A Glitch in the World

by Alex Drozd

  “No, Janus spinning and going around the sun are two different things, silly.”

  “You should do engineering instead of medicine. That would pay more here.”

  “No, I’m doing what I love. And that might not be true for long.”

  Stuart paused for a moment. It was true. There had been talk of identical incomes for all residents of Janus. But he didn’t know much about it because he didn’t pay much attention to anything that went on around him. He worried that he would embarrass himself in front of Alissa with his ignorance.

  “Not if people like Dwayne’s parents get their way,” he said.

  “They’re not going to get their way. Come on, you don’t think they should be able to collect the same salary his dad did on Earth while they’re just traffic supervisors here, do you?”

  “I don’t know—I just feel sorry for them,” Stuart mumbled. “First their kid dies, now everyone’s trying to take their money.”

  “Oh, they’ll keep what they already have. They just won’t get as much in the future. It’s going to happen.”

  “Well, forget the Equity Measure. We need engineers more than doctors, anyways. Everything here is breaking. They’re trying to use the same designs here that they use on Earth.”

  “The laws of nature are the same everywhere,” Alissa said. She stuck her tongue out at him. “What you’re saying is just a rumor.”

  “The engineering details aren’t the same everywhere,” Stuart retorted.

  “Neither are the medical ones. You know we need more doctors!”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Do you like medicine?”

  “I don’t know yet, do I?”

  The collection of dwelling units at the other end of the colony began flying by, each one almost identical to the last. They were efficient, cubical structures designed for families, Janus officials, and living groups. Each one bore the symbol of Janus and a dark green exterior. None was taller or shorter than two stories.

  “I’ll be getting off soon,” Alissa chimed. “Well, weren’t you happy to get out of school today?”

  “Yeah, Mr. Okada’s class is getting really hard,” Stuart said.

  “Is he the other math teacher?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, Mrs. Brinyark is fun. That’s who I have, of course.”

  “You like math?”

  “Why not? Don’t you? It’s so useful.”

  “I don’t like anything.”

  “You like computers!”

  “Not really. They just make time go by faster.”

  “And what are you waiting for?”

  Stuart frowned at the girl. He could tell their conversation was going nowhere. His answers were becoming too brooding. This is why people don’t want to talk to me, he thought, because they always feel like I’m about to tell them I want to commit suicide. No one wants to deal with all that.

  “I’m waiting for it to be when I have all my Ranks. I’m tired of school,” Stuart said.

  “Yeah,” Alissa cocked her head to the side, pensively. “I guess I’d like to know what kind of job I’m going to end up having.”

  The bus came to a halt, hovering over its stop below. After lowering itself with the all too familiar thud and shake, the craft planted itself into position, eager for more of its insides to spill out. Alissa hopped up. She turned to look at Stuart.

  “Well, I’ll see you in the morning, Stu,” she beamed.

  “Bye,” Stuart said. He awkwardly glanced at the exit and then back at her.

  “Bye!” She whisked off, her ponytail tied behind her head, bouncing up and down. He watched her leave. There was a numb ringing throughout his body.

  For the rest of the ride home, Stuart didn’t know how to process what he was feeling. Pure terror struck him. She had talked to him, and now she looked forward to talking to him again. Really talking, not just the small talk exchange they sometimes had in the mornings. The most they had ever discussed was their grade on one of their English tests.

  When the bus finally dropped him off, Stuart stepped out onto Janus’s surface, the wave of dread coming over him as it always did. He could feel it. The glitch. Something wasn’t right with the world. It wasn’t normal to be this afraid of it.

  He walked up to the front door of his family’s unit. The entrance slid aside for him and he entered. Inside, his mother was drawing something on the VidScreen. It was a picture of the colony center set against a Janus sunset. It looked well done, even to his cynical eye.

  “Hi, Mom,” Stuart said.

  “Hey, Stu,” Brenda said. She closed out of the program she was using in one swift motion.

  “Was that your new picture?”

  “Yeah, it’s not ready.”

  “I like it.”

  His mother gave him such a large smile that Stuart began to fear that he had fed a stray animal. What if she asks me to look at more of them now? He worried.

  “Did you really?” Brenda asked.

  “Y-yeah,” he stuttered.

  “Wow, thanks, Stu,” she beamed. “How nice of you.”

  He nodded and went to his room. With great reluctance, he set upon his homework, keeping in mind that there were only a few weeks of basic left. The trudge through would be a slow one, but it would eventually come to pass, just like everything else in the universe would. Stuart smiled. At least there was that.

  While in the middle of writing an essay, he heard the sound of his father coming through the front door, the fat man whose arrival meant it was time to eat. Stuart cursed under his breath. He was in the middle of his work, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood to deal with them. But, like every night, he had to. No one else would give him food.

  Stuart headed for the dining unit. He heard his father talking, his booming voice always discussing one trivial fact about life or another.

  “It looks like they’re sincerely discussing the Equity Measure.” Brian Fergesson’s voice rang through the walls. “I’m telling you, it isn’t right for Earth, but for a world like ours, it’s about the best system there is.”

