✦—✦—✦•
I always knew I was different. In fact, I knew it when I first made memories. I remembered it so specifically — day close to the Christmas holidays because there was a Christmas song playing. My parents had a fight and were screaming at each other. For the life of me, I can't remember what it was about. I only remembered the faces they made in anger, it played in slow motion. My mother had picked me up for some reason then put me down, all the while arguing with my father. The heightened emotions on both of my parents' faces seemed as apt a moment as any for the world to grant me sentience. In that one moment where I was watching my mother grow red-faced, I was born.
When I first saw things, or rather could remember things, everything changed. I couldn't see things in quite the same light anymore. I am no neuroscientist, but I was sure that I had memories even before that moment. I even remembered thinking about remembering them, but for some reason, those memories seemed erased from my mind as I think back on it now. My brain vibrated — or at least my scalp seemed to vibrate — each time that happened I received what I came to call "revelations".
It all started when I had been baptised not long after I could retain memories my memories like a sentient being. I was almost three then. My scalp felt the buzzing sensation accompanied by this odd feeling of my hair follicles loosening. As if my hairs were about to fall off. Goosebumps rose all over my body as I received the revelation that I assumed to be from God. In my toddler brain, I had received crystal-clear memories detailing the practice of baptism and information about the Protestant and Catholic churches. Of course, it didn't quite make sense that the memories were God-given, because most of what I received in revelation was about terrible things that organised religion had inflicted upon the world.
I didn't, or couldn't, think much on it at that time, as my first few years of life had been spent mostly following each line of revelation into the next branch until I found its roots. For example, I couldn't tell what atheism was, despite having the word revealed to me in another vision. But learning the word itself triggered another revelation which told me what it was. Inevitably, learning new things would involve me having to learn an exponential amount of more things just to understand those concepts. You'd be surprised how many things are explained by other things that have be explained, all the way down to the root.
What was color green? Light. What was light made of, then you would have to backtrack and explain that green was only light reflecting off a surface in only certain wavelengths. But then you'd have explain what light was, go into how green is only a concept from a human perspective. Other animals could see it as different colors depending on what kind of eyes they had. Usually things started with a simple question then went into excruciating scientific details before finally giving way to a philosophical explanation. So it is no wonder that I made my parents worry as I stood unnaturally still browsing memories and learning new things.
Of course, it didn't take long until I no longer believed that the revelations were given to me by God. Or if there was ever such a being, the revelation itself didn't seem to believe it. Have you ever wondered if you were actually crazy? Worried your mind had fractured, or having some sort of false memories planted into you. Someone evil torturing you by making you believe in crazy things? I had felt like that, but then my mind had spat out possible illnesses that could be affecting me. It never sat right with me, but it was clear that revelation had its limits. For one, illnesses given in the revelations had fragmentation — not the first I had encountered — but in this revelation, the memory had forgotten the word for schizophrenia, yet had minutes worth of knowledge for a word "Schizo" and its various uses.
I had started to have a theory about having lived this life before, but it was hard to prove given that I had never received revelation about myself. For some reason, whoever allowed me to see these memories didn't want me to know about myself. Wilfred Ingrid Price — my name — hadn't triggered any new revelation. Yet my eyes had seen a two-hour movie in my mind as I stared at that mandrill in Chester Zoo. With how recent the supposed film was, I asked my father to get me The Lion King, and we had watched the movie together. It was great to see it in its entirety and in real time, but the real-life experience was more limited than the revelations had been. It worried me how odd the revelations were — some things had too much information for me, yet some things had almost none. Some memories also triggered it but some didn't. I felt that a glass would disappear somehow but never received a revelation about what that memory was about. Solid trigger was required for me to obtain something concrete.
There also seemed to be something exceptionally sad about reliving a memory of the future or reminiscing about events that hadn't happened yet. My memory revelation seemed to calm down as I stared into the paper test laying before me. This was a special test just for me. This particular test did not follow the national curriculum our school followed, and it was certainly out of the primary school range for the class I was in.
The paper itself had a simple triangle with notations showing angles from certain points. When I saw the triangle, I had a revelation about geometry, and specifically trigonometry, which told me how to solve for the missing side in mere moments. These new tests jogged my mind, and I just loved how fresh it all was to me. I had to look around; my gaze briefly lingered over at Mrs Ramsdale. She had changed in the last few weeks, hadn't she? After our school trip to Chester Zoo, she started asking me to complete tests every day. At first, it was simple and easy for me — a slight bit of a brain tease — triggering almost no revelations. When the difficulty arose so did the amount of revelations.
My theory had finally settled on myself somehow repeating my life, so I was eager to remember everything I had forgotten. If God wouldn't let me remember my family or friends, I would have to remember everything else first.
"Are you done, sweet?" Mrs Ramsdale asked me sweetly — too sweet maybe.
"Yes, thank you," I replied and handed her the paper.
Mrs Ramsdale hemmed and hawed over the paper until she smiled. Her green eyes set themselves on my own sea-green.
