Chapter 1: Meet the teach!

Kenny MacGovern was nervous, as he prepared for his first day as a fully qualified, permanently appointed teacher. Sure he had taught classes before now, he'd had a full year as a probationer and that had taken him to three different schools in Dundee. His contact time with the students had moved from one or two closely supervised lessons per week, to two or three per day during that year.

His mentor and assessor had been extremely pleased with his performance. He prepared his lesson plans well, had excellent delivery and his presence in the classroom kept the students focussed and well behaved - most of the time!

His subject was computing, his passion in life, and he had graduated from Dundee University's School of Computing with an honours degree in Applied Computing.

He had originally thought he was destined for the computer games industry. Dundee's degrees were unique in that they included a practical project that involved designing and programming a computer game as part of the course and software companies in the area were responsible for world-renowned games such as Grand Theft Auto.

Even part way through his degree course, Kenny's name and reputation were known to the companies in the area. His professors had never come across such natural talent before. He was intuitive and incredibly quick at the keyboard, seemed to pick up coding languages like they were second nature and he had a logical brain that was able to deliver code that was as tight as a drum at the first attempt. He was imaginative too, and that added to the work he produced.

Both prospective employers and the faculty were therefore amazed when he signed up for teacher training instead. No one could figure out why Kenny would opt for teaching over the leading edge and lucrative world of gaming.

He did do some freelancing for the companies however, and he used some of the money he made from that to buy the props he intended to use as an innovation in his teaching.

Now Kenny watched as the twenty or so second year pupils filed into his class. The thirteen and fourteen-year olds were boisterous and he had to quickly get them settled down so he could begin the lesson.

He handed out a Nintendo DS games console to each pupil and talked them through how to use them. Kenny had them use the Dr Kawashima's Brain Teaching game to get their minds working effectively. Using the consoles also helped focus the pupils and the noise level quietened and then died as they concentrated on the mental exercises.

By the end of the day Kenny asked himself why he had been nervous. His lessons had all gone really well and the idea of using the Nintendo DS had been inspired. His teaching career was off and running.

Over the next few weeks Kenny was excited by how effective the games consoles proved to be. The performance of his pupils was markedly improving, of that he had no doubt. This was why he had decided to go into teaching - he was making a real difference for these young people, helping them get the best start in life possible.

The success of the consoles had Kenny thinking too. What if he could come up with a better program that Dr Kawashima's? He let his agile mind mull that over in his subconscious until the moment came that would change his life.

On the last weekend in August, Kenny was sitting at his home computer set up, having just completed tweaking his lesson plans for the following week.

"I know it's a pain but I really need to clean up my hard disk," he thought to himself.

He called up the utilities menu and clicked on Disk Defragmenter. He clicked on the various tabs and then sat back to watch the display as the computer moved the little blocks that represented the files on the drive. From experience he knew the programme would take an hour or so to run. Defrag would rationalise the disk, bringing files together where that made sense and promote the most used files to space that would make them easier and quicker to access. The entire process made the performance of the system far more efficient. Just as he was about to get up and make himself a cup of coffee, his subconscious brought him to a shuddering halt.

"What if I could develop a programme that did the same for people's brains? What if I could defragment the minds of the pupils in my classes? If I could do such a thing would it enhance their performance in the same way as the computer?" he asked himself.

Gripped by the potential of his idea, Kenny raced for his second computer and immediately began to crack open the code behind the disk defragmenter programme. He was able to read the code easily enough and began to write a modified version aimed at achieving what he wanted.

In true geek tradition, he worked on the code for twenty hours without a break until he was satisfied. He hooked up one of the How old is your brain Nintendo games and spliced his code into it. The effect was similar to the approach used by those using subliminal images and Kenny hoped the brains of his pupils would soak up the code and then their subconscious would run the program. If the program was assimilated successfully, it would run once a week when the individual was asleep. That would ensure any benefits continued throughout the person's life.

Satisfied with his work, Kenny collapsed onto his bed and was quickly snoring loudly. When he awoke, his first thoughts were who he was going to test his programme on. He didn't think there was any potential danger for the individual and was more concerned about choosing a candidate that would allow him to gauge whether there was any noticeable improvement in performance.