  “But what does it mean for me?”

  There was a pause. During the silence, Stuart walked into the dining unit where his family waited on him to start dinner.

  “You might have to get your Ranks,” Brian said softly. He turned away from Brenda to look at Stuart. “How’d the advising go? You signed on?” the fat man’s voice inquired.

  “Yeah, I am,” Stuart said.

  “Good, that’s great to hear!” Brian said. He took his seat at the table. Brenda was standing in the doorway, waiting for the food to finish cooking.

  “Stu,” his mother said. “We’re going to take a trip to Earth when you’re finished with basic. It’s been too long since we’ve seen Cliff and Jody.”

  It was as if she had smashed him with a hammer. After finally finishing his classes, after the drudgery of the semester, he would have to travel? The only thing more exhausting than basic? It wasn’t right. The glitch bled into his mind. Something about the world was plain off, and it all felt as if it might come crashing down around him at any minute. He forgot to hide his expression. A look of utter annoyance played over his face.

  “Stu!” Brenda gasped. “We haven’t been there since your Aunt’s funeral. We have to visit, especially for Jody.”

  “Okay,” he grumbled.

  Still leaning on the doorway, his mother shook her head. Brian looked over to chide Stuart.

  “He probably still misses his mom, Stu,” his father said. “This is when family needs to be there.”

  Stuart nodded, cleaning up his face. He had to pretend he cared about people who lived light years away. Those were the rules. The ones the glitch for some reason made seem so unfair.

  “We’ll be leaving the day after you graduate basic,” Brenda said. She pushed off the doorway, ready to check on the food.

  “Mom, what are we having?” Stuart asked her.

  “Pasta,” she said as she
walked to the kitchen.

  For the next half hour, he was tortured at the dinner table, his parents forcing details about his day out of him that even he didn’t know. Reflecting that his break before certification would be spent on a planet he hated more than Janus, Stuart sat there through it all, feeling like the world was conspiring against him.

  7

  The next day, he pulled himself out from under the blankets and slammed his hand down on the alarm, a sickly feeling washing over him. He had this feeling every morning once he realized he was awake. It was time to start the day.

  Leaving his bed, Stuart gathered his class materials, storing them inside his school bag. He had homework to turn in for history and mathematics class. A feeling of apprehension hung over those two assignments, a fear that he had marked something in the file incorrectly, something silly. He was prone to doing silly things. It was possible he had answered every last question incorrectly, that he had been under some delusion when he had worked them out. It was difficult to remember if a memory was false or not. He almost couldn’t bear the thought of turning it in.

  Stuart managed to have only minimal conversation with his parents at breakfast. His mother seemed sleepy, and his father was focused on savoring a banana, the off-world commodity that didn’t come by often, his favorite treat. Actual fruit was rare on Janus. It couldn’t be grown on the surface; there weren’t enough nutrients in the soil.

  “Have a good day, Stu!” Brenda yawned at him as he left for the bus.

  “Bye, Mom.”

  “Bye, Stu,” Brian echoed.

  He left his parents there, still eating breakfast. He wondered if his mother hated his father for being as fat as he was. Maybe that was why she cooked for him, to watch him grow older and fatter so she could hate him even more. Might kill him that way too. There aren’t many doctors on Janus, Stuart thought.

  The bus was a bit earlier than usual, and, as always, he almost didn’t make it. After climbing aboard and seating himself, Stuart gazed out the window, trying to savor the bus ride—his last few moments before class. He dreaded the VidScreen program he was about to be forced to watch. As the end of basic drew nearer, that program seemed to grow more unbearable. The incessant advertising and vacuous news stories drove him crazy—and he hated it far more now than he did when he first started basic. I guess years of watching it will do that, he thought. Like the glitch, it only gets worse with time.

  When the hover bus arrived at the education building, Stuart huffed and dragged himself to class. As he drew nearer, that sense of impending doom became more difficult to ignore. Stuart could sense the world growing uglier with every step he took, each one bringing him closer to the classroom and the dreaded events to follow. First, the VidScreen program, then English class itself, followed by three more classes, the last one being mathematics—taught by his despised teacher Mr. Okada, the bitter old man who seemed determined to get back at his fellow Janusians by torturing their children, his revenge for the terrible job they had given him. He was a harsh grader. The education institute had to set a maximum number of students he could fail each semester.

  The door to the English classroom lay open. Stuart walked past the throngs of his fellow students beside him. He went inside the room, heading for his desk, restraining himself from groaning out loud. The air was too thick. The sense of error he felt around him was crowding his thoughts. It was as if there was always an unevenness to the floor, a subtle elevation, and he was always just about to slide down across it. Why does it always have to feel like this? he wondered.

  At the front of the classroom, the VidScreen was warming up. Students filtered through the door. They occupied their seats excitedly, all of them discussing the previous day’s events. Stuart sat there, wishing both that Alissa would walk through the door and that she wouldn’t.

  The feeling grew deeper.

