A Glitch in the World

by Alex Drozd

  Stuart struggled to breathe. He was so confused. He wanted to do everything she told him. He wanted her to keep removing what she was wearing, to share the contents of that bottle with him. He could just have fun for once, and here was a girl willing to have fun with him. Was he really going to turn that down? Along with ceasing to exist? Weren’t those the things he had been waiting for his whole life?

  “All-all right,” Stuart choked. He could barely speak. “I’ll help you.”

  “Good,” Alissa said giggling.

  “Won’t I just pass right through you if I try to touch you?”

  “Not if you let your guard down. Here, Stu, drink this.”

  She poured him a dose of the HSP. Stuart’s hands trembled as he took it from her.

  “How are you handing this to me?”

  “You’re letting me, that’s how. It all rests on you.”

  “Okay,” Stuart said. He raised the liquid to his lips and drank it.

  “Good,” Alissa beamed at him. “Now we can have some fun, Stu. Haven’t you always wanted to have fun with me?”

  “I have,” he said.

  “Then come closer to me, and we can have fun before this unfair world comes to an end.”

  He did.

  The world began to spin.

  20

  Cliff Novak leaned on his kitchen counter, checking his PortScreen. He had done so several times in the past hour.

  “Jody,” he called out, his voice ringing through the apartment. “Are you coming with me?”

  “No thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.”

  Cliff glanced back down at the screen. Still nothing. He was growing impatient. There wasn’t enough time to get started on anything, so he wanted it to be time to leave already. He stretched his neck, hummed a tune, and popped his fingers—though that was a social taboo on five major planets—and sipped on a glass of water. Killing time.

  His PortScreen beeped.

  Finally, he thought. Still humming out loud, Cliff walked to his hover car. He was then on the road to the spaceport, listening to his favorite music, a two-decade old artist named Rhi Adams. He found her music authentic, its quality vintage. Smiling to himself, Cliff tapped the drumbeat on his knees, watching the car drive itself through the Earth traffic.

  Things were good; they would have been better had Emma been in the seat next to his, but that was a small detail. Everything else was pleasant, he thought.

  The hover car came to a stop as it pulled behind several others waiting behind a traffic light. The vehicles were all light silver color. They gleamed in the late afternoon sun. Each one hung a foot off the ground—they could afford to be closer than the buses due to their smaller sizes. The one Cliff drove was about four years old. He found himself wondering how much a new one would be. Give this to Jody one day, he thought. And then maybe get a new one for myself.

  Once the traffic sped up, Cliff began craving a carbonated beverage. He checked the time and saw that he could afford to stop. He had only left right away because he wanted something to do.

  Telling the car to get off at the next exit, Cliff continued humming along to the radio. A couple of minutes later he was parked and walking into a convenient store. The room was poorly lit, and Cliff frowned at the inconvenience. But he continued towards the cooled beverages. His sister-in-law and her family would probably want snacks. How old was Stuart? Kids his age liked snacks, whatever age that was. He grabbed a few bags of cookies and a Bubbler, a carbonated orange drink, the leading one on the market. Its logo was Cliff’s favorite.

  He went up to the cash register and placed the items on the counter, walking past the rows of merchandise, their labels crying out for his attention.

  “Ah, Bubbler,” the cashier said with a soft voice. He was a thin man, quite unimposing. The opposite of my brother-in-law, Cliff thought.

  “Yeah, one of my favorites,” Cliff said. He grinned and pointed at the logo, “I love that little picture.”

  “The one with the juice spinning out of the orange?” the cashier asked.

  “Yeah that one,” Cliff said.

  “That is pretty neat,” the cashier said. He grabbed Cliff’s items and began to ring them up. “So, you talked to her, didn’t you?”

  Cliff nodded.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” the cashier said.

  “I know,” Cliff said.

  “And she gave you the drug, didn’t she?”

  “She did.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken it.”

  “Are you going to run me through everything?”

  “I don’t know. This is pretty bad. It sets everything back. I was counting on you to be able to avoid her.”

  “It wasn’t exactly easy to. I’ve been trying to avoid all of you.”

  “I understand. I’m not sure where to go from here. If we figure it out, I’ll contact you.”

  “All right.”

  Cliff left the store, heading back for his car. He was back on his way in less than a minute, playing his Rhi Adams album. The music pulsed through the vehicle, drowning out all other sound, even the hum of the hover car. He was halfway to the spaceport when suddenly, the car swerved off the road and onto the sidewalk.

  A body thudded against the front of the car. Cliff heard the sound of bones cracking. Blood spattered onto the car’s windshield. Once he had come to his senses, Cliff got out of the vehicle to see what had happened.

  The car’s computer had driven him off the road to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle. A bug in the other car’s system had caused it to temporarily not recognize other vehicles whose identification number ended in a seven as being present on the road. And in that split second, it had come across Cliff’s car, whose ID happened to end in a seven. The bug was so subtle that it would probably never be found.

