Scott Westerfeld - Stupid Perfect World

LIKE MOST DAYS, I was barely on time for Scarcity class.

It wasn’t a real course with grades and everything, so only the most pathetic meekers worked hard at it. The rest of us just showed up and tried not to fall asleep. Nobody wanted to fail , of course, because that meant repeating: another long semester of watching all those olden-day people starving and being diseased. At least regular History has battles; Scarcity was just depressing.

So when I walked in and saw what Mr. Solomon had written on the antique chalkboard, I groaned out loud.

FINAL PROJECT PROPOSALS DUE TODAY.

“Forget something, Kieran?” That was Maria Borsotti from the desk next to mine, her old-timey paper notebook out and ready to be scribbled in.

“This is not fair,” I said, dropping into my seat. Assignments were supposed to appear in headspace automatically. But one of the rules of the Scarcity classroom was that all the decent tech was switched off. Just like our miserable, diseased ancestors, we had to rely on our own brains, or, like Maria Borsotti, scratch glyphs on to dead wood pulp.

Learn to write by hand? For a pass/fail class? What a meeker.

I’d meant to put a reminder up for myself. The projects were first-come, first-scourge (Scarcity humor = hilarious), so most people had shot right into headspace the moment class had ended on Friday, racing to look up the easiest diseases before anyone else claimed them.

We were supposed to “embody” some form of ancient lameness, spending the next two weeks being blind or whatever. This was supposed to teach us what things were really like in the old days, as if sitting through an hour of Scarcity every day wasn’t depressing enough.

But I’d been distracted by Barefoot Tillman, who’d come up after class wanting help on an Antarctic camping trip. It’s hard to say no to Barefoot—who’s about two meters tall and the most beautiful girl in school. After talking tempsuits and penguins with her, I’d teleported straight to my climbing elective in the Alps. That started a busy weekend without pestilence or war or want: shopping with Mom on the moon, buckling down in headspace to work on my old-speak (my acting class was doing Hamlet ), and spending all Sunday building my South Pole habitat for Advanced Engineering. The only time Scarcity had reared its diseased head was when my buddy Sho and I were simming some battle and I was like, “Whoa, people died a lot back then!” But then this airplane was bombing me, so I forgot again.

So here it was Monday, too late to do any research. As class officially began, headspace faded—my schedule, zero-g league scores, even the time of day, all gone. The world took on that weird, flat Scarcity look: one layer of vision, nothing to see but Maria Borsotti’s self-satisfied smile.

“Poor Kieran,” she said.

“Help me,” I whispered.

She looked away. “Well, I might have had a couple of leftover ideas…”

Mr. Solomon started by clearing his throat. He said that was how people got your attention in the old days, because they were always ill.

“Well, people, I hope you’re ready for a life-changing experience.”

Low-level groans rumbled through the classroom.

Solomon raised his hands to silence us. “Perspective is the key to the next two weeks. This project shouldn’t dismay you. In fact, the better you understand how things used to be, the happier you’ll be about your lives now.”

And that was the real point of Scarcity class: making us all into appreciative little meekers who never complained—even about really annoying things like, say, Scarcity class.

Maria shifted closer and murmured, “Oh, too bad. I can’t seem to find my notes. But Mr. Solomon said he had a few extra ideas.”

I swallowed. Our teacher had threatened a serious nightmare project for anyone who didn’t come up with their own. Bubonic plague, maybe. Or athlete’s foot, which sounded like a good thing to have, but wasn’t. I felt like one of those nerdy kids who can’t find a buddy in gym class and has to run laps instead of playing zero-g.

“Who wants to go first?” Mr. Solomon asked.

Hands shot up, everyone eager to lock in their projects. I sat there frozen, my unassisted brain spinning hopelessly. Solomon called on Barefoot Tillman first.

“Can I do the common cold?” she asked.

I glared at her. It was Barefoot’s fault I’d forgotten this assignment, and she was picking cold ? After all the famines and pandemics we’d watched this semester? Even nowadays people got cold sometimes . Like down at the Pole, my tempsuit was always icy when I first put it on in the morning. Distinctly unpleasant. And “common cold” sounded a lot lamer than South Pole cold.

A smile was spreading across Mr. Solomon’s face. “Are you sure you want to attempt something so…disagreeable?”

That seemed to take Barefoot by surprise, and I saw from Maria’s grin that she’d already investigated this “common cold,” and if a meeker like Maria wanted no part of it, Barefoot was in big trouble.

“I can handle it,” she said, bluffing. Her thumbs were twitching with unconscious headspace gestures, trying to check closer. Knowing Barefoot, she hadn’t gotten past the name. It’s that kind of lazy work that Scarcity is supposed to teach you not to rely on, because people used to die from being lazy.

Of course, Barefoot was still way ahead of me.

“Well then,” Mr. Solomon said, “the common cold is all yours, Miss Tillman. Enjoy.”

More hands shot up.

Solomon’s gaze took a random walk around the classroom. This whole raising-your-hand thing was another of the tech-stepdowns that made Scarcity so frustrating. You had to wait your turn instead of arguing on multiple audio levels or texting on to one big thread. No wonder they were always fighting back then—discussing anything complicated with a single audio level was like trying to suck tar through a straw.

Lao Wrigley had her hand up higher than anyone.

“I’d like to do physical transport. No teleporting at all.” She flicked her hair. “My dad flies me to school anyway.”

“What an ambitious bunch you are,” Solomon said, the sadistic glee on his face making my stomach flip. “But what about your classes on other continents?”

Lao smugly shuffled the paper in her hands. She wasn’t a Maria Borsotti–level meeker, but she always squirted her notes from headspace on to wood-pulp before class.

“Well, my courses in Asia are all in headspace this semester, so I don’t have to teleport. My skin-diving elective is down in the Bahamas, but there’s this cargo ferry that runs twice a day, and it has some old passenger seats.”

Mr. Solomon nodded. “Excellent research, Lao, but I think you’ll find that boats are surprisingly slow. Did you know how long it takes?”

Lao nodded solemnly. “Two whole hours, Mr. S. But I can manage it if our ancestors could.”

“And what about your social life, Miss Wrigley? This means no parties on Luna for two weeks.”

Still wearing her serious face, Lao folded her hands. “Well, Scarcity doesn’t mean much unless you have to give something up.”

I rolled my eyes—as if Lao Wrigley had a planet-hopping social life. Even Maria raised an eyebrow, like she’d just sent me a headspace message. (That was the one cool thing about Scarcity: it made you realize how much you could communicate using just your face.) We managed not to giggle out loud.