Stupid Perfect World

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.

Mr. Solomon nodded and started looking for his next victim.

Now my brain was really racing. It hadn’t occurred to me that you could give up teleporting. I’d been focused on the classics: diseases or starvation or having a limb paralyzed. Maybe a tech-stepdown was safer than some bacteria running rampant in my body.

I tried to remember all the olden-day hassles. No teleporting (taken). No headspace (yeah, right). No tempsuits (so I’d freeze to death down at the Pole?). No guaranteed credit level (and what would that mean— getting a job?). Every idea sounded nightmarish.

I guess that was the point of Scarcity: it sucked inescapably.

“How are those ideas coming, Kieran?” Maria whispered.

I gritted my teeth, having the sulky realization that my ancestors had expended lots of effort figuring out how not to suffer from hunger and lion attacks and random germs growing inside them. Much appreciated, ancient forebears, but why should I have to run that gauntlet again?

Though the thought of lions was kind of cool. I wondered if I could do predation, and have a fabricator build some big beast to chase me every now and then. But it would probably annoy my acting teacher, getting jumped by cave bears while rehearsing Shakespeare.

Solomon went through my classmates one by one, the noose tightening as hands went down.

My buddy Sho took hunger, saying he thought it would be funny to get skinny. His bioframe wouldn’t let him die, after all, and people used to fast for two weeks all the time. Solomon said okay, but made him promise to drink lots of water.

Judy Watson chose illiteracy, which meant she could only use icons and verbal commands in headspace. This was an excellent dodge, given how many people didn’t bother reading anymore. I tried to think of some variation on the idea, but nothing worked—and I needed to be literate to learn my lines for Hamlet.

Most people took diseases: cancers or infections, even a few parasites. Dan Stratovaria took river blindness, so his eyes would get eaten away over the next two weeks. Solomon let him keep visuals in headspace to do homework with, and Dan had been planning on getting new eyes anyway, so score another one for easy.

The only diseases I could remember were the ones with funny names, like whooping cough. But two weeks of whooping didn’t sound like fun.

“You’re cute when you’re nervous,” Maria whispered.

Mr. Solomon’s gaze shifted our way. “Maria and Kieran, what have you two been discussing so furiously since class began?”

“Well, Kieran has an outstanding idea, Mr. Solomon,” Maria said, and I suppressed the urge to kick her.

“No doubt, Maria,” he said. “But let’s hear yours first.”

Maria just smiled. “I’d like to suspend my hormonal balancers.”

Solomon nodded slowly—apparently these words made sense to him. “A little risky at sixteen years of age, don’t you think?”

“It’ll be fun, finding out how it was to be a teenager back then.” She shrugged. “It always sounds really intense when you read about it.”

“Indeed it does. Let the hormones run free, then. And what about your outstanding idea, Kieran?”

I ignored Maria’s amused expression. “Well, I was thinking about trying something…different.”

“Wonderful. And what would that be?”

What indeed? What? I tried to think of something that would help me with mountain climbing, like a fear of heights. Or motivate my Antarctic skills, like the possibility of frostbite. Or help me understand Hamlet better, because those Elizabethan times had been all about the heavy-duty scarcity…

And with that thought, William Shakespeare came to my rescue.

“Sleep,” I said.

“Ah.” Mr. Solomon steepled his fingers, looking pleased. “Very original.”

“Of course, I don’t mean tons of sleep,” I added quickly. “But some every single night, like they used to. Um, right?”

“Well, I don’t suppose I’ll make you put in eight hours,” he said. “As long as you get down to REM.”

I nodded, pretending I had some idea what “REM” was, while I was thinking, Eight hours a night? How did olden-day people get anything done? Most months I skipped my one hour of brainsmoothing.

A hint of panic must have crept onto my face, because Solomon said, “I believe that some ancients slept as little as three or four hours a night. Perhaps you can do some research on the matter.”

I smiled sheepishly, just thankful that I’d escaped bubonic plague.

Two

IT’S NOT LIKE KIERAN Black was cute or anything.

His outdoorsy mania had a certain charm, the way he teleported to classes straight from Antarctica, icicles clinging to his hair, lips freshly chapped by freezing winds. And he’d been attractively clueless that day, not realizing that hanging out at the South Pole was pretty much a Scarcity project already. I mean, who went outside in the cold these days?

So when class ended, I decided to take pity on him.

“Need some help?” I offered. “In my Bio unit, we have this hamster who sleeps.”

Kieran looked at me like he thought I was teasing him again, but then gave a tiny nod. Our projects were supposed to start right away, and he probably didn’t know the first thing about getting to sleep.

Sho Walters strolled past us and whacked Kieran’s shoulder. “Sweet project, bud. Lying there doing nothing.”

“Pretty good one, huh?” Kieran said, punching back. “But it isn’t like forgetting to eat is so hard.”

“Hey, I enjoy eating!” Sho called, then gave me a funny look as he slipped out into the hall.

I rolled my eyes, wondering if this outreach program was pointless. Sho lived by the rules that schoolwork was stupid, understanding was overrated, and effort was for meekers. If Kieran was the same way, I didn’t have time for posturing.

But then he muttered, “And I enjoy not lying around. I’ve got a snow habitat to build.”

I smiled. A snow habitat? Maybe this boy was worth my effort.

As the last few students slipped out of the classroom, a bemused look settled on Kieran’s face. “So is that all you do when you sleep? Lie there doing nothing?”

“That’s what Mikey the hamster does,” I said. “He breathes, but that’s about it.”

“Yeah, but he’s a hamster. Didn’t people back then get really bored?”

“You can’t be bored when you’re unconscious, silly.”

“Oh, right, unconscious. So like when you get major surgery.”

“No, it’s like…” I shook my head. “Kieran, you didn’t do any research on this, did you?”

“Not really. I was busy all weekend.”

“How did you even manage to come up with sleep?”

“Well, it’s in this play we’re doing. This psycho prince guy is thinking about suicide, and saying how death might not be so bad, because he figures it’s like sleep.” He shrugged. “So I figured it couldn’t totally suck.”

“You’ve read Hamlet?” I said, perplexed. Could Kieran Black possess hidden