  A crowd of people had gathered around the scene. Only one bystander had been hit. People were calling emergency vehicles on their PortScreens, hoping to help the poor individual, but it was too late. The collision had been too serious for the poor soul’s frame to handle. Arms and legs lay twisted up in a mess of unsightly positions. A few teeth were scattered on the ground. Cliff could see the bone from one of the arms protruding out of the flesh. The body was caked in blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Cliff said to the dead body.

  “It’s all right,” they said. “It’s not like it was your decision.”

  “I know, but I was in the car.”

  “Still, it had nothing to do with you. What’s your status total?”

  “A 327.”

  “Oh, good,” the body said. “I’m only a 261, so it’s not like we were really close or anything. I doubt you’ll have survivor’s guilt.”

  “Hey, you’re right. That’s good I guess,” Cliff said.

  “It sure is. If I had been a 320, or even worse, a 326, you might have freaked out or something, knowing that it had been so tight. You would have had to worry about the ten point margin of error. Isn’t that what they say it is? It’s hard to determine precisely how much someone is worth. They’re always revising it, aren’t they?”

  “That they are. Where did your points come from, anyhow?”

  “Well, they’re so low probably because of my job. I’m just an elementary school teacher.”

  “Hey, that’s an important job. Maybe some business tycoon snobs might not think so, but somebody has to teach their shitty little kids.”

  “You’re exactly right. But I’m replaceable. You understand that. I shouldn’t get as high of a total as someone with a difficult-to-master skill.”

  “I guess so. You know, mine would be higher if it weren’t for the fact I have kidney problems.”

  “Oh yeah, they’ve started deducting for genetic and medical deficiencies, haven’t they?”

  “They have. And it makes sense, you know, you wouldn’t want a sick person over a healthy person if you had to choose would you?”

  “No.
We have to minimize the damage, that’s true. So, take out the one that’s already damaged. Makes sense to me.”

  “I wish there was a way they could completely eliminate the damage, though, you know?”

  “I do, but they would probably just have to get rid of transportation altogether. If we want cars, we’re going to have to deal with accidents, I guess. There’s no way around that.”

  “That’s true. Well, thanks for being so understanding about this.”

  “Hey, it’s no problem. Like I said, it’s not your fault. Who knows, maybe one day they’ll be able to find a way to eliminate all the damage from hover car accidents, not just minimize it. That way having transportation will be worth it.”

  “That’ll be the day the world ends.”

  Cliff and the dead body laughed.

  “Well, have a good day,” Cliff said.

  “You too,” they said back.

  Cliff left the mangled corpse and the crowd of people surrounding it to get back into his car. It would still be able to drive, despite the incident. Besides, he had to pick the Fergessons up from the airport. So what if there was blood all over the front of his hover car? They would understand.

  It took a while to get clear of all the people and emergency vehicles, but once he was back on the road, Cliff was listening to his music again, waiting for the car to take him to the spaceport.

  He fell asleep on the way there.

  21

  Before sunrise, the traffic had begun to form; the noises of hover cars and buses, their engines stirring in the distance. Stuart woke to find that he had fallen asleep in Dwayne’s backyard. For a moment he was confused, but then he remembered what had happened. They must have passed out after taking the HSP. He looked to his left to see Dwayne a few feet away from him, still asleep.

  That was insane, Stuart thought. All of that was part of the trip? Oh my goodness, that certainly was a change of perspective, but I’m not sure if I liked it.

  Who am I kidding? That had been terrifying!

  It had been so detailed, almost a year’s worth of experience compressed into one night’s dream. Instantly, a visceral feeling of relief washed over him. There was no Alissa, no thin man. The HSP had just amplified the feeling of the glitch, which was really just his unhappiness, his poetic and bigger-than-life way of interpreting why he felt something was so off with the world—when really it was just something wrong with him, something wrong with his brain. Wasn’t that all that depression was? Some proportionality between the chemicals that made up his head was off. That was all.

  He prodded Dwayne awake.

  “Hey, we better get inside before your parents wake up,” Stuart said.

  Looking at him through groggy eyes, Dwayne grumbled, “All right. Let’s go.”

  “What did you think?” Stuart asked him as they stood up to go inside. Macrobius was rising in the distance.

  Twisting his head side to side, Dwayne said, “I can’t remember much to be honest. Hold on, I’m not fully awake yet.” He chuckled.

  “I can’t tell if it was part of the trip or a dream,” Stuart said. “But I saw some insane stuff. You died.”

  “What?”

  “You died, and I lived for like a year before I woke up.”

  “You’re messing with me.”

  “Am not.”

  “There’s no way.”

  They went back indoors and headed straight for Dwayne’s room. Still feeling exhausted from a combination of inadequate sleep and the after effects of the drug, they were eager to get a nap in before it was time to get ready for school. Dwayne handed Stuart a blanket and pillow, and the two of them settled down for their extra half hour or so of rest, Dwayne in his bed, and Stuart on the floor.

