A Long, Long Sleep

by Anna Sheehan

  “This first is just an informal session,” said my psychologist after I’d sat down on the comfortable sofa. “Just so we can get to know each other a bit. Have your foster parents told you anything about me?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I was just told I had an appointment.”

  “Ah.” Dr. Bija turned to her note screen and touched it a few times. I was still trying to get the hang of my own note screen. I knew touch- screen computers fairly well, but these flexible handheld things that pretended to be notebooks were new to me. It was nice that you could toss them around the room, accidently sit on them, pile them under real books, and still use them to access the net and take all your school notes on, but they weren’t really notebooks.

  Not as far as I was concerned.

  My psychologist was in her midforties, with rich black hair graying around the temples, her skin a warm brown. She was wearing a smart linen pantsuit. Her name was Mina Bija. “ Meena Beeja,” as Barry had sounded out for me. He had dropped me off at one of the hundreds of buildings that had sprung up in ComUnity in the sixty years I’d been in stass. I didn’t want a psychologist, but Barry assured me it was just so that I would be sure to assimilate. I rather thought Guillory wanted to spy on me, but it wasn’t my place to argue the point.

  “So you’re Rosalinda. Do you prefer to be called Rose or something else?”

  “Rose is good,” I said, surprised she’d asked. Guillory still called me by the full Rosalinda, as if I were in some kind of trouble.

  “Feel free to call me Mina,” Dr. Bija said. “Your case was referred to me by Mr.

  Guillory, yes?”

  “I think so.”

  “Of course, I saw you in the news about a month ago.

  Have you ever seen a psychologist before?”

  I shook my head. “No. I have a physical therapist I’m going to, but never a psychologist.”

  “So I’m your first, eh?” she asked. She grinned with something of a self-deprecating air, which helped me drop my guard a bit. “Well, just so we have everything out of the way, you should know that I do work for UniCorp, here out of Uni Prep.” I looked around her of fice again. I hadn’t realized we were in my new school. “I understand you are to begin attending here soon?”

  “Monday,” I said.

  “So soon? That must be scary.”

  I shrugged. “No scarier than everything else.”

  Her face turned concerned. “Yes, you’ve been through quite a shock.”

  I squirmed uncomfortably. “I’m not sure I really want to talk about that.”

  “Of course. Let’s talk about school. How do you feel about being enrolled at Uni Prep? Do you think you’re ready to go back to school?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “Not worried at all?” Mina pressed. “You have sixty years of technology and history to catch up on.”

  “I doubt I’ll notice a difference,” I said ruefully.

  “Oh, really? I hope you do find it easy to assimilate. It would make things much more pleasant for you.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant,” I said. “It’s just . . . I was never very good at school. I can’t imagine it could be much worse, even with all the new stuff.” I looked down at my knees. They were clad in Uni Prep’s gray linen school uniform. I had a choice of skirts in the Uni plaid of green, blue, and gold, or the same gray or dark- green linen as the uniform jackets. Guillory had arranged for several changes of the entire spectrum of Uni Prep selections to be delivered to me at Unicorn. I was actually relieved. It meant I didn’t have to go shopping for clothes. Patty had taken me to get some nightclothes and undergarments, and I’d found it a nightmare. I was used to fashions changing, but not at all used to choosing what I was going to wear. I wished Uni Prep had regulation pajamas.

  “You don’t do well in school?” Mina asked.

  I shook my head. “Never have.”

  She frowned. “You do realize that Uni Prep strives for excellence in all fields.”

  “You think I should ask to be sent somewhere else?” I asked, somewhat afraid she’d say yes. Her primary loyalty had to be toward the school, after all. I didn’t want to go somewhere else. For one thing, I’d have to give up the comforting uniform. For another, Uni Prep felt like an extension of my parents’ protection, the closest thing I had to the kind of life they’d have given me if they were still alive. I didn’t want to leave that behind.

  “No,” she said, “but I think we should have a talk with your school counselor, maybe arrange for some tutors.”

  Now it was my turn to frown. “Aren’t you the school counselor?”

  “No,” Mina said. “I’m the resident psychologist. The school counselor’s records are the school’s records. Mine are private. I work through the school so there is easy access for the boarders. Many of them are away from home for the first time and need support. But I also have clients outside of the school and outside of ComUnity.”

  I did feel better. “I’d work with tutors. But it might not help —I’m not very smart,” I admitted. “I used to try, but it never worked, so I don’t bother much anymore.”

  “This is before you were in the hospital?”

  “Before I was stassed,” I clarified, wondering why she’d avoided the word.

  “Sometimes I’d get so far behind that we all just gave up and I’d start fresh in a new school.”

  I couldn’t read the look on Mina’s face, but she hesitated a moment before she asked, “And would that help?”

  No one had ever asked that before. “Not really,” I admitted.

  Mina was okay, but I didn’t feel quite right talking to her. I dodged most of the rest of her questions. She was part of this world, and I didn’t fit properly into it.

  I was a child out of time. Nothing seemed to make sense. I didn’t know how to program the holoview, and I couldn’t even figure out how to work the stove.

