The Smartest Kid in the Universe Read online

  The crowd in the TED Talk audience looked stunned. Dr. Blackbridge smiled when he saw their reaction.

  “I suppose these smart pills might put a few of our top colleges and universities out of business.”

  A nervous titter ran through the crowd.

  “But don’t panic, fellow professors. We’re talking about the future. Ingestible Knowledge can’t be done. Not yet, anyhow. You still have thirty or forty years of job security.”

  Jake’s fingers were trembling when he tapped the screen to end the video.

  Had he somehow accidentally ingested knowledge last night at the hotel?

  Impossible. He’d had the chicken and the beef and a couple slices of cake. None of those were pills.

  Besides, Emma had eaten the cake, too, and she hadn’t become an instant genius.

  That was when he remembered the jelly beans.

  “Jelly beans?” said Kojo. “You aced that social studies quiz and made all those shots in the basketball game because you ate jelly beans?”

  Jake nodded. “I think so.”

  “You have any more?” Kojo asked. “Because I’d like to sink buckets the way you did. Tell me again how you did it? Is it like carbo-loading before a marathon?”

  “No. I used geometry and focused on the parabola of my shots. I also knew exactly when to feed you the ball, based on timing and patterns I was seeing on the floor.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jake kept going. “A parabola, as you probably know, is the arched trajectory naturally formed by any projectile—a missile, a rotten tomato, or a basketball—moving in a gravitational field. The higher the parabola, the more easily the ball drops through the hoop. The lower, the greater the probability that the ball will hit the rim. That’s why you need to follow through with your wrist, give the ball a quick little backflip at the end of the shot.”

  “For the parabola?”

  “Correct.”

  “Okay,” said Kojo. “We need to head to your mom’s hotel. See if there are any more magical jelly beans lying around. I want to get my parabola on, too.”

  Right after the final bell, Jake and Kojo caught an express bus downtown. They made their way up the alley to the hotel’s service entrance. Like always, Tony was on the loading dock, taking a break.

  “Hey, Jake. How’s it going?”

  “Fine, I guess. This is my best friend, Kojo.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kojo.”

  Kojo shook Tony’s hand. “Who loves ya, baby?”

  Tony shrugged. “I dunno. My mother? So, Jake, you guys looking for your mother? She’s probably up front in her office.”

  Jake shook his head.

  “We’re here for the jelly beans,” blurted Kojo.

  “The jelly beans?” said Tony, sounding confused.

  “Two nights ago,” Jake explained, “Emma and I were hanging out in the greenroom. There was this jar of jelly beans.”

  Tony slapped himself in the forehead. “Oh. Right. The jelly beans. I forgot to put the goofy little guy’s business card on the table with them.”

  “Huh?” said Jake.

  “That was the night this wild-eyed mad-scientist dude came by. I could tell he was a brainiac. One of those absentminded-professor types, you know what I mean?”

  Jake and Kojo nodded.

  “Anyway, he really wanted to leave Professor Blackbridge a present in the greenroom, even though Blackbridge had already gone into the banquet hall to eat dinner with his fans. The young guy had a jar full of jelly beans. I pointed to the sign: ‘Authorized Personnel Only.’ He can’t go backstage. All of a sudden, he’s peeling off twenty-dollar bills. Says he’ll give me a hundred bucks if I put his gift in the greenroom. So I did. Only I forgot to tuck his business card under the jar like I was supposed to. Oops.”

  Tony dug out his wallet and pulled a smudged and crinkled business card from its billfold.

  “ ‘Haazim Farooqi,’ ” he read off the card. “Later the guy comes running up to me, claiming somebody stole his jelly beans. I told him I don’t like jelly beans. I’m more of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup–type guy. Anyway, Farooqi’s going nuts. Screaming at me. Whining about his jelly beans. Saying they were supposed to go to Dr. Blackbridge. Finally, I had to call Omar from security to come haul the kook out of here.”

