Stupid Perfect World Read online

  He laughed. “Sounds like a pain.”

  “Don’t you pay any attention in Scarcity? Pain’s a good thing. That’s why we never cured it.”

  “Oh, right. Nature’s way of saying, ‘Get your hand out of the fire, doofus!’” As he spoke, Kieran lifted his fingers gently from the confinement field.

  Mikey looked like he might actually be asleep now. I guess Kieran had pretty decent hamster-wrangling skills. I let myself smile, my annoyance on the Barefoot Tillman issue settling.

  “Is that why you want to do that hormone thing?” Kieran asked. “To go crazy?”

  “Well…not totally crazy. But don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to feel how they did back then? Especially people our age. It was more extreme, more…dramatic. I mean, why do you go down to the South Pole and put up with that freezing cold? Because it’s intense, right?”

  Kieran was staring down at the dozing hamster. “Yeah. But cold doesn’t make me lose my mind.”

  “Still, it’s something no one else feels. Not these days.”

  “I guess.” He shrugged and smiled. “Just don’t get too crazy and drown yourself, Maria. Or write any poetry.”

  I had to laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ll try not to go completely Ophelia. As long as I don’t meet any psycho prince guys in the next two weeks.”

  The line for the customizing engine was winding down. People headed out for the rest of their afternoon classes, a few laughing nervously. Dan Stratovaria was rubbing his eyes, as if trying to feel the long-extinct worms growing inside them.

  I was a little anxious myself, now that my moment of hormonal imbalance was actually at hand. The next two weeks would probably be embarrassing. Though my bioframe wouldn’t let me kill myself, there was a definite danger of poetry….

  “Come on, let’s do some research.” I flicked headspace up to full, the Bio room and Mikey’s habitat fading in front of my eyes. “If we don’t figure out how sleep works, you’re going to be tossing and turning all night.”

  Three

  THE FIRST PROBLEM WAS finding the right furniture.

  When I got home, I asked Dad if I could synthesize a bed for my room. He immediately put on his serious face and sat me down.

  “Sixteen is too young to have a bed in your room, Kieran. Remember when we talked about this, how a little bioframe tweak can make those feelings less…persistent?”

  I groaned. “This isn’t about that, Dad!”

  “Who was that girl you were obsessed with last summer? Chrissy?”

  “Christine,” I said. “And this has nothing to do with girls. It’s for a school project.”

  He laughed too hard in a really embarrassing way, actually slapping his thigh. “Nice try, buddy.”

  “No, really. It’s for Scarcity!” I started to explain my project, but as usual Dad’s brain switched off. There hadn’t been any Scarcity classes back in his day, and he never understood how I could get worked up over an ungraded course.

  By the time my explanation sputtered out, his serious face was back. “So, Kieran. Is there anyone special you want to tell me about?”

  I groaned again. This was useless. At least Mom wasn’t around, which would have been twice as embarrassing. “Just forget I brought it up.”

  “Are you sure, son? You know I’m here if you need me.”

  I rolled my eyes and headed to my room.

  Around midnight I gave it my best shot.

  A pile of parkas wasn’t a terrible bed. It was a lot more comfortable than the furniture I’d been making out of snow. I sank into the thermal fibers, closing my eyes and trying to feel for any changes inside me.

  It had been about eight hours since Maria had switched off the metabolic nanos that kept my body humming twenty-four hours a day. For the next two weeks, my cells were going to divide their time the old-fashioned way: breaking down complex molecules while I was awake, and building up new ones while I slept. Not as efficient as doing both at once, but nothing I had to consciously control. Even Mikey the hamster could do it.

  I darkened the room to make it like outside at night, then I lay there with my eyes closed, waiting for some kind of change.

  According to headspace, there were five stages of sleep. Stage 1 was no big deal, like that feeling right after a brainsmoothing session, when everything’s fuzzy for a few minutes. Stage 2 was exactly how sleep looks in old movies: lying around unconscious, like after surgery or getting hit on the head. Basically your average waste of time, except you couldn’t be bored, which was a bonus.

