Zade

Chris Malone

Description

By the twilight of this century, unbeknown to parents, the education system has become a dystopian drug-fuelled sham. Children with scintillated eyes attend the high-performing grammar academies of the Central Area. Those who fail the Four-Plus are forcibly displaced to the dilapidated shanty towns of the Periphery.Zade, a fiercely independent school-refuser, is on a mission to uncover what causes scintillation. She discovers others who secretly share her alarm, combining forces with Central Area School commissioner, Alexandra Essex, with figureheads from the education underground, and with five-year-old, Lucas Patel, whose family has been displaced to the Periphery because his younger brother Noah failed to scintillate.As Zade's understanding grows, so does her determination to restore empathy and ethics to this dehumanising regime. Can Zade, homeless and powerless, expose the sophisticated 'con-trick' perpetrated by the education elite? Can she, against the odds, end the drug-dependency and end scintillation itself, releasing millions of unknowing families from its grasp?

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 29 mai 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781786931078
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Zade
Chris Malone
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-05-29
Zade About The Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Part 1 Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Part 2 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Part 3 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Postscript
About The Author
Chris Malone has been a teacher, headteacher, and an Ofsted inspector, as well as setting up and managing pre-schools, and leading a further education centre. She has worked in county councils, most recently as Assistant Director for Education in Warwickshire, previously occupying leadership roles in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
Dedication
To Ken.
Copyright Information ©
Chris Malone (2020)
The right of Chris Malone to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Austin Macauley is committed to publishing works of quality and integrity. In that spirit, we are proud to offer this book to our readers; however, the story, the experiences, and the words are the author’s alone and portrayed to the best of their recollection. In some cases, names and details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781786930415 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781786931078 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
Special thanks to my husband, Ken Malone, for going the extra mile. Zade would not have been possible without his unstinting support. Ken, I thank you for all your encouragement, criticism reality-checks, and for the many hours spent reading and re-reading, sometimes in tricky circumstances.
Thank you, too, to Liz Van Santen for invaluable enthusiasm and proof-reading during thunderstorms in French forests.
Finally, I thank the hundreds of now unidentifiable adults, who spent time with me as children, in my many classrooms and nurseries. I learnt from you. Thank you, especially, to one called Zade.
Part 1

