The Tree of Knowledge by Daniel Miller (room on the broom read aloud .txt) 📕

giant woman took aim. She fired three shots. The bullets hit the shield with a clang and dropped to the ground.

“You see,” shouted Salazar. “That gun didn’t do her a lot of good, did it, compared with my shield and stickers?”

Everyone nodded.

“OK, you got to go train with Brick now, but I got three lessons for you. Lesson one: The best weapon is protection, whether it is a shield or body armor or a hay bale. Like Turner says, the Tree of Knowledge is about achieving goals, and you can’t achieve your goal if you’re dead. Lesson two: The next best weapon is surprise. I’d take a beautiful woman and some poison over a bunch of soldiers any day. Lesson three: Always be unpredictable. Class dismissed.”

And with that, Salazar threw something to the ground, and a gigantic cloud of smoke filled the barn. Ying, Albert, and Ariel began coughing and stumbled their way out of the barn, attempting to catch their breath.

They looked around for Raphael, but he was long gone.

Chapter 16

The next day, Albert and Ying were subjected to a set of highly regimented meals that had been selected for them. Brick had decided that their diet and physical conditioning were completely inadequate and that he would be taking charge of their caloric intake and strength training for the remainder of their stay. Albert hated to give up his nutrition bars, but found Brick’s regulated food intake infinitely more logical than the world’s current smorgasbord.

After wolfing down their food rations, Ying and Albert hustled to the barn for their next class, hand-to-hand combat training. The barn was barely suitable for animals, let alone human beings. The dilapidated wood structure stood on a floor of dirt. In one corner was a medieval-looking weight set and in the other the remains of a boxing ring. A single ray of sunshine streaming in through a hole in the roof provided the solitary light. Despite the previous night’s rest, Albert’s body ached with exhaustion.

Brick began the session. His voice had a surprisingly high pitch given his large frame. “OK, you two. The professor tells me that I’ve got two weeks to whip you into fighting shape. Under normal circumstances, I’d need at least ten weeks to make real men out of you, so we’re going to have to crank it up a notch. From here on out, we’re going to treat your body like it’s a machine in serious need of maintenance. This means that everything you do needs to be programmed. Your diet, your sleep, and your workout regimen. You’re going to sleep when I tell you to sleep, eat what I tell you to eat, lift what I tell you to lift, and fight how I tell you to fight.”

Albert and Ying nodded their heads like new recruits receiving a reprimand.

“Let’s start with the bench. Show me what you can do.”

“I thought we were going to learn how to fight today,” complained Ying.

Brick tilted his head and stared at Ying for a long moment. She fidgeted under his glare, her lower lip pushing out in the closest she ever came to a pout. “Before you can fight, you need to get in shape. The way you two look, you’d probably hurt yourselves taking a swing at someone. I’m surprised you can climb stairs, drive cars, take baths.” Ying’s chin shot up and she fixed him with a glare. She was remembering when she couldn’t do those things—not without help. Brick seemed confused by the intensity of her reaction, and his voice softened slightly. “First we lift, then we fight. Now get to the bench.”

Both of them gingerly tiptoed in the direction of the dumbbells.

“Puddles, what are you doing?” interrogated Brick, his voice dropping into the obligatory Southern drawl of a drill instructor.

Albert stifled the impulse to ask to be called Dr. Puddles. “Sergeant, I’ve got to be honest with you. I’ve never lifted a weight in my life. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a gym. Is this really necessary?” His fatigue was beginning to show.

Brick hung his head, and Albert didn’t know whether the sergeant was going to hit him or break down and cry. “Yes, it’s necessary. You think Eva Fix is going to take it easy on you because you dress nice?”

He pointed to the bench twenty feet away from the dumbbells. “Puddles, you see that bench over there? Lie down on it. Koh, you go grab some dumbbells and come back here.”

Albert obediently lay down on the bench and grabbed the weightless bar sitting overhead.

“Don’t we want to put some weights on the end of this thing?”

“Puddles, the bar weighs forty-five pounds, and given that you’ve never lifted a weight in your life, I’m not sure you can get it up eight times.”

Albert scoffed, gritted his teeth, picked up the bar, and with his spindly white arms brought it down to his chest and back up again. “See, no problem.”

Brick closed his eyes. “Now show me seven more.”

Albert repeated the exercise, counting out loud, “Four, five,” but as he continued, he could feel the exhaustion seeping into his muscles. By the sixth repetition, he knew he was in trouble. “Seven.” Summoning all his strength, with arms shaking and face as red as an apple, he pressed upward. “Eight. I told you it would be no problem,” he gasped.

Brick smiled. “Good, Puddles. Now give me two more sets.”

For the next hour, Brick taught Ying and Albert the weight-lifting program that they would be using throughout their training. Ying took to the weight-lifting far better than Albert, regularly punctuating the silence with strained grunts and shouts of “Aaaaarrrrrrgggghhhhhh!”

Albert grunted out as he raised the two fifteen-pound dumbbells above his head and dropped them to the floor.

“C’mon, Puddles. You can do better than that,” shouted Brick, his face hovering inches from his trainee’s head.

Albert could feel the sergeant’s hot breath as sprinkles of spit rained down on him. His heart jumped like