The Great Brain Robbery (11 page)

Frankie couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Dr Calus Gore who, not so long ago, had been scurrying round a hamster wheel in 4D’s classroom was now striding on to
the stage, grinning like an imp. He looked just the same as he did when he was headmaster of Crammar Grammar, only instead of his headmasterly robes he wore the sort of long white coat that doctors
wear when they are about to stick a needle in your arm. The scientist’s yellowish eyes ranged over the room and his curled moustache twitched like a large black moth. Frankie frowned. No, he
didn’t look
exactly
the same. There was something changed about him. Frankie couldn’t put a finger on what it was – until he opened his mouth to speak.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he smirked. ‘Thank you, Marvella, for your most accurate introduction.’

Frankie had to suppress a giggle. Rather than the grating tone of his headmaster days, Gore’s voice kept veering into high-pitched squeaks. Whatever scientific wizardry Dr Gore had used to
transform himself back into a person had not been completely successful. Dr Gore was
still
part rat. His front teeth were long and pointy and Frankie could have sworn that his ears were
bigger and tuftier.

‘He sounds just like Teddy Manywishes!’ Neet whispered. Frankie did a double-take.

‘Wow, you’re right!’ he replied. ‘He
is
Teddy Manywishes. It must have been him in that costume when he came to visit the school!’ Frankie shivered to
think that his old enemy had been so close and he hadn’t even known it.

Dr Gore pressed the tips of his bony fingers together as he waited for the audience to settle.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, jutting his chin in the air, ‘I like to think of myself as an explorer!’

Oh here we go!
thought Frankie, sensing that Dr Gore was about to launch into one of his lectures.
We’ll be stuck here for ages.

The scientist sucked a lungful of air slowly through his narrow nostrils. ‘. . . An explorer of the mind.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘The mind of the child is a ghastly
place,’ he continued. ‘I know. I have seen it. Children may look like harmless little gnomes, but believe me, there are sinister things lurking inside those tiny heads.’

There was a splutter of nervous laughter. Who was this strange fellow?

‘Beneath those blond curls,’ Dr Gore went on, ‘between those pink ears, is a primitive jungle full of hidden dangers and creeping with monsters!’

‘What is he on about?’ said Neet.

‘Search me,’ said Frankie. ‘I never understand a word he says.’

‘Who here has read a child’s story or seen a child’s drawing?’ asked Dr Gore, lifting two bristling eyebrows. A number of hands went up. ‘Well then, you will know
that a child’s mind is full of the most abysmal nonsense. Fairy stories, magic, clowns, talking animals – children have no sense of reality whatsoever!’ Dr Gore’s moustache
was twitching so fast Frankie thought it might fly off and flutter round the room like a bat. ‘But I, Dr Calus Gore, have fearlessly ventured into this wilderness and I shall tell you what I
saw.’

The audience shifted in their seats, intrigued by the weird brilliance of the speaker.

The scientist flicked on the video projector and a large picture of a child’s brain appeared on the screen. It was divided into different colour-coded areas and at the centre was a large
dark spot. ‘As you can see,’ Gore sniffed, ‘the child’s brain has only a few basic functions. This part . . .’ Gore tapped the green area with his fingernail, ‘.
. . is for problem-solving. Children mostly use it for pointless activities like jigsaw puzzles.’ He gave a snort of contempt. ‘The pink area here,’ he continued, ‘is for
inventing things or, in other words, making up the most appalling drivel. You would not believe the ludicrous creations I have encountered there: green horses, talking toothbrushes, flying monkeys
in bowler hats!’

The audience laughed, but Dr Gore did not see the funny side.

Widening his yellow eyes, Gore pointed to the mysterious dark zone at the centre of the diagram. ‘But it is here . . .’ he said in hushed tones, ‘that I have discovered the
deepest, darkest possibilities of the child’s mind. This is the part of the mind that makes the child the person they are. It is the
core
, the keystone, the smouldering volcano at
the centre of the island. It is where we find their most secret thoughts, their most intense feelings and their most precious memories. It is
this
that we must colonise if we are to win
the race to Christmas!’ Dr Gore was so worked up that Frankie thought he could see a plume of steam rising from the dome of his head.

The audience muttered amongst themselves. They weren’t yet sure what to make of this odd chap and his even odder ideas. ‘I’m not sure where he’s going with this,’
whispered one.

‘I hope Marvella knows what she’s doing,’ muttered another, ‘or it’ll cost us.’

Then a silver-haired man who had been huffing and puffing for the past few minutes lost his patience and thrust his hand into the air. ‘This is all well and good, Professor,’ he
began, in a voice that sounded like the stomping of boots, ‘but what we want to know is how all this is going to pay off. How is it going to make us money?’

There was a general nodding of heads.

‘I believe Dr Gore is just getting to that.’ Marvella smiled frostily. ‘Aren’t you, Dr Gore?’

Dr Gore grimaced and narrowed his eyes. He could see that he was surrounded by idiots. ‘Of course,’ he hissed through his enormous front teeth. ‘The first stage of
Project
Wishlist
is complete. We have extracted the mind-matter from the core of children’s brains and stored it on a database.’

