‘We will go to the Education Room,’ was Shana’s reply.
‘Why?’
‘Because at the moment we’re helpless little creatures scurrying around a big building, knowing nothing about where we are or what we’re supposed to be doing. If that place lives up to its name it should provide us with some answers.’
Jon looked unconvinced but Shana pressed her case. ‘Look Jon, remember how much I learned when I was wearing that cap thing on the hill. How I learned about the Cave of Shadows. If I hadn’t gone in we’d still be there or maybe slaughtered by – by Korok.’
Jon finally agreed and having checked its location on another schematic set out for it. They passed several bands of toiling arachnoids who as usual totally ignored them. The second one appeared to be dealing with a particularly bad problem insofar as huge showers of blue and yellow sparks were issuing from a rip in a wall along with crackling bolts of electrical energy. It looked so dangerous that the pair were forced to find another way.
But find it they did and gained access to the room without further trouble. The Educator Room was comprised of an antechamber which had an open door in its far wall. Through this could be glimpsed a much larger room. Shana wanted to go straight through to that part of the room but Jon advised caution.
‘Let’s see what’s in here first,’ he said.
The answer was, apparently, not a lot. There was a continuous bench running three-quarters of the way around the room on which sat devices which would have reminded the pair of old-fashioned TV sets, if they had ever seen one. In front of each device was a chair. And that was all.
Jon sat on one of the chairs and inspected his immediate surroundings. He noticed a red button on the shelf in front of the device, which from its design must have been some kind of viewer and pressed it. Immediately a portion of the bench swung up revealing a vertically stacked collection of thin sheets of metal. Jon took one out: it was indeed metal and extremely thin so it bent like paper as he held it by one corner. He studied it intently and thought he could just make out extremely small marks upon its glistening surface. But they were far too small for him to be able to determine what they were.
He put the sheet back in its drawer and stood up.
‘Whatever they are, they’re no use to us,’ he decided, ‘let’s see what’s in the main room.’
Inside the larger room, they were confronted with row after row of long couches, at one end of which was a device that looked strangely familiar. Shana picked one up.
‘Look Jon, it’s like the device in your house.’
Jon studied it. Indeed it was similar to the object from his time on the Hill, possessing a curved section that terminated in two soft pads as before; but the material it was made from looked much more impressive.
‘So what do we do?’ he asked Shana.
‘I think it’s pretty obvious,’ was the reply, ‘we lie on the couches and put these things on our heads.’
Jon looked around at the huge number of empty couches that completely filled the entire room. ‘It looks like we are the first to arrive. The others will be late for the party.’
‘We already knew we were the first,’ Shana said, ‘stop delaying and just do it.’
She was already lying on the couch and Jon watched apprehensively as she put the headset on top of her riotous mass of hair. Instantly her eyes closed and her face went blank. Alarmed, Jon crossed to her and shook her as gently as he could but there was no response.
He stood over her for quite a while wondering what he should do. Eventually, he decided that trying to pull her out of whatever state she was in was too dangerous. There was only one way he could watch over her and that was to join her.
He lay down on the couch and very slowly placed the headset on his head. Instantly he felt tiny pinpricks as extremely small wires shot out of the ends and sank a short distance into his flesh. There was a short pang of pain and then no sensation at all.
He felt his eyes shut involuntarily.
And then his education began.
Four
There was only blackness; a blackness so deep it was if the entire universe had been annihilated. A blackness that was the negation of everything that had ever been, was or ever would be. Jon could have been hanging motionless in a universe of eternal night.
And then at what could have been any distance whatsoever he saw some spinning shapes, each glowing with soft pastel light. And slowly they began to approach him, one after the other in a short train of mystery.
Jon could see that they were regular shapes but as yet he did not possess the terminology to define them. They were, in fact, the Platonic Solids, each softly glowing with pleasing radiance except the last, the icosahedron, which was not self-radiant but a lightless, lifeless black.
The first in the line, the tetrahedron, slowly approached him until it became obvious that they would touch. And touch they did and more; Jon passed without resistance into the exact centre of the object and was immersed in its lambent substance.
And then it began.
He felt a sudden probing of his mind, as if every neuron was being studied for its contents and its holding capacity for information.
It appeared that a decision had been made because then came a vast flux of data deep into every one of those neurons; a great irresistible tidal wave of information, of concepts, of axioms, of rules of inference, as entire slabs of mathematical knowledge crashed into his brain.
He felt like screaming, of begging whatever force was responsible to stop, of pleading for respite. But still it surged on.
Then it was over and he was free, outside the tetrahedron and adrift in emptiness again.
But not for long.
The softly glowing cube approached, touched him, swallowed him.
And it began again. This time the mighty cascades were of advanced theoretical physics: special relativity, general relativity, quantum chromodynamics, non-abelian string theory. And there was practical physics also, mainly to do with rocket propulsion, but with a sinister subsection on weaponry.
And then the cube moved on.
Jon watched the glowing octahedron approach with the certainty that it too would be forcing yet more knowledge into his burning brain. And so it proved, this time of chemistry; mainly organic but with a heavy dose of planetology. And once again a disturbing area, this time on the use of chemistry for explosives.
The octahedron passed into unplumbed blackness and he was swallowed by the oncoming dodecahedron, which poured biochemical knowledge into his tottering mental circuitry.
He was released and waited for the final chapter of his ordeal by knowledge – but No! the icosahedron was dark and aloof. It passed him by without any recognition of his existence.
Jon watched it disappear into ebon oblivion and reflected that whatever knowledge it contained was not regarded as being for the likes of him.
Suddenly he realised that he was en rapport with Shana although he could not see her; he was somehow able to observe her thoughts, thoughts which were in a mind that was in total turmoil from having tremendous amounts of information poured into it. Then with what seemed like an audible snap, contact was lost. Jon hoped that was because she had come out of the Educator before him.
He then expected to awake from whatever this state was and find himself on the couch but once again he was surprised.
Now he was to be given a history lesson.
A great face appeared in the darkness, covering an area several times greater than Jon’s dimensions. It was the face of a man whose visage bore the unmistakeable lines of power and great authority. A face seemingly not made of soft flesh but skilfully carved from dark flint. A face that was that of someone used to deciding on matters of life and death without a second’s thought. A face of a man whose enmity was something to be greatly feared.