  I wasn’t looking forward to Stage 3, which featured these weird interruptions like sleepwalking, sleep-talking, night terrors, and something called “bedwetting.” (Don’t ask.) Luckily, that part usually passed quickly, and then it was on to Stages 4 and 5, but it wasn’t like I’d researched every detail yet. I was just hoping to get to Stage 1 tonight.

  So I waited some more.

  And waited…

  I won’t say that nothing happened. I thought about lots of stuff: my lines for Hamlet, Dad’s lameness, Barefoot Tillman in a swimsuit, Mikey the hamster, the way Maria Borsotti might be cute if she wasn’t such a meeker. But it wasn’t exactly sleep. I had so many thoughts, it was the opposite of unconsciousness; I was suddenly conscious of every sound in my room, every worry in my head, and especially every itch and crick in my motionless body.

  I wasn’t supposed to move, but my muscles kept demanding random adjustments. By the end of the first hour, I was tangled in the parkas and ended up throwing half of them across my room. (Is that where “tossing and turning” came from?) I hadn’t noticed any unconsciousness, but then I started wondering how you could even know you were unconscious, because you wouldn’t be conscious to know anything at all, which started my head spinning with thoughts and thoughts and more thoughts.

  Finally, I sat up, not caring if I failed Scarcity, anything to escape the crushing, sweaty boredom of not sleeping.

  And lo and behold, my three hours were almost up.

  But it hadn’t seemed that long. Was that because I’d never been still that long before, so I had nothing to compare it to? Or had there been a little bit of missing time in all that tossing and turning—a tiny sliver of sleep?

  If so, that was kind of cool—almost like some lame form of time travel. My head felt a little fuzzy, but I knew a quick shot of Antarctic wind would clear that up. I slipped on a tempsuit and headed for the teleporter, for the first time thinking that this project might not totally suck.

  It wasn’t until later that day that I really started to feel weird.

  Four

  KIERAN BLACK LOOKED LIKE crap. Crap covered with icicles.

  “Are you okay?”

  A shiver went through him. “Yeah, fine, Maria. I was just down at Amundsen-Scott Station. That’s at the South Pole.”

  “Um, Kieran? No kidding.” I reached across the space between our desks and pulled away a tiny icicle clinging to his hair. It gave my fingertips a cold little kiss, then melted in my palm.

  “This weird thing happened,” he said. “I was smoothing down the outside of my habitat with a blowtorch, and I started feeling funny. So I sat down in the snow, which you’re not supposed to do in winter, really. I was sitting there and sort of lost track of time…until my bioframe gave me a frostbite warning.”

  My jaw dropped. “You mean you fell asleep? Already?”

  He nodded, and I sighed. Even Kieran Black was ahead of me. I hadn’t felt anything yet, except maybe more than the usual annoyance at my mother, who’d insisted on criticizing every item of clothing I’d worn today. Like I’d never been in an all-black mood before.

  “I’m not totally sure,” Kieran said. A shiny sliver of tempsuit was sticking out from his shirt top, radiating warmth like he’d forgotten to turn it off. The icicles were melting fast. “I definitely didn’t get much last night.”

  “But you got some? What was it like?”

  “I don’t know.” He blinked. “I think whe
n you’re asleep you don’t know it. So…it’s not like anything.”

  I frowned. I’d been expecting this project to make Kieran Black more interesting. But apparently it was just making him kind of slow.

  I started to check and see if that was normal, but no sooner had headspace appeared than it faded back into flat reality.

  Scarcity was starting.

  “So how was everyone’s first day?” Mr. Solomon asked.

  “I have to change my project, Mr. Solomon,” Lao Wrigley began. “It isn’t safe.”

  She’d spoken without raising her hand, which Mr. Solomon usually corrected. But today he calmly interlaced his fingers, like he’d been expecting a few complaints. “Not safe?”

  “Not at all!” Lao gripped the sides of her desk. “I took the boat thing this morning, and the ocean was completely messed up!”

  “Could you be referring to waves, Miss Wrigley?”

