I
still
haven't authorized you to ask a question, much less one even more patently ridiculous than your first! Don't make me put a note out to the Admins!”

Bilma promptly sat down and closed her mouth.

Magister Dorkenlaffer meantime turned back to Patrick and, seeing the confusion on his face, hastened to explain: “Rex died in the Pandemic.”

“Yeah, when he saved the Seer!” yelled the same boy who'd asked if Patrick was related to Rex.

“Class!” Magister Dorkenlaffer yelled. “Remember the Twelfth Tenet: Patrick is an
emissary
; he is not a paid performer here for your amusement!” He coughed into the forest of wiry gray hairs on the back of his hand before adding, “I'm certain the Seer is right now entirely
appalled
at your behavior.”

The students did not seem to like this thought and fidgeted uncomfortably.

“Umm, who's the Seer?” asked Patrick.

Everybody gasped except for Magister Dorkenlaffer, who gurgled.

“She's, umm,” said Magister Dorkenlaffer, again adjusting his shirt collar, “you know, err, much like your Hearer.”

“My hearer?” asked Patrick.

“Yes,” said Dorkenlaffer. “The leader of your sense, the ruler of your world.”

“You mean the President of the United States?”

“The resident of what? No, I do not mean—”

Kempton turned to Patrick and hissed. “Are you making a joke? The
Hearer
—your world's representative to the
Minder
!”

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about.”

Dorkenlaffer made a frantic beckoning gesture at a security camera in the ceiling and the children began to chatter among themselves. Patrick overheard somebody speculating that this must be some sort of drill.

“Ah, never mind,” said the teacher, seeing something on his binky. “Eyes forward.
Quiet now!
”

Patrick looked down at his binky, which, at the moment, was showing a title menu for “
A
fōk
usd rev
ü
uv
Ð
e
p
E
r
E
odic
e
L
Ə
m
Ə
nts
.”

“What does this say?” asked Patrick.

“What?” asked Kempton.

“Let's see, ‘A focused, rev-uh—'”

“‘A Focused Review of the Periodic Elements,' you mean?”

“Oh,” said Patrick.

“Yeah,” replied Kempton.

“So this is a chemistry class?” asked Patrick.

“Look around,” replied Kempton, gesturing behind them.

Patrick turned around. Maybe he hadn't noticed before because the back of the room was so poorly lit, but he could now discern it contained lab benches, faucets, equipment clamps, sinks, Bunsen burners, insulated dry ice buckets, and fume hoods.

“We're on chapter eighty-six,” said Kempton. “Optical properties of the noble gases. So just skip to that section and process along with the rest of us, okay?”

Patrick rubbed his eyes and looked back to the front of the room, also now noticing a periodic table of the elements on the wall and a ball-and-stick model of glucose on the teacher's desk.

“And stop touching your face,” whispered Kempton. “You're smearing your mascara.”

Patrick studied his new binky. He hadn't spent much time on it yet, but it seemed fairly intuitive. The screen resolved, swiped side to side, magnified, brought images and text forward and backward in three dimensions with amazing ease, and—before he figured out it was controlled by the natural movements of his eyes—he had the eerie sensation it was reading his mind.

He played a holographic video showing how a stream of electrons could cause neon atoms to give off light. It was very cool, but the captions were pretty confusing. With a little concentration he was able to figure out at least most of the words (like
a
tom
ik
he assumed meant
atomic
) but quite a few were harder than that.

“Is there some way to have it show regular words? A settings menu? What's this big red eye symbol in the corner?”

“That's the Inform icon! Only select that in case of suspected malefaction!!!”

“Oh,” said Patrick.

Kempton leaned over and studied Patrick's binky. “And what do you mean, ‘regular words'? They look fine to me.”