  “Does his business card have an address on it?” Jake asked.

  Tony glanced at the card.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “What for?”

  “Well, uh, Kojo and I are working on a project. For school.”

  “That’s right,” said Kojo. “It’s all about jelly beans and parabolas.”

  “Huh?”

  “Did you know,” said Jake, “that jelly beans were first mentioned in 1861 when a Boston confectioner named William Schrafft urged people to send his small bean-shaped candies to soldiers during the American Civil War? Then, in 1963, fans of the Beatles—”

  “Here!” said Tony, terrified that Jake could go on for hours about jelly beans (he could). “Take the guy’s card. Just don’t bore me to death with more jelly bean trivia.”

  “Thanks, Tony.”

  Jake took the card and studied what was printed on it:

  Kojo peered over Jake’s shoulder. “What’s ‘IK’?”

  Jake swallowed hard before he answered. “Ingestible Knowledge.”

  Jake used his phone to check out Haazim Farooqi’s website, beans4brains.net.

  It had one of those yellow-and-black banners saying it was under construction.

  “Guess it’s a startup that hasn’t exactly started up,” said Kojo.

  “We should go visit him.”

  “Good idea. But how do we get there?”

  “Simple. We take the downtown nine bus, transfer at Tenth Street for the crosstown twelve, take that to Arlington Avenue, where we can hop on the number fifteen, which will take us the remaining eight blocks to Warwick College. Given current traffic conditions, I estimate total transit time to be approximately twenty-nine minutes, plus or minus ten minutes, depending on how speedily we are able to transfer between buses.”

  Kojo nodded. “One of those jelly beans linked to a travel app?”

  “I guess.”

  “Cool. Let’s boogie, baby.”

  “That’s not Kojak’s catchphrase.”

  “I know. But it’s going to be one of mine!”

  Jake and Kojo boarded the first bus, where Jake helped a kid coming home from school conjugate a Latin verb.

  “To love. Amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant!”

  On the crosstown bus, he taught a second grader how to memorize the order of the planets in the solar system. “My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets.”

  “Okay,” said the boy. “What is it?”

  “That sentence. M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N-P. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto.”

  “Technically, Pluto’s not a planet anymore,” Kojo told the second grader. “But it is still considered a dwarf planet.”

  “So, so true,” said Jake.

  Kojo shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “This is weird, bro. You knowing stuff like me.”

  “I know!”

  The bus ride down Arlington Avenue was extremely short, so Jake amused himself by silently factoring percentages for passengers versus bus capacity and average number of potholes per city block.

  * * *

  —

  They hopped off the bus, saw the big arched entryway for Warwick College, and made their way onto the campus. A winding path led them past stately buildings with Greek columns and across a grassy space known as the Willoughby Quad because, as Jake informed Kojo, “it was named after Willoughby Wanamaker Warwick, the popular foun
der and first dean of Warwick College.”

  “TMI, bro,” said Kojo. “TMI. Let’s just find Corey Hall.”

  They finally did. It took some doing. But after a series of switchbacks, twists, and turns, they stood in front of a three-story redbrick building, tucked behind the Science and Engineering Library. Most of the windows in Corey Hall were dark. There were also signs of construction—a barrel-shaped cement mixer and a dumpster filled with debris. A posted sign read, PARDON OUR DUST, BUT REMODEL WE MUST.

  “The place looks deserted,” said Jake.

  “Except for that security guard in the lobby,” said Kojo. “Let me handle this. On TV, detectives and spies are always looking for people, getting in where folks don’t want them to get in. I’ve been studying their moves.”

  “Great,” said Jake. “Thanks.”

  Kojo unwrapped a Tootsie Pop and tucked it into his mouth. He hiked up his pants, smoothed out his shirt, and strode into the lobby.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am,” he said to the security guard stationed near the entrance. “This will only take a minute. We’re looking for Haazim Farooqi. Name ring a bell?”

  “Downstairs,” said the lady.

