The Infinite

by Patience Agbabi

  ‘You OK, honeybee?’ GMT hands me a sweet. Strawberry. But it’s then I realise it isn’t the leap that’s made me feel sick. It was Millennia shouting at me. Her words are still clanging in my head. The sound AND the sense.

  ‘Leaps, you’ll never guess—’ MC2 checks his Chronophone.

  ‘I don’t want to guess,’ I say. ‘Le Temps made me guess the name of his cannibal meat.’

  ‘28 Feb 2100,’ says MC2 and raises his eyebrows at me. ‘Elle, I know it was you. How d’ya do it?’

  ‘I tried to think of the 1st of March but Ama said the 28th of February was closer to a leap day on a non-leap year so my brain couldn’t help it.’

  GMT smiles. ‘You outthought us, man. Like you leapt solo. When I tried, couldn’t get past ’99. MC leapfrogged all the way back to 1860 an’ his phone died. You got The Gift in daisy chains.’

  I smile. I didn’t know I had such a strong Gift. Maybe it’s all my athletics training. Big Ben and I train harder than anyone else in the club. I wish he was here now. I suddenly feel sad. So much happened after he left, I forgot he’s a missing Leapling too. Where is he?

  ‘What time is it?’ I’m trying not to think about missing Big Ben or Millennia’s threat. MC2 shrugs his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t know. Signal’s gone. Place smells of number two.’

  ‘What’s that noise?’

  In the far corner of the room is a cage. I don’t want to look in the cage in case there’s a man-beast hybrid in it with the body of a sheep and the face of a Leapling or vice versa. But MC2 is already there.

  ‘Just a sheep,’ he says.

  I look at it out of the corner of my eye. It has a black face and white woolly coat. And it certainly LOOKS like a sheep and SOUNDS like a sheep. But it isn’t just a sheep. It can’t be.

  ‘Le Temps did a cut-and-paste with the sheep gene and the Leap gene and came up with a winner,’ I say.

  This must be the sheap with an ‘e’ and an ‘a’. But it doesn’t look like it would win prizes. The sheap has pooed all over the floor. But it’s not its fault. It would rather be living in fields, not in a chemistry lab. I’m so glad the sheap is alive and not made into burgers and sold to those who can afford it.

  We follow the Exit arrow upstairs that reminds me of the ones I came down in 2048 before I reached Le Temps’s office. As we get upstairs there’s bright daylight. Must be around lunchtime, when the sun comes round. The hall is the same as when we arrived at the centre and Millennia gave her opening address but there are screens all over the walls and the floor’s made of glass. MC2 blinks, tenses his body like he’s about to do the run-up to the long jump, but instead of disappearing, appearing, he doesn’t move.

  ‘Glitch! We’ll have to do this old skool. Room by room in case of guards. Leaps must be locked up someplace. GMT, check outdoors. We’ll do inside.’

  It’s too quiet, like the place has been abandoned, and I wonder if we got the year wrong and we should be sometime else, like 2072. Maybe it’s a trap. Maybe Le Temps lied when he said work for me in 2100. MC2 walks down the white corridor, holding his Chronophone in front of him. Le Temps must have guards working here so people can’t come in the middle of the night and steal his prize sheap. All the rooms are empty. I keep thinking I hear noises but I can’t work out where they’re coming from.

  ‘Did Le Temps kill the Leaplings and bury—?’

  GMT bursts into the centre like a firework.

  ‘Guys!’ she says. ‘Quick! There’s a lime-green car circling overhead!’

  It’s a crash landing! Big Ben’s a great driver but he’s never flown a Ferrari in driverless mode. He lands in the wood, in the car, eyes closed. Fiona looks like someone’s given her a very strong hug. We all sprint over. I get there first. I look at him out of the corner of my eye in case there’s blood. I hope the flash of red I’m seeing is only the red hat. What if he’s dead? It would be all my fault if he was dead and had killed Fiona.

  MC2 forces the door open and shakes Big Ben’s shoulders until GMT gives him the bull’s-eye. Big Ben’s eyes flick open. It takes him a second to realise it’s MC2 staring into his face, to go from 0 to 10, then he punches him and MC2 falls back onto the grass like he’s done the Fosbury Flop.

  ‘Big Ben,’ I say, ‘if you hit MC2 again you’ll get excluded from Leap 2048 and sent back to 2020 in disgrace.’