  Barefoot Tillman, who always bragged about her stupid surfing trophies, stifled a laugh, and I grinned at Kieran. He didn’t respond.

  His expression was strangely peaceful, and he didn’t stir as the last icicles melted from his hair, drops rolling down his neck and into his shirt. Watching it, I felt a matching trickle of sweat on my own back, hot instead of cold.

  That was an interesting feeling.

  “Yes, the ocean does have waves,” Mr. Solomon was patiently explaining. “But ships are designed for waves. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe out there.”

  Lao shook her head. “Oh, yeah? Well, if ships are so safe, why is there a word for them turning upside down?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Capsizing, Mr. Solomon!” Lao said. “That’s a special word just for ships turning upside down. I checked in headspace, and I couldn’t find a single word for trains turning upside down! Or cars or hovercraft—just ships. Think about it!”

  “Miss Wrigley, I doubt your cargo ship is in danger of capsizing.”

  “But it’s awful!” Her head fell into her hands. “I also did the math wrong.”

  “The math?”

  “Turns out it takes two hours each way!”

  A smiled flickered on Solomon’s face. “But of course, Miss Wrigley. Did you forget you had to come back?”

  I raised an eyebrow. Those extra two hours would have gotten past me, too. It wasn’t like it had ever taken me longer than five seconds to get anywhere in the world. Even Mars was only a three-minute teleport away.

  Lao looked up from her hands, swallowing, and I noticed that her skin was paler than usual. “Four hours every day! And when I tried to get some reading done this morning, the waves made me feel really weird!”

  “Ah…” Mr. Solomon nodded. “I believe you have something called seasickness. If you check headspace later, you’ll probably find a few old bioframe patches for it. Your Scarcity project has no medical restrictions, after all.” He chuckled. “But there’s no cure for having to go both ways in a journey. I’m afraid you’re stuck with that. How’s everyone else?”

  As more hands went up, I looked closer at Lao. Now that I’d noticed it, she definitely was a weird color. Hints of blue-green in her face, like the sea. Is that why they called it seasickness?

  Barefoot raised her hand. “My common cold is going great. I like the way it makes my voice sound.”

  I frowned. Her voice was sort of lower, like a soft growl. Leave it to Barefoot to bag a project that made her even sexier.

  At least Kieran wasn’t staring at her today. His gaze was lost in the black depths of the chalkboard.

  I raised my hand. “Mr. Solomon? I think something’s wrong with Kieran.”

  At the sound of his name, Kieran snapped out of his catatonic state to glare at me. “No, I’m fine.”

  “Just checking.” I smiled sweetly.

  “I’m sure Kieran simply feels a little unusual,” Mr. Solomon said. “I believe the technical term is ‘sleepy.’ But you’re all going to feel a lot stranger as these projects go on. Today is only the beginning, so stop gnawing on your sleeve, Sho.”

  “My sleeve isn’t food!”

  “No, but it’s annoying.” Mr. Solomon sighed, looking at Lao Wrigley again. She had started making weird noises in the back of her throat, and her face was definitely the green of a shallow sea.

  I looked down at my blank notebook, fingers curling around my pen.

  The green of a shallow sea, I wrote. The words looked frail and fragile in my spindly hand. All that time spent learning to write, and I’d hardly taken any notes this semester.

  Suddenly, I wanted to incise the white surface of the paper.

  Lao made a distinct gagging noise.

  “Hmm, perhaps we should end class early today,” Mr. Solomon said. “On account of seasickness. You and I can head straight to the Biology Department, Lao. And everyone else, try to spend some of this unexpected hour of freedom thinking about your project. Take note of the changes within you.”

  I smiled at his words, writing, The changes within me…

  I had lots of notes to take.

  Five

  THIS PROJECT SUCKED.

  On top of losing three hours a day, I was brain-dead the other twenty-one. All week I’d shuffled through my classes like a zombie in one of Sho’s combat games. Suddenly all my lines for Hamlet were missing from my head. I tried to explain to Ms. Parker that it was all Mr. Solomon’s fault, but she said that was no excuse because actors in the olden days had slept every single night.

