Weird Johnny.

Weird Johnny showed up in Mr. Jones's fourth-grade class at eleven o'clock on the first day of school — having started kindergarten three hours earlier.

"So, Johnny," said Mr. Jones, paging through the contents of Johnny's academic folder, "it says here you already know all the forms of basic math, and, apparently, half the dictionary."

"A through O," said Johnny, not looking up from the long piece of ribbon he was playing with.

"You've read volume one of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary," hazarded Mr. Jones.

"I guessed the ending," said Johnny. "Say, look at this ribbon and tell me if you have the understanding of it."

"You gave it a half-twist and glued it together," said Mr. Jones. "You've discovered the Mobius strip. It's missing a dimension, isn't it strange?"

"Nah, it's boring," said Johnny. "But if I extended it three-dimensionally—"

"That'd be a Klein bottle," said Mr. Jones. "Here, take this copy of Infinity And The Mind by Rudy Rucker and read it while the rest of the class does things you would find excruciatingly dull."

"Gosh," said Weird Johnny, "you're not nearly as abysmally stupid and ignorant as everyone else I've met in school. When I take over the world you'll be one of my favored pets!"

"Thanks, Johnny!" said Mr. Jones.

That afternoon, under the guise of a science class experiment, Mr. Jones obtained a cheek scraping from Johnny, and on his way home FedExed it (along with an explanatory note) to a radical college friend of his who was now working at Genanotech.

A few days passed, during which Johnny showed off his proficiency at quadratic equations, independently invented the calculus (with some improvements over Newton and Leibniz), and was promoted to high school. Finally Mr. Jones got an email from his friend:

"Wow! Have isolated differences from standard genetic sequence, see attached file, and have shot up six lab rats, all of whom can now do the London Times crossword in less than half an hour. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?? The Revolution Lives!!"

Mr. Jones and his friend wasted no time. Mr. Jones emptied his retirement fund and booked an around-the-world trip for his winter vacation, and his radical friend tinkered the mutant superintelligence genes into some genetic biowarfare distribution agents he was working on for the CIA (or so the CIA thought).

By the time school resumed on the second of January, half the world was infected with superintelligence.

By the fifteenth, the average human IQ was 672.

Things had to change, and they did. For example, Weird Johnny was demoted from high school to third grade, where he discovered that he couldn't handle the new standards for homework and asked for reassignment to second grade, first grade, and finally kindergarten.

One bitter cold day in early March, Just Plain Johnny was on his way to school when Mr. Jones drove up alongside him in a brand-new solar powered Cadillac.

"Hi Johnny!" said Mr. Jones.

"Hi Mr. Jones," said Johnny dejectedly.

"On your way to school, eh?"

"Duh," said Johnny.

"Not me!" said Mr. Jones. "I've been retired on special disability pension. Seems I'm immune to that intelligence mutation bug that's been going around. I'm moving to a colony for other formerly normal people in sunny Southern California. They say I'll never have to work a day in my life again, and the surfing is great! Well, see you — or not!" And he drove away, laughing uproariously.

Johnny shuffled hopelessly off to school and went on to a life of complete mediocrity.

The End.

MORAL: never tick off a teacher. You never know what might happen.