  Big Ben gives me the glass-eye, jumps out of the car and hits MC2 again. MC2 tries to disappear but it doesn’t work. He holds up both hands.

  ‘I ain’t fightin’ you, bro. We gotta stick tight and save the Leaps.’

  Big Ben faces him. ‘Are you her boyfriend? Youareyouare youareyouareyouare!’

  I wonder if he has concussion from the car crash. You get concussion if you bang your head and it makes you talk nonsense. What’s Big Ben talking about? MC2 sits cross-legged on the ground and blinks.

  ‘Listen, man. She’s NOT my girl.’

  ‘Who?’ I say.

  ‘YOU, Elle. Man’s got it bad. The lovebug. Man needed to flex his biceps, show he’s vex. But man saw sense.’

  And then I get it, like the answer to a crossword puzzle. I knew Big Ben liked me but didn’t realise that’s why he got so upset when I said anything nice about MC2.

  ‘So glad you’re OK,’ I say. ‘And guess what? We haven’t found Kwesi or Noon but we found the prize sheap.’

  Big Ben isn’t impressed with the sheap. I think he wanted it to have two heads or the head of a Leapling and the body of a boy or vice versa. It stinks like a normal sheep.

  ‘It can think aloud, though,’ I say and Big Ben scrunches up his eyebrows.

  ‘Not logical.’

  ‘Listen! I can hear it muttering but it isn’t opening its mouth.’

  ‘Honeybee, it can’t—’ GMT does what-big-eyes. ‘That’s not the sheap. That’s voices!’

  Everyone goes quiet. There are definitely voices. But where are they coming from? Has someone come into the building? No. The murmuring is under our feet. But how are we supposed to get underground? The only door is the one with the arrow leading upstairs. MC2 is already there.

  ‘Never was no Minus 2, unless . . .’ He looks to his right. On the door frame there’s a metal code lock. ‘Millennia was old skool with tech.’ He taps into it.

  ‘Spit!’

  We crowd around him.

  ‘2000MM. 2048 code for storerooms. Ain’t cooperating.’

  Big Ben pauses before he speaks. ‘They might’ve changed it to 2100.’

  ‘Maybe. Only the double M’s fixed.’ He taps the box. ‘No go. Leaps, THINK. What would Le Temps go for? When was he born?’

  ‘2008.’ Big Ben and I answer at the same time. Le Temps who is Pete LMS was born the same year as us.

  It doesn’t work.

  GMT scrunches up her face. ‘Could be ’68, ’72. Might not even be a leap, guys. Le Temps is an Annual. He could choose anything.’

  ‘Millennia said I’d destroyed a CENTURY of work.’

  MC2 wriggles his body. He wants to disappear, appear, but can’t. ‘She founded the centre 2000, it’s now 2100. 2100 don’t work.’

  He holds his hands up to the sky like he’s trying to catch rain. GMT’s raising her eyebrows like she’s asking me a question. I take a deep breath like I’m going to run the 100 metres.

  ‘What if it’s 1900?’

  No one moves. I tap the digits into the box followed by MM. Nothing happens. Then we hear a creaking noise and the floor starts moving under our feet like a lift. A hidden shaft!

  ‘Maestro, Elle!’ says MC2 as we slowly descend to Minus 2 and the voices increase in volume until they turn into teens. The missing Leaplings!

  It takes a little while to see properly; it’s so much darker down here. The walls are brown and the lighting isn’t so bright. There are lots of machines that make it look like a factory. It must be where they do the meat-packing. The Leaplings look like normal teenagers except they stare at us without blinking and are wearing brow
n jumpsuits the colour of sacks and are standing behind the machines. But the machines haven’t been turned on. No one says anything. They stopped talking as soon as we landed. Then a very short boy with black electric-shock hair steps forward.

  ‘I’m Jack. Have you come to give us food? Have you come to give us food?’

  ‘Far out,’ says GMT. ‘He’s looping speech. You only do that when you get stuck in a year too long. How long you guys been down here?’

  The Leaplings say nothing. They don’t know. How do you count the days when you’re looping with no watch?