  Yeah…but they knew how!

  So at midnight, there I was again, staring at my makeshift bed with the usual tangled emotions. On the one hand, looking at the crumpled parkas made me want to strangle Solomon with a fleece-lined sleeve. But at the same time, somehow, the pile looked lovely. There was nothing I wanted more than to lie down on it. Waves of dizziness were drifting over me.

  Maybe tonight it would finally work.

  I dropped on to the pile, my face landing in a collar of fake fur. The hairs ruffled softly against my lips as I breathed in and out. I told the room to darken, and silence began to settle around me….

  A communication chime sounded, breaking the spell.

  “Yeah?” I sighed.

  “It’s me,” Maria’s voice said. “Can I come over?”

  “Um, now’s not good.”

  “Hey, you sound kind of…Oh, crap! I forgot what time it was. Were you sleeping?”

  “Not yet,” I murmured. “Well, maybe Stage One-ish.”

  “Oh, sorry,” she whispered but didn’t hang up. Her breathing floated invisibly in the air around me, soothing in the darkness.

  It felt weird, together in silence like that, so I said, “I think it’s going to go better tonight. Of course, I thought that last night, too.”

  “Hmm. Is your bed comfortable?”

  “Well…” I didn’t want to go into Dad’s whole bed issue with Maria. “I haven’t gotten that sorted out yet. I’m just sleeping on a pile of parkas.”

  “No bed?” Her giggle traveled through the room. “I hope you have pajamas on at least.”

  “Pa-whatses?”

  She laughed again. “You’re not supposed to wear regular clothes to bed, silly. Olden-day people had these special sleeping clothes. They had sleepy pictures on them. No wonder it’s not working.”

  “I don’t think that’s the problem,” I mumbled.

  “But I don’t think everyone had pajamas. Some people pulled these sheet things over them and were naked underneath.”

  “Now that makes sense.” I yanked my shirt off over my head. It was more comfortable this way, so I kicked off my shoes and squirmed out of my pants. “Yeah, this is much better.”

  “Did you just—” she started, but her breath caught.

  “Mm-hmm. Thanks for the suggestion.” I settled into the pile, the fleece and thermal fibers soft against my skin. “It feels weird here in the dark. Like I’m turning weightless.”

  “Weightless in the dark,” she repeated slowly.


  The void behind my eyelids had grown deeper, a heaviness descending on me, finally squeezing out the rapid fire of my thoughts. “Yeah, it’s weird. Like the world’s being erased.”

  “The world erased…”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, I was just copying some stuff down,” she said. “I’m sort of…keeping a journal of my project.”

  “Solomon will love that,” I murmured.

  “It’s not for him. It’s only for me…. Want to hear some?”

  I must have grunted, because Maria started reading to me. It was more random than any diary, more like phrases snatched from conversations, words repeating and tangling without ever making meaning. Soothingly senseless, like drifting clouds of language.

  But whatever it was she’d written, the sound of her voice worked wonders. An enchantment fell across me, the darkness carried me swiftly toward Stage 2, the world finally evaporating. No doubt I passed through 3 and into 4 in pretty quick succession.

  And later that night, very definitely, I fell all the way down to Stage 5…where I dreamed.

  Six

  AFTER HE FELL ASLEEP, I listened to him breathe for a long time.

  My own skin felt wrong, hypersensitive to my clinging clothes, to every shift of air. While we’d been talking, I’d dimmed the lights to match my mental image of Kieran’s room, and now the darkness seemed tangible around me, a physical thing, pressing against my hungry skin.

  The white pages of my notebook glowed in my hands, still demanding attention. It was as if the paper had grown thirstier for words as I read from it.

  Especially when I read aloud to a naked, almost sleeping boy.

  I could picture him there in his pile of puffy coats, vulnerable and perfectly still. It maddened me that he was so far away, out of reach of my aching skin. But there was also something intense in disembodiment, as if distance amplified our connection.