Free The Great Brain Robbery by Anna Kemp Page B

toothbrushes, flying monkeys
in bowler hats!’
    The audience laughed, but Dr Gore did not see the funny side.

    Widening his yellow eyes, Gore pointed to the mysterious dark zone at the centre of the diagram. ‘But it is here . . .’ he said in hushed tones, ‘that I have discovered the
deepest, darkest possibilities of the child’s mind. This is the part of the mind that makes the child the person they are. It is the
core
, the keystone, the smouldering volcano at
the centre of the island. It is where we find their most secret thoughts, their most intense feelings and their most precious memories. It is
this
that we must colonise if we are to win
the race to Christmas!’ Dr Gore was so worked up that Frankie thought he could see a plume of steam rising from the dome of his head.
    The audience muttered amongst themselves. They weren’t yet sure what to make of this odd chap and his even odder ideas. ‘I’m not sure where he’s going with this,’
whispered one.
    ‘I hope Marvella knows what she’s doing,’ muttered another, ‘or it’ll cost us.’
    Then a silver-haired man who had been huffing and puffing for the past few minutes lost his patience and thrust his hand into the air. ‘This is all well and good, Professor,’ he
began, in a voice that sounded like the stomping of boots, ‘but what we want to know is how all this is going to pay off. How is it going to make us money?’
    There was a general nodding of heads.
    ‘I believe Dr Gore is just getting to that.’ Marvella smiled frostily. ‘Aren’t you, Dr Gore?’
    Dr Gore grimaced and narrowed his eyes. He could see that he was surrounded by idiots. ‘Of course,’ he hissed through his enormous front teeth. ‘The first stage of
Project
Wishlist
is complete. We have extracted the mind-matter from the core of children’s brains and stored it on a database.’
    ‘That’s what the Mechanimals are for,’ whispered Frankie, remembering his own memory flashing on to the screen in Marvella’s creepy computer lab. ‘They’ve
been robbing our brains and beaming our thoughts back here.’
    But the man who asked the question wasn’t satisfied.
    ‘So what did you find out?’ he puffed. ‘What
do
children want?’
    Dr Gore rolled his eyes. ‘My dear ssssir,’ he hissed, ‘you are asking the wrong question. Children, as we all know well, do not want
anything
for very long. One day
it’s a toy castle, the next it’s a spaceship, the day after that it’s a pirate costume. Today, they all want Mechanimals but next week it will be something else entirely. All this
makes life very difficult for toyshops.’ The audience nodded in agreement – he was spot on there. Dr Gore smiled his piranha smile. ‘So I have ssssimplified things. The purpose of
Project Wishlist
is not to
find out
what children want, but to
tell
them what they want.’
    ‘How do you propose to do that?’ the gentleman sniffed.
    ‘Sssimple,’ hissed Dr Gore, spreading his fingers like a magician. ‘Advertising.’ Dr Gore’s grin twinkled in the spotlight.
    ‘Advertising?’ scoffed the gentleman. ‘But that’s the oldest trick in the book!’
    ‘You misunderstand, dear sir,’ Dr Gore continued. ‘This won’t be any old advertising. It won’t be the sort that you watch as you’re eating your cornflakes and
forget by the time you’ve brushed your teeth. No! This kind of advertising will go straight to the core of the child’s mind and lodge itself there for eternity. Think of it as upgrading
their brains, giving their minds a makeover.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked the woman with the pointy shoes.
    ‘As we speak,’ said Dr Gore, ‘there is a team of computing experts working on the memories that we have harvested from children’s brains up and down the country. Into
this mind-matter they are inserting Marvella logos, Marvella products and the Marvella jingle. Let me demonstrate.’ Dr Gore pushed a button and the screen lit up. ‘This memory