  There are SEVEN missing Leaplings: Jack, who must be 4-leap even though he’s tiny, who was kidnapped from Leap 2044, the same trip Kwesi was on; three friends who came from 2032 called Yola, Lola and Shola who did illegal leaps from their day school; and three other Leap teens who were born in leap years they hated so couldn’t wait to escape but got rounded up and forced to work here. They squint at us like people who’ve just got out of bed, and even when they turn their heads they do it in slow motion like robots. Le Temps must have threatened to shoot them with his Chronophone if they didn’t work in his factory. I want to ask them lots of questions, like why didn’t they leap to escape, but what actually comes out of my mouth is:

  ‘Did Le Temps steal your DNA so you can’t leap any more?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Jack is the only one who will talk to us. ‘We tried to leap on our own and holding hands but we got ill ill. They made us run round and round and round and round and round the field then go in the lab and spit in bowls. Then injected us for our blood. Then they gave us any food we wanted. I had chocolate cake. Are you robots?’

  ‘No, we’re Leaplings.’

  Lola steps forwards, twiddling her long brown plait. ‘They were nice to us at first. They let us play computer games. Said they’d contact our parents to say we were OK when our phones didn’t work. Said it was like being on holiday.’

  ‘But they lied.’ Jack again. ‘We started getting headaches from the games. I think they were designed to make us to make us confused. Then they brought us down here to work the machines. There were no clocks and our phones didn’t work so we didn’t know what the time was. We only stopped when the robots brought us food. Have you come to give us food?’

  GMT shakes her head slowly. ‘Le Temps wanted their DNA and their silence. He couldn’t let them escape to tell the world. He used them to do what robots do. Run the machines.’

  We look around the factory, then back at the Leaplings. They don’t know what to do with the machines switched off. Some of them seem to have forgotten how to speak. I don’t think stealing your DNA would take away your voice but I have lots of questions that come out in a string before I can stop them.

  ‘Did all of you try to leap solo? When you got ill, did you vomit? Have you seen the sheap?’

  MC2 coughs. ‘Forget Genetic Switch; Glitch is the problem. Le Temps deliberately chose 2100 so leaps would stay put. It’s not a leap year, remember. Much much harder to leap unless you got The Gift in spades. Impossible to leap if your brain’s mixed. You seen Kwesi?’

  They all shake their heads.

  ‘We have to find Noon,’ I say.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ says Jack. ‘Have you come to give us food?’

  I think about going to the woods to pick mushrooms. Season taught me which ones are OK to eat and which ones will kill you. Big Ben rummages in his bag and takes out a bread roll. I squint my eyes at it. It can’t possibly be. It IS.

  ‘Don’t eat it!’ I shout and everyone looks at me.

  ‘It’s evidence.’ MC2 smiles. ‘Elle. Tell Leaps about the sheap.’

  Some of us want to leap and some of us want to seek. The seekers win.

  ‘No one’s going nowhere till we find Kwesi.’

  I second that. Imagine if we got back to 2048 without Kwesi? Ama would never speak to us again. GMT stays in The Beanstalk with the Leaplings who are still eating like they haven’t eaten for days and they haven’t, not since the robots abandoned the centre and all the machinery stopped and they thought they’d die of starvation.

  MC2, Big Ben and I are walking up the spiral staircase to the first floor when we hear the music.

  It’s faint at first, like you’re imagining it in your head, but as we continue up the stairs it gets louder, till we’re taking two steps at a time like athletics training. I’ve heard music like this before, at the leap day celebration: that 1924 music Noon likes and she and Ama went crazy in their dancing, all arms and legs. Noon! We stop outside a door at the top of the stairs. Or rather, I stop, but MC2 tries to open it, which is impossible because it doesn’t have a handle.

  ‘There’s a code lock,’ I say, and he taps in 1900MM. A second later, the door clicks open and the music stops.

  ‘Careful,’ I say. ‘It could be a trap.’

  We push the door in slow motion. The first thing we see is a large black wall covered in numbers and letters sprayed on like graffiti. But they’re not flat against the wall. It’s like the wall has come to life and is breathing. I squint my eyes and make out some of the symbols. E=MC2, 2100 rotated all different angles, upside down, inside out, back to front. In the left-hand bottom corner, an unmistakable L with an infinity sign weaving in and out of it like a snake. Next to it, the thick black outline of a boy. Inside the outline, a tall black boy with round glasses, big ginger hair, white-and-black clothes like MC2 and an infinity tattoo on his left hand.

