The Smartest Kid in the Universe: Chapters 13–24

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.”

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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

He shook his fist at the ceiling, as if he were 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.”

“’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.”

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.”

“I’m like the world’s finest chefs. I improvise. A little bit of this. A dash of that. Oh, sure, like every good scientist, I eventually write my recipes down on three-by-five index cards and store them in a tin box, but I can’t be constrained by rigid formulas or formulae. I’m an artist, not an automaton!”

“But why me?”
“Because you ate the jelly beans! Fate put them there and you gobbled down your destiny.”
“You think this is my destiny? To be super smart?”

The next morning, on his way to school, Jake noticed a long line snaking out of the corner bodega, a small grocery and convenience store where people bought their coffee, bagels, and egg sandwiches.

“It’s taking forever,” groused a man, checking his watch.

Dominic, the guy who usually worked the register in the mornings, was pushing a pencil across the back of a brown paper bag. Jake went up on tiptoe so he could see Dominic’s math scrawls.

“The total is fifteen seventy-four,” Jake told Dominic. “He has a twenty. You owe him four dollars and twenty-six cents.”
Dominic gave Jake a quizzical look, then took the man’s twenty and gave him the correct change.

Grace said something like “Nice weather.” Jake gave her the extended five-day forecast complete with information about the fluctuating barometric pressure. Grace didn’t say anything after that.

Jake started sweating profusely and immediately knew why: when emotional stress causes a reaction from your sympathetic nervous system, it primarily affects the eccrine sweat glands on your face, your palms, and the soles of your feet, and in your armpits.

Jake also wondered if boredom with everyday, humdrum things might be a curse that came with superintelligence.

He shook his head, wiped some sleep out of his eyes, reached for his giant Battlestar Galactica travel mug, took a sip, and led his homeroom class in a fifteen-minute discussion on what he called the “philosophical ramifications of knowing that we’re not alone in the universe.”

“Um-hmmm. Well, I call Spanish a romance language because that’s what Grace speaks when she’s making goo-goo eyes at you. Did you see her in the bleachers yesterday? She never used to come to our basketball games.”
“Yes. That did strike me as a bit odd. I can’t quite surmise why she was there.”

“You’re starting to sound like a robot.”
“Sorry. I just seem to precipitously have this capacious and voluminous vocabulary at my disposal.”

“You’re starting to sound like a robot.”
“Sorry. I just seem to precipitously have this capacious and voluminous vocabulary at my disposal.”

“You’re starting to sound like a robot.”
“Sorry. I just seem to precipitously have this capacious and voluminous vocabulary at my disposal.”

“Enough,” said Farooqi, throwing up his arms in exasperation. “Fine. You want a Spanish-language jelly bean? I’ll make you one. Because”—he put on a singsongy voice—“‘that’s what Jake wants.’ Well, what about what I want?”

“Are you trying to look tough?” asked Kojo.
“Yes,” Farooqi replied sheepishly.
“Not working, dude.”

“You’re incorrectly paraphrasing Neil Armstrong,” said Jake.

“It might take me a little while to concoct this new chemical confection,” said the scientist.

A few library patrons started to watch. They were mesmerized by Jake McQuade, the human learning machine. Kojo wondered if he should charge admission. There had to be some way to cash in on Jake’s newfound gift.

“It was a wise investment, Uncle Heath.”
“Indeed it was, Patricia. Because I’m going to completely finance this tower with what we find in the caves underneath your ramshackle old school!”
Then he and Mrs. Malvolio laughed their sinister family laugh.

“It was a wise investment, Uncle Heath.”
“Indeed it was, Patricia. Because I’m going to completely finance this tower with what we find in the caves underneath your ramshackle old school!”
Then he and Mrs. Malvolio laughed their sinister family laugh.

“She fired Mr. Schroeder?” he said, sounding stunned, like his whole world was putrefying faster than the curdled chocolate milk he’d almost just drunk.

“Well,” said Grace, “according to Uncle Charley, Mrs. Malvolio wants them to sell this property. To her uncle, who just happens to be Heath Huxley.”
“Oooh,” said Kojo. “That dapper and dashing dude is a real estate tycoon! I’ve seen his commercials on TV.”

“Well,” said Grace, “according to Uncle Charley, Mrs. Malvolio wants them to sell this property. To her uncle, who just happens to be Heath Huxley.”
“Oooh,” said Kojo. “That dapper and dashing dude is a real estate tycoon! I’ve seen his commercials on TV.”