The Ambrose Object

[Unseelie]

His name was Yale Ambrose. He was sixteen years old, and the youngest person, ever, to be recognized as a member of the Cambridge Twenty. He was, surely, absolutely brilliant, top of his class, top of every class, ever. He'd been tested at seven, like most every other child of Bretonia, and found to be brilliant. Exceptionally brilliant. More brilliant than most everyone else, but that wasn't saying much. He was lucky, at seven, to score exceptionally high. He was special, and a standard deviation did matter. Even half a standard deviation, and a person could say more, beter, stronger, noticably more brilliant. But in his range, in that upper echelon, where he tested, probably by fluke, above a million other people, he was marginal. Better, worse, the margin was so small that no difference could be shown between him and a million other people.

Today, nine years later, there wasn't a single member of those million exceptional, brilliant, Bretonian youth who could hold a candle to his brillance.

He'd been selected, probably as a fluke, after fourteen other families refused to give up their brilliant children, after a standard school aptitude test for standard advanced classes, and been passed into the custody of the Office of the Queen's Spider. His records were altered, his history changed, his citezenship, his identy, nearly vanished. He went to special schools, recieved special doctors. Compounds were added to his food, treatments made, subliminal messages added to his constant mediaflow. Behaviors were coded into him, viruses slightly altered his DNA. He was still human, so far as such things went, but only barely. His mind was one of twenty objects, the most brilliant, dangerous things in Bretonia, the Cambridge Twenty.

And he hadn't the slightest object what it was.

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