  I stare at the painting of the boy until it blinks! Slowly the painting that is a boy comes out of the wall towards us. Big Ben takes a step back. MC2 swears under his breath and holds up his left fist like he’s giving the Black Power salute in Mexico City in 1968. His voice sounds odd when he speaks, like he has a sore throat.

  ‘The Squared missed a beat when you went phone-dead.’

  The boy looks at him like he’s looking twice, first through his eyes, then through his glasses. Very slowly, he holds up his left fist. They touch fists, clap palms, snap fingers till it sounds like a rap. Then they make all kinds of shapes with their hands like they’re sculpting air. A sign dance. MC2 turns to face us.

  ‘Elle. Big Ben. KWESI. Kwesi. ELLE. BIG BEN.’

  Kwesi holds up his fist to greet us. I do the same but Big Ben doesn’t move forwards. I hope he’s not going to hit Kwesi. He only just met him.

  ‘Why are you here and not in the Minus 2?’

  Kwesi makes rapid movements with his hands and face. MC2 raises his eyebrows.

  ‘Kwesi says he worked for Le Temps undercover in black gloves to hide the tat. But Le Temps got wise. Put him in solitary.’ He waits till Kwesi drops his hands. ‘To try to make him switch sides, brother got special treatment. Beats. Paints.’

  Big Ben pauses a long time before he speaks. ‘Logical.’

  Kwesi raises his fist to Big Ben and points to the red hat. Big Ben takes off the hat and hands it to Kwesi. I can’t imagine how it’s going to fit on his head over the afro. Big Ben tries to smooth down his hair but it still looks scruffy. In slow motion, he raises his left fist to meet Kwesi’s.

  ‘We still haven’t found Noon,’ I say.

  Kwesi jerks his head towards me on the word Noon and draws a big circle with his hand then claps his hands fast twice. We don’t need a translation. We should have thought of it before. Noon loved The Round. If she was going to leap anywhere in 2100, that’s where she’d go.

  Noon doesn’t look dazed like the other Leaplings. I guess she’s not been here as long. Luckily she didn’t leap to January 2100 by mistake.

  ‘Le Temps told me to work for him. I said no. I leapt in The Round to escape. Kwesi said 2100. I KNEW you’d be here.’ Noon smiles at Kwesi from East to West. I’ve never seen her look so happy.

  ‘You did good,’ says MC2.

  ‘There’s 13 of us now,’ I say. ‘A group leap might work.’

  Kwesi shakes his head and holds up various fingers like he’s playing the piano. MC2 explains.

  �
�Brother don’t like 13. Says 12 is best. He’ll stay behind.’

  I stare at him with an open mouth. ‘What about Ama? She’ll be furious if you don’t go back. She’ll roll her eyes anticlockwise. She can’t leap to 2100.’

  Kwesi looks at me as if he can see right into my head. Then he signs to me. I don’t understand what he’s signing but I like how he moves his hands and fingers. You can almost imagine the sound.

  ‘Kwesi says: you speak sense. Big Ben should leap by car. And the sheap must be centre of the leap.’

  12 of us form a Chrono in The Round. In the middle is the prize sheap we called Ewe because she’s female. We’re going to transport her like luggage. We’ll drop off Leaplings to their destination years and take Ewe back to 2048 to give to Season as a pet so she can use the poo to grow vegetables. We close our eyes and concentrate on the first stop, the 29th of February 2044. Jack wants to go back to the day he went missing. It’s smooth this time, nothing like the 6-chrono-leap from 2020 or the 3-chrono-leap here. 12 is definitely best.

  Yet before I open my eyes I know something isn’t right. Before MC2 consults his Chronophone and Kwesi signs something about the number 12 and Jack starts sniffing like he has a cold.

  The leap hasn’t worked. We’re stuck in 2100.

  I hate 2100. It’s like the end of the world because no one lives here except the robots and even the robots have gone. Le Temps chose a good year to hide his crimes. We look at each other in the Chrono. How will we ever get back to Leap 2048?

  ‘Can anyone know the time without a phone?’

  Thankfully, Big Ben hasn’t leapt in Fiona yet. He’s good at problem solving so might come up with a plan. I concentrate.

  ‘Le Temps said you have to look at the stars but he’s a REAL criminal so it’s a lie.’

  ‘Today’s the 28th of February?’