‘That’s what the Mechanimals are for,’ whispered Frankie, remembering his own memory flashing on to the screen in Marvella’s creepy computer lab. ‘They’ve
been robbing our brains and beaming our thoughts back here.’

But the man who asked the question wasn’t satisfied.

‘So what did you find out?’ he puffed. ‘What
do
children want?’

Dr Gore rolled his eyes. ‘My dear ssssir,’ he hissed, ‘you are asking the wrong question. Children, as we all know well, do not want
anything
for very long. One day
it’s a toy castle, the next it’s a spaceship, the day after that it’s a pirate costume. Today, they all want Mechanimals but next week it will be something else entirely. All this
makes life very difficult for toyshops.’ The audience nodded in agreement – he was spot on there. Dr Gore smiled his piranha smile. ‘So I have ssssimplified things. The purpose of
Project Wishlist
is not to
find out
what children want, but to
tell
them what they want.’

‘How do you propose to do that?’ the gentleman sniffed.

‘Sssimple,’ hissed Dr Gore, spreading his fingers like a magician. ‘Advertising.’ Dr Gore’s grin twinkled in the spotlight.

‘Advertising?’ scoffed the gentleman. ‘But that’s the oldest trick in the book!’

‘You misunderstand, dear sir,’ Dr Gore continued. ‘This won’t be any old advertising. It won’t be the sort that you watch as you’re eating your cornflakes and
forget by the time you’ve brushed your teeth. No! This kind of advertising will go straight to the core of the child’s mind and lodge itself there for eternity. Think of it as upgrading
their brains, giving their minds a makeover.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the woman with the pointy shoes.

‘As we speak,’ said Dr Gore, ‘there is a team of computing experts working on the memories that we have harvested from children’s brains up and down the country. Into
this mind-matter they are inserting Marvella logos, Marvella products and the Marvella jingle. Let me demonstrate.’ Dr Gore pushed a button and the screen lit up. ‘This memory belongs
to little Viola Fordham of Oxford, England.’ The screen showed a little girl playing cricket with her mum on the beach. ‘The sun is shining, the sea is sparkling, the ice-cream is
melting. It is a perfect day, is it not? It is a memory that Viola will no doubt cherish for years to come. But our laboratory has added some finishing touches. I shall now give you the new and
improved version of little Viola’s memory. See if you can spot the difference!’

Dr Gore restarted the film. The exact same memory replayed, only this time there were two striking differences. Firstly, Viola’s mother was wearing a T-shirt with a large Marvella logo on
it and secondly the ice-cream van in the distance was playing the Marvella jingle over and over and over again. Dr Gore had turned Viola’s memory into an advert for Marvella Brand’s
Happyland. The audience oohed and aahed in astonishment. This was extraordinary! Revolutionary! The man was a genius, no doubt about it. Dr Gore puffed up like an adder.

‘At midnight tonight,’ he continued, ‘when little Viola is tucked up in bed dreaming of dancing sugarplums and other such nonsense, the Mechanimals will switch her old memories
for these new, improved versions. All Viola’s warm, fuzzy feelings about family holidays, her mummy, the seaside and so on, shall be instantly transferred on to our toys. And the results
shall be astounding. From tomorrow morning,’ Gore shouted triumphantly, ‘whenever children see the Marvella logo or hear the Marvella tune they will become convinced that owning our
toys is the very key to happiness. At the same time, they will feel certain that – should they fail to own them – they will be as worthless as dung-beetles. In short, they will be
overcome by an irresistible desire for as many Marvella toys as they can get their sticky little fingers on. Not just this Christmas, not just next Christmas, but every day till the end of their
childhoods!’

The audience exploded into waves of applause. They were impressed, very impressed.

‘He wants to turn us into drones!’ whispered Neet, appalled. ‘It’s horrible! Horrible! I can’t believe he’s been poking around inside my head!’

‘It’s OK, Neet,’ Frankie said, trying to sound much braver than he felt. ‘We’ll stop him. We’ll find a way.’

All of a sudden there was a faint knock at the door, just next to where Neet and Frankie were hiding.

‘Hello?’ said a small, nervous voice.

It was Timmy.

‘A five-minute break, my good people,’ Dr Gore grinned, spotting Timmy peeking round the door. ‘I have something urgent to see to.’ Gore and Marvella
both headed towards Timmy as the audience chattered excitedly amongst themselves.

‘Well?’ smiled Marvella, in a voice that sounded like the squeak of snow underfoot.

‘Ummm . . . errrr . . . the thing is . . .’ Timmy fumbled. Frankie felt the air temperature drop as Marvella’s patience thinned like ice on a lake. ‘They didn’t
come into school today,’ blurted Timmy. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Miss.’

Dr Gore’s eyes bulged out of his head like a rat caught in a trap. ‘So where
are
they?’ he spat. ‘We must find them. We must root them out!’

‘It’s not my fault, sir,’ Timmy whined. ‘That’s all I came to say. Can I have my vouchers now?’

‘No you can’t have—’ spluttered Dr Gore, the veins on his head pulsing like earthworms.

Marvella interrupted. ‘Don’t you listen to that mean old man, Timmy dear,’ she soothed. ‘Rudolph, my secretary, will give you as many vouchers as you can stuff in your
pockets.’