Nate Newton came home one day after enjoying a stunning game of football in the park with his mates, to find his parents waiting for him with stern expressions on their faces. Nate sat on the stairs and listened glumly as they berated him about how bad his grades at school were, and how he needed to start doing his homework instead of going out and messing around with his friends.

Nate hated homework, and school too for that matter. He and his friends often bunked off, and had fun outdoors instead. But now his lack of study had caught up with him, and it seemed certain that he would fail his exams. Nate would rather do anything than that tedious and difficult school shit.

However his parents were insistent, so he stomped up the stairs and made an attempt to start on his physics homework. The attempt didn’t last long though, as he found the physics material he had been given to be incomprehensible gibberish. So, he just started mindlessly watching football videos on YouTube instead.

One of the videos was suddenly interrupted by an advert. Nate sighed, he hated adverts, but quickly noticed that there was something odd about this one. The ad showed an old and crusty looking professor sitting in a library, staring silently at the camera.

“Nathaniel Newton,” said the professor finally.

Nate nearly jumped out of his chair in surprise.

“Can...can you see me?” asked Nate nervously.

“Yes, of course I can, you empty-headed nincompoop,” responded the professor tersely.

Nate tried to close his laptop in fear, but a spark of electricity flew out and zapped him, forcing him to back against the wall.

“Now, listen very carefully, as we don’t have much time,” said the professor. “I am speaking to you from the future. I know that you have been struggling with your schoolwork, and I am here to help you.”

“Yeah, right,” laughed Nate, coming to the realisation that this must be some kind of prank. “What kind of sick joke is this? Did Deano put you up to this?”

“The solution is very simple,” continued the professor. “You must utter the word ‘cognitio’ out loud every night before you fall asleep. The word has great power, and will increase your ability to absorb knowledge in ways you cannot even imagine yet.”

“You can piss right off,” said Nate, giving the professor the finger.

“Now remember,” said the professor, ignoring Nate’s abuse, “you must say ‘cognitio’, every night before bed. Out loud! Our time here is at an end, but we will see each other again. Until then, farewell Nathaniel Newton.”

Then the football video resumed as if nothing had happened. Nate continued to stand against the wall for several minutes in a state of shock. He was sure it must have been some kind of prank perpetrated by his mischievous mates, but how? One thing was for sure, there was no way he was going to say that stupid word, “cogneeto”, or whatever it was.

As the weeks went by, Nate continued to ignore his studies, and his fast approaching exams, choosing instead to bunk off and play football in the park. On one of the few occasions that he actually turned up to class, the English teacher Mrs Hanson decided to keep him back for a stern talking to. Nate stared at the wall unresponsively as the teacher lamented on about the importance of exams. As he stared at the wall, his eyes fell upon a poster containing a cloud of Latin words. One of the larger words said “cognitio”.

“What does that mean?” asked Nate, interrupting Mrs Hanson mid-sentence and pointing at the poster.

“What does what mean?” asked Mrs Hanson looking around in confusion.

“cog-nit-tio,” said Nate, pointing at the poster again.

“Oh, cognitio,” said Mrs Hanson, pronouncing it correctly, and somewhat surprised by Nate’s sudden interest in Latin. “Well, it means knowledge, and the process of learning. Something that was very important to ancient Roman civilisation. I didn’t think Latin was your kind of thing Nate, but I do an after-school class if you’re interested...”

“I’m not,” said Nate abruptly, and then he stood up, and walked out of the classroom.

That night, Nate lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and wondering about the strange message from the old professor, and the word on the wall. What if it hadn’t been a prank? What if saying that word could really help him with his schoolwork and exams? He felt a bit embarrassed trying to say it out loud, but he thought maybe if he said it quietly, no-one would hear.

“Cog...,” he tried to remember the pronunciation, “cogn...cognitio.”

Then Nate immediately fell asleep.

From the moment he woke up the next morning, Nate felt a bit different. His mind was clearer, as if someone had scrubbed the cobwebs out of his brain. He watched the TV as he ate his breakfast. His parents had left the TV on the 24 hour news channel. However, instead of switching immediately to the sports channel like he normally did, he left the news on, finding himself able to concentrate and understand the stories that the newsreaders were reporting. He almost found it interesting. It was an odd sensation!