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s downstairs. Subbasement C. Take the elevator on the left. It’s the only one that goes down that far.”

  “Thanks for the four-one-one, ma’am. Come on, Jake. You heard the lady. We need to be downstairs.”

  Kojo jabbed the nubby down button for the elevator. There was a thunk, a whirr, and the sound of grinding gears as the elevator car slowly creaked its way through the shaft. Finally the door slid open, and the two friends stepped aboard.

  Jake pressed C. Several times.

  When the door rattled shut (with an assist from Kojo), the elevator shuddered and started its very slow descent.

  “You think they have gerbils on exercise wheels powering this thing?” joked Kojo.

  “No. I suspect they’re utilizing pulleys, cables, and counterweights, as is customary.”

  “Riiiight.”

  When they reached the subbasement, the elevator door skidded sideways, opening up on a dimly lit hallway where the ceiling was filled with a jumble of hanging pipes and dusty ductwork. A bulletin board on the far cinder-block wall displayed one faded flyer. For something that happened ten years earlier.

  “Guess nobody comes down here much,” said Kojo.

  “Guess not.”

  They crept along the empty corridor. Somewhere a furnace thrummed. Steam hissed through pipes overhead.

  “Here we go.” Jake nodded toward a battleship-gray steel door. “Room C-Thirteen.”

  “Stand back. I’ll handle this.” Kojo banged his balled-up fist against the door. “Yo. Mr. Haazim Farooqi, if that’s really your name. Open up. Official business.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t knock so loudly,” suggested Jake.

  “What? Have you been studying TV detective shows like I have? Or did one of those jelly beans you wolfed down—”

  The door swung open to reveal a wide-eyed young man in a white lab coat, rumpled white shirt, crooked bow tie, plaid shorts, knee-high socks, and sandals. His dark hair was sticking out in wild spikes, as if he’d been tugging on it all day. He had stubble on his chin and bags underneath his bulging eyes.

  “Jelly beans?” he said hastily. “What do you two know about jelly beans?”

  Farooqi looked up and down the hall like a nervous ferret, then dragged Jake and Kojo into his room.

  C-13 appeared to be some sort of chemistry lab. There were beakers and bottles and test tubes everywhere. A Bunsen burner’s hissing blue flame was making a round-bottomed bottle full of purple goop burble and bubble. Stacks of paper and empty takeout cartons were piled on a pair of antique metal desks. A bulky computer—one that looked like it was born in the late 1990s—randomly blinked on a rack. Several pairs of argyle socks were draped over one of the exposed pipes hanging from the ceiling. There was a dead plant in the open top drawer of a dented filing cabinet.

  Haazim Farooqi’s IK lab was definitely low-tech and old-school.

  “I’ll ask again,” said the frazzled scientist. “What do you two know about my jelly beans?” There was panic in his eyes.

  Jake explained everything as quickly as he could.

  How Tony had put the jelly beans in the greenroom, backstage at the hotel. How Jake had seen them and, since they weren’t labeled or marked in any way, gobbled them down.

  “When we went back to the hotel,” Jake explained, “Tony gave us your business card. The one he was supposed to put with the jelly beans for Dr. Blackbridge. I know about IK. I know because I think I ingested a whole bunch of knowledge when I ingested those jelly beans.”

  Farooqi’s eyes brightened as they darted back and forth.

  “Did anybody follow you here?”

  “No,” said Kojo. “I know how to lose a tail.”

  Farooqi glared at him. “Did you eat some of my jelly beans, too?”

  “No, man. I just watch a lot of TV.”

  “Where’s my notebook?” said Farooqi, patting his many pockets. “I need a notebook. I want to journal this.”

  “There’s a notebook over there,” said Jake, trying to be helpful. “Under that half-empty bottle of soda.”

  “That’s not a notebook. That’s a coaster. Wait. I can use my phone. We can talk, and I’ll record you.”

  Jake nodded. Recording was fine with him.

