Everything Is As It Should Be
“Things must change NOW!”
These are the words scrawled across every newspaper, billboard, and political campaign as we start the series. The first book, The Mysterious Benedict Society, throws us headfirst into the global disaster known only as “the Emergency”. Everything is in turmoil.
“Things had gotten desperately out of control, the headlines reported; the school systems, the budget, the pollution, the crime, the weather… why, everything, in fact, was a complete mess, and citizens everywhere were clamoring for a major -no, a dramatic– improvement in government.”
Enter Nicholas Benedict. He has discovered a nefarious plot being run by a certain someone who’s name you should by now recognize. He pinpoints the cause of the majority of the Emergency to a school known as the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, or L.I.V.E. for short. The school is located on an island outside the city, and Benedict recruits the help (reluctantly, not wanting to endanger the lives of children (or anyone)) of four gifted children, who he enrolls in the school. The school is run by our beloved villain, Ledroptha Curtain, and as the curtain drops, our protagonists are horrified to see he is identical to Benedict. Upon first meeting Curtain, the children believe him to be their mentor Benedict, but through a morse code message, sent from Benedict and his companions, containing the words “beware the gemini”, this is all resolved.
Curtain has created an incredibly complex machine called “The Whisperer”. This machine has been secretly influencing the entire population for over a decade by way of secret messages embedded in technology. These messages are broadcasted using the minds of children, and they are translated into every language. There is far too much information about this to be summarized here, but for your sakes, readers, let us say for now that the children need to stop this machine, and, over the course of the book, succeed in doing so.
In my next blog, I will take a look at some of the specific examples of doubling in The Mysterious Benedict Society and its sequel The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey. For now, I bid you good night, and hope none of us are being secretly brainwashed.