  She never came. The VidScreen came to life, playing its godawful, locally-produced show. Stuart felt a numb tingling in his stomach. He didn’t know whether to be glad or not. He wanted to talk to her more, but at the same time, he never wanted to talk to her again. Yesterday had been too much. He had lain awake all night thinking about how uncharismatic he had been during their conversation. She had probably been relieved when the bus had pulled up to her stop, finally free from Stuart’s lonely, desperate eyes.

  About halfway through the program, he looked around the room, trying to find anything at all that was more interesting to look at. Their teacher stood in the hallway, playing on her PortScreen, enjoying every last minute of it before class started. He wondered what it was like seeing a batch of fresh new faces that hated you every year. He was sure everyone hated their teachers.

  “Stu,” a girl’s voice said.

  He looked to his left. There she was, inexplicably seated right beside him. “Stu,” Alissa repeated.

  “When did you come in?” he asked her.

  “What do you mean?” she giggled.

  “I didn’t see you come in.”

  “You must not have been paying attention. You’re always staring off into space.”

  “Oh,” Stuart said. He trembled. Something was funny.

  Alissa watched him closely. She giggled again. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Oh, it’s not that bad. And you’re almost done!”

  Stuart shook his head. He looked at her. “Really, how did you get in? I was watching for you.”

  “You were watching for me?” Alissa asked suspiciously.

  “No, I mean,” Stuart paused. “I mean I was looking forward to talking to you again.”

  Alissa giggled again, but this time, the noises coming from her mouth sounded strange. “Why, what did you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

  “Tell me when you walked in first. I swear I didn’t notice you.”

  “No you tell me first.”

  Stuart sighed. “Nothing in particular. I just wanted to ask you more about medicine certification. I don’t know anything about it.”

  Her giggles had turned into laughs, loud ones. Stuart began to look around, surprised she wasn’t drawing attention to herself. Everyone else in the classroom was still watching the VidScreen, as if Alissa’s growing laughter wasn’t even there.

  “What are you laughing about? Quiet down,” Stuart said. He was beginning to fear they might get in trouble for disrupting class, an offense that carried a penalty for students on Janus. Interrupting the VidScreen program would count as such an offense.

  Alissa suddenly stopped laughing, a smile still on her face. Her eyes took on a serious look. They focused on Stuart, zooming in. It made him shudder.

  “You want to know how I got into this desk without you noticing?” she asked him, her tone playful.

  “Yes,” Stuart said.

  She sat there, her whole body turned towards him, her eyes burning into his. Stuart didn’t know why, but he realized he was afraid of her.

  “I’m the glitch,” she said.

  Then she disappeared. The background took over, and she was gone. Stuart had to restrain himself from crying out.

  8

  Stuart had trouble falling asleep that night. He couldn’t stop shaking. In the morning when the mandatory alarm went off, Stuart groaned aloud as he opened his eyes, realizing he was awake yet again. Awake to face a new set of terrors along with the old ones.

  Alissa wasn’t real—of that much he was certain. He was delusional, so deranged by his being ostracized socially that he was imagining he had friends—or girls who had crushes on him. He had imagined her. It was all a cruel trick of his own mind; of course the only girl who ever talked to him turned out to be part of his imagination. Stuart sighed. The glitch had gotten worse ever since Dwayne had left, and that had been months ago.

  The bus ride was a poor one. Anxiety brewed in him, a bubbling amalgamation of all the undes
irable facets of human thought. The whole time he sat there by himself, gazing out the window, trying to hide from his fellow passengers. He didn’t want to make eye contact with them. They would see how miserable he was, and they would hate him for it—hate him for ruining their image of the world. What right did he have to be miserable around people who were not?

  While still lost in his introspection, the bus dropped to the ground. It was time to go to English class. Stuart grew tense. He hoped he didn’t imagine Alissa again. He begged to anything that was listening to make it so that his mind stayed under control.

  “Well that idiot’s the reason refill day is so small,” a student walking near him was saying. Stuart was on his way to the education building from the bus stop.

  “That’s not true,” said another student in response.

  “And how’s that?”

  “If the council can’t reduce energy costs, trade can’t improve.”

  “Well he won’t work with them. Why should he get paid more to do nothing?”

  Glad to get away from yet another set of his peers discussing the Equity Measure, Stuart entered the building. The clear, reflective doors made way for him. His heart pounded as it tried to escape from his chest. He swallowed hard. The building felt far too hot. Hoping he didn’t break out in a sweat while at school, Stuart walked inside his English classroom, his heart sinking when he looked in at the classroom seats.

  Alissa was sitting there smiling at him.

  He took a deep breath and sat down, determined not to look at her. She watched him for a few moments without saying anything, but grew impatient.

  “Stu,” she said.

  He made no reply.

  “What’s wrong with you? Hey, Stu.”

  Alissa began to wave her hand at him, even getting near his face. He still ignored her. While she was doing this, the VidScreen came to life, and the intro to the worst program ever made began.

  “Good morning, students of Janus,” the VidScreen sang as a shot of the colony was displayed for them all to see. “Big news today, the council of Janus has approved a sanitations bill to more properly address the regulation and maintenance of the section 21-D water dispenser.