That odd sensation continued throughout his school day, where rather than mucking about at the back with his mates like he normally did, he found himself paying attention to the lessons, and actually taking some of it in, at least for a while, until Deano distracted him again.

That evening, he really wanted to go out and play football, so he decided to just get his homework done first as soon as he got home. Two hours later he got a message on his phone from Deano asking where he was, and he realised that he had got so engrossed with his homework, he had lost track of time! That freaked him out a bit, so he immediately dropped the homework and went out. However, that night, he felt so intrigued by this new clearer mind that he was experiencing, he decided to say the word again.

“Cognitio,” he said, pronouncing it right first time.

Then, as the days and weeks passed, his mind began to develop in ways he had never expected.

Nate had now become addicted to absorbing knowledge, all knowledge, any knowledge he could get his hands on. He felt like he desperately needed to fill his once empty head with as many facts as possible; from physics to philosophy, from art to astronomy, and everything in-between and beyond. It was as if he could suddenly see the whole universe for the first time with clear eyes, and a clear mind, and it was exciting. He had even been forced to start wearing glasses as it turned out that his natural eyesight was not quite up to reading the four or five books he now got through on a weekly basis.

His old friend Deano said the glasses made Nate look like a nerd, and it started to become clear that their once solid friendship was now showing signs of strain. Nate still played football with Deano and their mates once or twice a week, but even then, he was only really doing it to keep Deano happy. In truth, he would rather be listening to a podcast about computer science. Besides, he didn’t even seem to be quite as good at playing football as he once was, and it started to feel a bit like a difficult chore.

Meanwhile, Nate found himself making new friends in places like the school library, where he was now volunteering, plus many of the after-school clubs that he had joined, his favourite being Mrs Hanson’s Latin class. His new friends liked to engage in intellectual conversations of all types, and Nate found himself really elated by those conversations. He found that they stretched the elastic of his new, ever growing, intelligence.

The once dreaded exams came and went, and in the end felt like a breeze to Nate, as he scored A grades in every one. Needless to say, his parents and teachers were massively impressed, if somewhat perplexed by his new-found intelligence and love of knowledge.

And every night, Nate lay in bed and said “Cognitio,” loudly and clearly, before falling fast asleep.

This was probably the stage where Nate was at the height of his popularity in school; still able to play sports, wear fashionable clothes, hang-out with the “bad” kids, and at the same time get on well with teachers, and so called “nerds”, who Nate now realised weren’t so annoying after all. However, his inner transformation then started to progress further.

Things came to a head one evening when Nate was trying to play football with Deano and the gang. His skills on the pitch had been rapidly decreasing, and he seemed to be developing a form of dyspraxia. Nate missed a clear opportunity to score a goal, and Deano lost his temper. They got into a fight in front of all their friends, but Nate didn’t have the physical strength or ability he once had, and Deano beat him up so hard, he had to take a brief trip to the hospital.

After that, Nate never played football again. In fact, he started to hate it, and sports in general. He just found them difficult, and quite boring now. He also steered clear of Deano and gang from that moment, opting instead to enjoy his spare time debating intellectual matters with his new friends from the school library. His old friends looked so stupid and empty-headed to him now, it was almost laughable.

As Nate naturally progressed to college, he started to change his image to fit in better with his fellow knowledge seekers. He swapped his trendy sports gear for shirts, sweaters, and chinos, often wearing long sleeves to hide his old tattoos, which he now felt embarrassed to show. He also didn’t care so much about having the trendiest haircut any more, and let his hair grow out more naturally.

In addition, it didn’t go unnoticed that his speech started to change. He had already learned to speak several languages fluently, but his English vocabulary had also expanded dramatically. Nate now spoke confidently with a posh and polished tone, inserting long and complex words into sentences whenever possible. He also started to correct people who still called him “Nate”, and would insist that he would prefer to be called by his full name “Nathaniel” now.

Nathaniel had become a certified genius, and as he progressed to Oxford University, he began to deeply study his preferred subject of physics, especially the aspects relating to time travel. As the years, and then decades went by, he found himself on the forefront of many incredible breakthroughs, until finally, he discovered a way to send messages into the past. On that day, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, now that of an old and crusty professor.

“You see,” he said to his reflection, “I said we would see each other again, didn’t I.”