  Which was ironic, since the stove and the refrigerator were a UniCorp’s subsidiary’s speciality, with their tiny NeoFusion™ labels stamped on the front.

  The all- but- everlasting NeoFusion power source had been UniCorp’s master patent, the first step that had made the rest of the interplanetary corporation possible. Before I’d been put into stasis, it was only used for expensive, important devices, like central power plants, as well as interplanetary shuttles and the rare self- contained units, such as my stass tube.

  Now, apparently, the same NeoFusion batteries that powered my tube were everywhere. Unfortunately, so were the subtle, heat- activated SubTouch™

  controls, which reacted before I’d even touched them. In theory, they prevented infection, something people seemed much more worried about after those Dark Times. In reality, I couldn’t get the stove to work, and then I nearly burned down the condo.

  All I wanted to do was fall into my drawings. I most assuredly didn’t want to go to school.

  But what choice did I have, trapped in a world that wasn’t mine, with my life belonging to everyone else? Eat dinner, talk to a psychologist, prepare for class.

  I did whatever they asked of me. It was all I could think of to do.

  – chapter 4—

  The building was tall, frowning and ancient in style, jagged- stone construction, arched windows and high gables. It was the House of Usher, the home of the undead, a dark, dreary dungeon of a place. And it was my school.

  Uni Prep was considered the best school in the solar sys-tem. Most of the upper echelons of the colonies sent their children to be educated there. The day students, such as myself and Bren, were the cherished young citizens of ComUnity itself.

  I’d seen it before, of course —Dr. Bija’s of fice was around the west wing — but I hadn’t gone through the imposing front entrance before. The whole place had been built in a style known as Gothic Revivalist, built in the years after what Bren called the Dark Times. Uni Prep looked like a massive maus
oleum, with some entirely incongruous chunky bits of modern artwork around the moldings that reminded me of fungus. I half expected Nosferatu to leap out of the nearest exit and go for my throat. People must have been really depressed during those Dark Times.

  I dragged myself up the dungeon stairs and across the entry foyer to the central quad, where Bren had half promised to meet me. The interior of the school was pleasant enough, I supposed. The arched windows did, in fact, let in the sun. There were dozens of students milling about here and there, folded note screens under their arms, laughing and smiling as if they weren’t living in a crypt. But the cadence and accent of their speech was slightly different, and I kept hearing things that made no sense. “Noid, that’s so sky!” “You’re such a burning sped!” “I comm, already!”

  I shuddered.

  “Welcome to Uni Prep,” Bren said from behind me. I whirled. I felt so relieved to see him I could have cried. “Sorry, this is it,” he said, gesturing sadly at the quad. The quad was a sort of cement pit in the center of the school that pretended to have something to do with a garden and so had several exhausted trees swaying gloomily in pots. Bren began pointing things out to me so quickly that I could barely keep my balance. “Down that way are the grav- courts for interplanet games. They have the weights for Mars, Luna, Titan, Callisto, and Europa. See that group of girls over there?” He pointed to a handful of girls who looked as squat and square and sturdy as tortoises, yet who moved as gracefully as dancers. “That’s the Uni volleyball team. They think they’re so sky. They’re mostly boarders, and they’re thick as thieves. Get one of them angry, and you’ll get exed in your next phys ed class, and probably have most of your homework hacked.”

  He turned me in another direction. “Over there are the scholarship students.” A tight knot of students chatted beneath one of the hapless trees. They looked like a perfectly ordinary group of kids to me. “They mostly stick together for protection. They’re pretty harmless and they’re all okay individually, but don’t be seen with them as a group or you’ll be branded forever. You’ll never see the end of it. I comm, it burns, but that’s the way it is.”

  He pointed out the narrow entryway of the quad at a pair of buildings that flanked the back of the school like bodyguards. Also like bodyguards, they were squat and bulky compared to the Gothic Revivalist majesty of the school proper, though I could see the hand of the same dismal architect. “Those are the dorms for the boarders. Insane security. Everyone’s scanned the moment they get in, and they’re very strict about girls and boys. Make sure you have a boarder with you, or you’re likely to get a reprimand. There’s a bit of a rivalry between boarders and day kids. Nothing to worry about, but there’s been some vandalism, so don’t let people think you’re up to the same thing.”

  He glanced over the rest of the quad. “Can’t see anything else you need to watch out for. You comm everything?” I guessed he meant Do you understand?, but I hadn’t picked up the new slang. I managed a nod, which seemed to work. “I have to get to class. Do you have your schedule yet?”

  “No,” I said. He had gone through everything so quickly and so dizzyingly that I began to suspect he wanted to get rid of me. The thought made me sad. Bren was the closest thing I had to a friend in this insane new world. “Do you know where the office is?” I asked.

  He pointed at an imposing door behind me. “Through those doors and to your right. You need me to show you?”

  I smiled. Even if he was doing it under some kind of duress, he was taking very good care of me. “No. I think I can manage. Don’t be late.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you at lunch.”

  I let loose a relieved, and somewhat shaky, sigh. “Thanks.” Whenever I started a new school, it was always hell trying to figure out where to sit at lunch. But if Bren was looking after me, I knew it would all be all right.