  When it was time to wake up again, they groaned and prepared their school bags, dreading Mr. Okada’s math test that was to come later in the day. The morning went by in much the same way it always did. They boarded the bus and talked the whole way to the education building. Dwayne told Stuart about Patrice, and Stuart sat through it, hoping the conversation would change soon. For a brief moment, he wished Alissa was real, someone he could tell Dwayne about. But bragging about an imaginary shirtless girl in a psychoactively induced hallucination didn’t seem to be the same thing that Dwayne was talking about.

  So Stuart kept it to himself.

  “Do you think we’ll ever do that again?” Dwayne asked him.

  “Oh, I don’t think so. That dream or whatever I had was a bit too much.”

  “I didn’t get anything like that. I just remember you trying to bite me in the shed.”

  They both laughed.

  “That was strange,” Stuart said. “I never could have imagined that that’s what it would be like.”

  “Me neither. And weren’t we talking about aliens peeing or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  The hover bus arrived at its stop. Though the experience had been terrifying, Stuart did regret that the part about finishing basic wasn’t real. He would have to go through it all over again. The thought was chilling. Maybe all that scary stuff would have made it worth it. Could I skip forward? he wondered. If only.

  “Well, see you in math. Good luck,” Dwayne said.

  “You too,” Stuart said.

  They got off the bus and headed for their respective first classes of the day. When Stuart walked into the English room, he was surprised to see a stranger in what had been Alissa’s chair, the seat next to his. But it made sense. Alissa wasn’t real.

  But didn’t he recall seeing her before he had ever taken the HSP? If so, maybe that was just a memory implanted by the drug.

  Stuart sat down at his desk and procured his books and glow-pens from his bag. Sighing to himself, he prepared for the morning program that he was about to watch, the one he thought he would never have to sit through again. He couldn’t believe they were required to watch such a thing; it was designed mostly to advertise to the students stuck in basic.

  Again Stuart felt that if all he’d experienced under the HSP were real, it would have at least been worth it to get out of this monotony—the monotony that was repeating itself because he had already lived through it once.

  The program started.

  “Hello, I’m the Chief Engineer for the Janus Energy Efficiency program, Don Watkins. And I’m here to talk to you about some of the exciting new advancements we’ve made recently in the lab.”

  Stuart rested his chin on his open palm, half closing his eyes. This would go on for the next ten minutes, unfortunately. They made it almost too loud to ignore.

  “As you may already know, the primary source of energy we use here on Janus—and everywhere else we’ve inhabited in the galaxy—is nuclear energy. Before now, no other means of energy production has ever yielded the results that nuclear power has. On a planet’s surface, we use a combination of solar and nuclear energy, but for space travel, we exclusively use nuclear. This should be obvious because a starship can’t have as much surface area as a planet has exposed to collect sunlight, but there is also a problem in using nuclear energy to power our hyperspace drives: the waste.

  “Getting rid of nuclear waste on a planet isn’t too much of an issue. Most civilized worlds have designated depositories far away from any inhabited areas where they can store the ugly byproduct, but while on a ship, you either have to carry the waste with you, or eject it during the trip. Both situations have been met with controversies; there’s the matter of the health of those on board with the former—albeit it’s a minor concern, but our shielding isn’t always perfect—and there’s the legal trouble with the latter.

  “So, rather than deal with doctors and lawyers, we engineers—the real cornerstones of society—decided to bypass the issue altogether, and come up with an entirely new means of energy production, something that is sure to build Janus up as the lead developing world.”

  The image on the VidScreen changed from the speaker to that of a shiny mechanical dev
ice, one that certainly looked advanced and made for presentation. Even Stuart had to admire it. The chief engineer, Don Watkins, then walked back onto the screen, and stood next to the impressive piece of machinery.

  “The Janus Energy Efficiency program would like to present to you the prototype for the antimatter drive. We’ve conducted our first trials, and with confidence we can say that nuclear energy will soon be a thing of the past—nuclear fusion energy that is. Though, many of the same principles here remain, like converting mass into energy. Let me explain how it works.”

  Stuart no longer felt tired. In fact, he was sitting up rather straight now, watching the VidScreen nervously. A small pit in his stomach was growing.

  “As you know, we are composed of something called matter, which makes up everything you see and everything around you. Liquids, solids, gases, these are all forms of matter—but matter has a twin sibling, and it’s called antimatter. Now, like two opposite sex twins—where both of them are identical genetically but of two different genders—matter and antimatter are the same in every regard except for one thing: their charge.

  “Unlike twins though, matter and antimatter destroy each other when they come into contact. And when this happens, they are completely destroyed, with not a single proton or ounce of mass left behind. Where does all this matter go? To energy! That’s what that famous “E equals MC squared” equation means. And that’s what we’ll be using to power our interstellar ships from now on. It’s the cleanest, but also the most efficient means of energy production that we’ve ever discovered!

  “It’s interesting to note, though, that what we call matter and antimatter is somewhat arbitrary, as is what we call the charge of the particles that make them up. So for example, we could just as easily be made of antimatter as matter, and we wouldn’t notice any difference. We call ourselves matter, and we call the other one antimatter, even though there could a universe where it’s reversed—and they could call themselves matter and us antimatter. It all comes down to convention, really. Again, the deciding factor is just the charge.