"Genius" by Dewi Morgan

Painting. Brushstrokes. A tree. Stars, grass. People, cars and houses. The picture was a good one; texture, shading, line, shape and colour were just right. It was, thought Johnnie, just right.

Johnnie was twelve, and as good with his mind as with his hands. At that moment he was sprawled across the floor of his bedroom, brush in one hand, pallette in the other.

The door opened, and his father stepped in, smiling. "Painting, Johnnie? Let's see... oh my God!" His father loked at the picture in horror. "Why can't you be normal?" he roared. "Why do you have to be so ruddy intelligent? Here, give me that!" He took the picture, slashed it to pieces, and left the room and the crying Johnnie.

Writing. Penstrokes. A word. Sentences, paragraphs. The essay was a brilliant one: a story, with suspense, comic relief, punch, words placed to make the essay 'perfect'. It was, he though, a very good one.

He put his pen down, went to the teacher. She was new to this school, pretty and friendly. He felt he wanted to impress her.

She glanced at it. "Good." Her expression changed as she read it, drawn in. Johnnie went and sat down.

Later that day, he thought he caught her looking at him with a mixture of respect and pity. The pity baffled him, but he noticed that she kept taking the story out and rereading it, her face glowing as she did so. He felt proud.

"Hey, Johnnie, guess what? Davey's died!"

Johnnie and his friends were in a corner of the yard, playing marbles. Johnnie was winning.

"No!"

"Yes. You know he was going to that test thing on Sunday? That test you have when you're thirteen? Well, news is out that he died right after he took it! If you ask me, he was killed off cause he was too thick. You know how he was - always asking these really stupid things, like 'How hot's the sun' and things. Boy, we're gonna have to start swotting up, or we're dead meat!"

Johnnie laughed. He knew his friend was just trying to scare him. It didn't work.

That evening, he went to his computer, and for no reason except curiousity, attempted to break into the government's main computer.

His own computer had started life as a ZX Spectrum 128k +3, with a 3" disk drive. However, with a few minor changes, along with several not-so-minor, it was now much more than that.

Using his modem (a way to communicate between computers via the telephone network), he spent half the night at his task.

Finally, at 5:36, he found a 'back door' left by the programmer. He was in! He typed:

SEARCH.
DEATHS, FILE ON.

And he was answered:

DEATHS FILE
UNAUTHORISED ACCESS STRICTLY PROHIBITED
Press space bar to scroll through list or type in name, age at death and address of deceased.

He typed, scornful of such lax security.

ANDREWS, DAVEY. 25 THE BIRCHES, PLEWTON PL13 5JD.

He switched on the printer, to record the information.

ANDREWS, DAVEY.
25 THE BIRCHES, PLEWTON, ESSEX. PL13 5JD
Subject found to be over the legal IQ limit, and was removed from society. (see section 37/x3).

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"I found out about the test they give people when they're thirteen. And I learned what heppens if you pass."

His father, Mark Pilkington, didn't speak or move for a long time. When he spoke, it was in a voice that Johnnie had not heard before, grave and serious.

"Oh," he said. "I would have preffered that you didn't know about it. Then you wouldn't have suffered. Now you know you'll pass, and the consequences."

"What if I pretend that I'm stupid?

"You won't be able to. They've got this drink which means you can't lie, and makes you go all relaxed. Oh God, oh God, why did I have to have an abnormal son?

This time it was easy to break into the government's computer, as he knew the codes. He pressed keys.

TRUTH SERUM.
NO UNAUTHORISED ACCESS.
Type in CODE to enter: _

Security for this subject was less slack! But there must be thousands of similar, restricted subjects. They would have gone for a code they could remember, he thought.

Type in CODE to enter: SERUM
ERROR: BAD PASSWORD.
Type in CODE to enter: TRUTH
ERROR: BAD PASSWORD.
WARNING: Entering further incorrect codes from this keyboard will result in alarms being set off.
Type in CODE to enter: _

He had one more chance. He took it.

Type in CODE to enter: CODE
PASSWORD VERIFIED
TRUTH SERUM
A drug which relaxes users, and causes them to become incapable of saying anything other than the truth as they percieve it, in response to a direct question. Chemical formula ChN...

The screen scrolled forward, and the printer worked overtime.

...invented by Fabian Fernandez, in 2165AD (see L73, U68). Fernandez was removed from society for disobeying a general order (section 37/x18) prohibiting the creation of the antidote, chemical formula...

Johnnie gasped. The answer, there for anybody to find!

He broke the connection. He had the information he wanted, and he knew how to use it. The Chem lab in school was well stocked, and was, for some unknown reason, left unlocked in dinnertimes.

The Exam. Time to go.

He walked to the car, climbed in, and he and his father drove in silence to the Exam Building.

He came to the waiting room, but took in none of the details. The antidote tasted awful, and when he had looked in the mirror he had looked a strange shade of green.

His name was called. He walked into the exam room, and was pushed firmly around, lights shone in his eyes, and he drank a horrible concoction of some kind. He sat down, and found that he was beginning to feel better. The serum and the antidote must cancel eachother out, he thought.

The exam started.

"Eighteen, ten, six, four. Complete the sequence," said a voice.

"Two?"

Pacing, left, right, swish, swish, waiting for the telephone. A ring, a jump - but it's only a bicycle bell.

"Find the odd man out in this sequence: 'Balet', 'Racih', 'Paterc', 'Nacimora'."

"Uh... the second one?"

Left, right, left, right. Why doesn't the 'phone ring?

"Choose a word ending which can be prefixed by all of the following: TH, SL, P, H, CL, D, B, J, L, R, S."

"I don't know."

"A clue: it's three letters."

"'And'?"

"Out of a possible one thousand, you have scored twenty. This is almost one hundred less than a chimp could mange by guessing randomly, and more than nine hundred less than you were expected to achieve from your school grades to date." The owner of the voice came up to him. "You were lying, weren't you? I was onto you from the first, because your pupils were dilated, and you looked ill. You revived then the truth serum was put down your parched throat. You were nervous, even though one of the functions of the serum is to relax you. You fell into the trap set by the government: easy access to the government computer system; the answers right in front of you; all the chemistry laboratories in the country easily accessible. But you will find consolation in one thing: nobody else has ever got this far."

"Ring." Ringing. Lift the reciever.

"Is that Mr Pilkington, father of John Pilkington?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry to inform you that your son has failed the test. He exceeded the intelligence levels set by the New Law, sections six and seven. You may, if you wish, have the body cremated, and the ashes sent to you for disposal, or you may have the body brought home for a private burial. State burial costs five pounds.

Six years had gone by, and Mark Pilkington had become worse and worse. His wife had left him right after the exam. He had lost his job, adn had become a dustman.

He read the papers that others had thrown away, and often had to resort to eating the rubbish so that he could pay his incredibly high rent.

While he was reading a thrown-away newspaper, a picture caught his eye. It was a picture of a young man, a man he seemed to recognise. Then he realised, and screamed.

The nurse walked into the cell, tastefully padded in violet. The inmatem scruffy, unshaven and dirty, looked at her and screamed "My son is ruling the world! My son!"

"Really? Do tell me about it."

Put off guard by her seeming agreement, he hardly noticed the hypodermic injecting the drug into his arm.

Johnnie put down the telephone, and sighed. He decided he was happy with his life, although the social reconditioning had been a luttle upsetting in the beginning... oh, well, no use dwelling on the past. He called to his secretary over the intercom.

"Davey, could you erase the name Mark Pilkington from the List? Thank you."

Author's comment