Scott Westerfeld - Stupid Perfect World

My brain was growing fuzzy, my heart pounding sluggishly, the world shrinking to the little tunnel of the parka hood.

Then a brilliant star flared before me…

A human shape was making its way around the igloo, waving a gout of flame across the curved surface of the ice. My freeze-dried brain remembered Kieran saying something about a blowtorch.

I tried to call to him, but my lungs could only suck the tiniest gulps of air, like breathing ice cubes. My body kept moving, driven forward by the promise of the glowing ember in Kieran’s hands.

Fire was hot—I recalled this fact from some pre-Antarctic existence.

I staggered on until I was close enough to feel the warmth. My bare hands reached out for the flame, my fingertips slightly blue.

Kieran finally heard my snow-crunching footsteps and turned to face me, letting out a yelp of surprise.

“Maria! What are you…?” The torch fell from his hands into the snow, where it sputtered and died.

I fell to my knees beside it, groaning with disappointment. I reached for the still-glowing metal…and then Kieran’s hands were around my shoulders, and I wanted to kill him for dragging me away from that sliver of leftover heat.

Through the tunnel of my parka hood, I watched my boots skidding across the snow until the pale sunlight darkened. Suddenly it was warm, gloriously hot, maybe even above freezing! My hood was pushed back, Kieran’s concerned and goggled face in front of me, the inside walls of the igloo shimmering with artificial light.

“What are you doing here?” He pulled off his goggles and parka, stripping off his tempsuit right in front of me. “Are you crazy?”

Half naked, he wrapped the silver tempsuit around me, its elements burning my skin like hot coals. I could only nod and stare. It felt like my eyes would shatter if I blinked.

“Came see you,” I managed.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I never dreamed about Barefoot, never once! It was you from that very first night!” He swallowed. “But it was so weird and incredible, and everyone always said that dreams weren’t real. But they are sometimes…. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yesh,” I assured him through cracked lips. There was more in heaven and earth and all that…so much more to say.

But just then, my frantic bioframe realized that I’d reached somewhere warm and safe, and so dutifully knocked me out, not wanting to risk me freezing myself again.

Stupid perfect world.

SO HERE WE ARE at the end of our little adventure,” Mr. Solomon began.

Barefoot Tillman sneezed in her quarantine corner. She’d been much better the last couple of days; the goo had stopped running from her nose. But everyone still kept their distance.

“ Gesundheit ,” Maria said, having looked up a few old traditions on Barefoot’s behalf. We smirked at each other.

“But before we all return to the modern world, perhaps we should share about our experiences.” He spread his hands. “Anyone?”

Lao Wrigley raised her hand. “Well, I feel like I got much closer to my father.”

“Hmm,” Mr. Solomon said. “Because you made him fly you to and from the Bahamas every day?”

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” Lao flicked her hair.

“Check out these abs!” Sho cried, standing up in the front row, spinning around and lifting his shirt. “I may never eat again.”

“I doubt that,” Mr. Solomon said. “And I believe those are ribs , Mr. Walters, not muscles. Anyone else with profundities to share? Yes, Mr. Stratovaria?”

“Well,” Dan said, “I’ve discovered that there’s nothing funny about parasites.”

“Ah, insight from the sightless. Someone, at least, appreciates the seriousness of scarcity. Perhaps this semester hasn’t been entirely wasted.”

“No kidding,” Dan said, waving his cane in one white-veined hand. “My mom’s so freaked out, she’s shelling out big-time for the replacements. My new eyes are going to kick ass !”

Mr. Solomon sighed. “Indeed. And is there any great wisdom from you two lovebirds holding hands in the back?”

We pulled apart as everyone spun around, still quizzical at the two of us together. My friends blamed William Shakespeare for turning me into a meeker. They rolled their eyes at the old-speak that sometimes burbled out of my mouth.

But the changes had come from a place more primeval than they thought. The Bard had nothing on my subconscious.

“Well, Mr. Solomon,” Maria said, “I learned that those olden-day heroines weren’t nearly as wimpy as I thought. Turns out you really can die from running around outside in the cold. Especially if you’re wet.” With her free hand, she pointed to the dark patch of frostbite on her left cheek, which shone like a misplaced black eye. Her mother had made Maria promise to get a skin graft soon, but in the meantime she was seriously milking it.

“Fascinating,” Solomon said. “Though perhaps not as relevant to your original project as one might hope.”

“Oh, I assure you, Mr. Solomon,” Maria said. “Unbalanced hormones and Antarctic exposure go hand in hand.”

“An interesting observation. And you, Mr. Black? What have you to tell us about the rigors of sleep?”

What indeed? I took a deep breath, wondering what I was going to do after class ended today. Now that the final projects were over, I could reset my bioframe, switch on all those little nanos that would make my anabolic and catabolic processes simultaneous once more—no need to sleep ever again.

Did I still want my dreams? They weren’t so different from real life, now that Maria and I had connected out here in the waking world. But I kept wondering what else they might show me, what magic would be lost if I never twitched and blinked my way through Stage 5 again.

“I’m glad I tried it, Mr. Solomon.”

“Did you make it all the way down to REM sleep?”

“You bet,” I said. “Dreams, rapid-eye movement, drool, the whole deal.”

Maria shot me a sly look. We’d decided not to mention that she’d dreamed once, too, courtesy of acute hypothermia, combined with a little knock-out juice from her bioframe. Or to tell Solomon that my hormones had followed hers out of balance, since modern-day widgets weren’t calibrated for someone sleeping six hours a night. I’d gone mad enough to have teleported to a deluge in Denmark the night before, just to hold Maria’s hand in the freezing rain.

Our projects had overlapped in all kinds of interesting ways.

“And what exactly did you dream of, Mr. Black?” Solomon asked.

Maria reached over to squeeze my hand again, fingernails biting flesh.

“Scarcity, Mr. Solomon,” I said. “War, pestilence, famine. All the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that this world does not allow.”

“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “ Nightmares is the old term, I believe. So you must be relieved to be here at the end.”

“Most definitely,” I said, hearing the sound of Maria scribbling in her notebook, tangling more words and images inspired by my lies. And I decided: no adjustments to my bioframe this afternoon, not yet.

At least one more night of dreams.

8:11 A.M. REX

The halls of Bixby High School were always hideously bright on the first day of school. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their white honeycombed plastic shields newly cleaned of dead insect shapes. The freshly shined floors dazzled, glinting in the hard September sunlight that streamed in through the school’s open front doors.