Chapter 1
I am going to jot my thoughts down in my notebook because, in future years, they may make sense to someone. I fear for my future; it is not safe for me here, and there are only a few people who I can trust.
My name is Zade. I know that it is my real name, given to me by my parents before they disappeared, but I have no surname. I used the surnames of a string of foster families so that I would blend in better; firstly Marriott, then Wilkinson, then Better-Smith, but I didn’t blend in. I was always different. I am pretty confident that my birthday is 21 st of December, and I am 15 years old. I stopped attending school last year when my most recent foster family departed for the Periphery, and I have stayed in their small flat, which is conveniently tucked away out of sight, off the street. I expect a representative of the Landlord’s Association to appear and evict me any day, but have survived here for nearly a year now. There is no power, which means that I live by daylight and sleep when it is dark, in a circadian rhythm. Although the water is turned off, there is, mercifully, still a trickle of water from one tap. I use a system of glass water bottles, circulating them to keep it fresh.
If you saw me, you would think I was under-fed, which is true, but I am strong; strong of body and stronger of mind. Even when I have been well-cared-for, I have always checked over my shoulder for what lurks behind me, as well as constantly asking questions to find out what motivates people. There are few people who I trust. This has helped me to survive, but has not always endeared me to adults.
When I wash myself, clean my jeans and jumper, and brush my hair, I still look unkempt; there is a wildness about me which I wish I understood. But most striking are my eyes. My year-group was the first to experience scintillation. People take it for granted now, but when I was born, it was new. I don’t know why, but my eyes are amazing; they sparkle and glitter much more strongly than other children’s. Adults love this, pet over me and take photographs. Children gather round, seeking my ideas, my plans, which may be why I have ended up in trouble over the years, leading minor rebellions. It was quite nice to have special status among my peers, because of my eyes, but now I am older, they draw attention to me in an unwelcome way.
Most children’s eyes start to fade at my age, in fact, by sixteen they all have plain adult eyes. I wish mine would start fading. There are expensive products sold by the Prophet Corporation, but I don’t think that they really work, they simply make you feel that you are doing something about it. I prefer to wear a hat to shade my face, with dark glasses, and I move quickly, before they see my eyes too clearly.
There is something odd about scintillation which I am determined to understand. Firstly, the displacement of families is inhuman. Over the years, it has become accepted by society, but why is it always the poorer families in the Central Area whose children’s eyes fail to scintillate? Is it due to poor nutrition, if so, why doesn’t it occur in the Periphery? Who decided to prosecute the parents who home-educate their children out of desperation to stay put? Who manages the Education Enforcement Officers? How is the ethos of the Central Area of grammar academies growing such momentum at the expense of the victimised Periphery?
I have so many questions and very few answers. Meanwhile, I feel driven to find out and to record the evidence. That is what we were taught in science, and in history lessons; to pose the question, to collect the evidence and to come to a conclusion. We were taught other things which I refused to adopt; to obey without question, that profit trumps moral imperative, and that material wealth precedes intellectual wealth. What rubbish.
To start my investigation, I tried to find out about the Area School Commissioners. My cover story is that I am writing an essay for school about the history of education. It is true I suppose, just not for school. I use the Biblio, which is short for the Bibliotheque Commerciale; the public commercial resource centre, where I can sit in comfort, and two hours on a static Prexia doesn’t cost. I found out that the big chief is Michael Morgan. He is the High Commissioner for Future Success, which is the national High Council role in charge of education. He has a team of five School Commissioners; someone called Alexandra Essex in the Central Area. This is the area that I live in, where all schools are grammar academies for children with scintillation, from age four through to sixteen. Sean Price is the Commissioner in the West, Manya Gray in the East, Peter Edwards in the South West, and there is a new Commissioner in the North called Sue Sutton. Last year the north and the central seem to have merged. In the North, there is currently a mix of grammar academies for scintillated children and ordinary schools for the others, but headteachers have mounted an ongoing protest about the changes. Sue Sutton seems to have been put there to sort this out.
The West (Wales), East and South West, are all called “The Periphery”. They only offer old-style schools, educating all the children without scintillation. In the Periphery, schools are filled with children already living there, plus all unscintillated children from the Central Area, who are forced to migrate. Their eyes are plain like those of adults, blue, brown, a few green or grey, but without any sparkle; no “designer-eyes” as some call it. At first, parents of unscintillated children tried tricking the system by giving them sparkling contact lenses, but the Education Enforcement Officers soon became wise to this.
Living alone, when I am not legally independent, is a challenge. Fortunately, my foster carer, Lyn, still manages to collect my allowance, getting it to me whenever she can, and this funds my food, bus tickets, essential items, but not much more.
Last year, I travelled to Wales to visit Lyn who had moved there because her own daughter, Kira, did not develop scintillation and was therefore banished from the Central Area. I learnt a lot on the trip. Travelling out across the policed Marches’ border with the hoard of migrating families was easy, but getting back into the Central Area would have been tricky had I not flashed my eyes in the direction of the guards at one of the terrifying gates, and then at the bus drivers. There’s a lot of suspicion out in the borderlands.
While I was there, I accompanied Lyn when she took Kira to school. Kira is just five years old, and failed the Four Plus last year. She is a happy-go-lucky character. Compared with grammar academies in the Central Area, the school was chaotic and massively overcrowded. New children seemed to arrive every day, and there was no space in the classes. The atmosphere was free and easy, one teacher struggling to keep track of over fifty children, but there was a quality that I cannot put my finger on; a huge amou