  “Where’s my phone?” said Farooqi. He stared at his guests.

  Jake and Kojo glanced at each other.

  “Are you asking us?” said Kojo.

  “Of course I am!” said Farooqi. “Do you see anybody else in the room? Wait. Don’t answer that. I sometimes see people who aren’t really here. For instance, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie. They pop in sometimes. Tell me to keep on keepin’ on.”

  “Cool,” said Kojo. “I can dig it.”

  “Huh?” said Jake.

  “That’s from Shaft. He was big in the nineteen seventies, too.”

  “Okay,” said Farooqi, nervously fidgeting his fingers in the air. “Never mind the notebook. Or the phone with the voice memo app. I don’t need notes. Notes are overrated. Just tell me what happened after you ate my jelly beans. I’ll remember. I’m good at remembering things.”

  “Yeah, like where he put his phone,” Kojo muttered to Jake.

  “Can I ask a question first?” said Jake.

  “Yes, of course, young man,” said Farooqi, stroking his chin thoughtfully, trying his best to look like a calm and wise scholar. “I’m sure you must have a lot of them.”

  “Are you a professor?”

  Farooqi shook his head. “No. I’m a research assistant. Have been for nine years. This is my lab.” He proudly gestured at everything in the cramped, cluttered room. “Nobody really bothers me. Ever. I think they forgot I’m down here. They still pay me, though. Not much. I eat a lot of ramen noodles….”

  “Um, sir?” said Kojo, pointing at the gurgling beaker of purple gunk. “Your purple goop is boiling over.”

  “I know that!” said Farooqi. “Now.”

  He twisted a green spigot on a gas tank.

  “Forgot to turn off the Bunsen burner.”

  “A common piece of laboratory equipment that produces a single open flame,” said Jake, “named after Robert Bunsen, who, in the eighteen fifties, with the help of the University of Heidelberg’s chief mechanic, Peter Desaga, invented a prototype of a burner lamp designed to maximize temperature while minimizing luminosity.”

  Farooqi gawped at Jake. Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Oh my goodness. Zabardast! My jelly beans worked! I knew it. Isn’t science amazing? Think of it! Oh, the wonder of what I have done!” He shook his fist at the ceiling, as if he we
re mad at somebody upstairs. “Ingestible Knowledge isn’t just a theory, Dr. Blackbridge. Cognitive enhancement through the bloodstream is possible! This boy is proof! Living proof! I did it.”

  “But how’d you do it?” asked Kojo. “ ’Cause I’m into science and—”

  “What your friend here thought were jelly beans were actually sugar-coated nanoprogrammed capsules that can take your neural synapses back to what they were like when you were an infant learning everything at an astonishing rate, while simultaneously overloading those junctions with the chemical deposits associated with the learning of various subjects.”

  “Which jelly beans are good for basketball?” asked Kojo. “The green ones? The orange ones?”

  “Basketball requires a complex combination of many diverse skills,” said Farooqi. “I suspect that the rapid ingestion of a wide variety of Ingestible Knowledge pills—which, to tell you the truth, I was going to recommend that people take one at a time to master a specific subject—may have resulted in intelligence leaps and synaptic connections I never dreamed possible. The human brain is capable of so much. I just wanted to give it a gentle nudge!”

  “So what’s the antidote?” asked Jake.

  “Excuse me?” said Farooqi.

  “The antidote. You know—the cure.”

  Now Farooqi looked confused. “You want a cure for the gift of superintelligence?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I’d like the option.”

  Kojo nodded. “He’d like the option.”

  “I see.” Farooqi fidgeted with the sleeves of his lab coat. “Well, unfortunately, there isn’t one.”

  “Excuse me?” said Jake and Kojo.

  “They might wear off. You could lose your newfound intelligence. Eventually. Maybe all at once. Who knows? Not me. But I do know that there is no antidote. I wasn’t sure what I was doing would work, so why on earth would I worry about inventing a way to reverse it if it did? I need your contact information.”