  To my surprise, Mr. Guillory was waiting for me in the office. “Ah! Rosalinda, I was just talking to your school counselor here, just to make sure you’re to be in all the right classes. We’re putting you into sophomore history because they’re about to start the turn of the century, which is about where you . . . ah

  . . . left off. I thought it would be good for you to catch up on some of what you’ve missed.”

  I swallowed. I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to know what I missed. “Thank you, Mr. Guillory.”

  “Please, call me Reggie,” he said again. “Now, I trust that you should be able to take up where you left off in math, English, and Chinese, yes? I found your . . .

  ah . . . most recent school records in the city archives. You were taking Chinese, weren’t you?”

  My parents had thought my learning Chinese would be would be good for me, as it had been the second most used commercial language after English. They’d signed me up for Mandarin in every school I went to. I hadn’t been very good at it. “Yes, thank you.”

  “We were discussing about what sciences to put you in. Is social psychology all right, coupled with elementary astrophysics?”

  There was such a thing as “elementary” astrophysics? “That will be fine,” I said, collecting the paper copy of the schedule, even though I knew it would also be downloaded onto my notescreen.

  “I thought astrophysics would be useful for you, considering the interplanetary empire you’ll be inheriting, eh?” Guillory and the counselor laughed, and I forced out a laugh to be gracious.

  “I’ll show you to your first class,” Guillory said, and took my shoulder in one golden hand before he snatched the schedule out of my grip. “Social psych. I think that’s right down here.”

  Most students were hurrying through the halls, afraid they’d be late for class, but when they caught a glimpse of me walking with Mr. Guillory, everyone seemed to hit a brick wall. If they had any doubts about who I was, Guillory’s presence quashed them. I created a sea of stillness everywhere I went, with all eyes fixated on me. I could hear people muttering behind me. “Is that the Sleeping Beauty?” “Noid, she doesn’t look so beautiful!” “I heard she stassed herself because she wanted to preserve her longevity.” “I think she’s a fake.

  UniCorp just wants a figurehead.” “Look at her with Guillory, sucking up.”

  “Already a sped puppet.” I kept my head down, refusing to meet the eyes of any of the people staring at me. Any hope I had of fitting in had been quashed by Guillory’s bold appearance. He, of course, strode through, oblivious.

  “Here we are,” said Mr. Guillory. “Would you like me to talk to your teacher and find you a seat?”

  “No, that’s quite all right —” I began, but Mr. Guillory strode right up to the teacher, his golden skin all but glittering with efficiency.

  “This is Rosalinda Fitzroy. I trust that you’ve been briefed as to her treatment?”

  he said, not nearly quietly enough.

  I blushed bright red and tried to hide it beneath my hair. I wished I were not blond and fair and so quick to turn as red as the rose I was named for. My skin was practically translucent. Daddy always called me his “little rose.” The students who were already seated stared at me, some in wonder, some with unabashed curiosity, a few with blatant loathing. I wished I could disappear.

  Mr. Guillory finally departed (taking the copy of my schedule with him), and I tried to make sense of the class. If they had asked me, I would have told them to give me all remedial freshman classes and then ply me with a dozen tutors.

  But that would have been too much trouble. If Dr. Bija had spoken to the school counselor, as she had hinted, her recommendations had been completely ignored. After a little while I gave up and started sketching a landscape on my notescreen. It was one of my stass dreams, all twisted tree-scapes and melting horizons. But the notescreen just wasn’t a sketchbook.

  Though I could pull up palettes with a thousand and one shades of color, it didn’t feel like real artwork to me.

  As the tone sounded for the end of class, I dutifully copied down t
he homework assignment, but I knew I wouldn’t get very far with it.

  In English we were supposed to be studying turn- of- the- century authors, which Mr. Guillory had thought would be old- school for me. I didn’t have the heart to tell the teacher that I’d never even heard of half the authors or that I hadn’t read a single book on the syllabus. The authors they thought were classics must have been utterly obscure when they first came out.

  As far as Chinese went, it was all Greek to me.

  I had phys ed right before lunch and was horrified to discover we were doing a track unit. I ran approximately twenty yards before the coach put me on the sidelines. I was panting and shaking and I would have thrown up, but I had eaten so little that all I did was retch ineffectively. Stass fatigue still impeded most of my motor functions. The coach said he’d try to arrange a pass on my phys ed credits for this term. “That’s . . . not . . . necessary. . . .” I panted.

  “It is,” he said. “Mr. Guillory’s orders. I’m to make sure you’re well cared for.”

  I was most chagrined to discover that after Mr. Guillory had left me in my social- psych class, he had traveled to each of my teachers in turn, interrupting their classes, to inform them of the special treatment I merited. If most of the school hadn’t already been resentful toward me, they certainly were now. I’d ask Dr. Bija if she could arrange for my physical therapy sessions to be counted toward my gym credits. I could do some of the exercises the doctors had set for me while everyone else ran laps or shot baskets.

  When I was finally released, I fled to the cafeteria, hoping to find Bren. But the crush of bodies defeated me. Finding one beautiful boy in a school of two thousand wealthy members of the elite was next to impossible. I stood in line and carefully collected the standard meal.