The Infinite. Patience Agbabi
show. But I had to do my speech. If I didn’t do my speech, I’d get into trouble.
I stared down at my phone, the word COWS, and began again.
‘Too many people in the world eat cows. They are addicted to burgers.’
‘Ever seen a cow eat a burger?’ shouted Pete LMS and banged his fist on the table. Everyone was laughing now, even Jake and Maria. But that wasn’t what I meant. I meant PEOPLE are addicted to burgers.
I tried to continue my speech but every time I started a sentence Pete LMS would say the opposite and roll his eyes clockwise while Mr Carter looked out of the window because he’s 103. Pete LMS gave me a hard time because his dad’s a millionaire factory farmer who specialises in cattle, so if no one bought meat his whole family would starve. Actually, they wouldn’t starve; they could eat the meat other people didn’t buy. They’d be eating forever!
When I got to the FISH section, I looked down so I’d say the right words in the right order and noticed my screen was flashing. I had a text. In capital letters, it said:
SOS L
Sent Tue 3 Mar 2048. 23:00.
2048! It must be a mistake. I didn’t recognise the number and I had lots of thoughts in my head at the same time. I closed my eyes and opened them again because the thoughts were coming too fast, one on top of the other, and maybe if I closed my eyes and opened them everything would be normal and I could carry on doing my speech. But when I opened my eyes, the thoughts kept coming like this:
SOS L
Who sent it? Why did they text ME?
SOS means someone’s in trouble.
Howdidtheygetmynumber?
This isn’t supposed to happen.
What does L mean? Is it a person who ends their texts with the initial L?
L means 50 in Roman numerals.
Is it someone pretending to be L to humiliate me? Like Pete LMS. Does he sign texts as L? But he’s not a Leapling, how could he send a text from the future?
SOS means someone’s in trouble!
It was sent in 2048 so it hasn’t happened yet.
If you get a text about something that’s GOING to happen, it’s a Predictive.
SOS L is a Predictive!
Sent Tuesday the 3rd of March 2048, 11 o’clock at night.
2048 is the year of the school trip.
Maybe I can stop the bad thing that’s going to happen.
I thought all this in ten seconds till I realised someone was nudging my hand. Suddenly, Pete LMS had my phone! He smiled like it was his birthday and this was the present he’d wanted for ages.
‘SOS L,’ he said, in my voice, to the whole class. Then, in his voice, ‘A message from your Leaper boyfriend.’
I had a shooting pain in my head but I rushed across the room to get it back. I lunged towards Pete LMS and he laughed in my face. He was holding the phone too tight for me to grab it. Of course Mr Carter was a minute behind. Before he could say anything, Pete LMS said: ‘Is The Palindrome about to cry? Boohoo!’
‘That will be quite enough, Peter,’ said Mr Carter in his slow, croaky voice.
Pete LMS stood up at his desk.
‘Enough? I’ve had enough! Expect us to believe all this rubbish about man-made climate change?’ We all gasped. ‘My dad says Nature does what she likes. Nothing to do with man.’
He turned and threw my phone across the room. It crashed to the floor and the back came off.
And what did Mr Carter do? Continued the lesson, in his own time, like nothing had happened. His droning voice went on and on but it sounded like it was in the distance.
‘Where are you going, Elle?’
I hadn’t realised I’d packed my phone and yam, stood up, put my bag on my back, walked over to the door and opened it. Run round the track, I told myself. Do ten laps of the track. But instead I stood in the yellow corridor with all the thoughts spinning round my head. I closed my eyes, my body went fizzy and I leapt through time.
SOS L
Someone’s in trouble in 2048 and I have to save them.
MC2
At the beginning of Seventh Year, a criminal came to our school. He was a skinny black boy with clumps of hair sticking out of his head like antennae. His eyes turned up at the edges and he had an infinity tattoo on his left hand which looked like a number 8 sideways:
Mrs C Eckler had given us investigative homework on MC2 the night before, so we could ask sensible questions. She gave us a ‘secret link’ and reminded us of our Oath of Secrecy. That’s when I found out he was a Leapling who’d committed lots of Anachronisms. Normal bad people commit crimes in their own time, but bad Leaplings steal things or kill people in the past so it’s harder to trace the crime. All these crimes are called Anachronisms. MC2 was nicknamed the Mixer of Chronology but I didn’t have time to find out what it meant because Grandma wanted me to fetch the comb and pomade.
Mrs C Eckler smelled of perfume that day rather than Pears soap. She had her ginger hair down to her shoulders rather than piled up on her head as usual and was wearing bright blue eyeshadow. I didn’t like this. I kept thinking she was someone else who’d stolen Mrs C Eckler’s voice.
‘Now Seventh Year, we are EXTREMELY lucky today.’ She was pacing up and down rather than standing still, which was really distracting. ‘We have a very special visitor . . .’ I think I zoned out during her introduction, but the next thing I knew everyone was cheering like he was a pop star.
MC2 blinked all the time. He blinked so fast you might not even notice. I think he was scared. I tried to hate him because he’d broken the law but I felt bad for him because he was scared. And he spoke in rhyme so it was more like a rap than a talk.
‘To the power of 2, I deliver my apology,
I committed intricate crimes against chronology . . .’
That word again. Chronology. I know now it means the order that things happen. MC2 was nicknamed the Mixer of Chronology because he sold things that were out of time, like DJs who used to ‘mash up records’ so the words came out backwards and sounded like another language. But I didn’t know that last year.
‘The making of watches and clocks is horology,
I stole the past, so the present acknowledge me.’
And I remembered reading online he became an expert on clocks and watches. He would go back in time to find a clock that was worth lots of money and then bring it back to the present to sell it. Then he did the opposite: he stole modern watches and sold them to rich people in the past. He didn’t make as much money that way round but liked to watch people do what-big-eyes in 1800. The wristwatch hadn’t been invented yet.
‘If you’re in a mess, if you’re in distress,
send an SOS via SMS . . .’
Lots more applause.
And Mrs C Eckler was smiling