Chapter 4: Mr Gadget

Alex was moved from the non-de-script room in the customs office to a large hotel room. It was an expensive room. Any fool could tell that. There was a foyer with a side table and coat rack, which ended in a step that brought you into the lounge area. There was a luxurious, leather couch facing a broad window showing a spectacular view of the city and a large screen TV. Off to the left there was the door to the bath room which was an expansive room decorated in a soft shade of pink with a large spar sitting on a pedestal in the middle of the room. To the right there was a make do kitchenette that consisted of a bench a mini fridge and a sink, a table at which two could dine, and the door that led of to an extravagant bed room painted in pale blue.

Alex spent his first day in the room, learning everything he possibly could about his alias 'Alex Harris'. He was from London (Alex couldn't exactly act as if he had lived in Bradford if he had never spent more then a day there in his entire life) he had two dogs (Jamie and Boxer) and a cat named Babe, he had no siblings and was moving to Australia because his "dad" got a job offer he couldn't turn down. His "mum" was a real estate agent who was being "transferred" to Sydney because of his "dad". By midday Sunday he knew everything about his alternate self and decided to explore the hotel.

He opened the door to find a very fat man frozen in mid knock. "Hello Alex", the man exclaimed a little bit too joyfully, taking his hand down slowly, "how have you been?" he didn't wait for an answer before moving on, "Good? Good. Well now Alex, are you going to invite me in, it really doesn't do for us to converse in the hallway like this." Recovering a little, Alex stepped aside to let the large man waddle in.

As he reached the main area he sucked in a breath of air in shock.

"This is quite a room you've got here," he sighed, "truly magnificent. All they gave me was a one room thing on the second floor with two tiny windows, one in the bathroom and one beside the bed. It's a single by the way."

Alex stepped up behind him and took another look around. "It is quite large isn't it Mr. Smith."

"I would say that's an understatement, but anyhow, on to business. I've been racking my brain, Alex, to come up with some new and interesting things to hide in objects that are permitted in Australian high school's. I must say they are quite strict, not as strict as the American's, but…" he nodded his head slightly to emphasize his point, "I must say I'm very happy with what I've come up with."

He walked over to the kitchenette and sat down at the two man table. He put a large metal briefcase on the table in front of him and Alex joined him as he entered a combination into the complicated looking lock. He lifted the first object out of the box slowly as if to build suspense.

"This is your school diary. It look exactly the same as every one else's but if you peal back the top layer of the front and back covers ,cover someone's mouth and nose and they will be knocked out for half the day. It is like those hand wipes they give you a KFC except it is covered in chloroform."

Alex took the diary and looked through it. It just looked like a diary. It had day's, week's and months. A section for you to write down home work and other things like that. It even had a little place where the teacher could write a note to parents if they needed to.

Alex would have kept looking at the diary, there was something about new stationary that made him want to start writing, but Mr. Smith was already taking out the second object. It was one of those scientific calculators that required an entire topic of work each year just to understand.

"This is the calculator that the school requires you to own. You won't be able to use a calculator in the finals if it isn't one of these. This one however is different from most-"

"Obviously-"

"-if you press shift + the hyp button then the calculator will screen the room for bugs. If you press mode three times then press 1 then the darker buttons turn into a calculator. You can type up a message and send it back to London by pressing equals twice."

He gave this to Alex also. Alex stared intently at the keys trying to burn all the combinations into his brain. He put it aside and Mr. Smith reached back into his box of tricks.

His third object was something that every school student, infact every one in the world owned. A bag. It looked like a regular back pack but knowing Smith it had some pretty amazing tricks up its sleeves, or… zips.

"This is to be your school bag. It is pretty basic, school books in here, lunch in here, but…"

Here it comes thought Alex.

"But…?" Alex asked, curious to what the bag could possibly do.

"But, you see this layer of padding in the back here. Well if you pull on the straps really hard, simultaneously, then it opens up here to release a parachute. I don't know what you would need it for, but it's better to be safe then sorry. It also has, now I'm extremely proud of this invention, wait for it, an oxygen tank."

Alex blinked and looked back at the bag. How could it possibly hold an oxygen tank. He had been scuba diving a few times, mostly in the last year and a half, and he had never seen a tank small enough to fit in that bag.

"Huh?"

"I discovered a particular type of plant fiber that doesn't require sunlight or water. It converts carbon dioxide into air in less than 30 seconds so you only need about 2 minutes worth of air to run it for up to two months. All you have to do is unzip this zip with the umbrella sign on it and pull out the tube and mouth guard and breath."

"Amazing." Alex sighed dreamily thinking of all the times he had nearly run out of air under water on a mission of some sort.

"Now for the big finally." Exclaimed Mr. Smith, lifting the last gadget from the briefcase.

"It's a glue stick." Alex said, a little disappointed. He just couldn't imagine anything that this simple glue stick could accomplish, other then gluing paper and they usually didn't do that very well any way.

"Not just any Glue stick. It is a super glue stick. It is as sticky as super glue and, when applied to metal, acts as an acid and eats it away in 20 seconds."

"You truly are a brilliant man Mr. Smith." Alex grinned.

"I know."

Hi Guys I know I haven't updated in a while but for some reason I have more of an urge to write when I have mountains of school work and now that the school cert is over and all we are doing is watching videos and making DNA earrings (very cool by the way) I just haven't had any inspiration to write. Sad I know.

Any way I promise I will try to up date more often.

Thanks for all the wonderful reviews.

Bye now Burgirhig.

TBC