Kenny took a shower and looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. At twenty-two years of age, he was still very much a geek, a super geek, an 'uber' geek of the first order. He stood at 6' 1" with shaggy blonde hair and dishwater blue eyes. His complexion was pale from lack of exposure to sunlight and he had no real physique to talk of. The face staring back at him wore a worried look now. Was what he was about to do ethical? Was he entitled to play around with people's minds even if it was in the interests of improving their education?

"What if it makes a really significant difference? Can I afford not to give these kids the chance something like this might represent?"

Eventually after mentally arguing back and forth, Kenny decided he had to try his code. He settled on trialling the programme with one of his first year students. Mark Crawford was an average performer at best and if he didn't start to pick up soon, he would not be a candidate for sitting standard grade exams by the time he got to fourth year.

Kenny had a troubled sleep that night as he continued to agonise over his decision. There was also a great deal of excitement and anticipation to contend with - if his programme worked it held out incredible possibilities.

The first year class was the third of the day for Kenny. He carefully singled out the Nintendo console with the amended game and made sure he delivered it to young Mark Crawford. The young man went through the normal ten minutes with the game. Kenny watched Mark closely. The programme had a signal built-in that was designed to help Kenny know that it had been 'uploaded' successfully. A few minutes later, Mark's right hand crossed his chest and he scratched his left shoulder. That was the signal and Kenny was now pretty sure the programme had at least been recognised by Mark's brain. He gathered the consoles back in and began the lesson proper.

Kenny went through the same routine on the other two days he had Mark Crawford in his classroom that week and also in the following week. He was sure that Mark seemed far more alert in class and he even managed to give several answers when Kenny called on him during lessons. Overall though it was difficult to judge whether his performance was markedly improved. Kenny decided he would stage a snap test to help him assess whether the programme had worked or not.

He managed to control himself and put off marking the test papers until Saturday afternoon. Even then he delayed the moment by putting Mark's paper to one side and marking all of the others first. As usual there were two real stars in the class - Melanie Beckford and Tracy Stubbs - both of whom scored 18/20. At last Kenny turned to Mark's paper and a few minutes later the grin on his face spread wider and wider. Mark had scored 19/20, top of the class!

Kenny knew this couldn't be a coincidence. From below average student to front runner didn't happen overnight, it wasn't normally a feasible possibility. Now, with his brain defragmenter programme it seemed it was. Kenny's excitement hit new heights, as he thought about the rapid improvement he could achieve for all of his pupils if he used the programme on them. He immediately started to adapt more if the Nintendo games to include his programme. From Monday he intended to give the new games to all of his pupils.

For the remainder of the term all of Kenny's students had the programme uploaded into their memories and he watched them all give the telltale signal to confirm installation had been successful. Performance improved for all of them and his Principal teacher was delighted with the results he was achieving. To have every member of every class achieving over 80% in the pre-Christmas exams was phenomenal and even the head teacher asked to see Kenny to congratulate him.

His students had also achieved vast improvements in their other subjects too, but the fact they had various timetables and were spread out across the school meant that no one made the connection back to Kenny's classes.

Any remaining doubts that he had as to the morality of what he was doing vanished in light of the results - to him this really was a case of the ends justifying the means. Already nearly one hundred kids were performing much better because of his programme. These kids were excelling in all of their studies and the weekly running of the programme in their subconscious would ensure that that continued even if they didn't attend Kenny's classes any longer.

There was only one blip in his otherwise rewarding first term. One of is second years was a constant nuisance in class. Colin MacNab's performance had improved just like everyone else's had, but he couldn't stop talking in class and was always trying to show off in front of the girls. Kenny was determined to do something about that and he'd had an idea.

Like all good programmers, Kenny had left a backdoor into his brain defragmenter programme. He was now considering the possibility of trying to use that to improve Colin MacNab's behaviour in class.

"Okay, Colin. I think I've had just about enough of hearing your voice when you're supposed to be busy. Stay behind after class please," Kenny ordered.

MacNab's face showed concern and he did quieten down and get on with his studies. As the bell rang for the end of the lesson, Colin hung back while everyone else filed out of the room. As he approached Kenny's desk, Kenny invoked the trigger phrase for his backdoor.

"Colin, have you ever heard of the Church of Cyberscience and what it can do for you?" he asked.