"Well done, Will," Mrs Ramsdale said with a thoughtful look then shook her head and left.
I just didn't understand her — she seemed eager to tell me something but always held herself back. I forgot about it almost as soon as she had left though. There was no point — I had to go feed the chickens.
—✦—
"Wilfred is a special child," Chris said to Mr Price.
"I know he is. What will you do about it?" Oliver asked the balding man.
"Well, Woodfield has been dropping standards in recent years. Our pupil numbers are decreasing day by day. But we can bring him to UKMT — that's a challenge for mathematics for children his age. Juniors, that is to say, primary schoolers can compete for medals, and the top scorers can join more Olympiads like the Junior Kangaroo," Chris continued. "Mrs Ramsdale will have extracurricular classes with Wilfred to make sure his knowledge is more complete. I'm afraid there's not much time until the next UKMT. But, Mr Price, I'm sure Wilfred can win a medal." Chris chuckled slightly, still trying to get some signal that he could play off of from Oliver's blank face.
"Don't take me for a prideful man, Mr Hale, but I've been his father for eight years. I can see how special he is. I've never needed to teach him anything. He's always just known things and if he didn't, figured it out quickly," Oliver sighed.
"My point is, Mr Hale, he can excel at these things. I'm just not sure if he is motivated to do so. He's never wanted for anything — trust me, I've tried," Oliver finished.
"Ahem, that is how his homeroom teacher described Wilfred too. But everything changed suddenly — Wilfred seems eager to learn advanced material."
"Advanced material? What do you mean by that?" Oliver asked.
"Mrs Ramsdale gave Wilfred tests from Year 5, 6, and then 7, 8, and finally now at Year 9 levels. Wilfred can understand trigonometry and algebra at an instinctive level. It's quite scary," Chris chuckled nervously, "Of course, it would be absolutely enormous if we can keep that fire stoked. We can start the process to get him transferred to King's School. They'll have better resources than our school and, of course, he could skip years and graduate earlier." Chris hated selling a different school, but he didn't have to fool himself into thinking that Woodfield could compete.
Oliver rapped his knuckles and let his legs play a tune.
"Tell me more about this UKMT thing."
"It's an Olympiad — they started a junior version a few years back for students under Year 8. It should be at your son's level, and it's a short paper without much stress."
—✦—
October 23rd, Woodfield Primary School, UK
That hadn't taken that long. I didn't spend much time discovering my memories anymore, and I was eager to learn subjects just by looking at a new challenge. It was addictive in a way, and after completing quite a few of them, I was now stuck at school for extracurricular activities with Mrs Ramsdale. She was a chubby lady on the wrong side of forty; her most prominent features were the kindly face, widow's peak, hooked nose, and laugh lines. Ageing had done her no favours, but for all that, she always seemed energetic about everything.
Today, she had gone through many examples of maths problems with trick questions. Some problems were more of an English test rather than a maths problem, but I really enjoyed the dopamines from completing every problem on my first try. Fractions and multiplication were so simple, logic puzzles were childish, and multiple-choice questions made it too easy. The only problem that my revelations didn't help with was a visualisation problems that asked how many sides a very odd shape given an image would have.
"Good job, Wilf. Let's go over your answers," Mrs Ramsdale said before picking up my paper to mark it.
"I'm flabbergasted," Mrs Ramsdale sighed. "You are so very good at this. I mean, these are supposed to be completely new to you, but you complete them without issue."
"I'm not sure what to say, ma'am. It's just simple logic, isn't it?" I replied, not too sure what more I could say.
"That's right — never mind me ramblings. I have spoken to your father; turns out no one has any academic background, so all of your genius must be natural," Mrs Ramsdale told me. I started to think about where this was going. I had an idea or two that had been revealed to me in the visions, but so far nothing was set in stone.
"UKMT," Mrs Ramsdale enunciated clearly in her northern accent.
I was stumped — no revelations and no visions. "What's UMKT?"
"It's an organisation founded by a mathematician. Erm… you could say a very smart man started a competition that every boy and girl can take part in. A hundred thousand kids compete in the challenge. Isn't that brilliant?" Mrs Ramsdale asked.
"Yeah, that sounds lovely. Why haven't I been allowed to before?" I had to ask.
"We make the Year 5 and 6 take it, but I think you are sharp enough to take them now."
"Let's!" I replied enthusiastically.
There were so many things that I just had no idea about. These revelations were brilliant, of course, but it was hard to attribute how much of my "genius" could even be related to my own brain or the revelations that allowed me to bear the fruit of learning without putting in the effort. But more than all of that, I wanted to know what the limit was. Was I truly a genius, or was being given memories just something that can be mistaken for genius?
Too many questions and not enough answers — many revelations, yet I seem to have more questions, the more I've learned.
"I'll give you the papers from previous years. There are some general knowledge questions that would be good to study," Mrs Ramsdale said. My brain settled into a low hum of activity.