A child prodigy is recruited for special training by the government, but the teacher's sinister motives remain secret from the boy's parents.

Opening narration

This episode has no opening narration.

Plot

A man confronts Mr. Zeno, a mysterious educator who seems to have alienated his son's affections. Mr. Zeno apparently uses his mental ability to make the man jump out of the window against his will.

Roy Benjamin and his wife, Aggie, are delighted, but puzzled when they meet Mr. Zeno, who explains that he is a government educator sent to cultivate the mind of their gifted son, Kenny. Roy becomes worried, however, when he discovers that Kenny is learning things that are not accepted by earthly science, including a device given to Kenny by Mr. Zeno that has the ability to control weather patterns.

When Roy discovers that the government's Educational Enrichment program knows nothing about Mr. Zeno, he confronts the educator, only to discover that he is an alien, re-educating children in a plot to take over the world. Kenny now has superhuman knowledge and even possesses a few mental powers, having seemingly become loyal to the alien.

Nonetheless, it is revealed in the end that Kenny knew of Mr. Zeno's plans since the beginning (Zeno having believed children to be more easily impressionable and more gullible than adults), and decided to feign loyalty in order to better thwart them. Managing to render the alien powerless by using the sound-wave-powered weather machine against him, removing the essential element from the atmosphere that would enable his kind to survive on Earth, Kenny forces Mr. Zeno to retreat back to his homeworld, Venon, thus ruining the alien's plans of conquest.

Closing narration

"The mold of a man stems from the mind of a child. Educators and emperors have known this from time immemorial. So have tyrants."

Notes

• This is the only episode written by Oliver Crawford.

Cast

• Richard Ney as Mr. Zeno
• Flip Mark as Kenny Benjamin
• Macdonald Carey as Roy Benjamin
• Marion Ross as Agnes "Aggie" Benjamin
• Edward Platt as Mr. Terrence
• Jason Wingreen as Bill Turner
• Bert Freed as Joe Hayden
• Vic Perrin as the Control Voice (voice)

Crew

• Cinematographer - Kenneth Peach

The Outer Limits (1963)
Season 1	"The Galaxy Being" • "The Hundred Days of the Dragon" • "The Architects of Fear" • "The Man With the Power" • "The Sixth Finger" • "The Man Who Was Never Born" • "O.B.I.T." • "The Human Factor" • "Corpus Earthling" • "Nightmare" • "It Crawled Out of the Woodwork" • "The Borderland" • "Tourist Attraction" • "The Zanti Misfits" • "The Mice" • "Controlled Experiment" • "Don't Open Till Doomsday" • "ZZZZZ" • "The Invisibles" • "The Bellero Shield" • "The Children of Spider County" • "Specimen: Unknown" • "Second Chance" • "Moonstone" • "The Mutant" • "The Guests" • "Fun and Games" • "The Special One" • "A Feasibility Study" • "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" • "The Chameleon" • "The Forms of Things Unknown"
Season 2	"Soldier" • "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" • "Behold, Eck!" • "Expanding Human" • "Demon with a Glass Hand" • "Cry of Silence" • "The Invisible Enemy" • "Wolf 359" • "I, Robot" • "The Inheritors, Part I" • "The Inheritors, Part II" • "Keeper of the Purple Twilight" • "The Duplicate Man" • "Counterweight" • "The Brain of Colonel Barham" • "The Premonition" • "The Probe"