The Infinite. Patience Agbabi

because I expected him to have a French accent but he just sounded posh. I know le temps means weather in French so maybe he was in charge of the weather as well. He wasn’t doing a very good job!

      Then the camera went into the building and zoomed in on a café sign, with green tendrilly writing on a white background that read ‘The Beanstalk’, then into a large white room with a brown floor with a giant beanstalk in the middle that went right up into the ceiling, and it focused on a fat woman who was older than Le Temps but younger than Millennia and looked Indian. She was kneading a big lump of white dough like it was a punchbag. Her long black hair had silver streaks and it was wound up into a knot on top of her head and she had her nose pierced with a sparkly blue stone. The caption said ‘SEASON, Cook’ and she became a talking head. She said, ‘I make the food.’

      Then the camera went along a corridor and up a spiral staircase to a door that said ‘The Igloo’ and went inside. The room was round, with large white bricks and a dome ceiling. Then a teenage boy appeared out of nowhere, disappeared, appeared again in another part of the room, and I recognised him because he came to our school last year at the beginning of Seventh Year. He looked exactly the same: a skinny black boy with hair like antennae and white clothes with graffiti on them. A caption came up saying ‘MC², Energiser’. I assumed he charged us up like batteries. The camera zoomed in on his face and he blinked several times before he said, ‘I move through time and space,’ and Big Ben pumped his arm in the air. That was the end of the video.

      Mrs C Eckler turned off the equipment and smiled.

      ‘Any questions? Yes, Ben.’

      ‘In 2048, are we 40 years old?’

      ‘No, Ben. When we leap, we’ll all stay the same age as now. But you’ve raised a very important issue.’ She cleared her throat, so I knew she was going to say something important. ‘Very rarely, when people leap they meet their future self. Your FUTURE self would be 40.’

      I raised my hand. ‘Is it dangerous?’

      ‘No, Elle. But you mustn’t approach your future self. Let them approach you. They will know exactly what to do.’

      I still wasn’t sure Big Ben’s future self would be less likely to go from 0 to 10 than him. I had lots more questions, like how MC² was going to charge us up like batteries, but they stayed in my head, which was resting on the desk straight after the video. I’d already started replaying it back in my mind, especially Season kneading a big lump of white dough. I knew we had breadmaking in the timetable and wondered if we were going to make WHITE bread. I hoped so because I only eat white food. If the food has a colour, or worse still lots of different colours on the same plate, the smell and flavour mixed with the SIGHT of it is too much and I get sensory overload and have to have time-out. I don’t want to eat with my eyes closed.

      I was still thinking that when I realised Mrs C Eckler was talking to me.

      ‘Elle, be ready for me to collect you at 5:45 a.m. this Saturday. Text me if you’re feeling delicate.’

      I looked up at her. ‘Why will I feel delicate?’

      ‘Sometimes we have an Oops, remember. Things happen that we don’t expect. If you’re feeling a BIT delicate, you can still come on the trip. But we must plan for Oops.’

      Oops is the bane of my life. Oops makes my heart beat fast and hard like I just ran the 100 metres but instead of feeling happy I feel scared. If there was a person called Oops, they’d be my mortal enemy. Worse than Pete LMS. Mortal enemy means you fight to the death.

      After lunch was double geography. We’ve been doing projects on climate change and what we can do to stop it. We had to interview grown-ups about food, fossil fuels or plastic bags. I interviewed Grandma about food. I don’t want the climate to change because I find it difficult when it goes from spring to summer and autumn to winter. The government make the clocks go forwards or backwards, it’s either too dark or too light and messes with my sleep. It takes me weeks to recover. But the worst thing is when weather changes dramatically from one day to the next. I have to check the forecast a lot because the prediction can change every hour, especially when it’s windy. The wind makes the weather move around like a poltergeist.

      Projects mean working in pairs and I was with Big Ben. He wanted to do CO₂ emissions from cars. He plans to invent the first eco-friendly supercar. But I wanted to do the meat and dairy industry because I read online that the rainforest is being destroyed so they can grow cows to make into burgers. When the cows poo they mess up the gases in the air, so the air gets warmer and melts icebergs in the North Pole and sea levels rise.

      Grandma told me when she was a girl she only ate meat once a year at Christmas, when they killed a goat and roasted it for the whole village. The rest of the time they ate fish from the river like tilapia. I was happy when she told me that because I like fish even more than meat. But when I read about us fishing too many fish until there will be none left I was sad.

      I wanted to celebrate vegetables. I brought a yam into school as an example of a vegetable. Big Ben had to go with my idea because he has difficulty reading and talking in class unless it’s maths or PPF. Anyway, he wasn’t at school yesterday because of Anger Management so I had to present on my own.

      I got to geography last because I always try to avoid the rush between lessons. As soon as I walked through the door I heard, ‘Where’s your Leaper boyfriend?’ It was Pete LMS. He always says this when Big Ben isn’t at school. Some of the class laughed, but Jake smiled at me and Maria said:

      ‘Shut up! You’re not funny.’

      I like Jake and Maria, they often stick up for me. Jake’s very good at PPF, even though he shouts out in class, and Maria does the high jump at athletics club. She’s so good she represented Brazil.

      I sat down at the back of the class and refreshed my mobile for the speech. I knew it off by heart but liked reading it over and over again. It distracted me from the talking that goes on during lessons when the teacher is speaking. The class is extra noisy for Mr Carter who speaks extra loudly in a slow, croaky voice, even though the geography class is small, only 15 children.

      Suddenly, it was my turn to present. I took the yam out of my bag and I could hear someone laughing but I didn’t know why. I stood up, scrolled down my mobile for the prompt list and took a deep breath like I was going to push out of the blocks for the 100 metres.

      ‘Toomanycowsintheworldeatpeople.’

      The whole class laughed so loud I couldn’t rearrange my thoughts properly. That wasn’t what I wanted to say but we were advised to deliver from prompts rather than read the full speech from the page. Mr Carter said we could use our mobile phones and make a list of words so we knew what to focus on for each section. My list said:

      COWS

      DAIRY

      FISH

      VEGETABLES

      Looking at the word COWS had made me say cows first, when I should have said people. I’d memorised my speech word for word; I could see it in my mind, but my mouth mixed everything up and it came out like a long sentence in German that’s all one word. I love German but not when I want to speak English. Mr Carter cleared his throat like he was starting a car on a cold day. He does everything in slow motion because he’s older than Grandma. But before he could say anything at all, Pete LMS said, in my voice: ‘MAD cows.’

      Everyone laughed except Maria, who shouted across the room: ‘Just cos you’re Pete LMS doesn’t mean we like you.’

      Maria has hated Pete LMS since he wasn’t picked for the athletics team and said high jump was only for freaks. Pete LMS makes fun of people who are different, especially if they’re good at something. He calls Ben a Leaper after Big Ben let slip he was born on the 29th of February. Pete LMS doesn’t know everyone in this school is a Leapling with The Gift. When we do PPF, he does history on his own.

      I