Stupid Perfect World

by Scott Westerfeld

  My hormones were definitely roiling now, flexing their muscles. But being out of balance wasn’t what I’d expected; there were no sudden fits of madness, no breathtaking epiphanies. It was almost subtle—like the flickers of desire that rose and fell with the sound of Kieran’s breathing.

  I started scribbling again, trying to spill the slow pressure inside me on to paper. As words poured out, a rumble gradually built up around me. It took ages to realize that the sound wasn’t in my head—it was coming from the window. Rain drummed against it, blurring the lights of the other high-rises.

  I jumped up and put my hand against the glass, felt the cold and condensation, and suddenly I wanted to be outside—in the rain. That was what lovelorn heroines always did in the old stories: they ran outside and screamed their frustrations away! (And then they got sick and almost died, but I could skip that part.)

  I stared out at the downpour, letting out a groan…

  Mom’s apartment wasn’t like the old-fashioned house we’d lived in when Dad was alive. The high-rises didn’t have doors to the outside; you came and went through the teleporter. The gardens and lawns around us were just for looking at, the mountains in the distance all national parkland, forbidden and protected.

  Stupid perfect world.

  My fingernails skated the edges of the window, but there were no buttons to press, no latch or lock. All I wanted was to feel the rain on my hands! But windows that opened were too dangerous.

  The boiling under my skin was much worse now; my hormones had sniffed freedom. My blood felt trapped inside me. And on top of it all, I heard Kieran Black breathing again—the voice call still connected.

  It was like he was inside me, his slow rhythm stuck in my head, something invisible and ancient connecting us.

  I sat down on the floor with my notebook, grabbed for the pen, and cut into the paper with quick strokes.

  In this tower with no doors,

  My skin hunger pulses,

  Like his breathing in my ears,

  So near and yet…

  “Oh, crap,” I cried, staring at the staggered lines of handwriting. I hadn’t been keeping a journal…I’d been writing poetry.

  I had to get out of here, out into the rain and oxygen. I grabbed my jacket again and ran toward the teleporter, checking in headspace for somewhere—anywhere—that it was raining. Climate Watch informed me that it was pouring in Paris, drizzling in Delhi, and that a monsoon was skirting Madras—all five seconds away.

  But I hesitated inside the teleporter; it seemed wrong to go ten thousand kilometers. I wanted that rain right there, on the other side of my window.

  Then I saw the fire evacuation stickers on the wall—maps and procedures for when teleportation failed—and smiled.

  “Sky deck,” I told the teleporter, not wanting to climb thirty flights of emergency stairs.

  The huge room twinkled into view. It was empty, of course. Nothing to see tonight through the floor-to-ceiling windows, streaks of rain concealing the dark mountains in the distance. The stars in the sky were washed away, even the moon a blur…

  The moon a blur? Argh. I was thinking in poetry now!

  I looked around for the soft red pulse of the fire exit, pulling the jacket across my shoulders as I ran. The storm was deafening up here, the rain driven by high-altitude winds.

  EVACUATION ONLY, the door warned, less than poetic.

  I placed my palm flat against its cold metal surface, bit my bottom lip, having a last moment of hesitation—afraid to break the rules.

  “Meeker,” I hissed at myself. That’s what Kieran Black thought of me, with my Scarcity-era notebook and pen, scribbling to impress Mr. Solomon.

  Well, this was the door out of my stupid perfect world, a door for calamities and conflagrations, and for when things were on fire…

  I shoved it hard, and a shrieking filled my ears. A dingy flight of stairs led upward, harsh lights flickering to life overhead. A canned voice broke into the alarm, asking the nature of the emergency, but I ignored it and dashed toward the roof. Two flights up was another door, plastered with stickers warning of high winds and low temperatures, of edges without safety rails, of unfiltered, cancer-causing sunlight—all the uncontrollable dangers of outside.

  I pushed the door cautiously, but the wind reached in and yanked it open with the crash of metal. The rain tore inside, streaming across me. I was frozen for a terrified moment; the rushing blackness seemed too vast and powerful. But that calm, infuriating voice kept asking where the fire was, driving me outside.

  The wind grew stronger with every step I took. A few meters from the door, my jacket was stripped from my shoulders, disappearing into the darkness. Half-frozen drops streaked out of the dark sky, battering my face and bare arms, feeding my hungry skin.

  I opened up my hands to feel the rain drum against my palms, and opened my mouth to drink the cold water, laughing and wishing that Kieran Black was there beside me.

  Two minutes later, security arrived and took me home.

  Seven

  MORE DRAMA, PEOPLE!” Ms. Parker cried.

  Everyone just stared at her, swords drooping. We’d been practicing this scene for hours, trying to get the blocking right. Most of this was William Shakespeare’s fault; it’s pretty hard to switch two swords in the middle of a fight by accident. Come on.

  The so-called army waiting off-stage was growing restless. Every time they got ready to march in with a warlike volley, Ms. Parker cut in, complaining about the lack of drama. Too bad nobody had taken death-by-poisoning for their Scarcity project—they could have showed us how….

  “Okay, take a break,” she finally said in disgust.

  Everyone headed to the green room or over to the teleporters, but I sheathed my sword and slid off the edge of the stage, climbing up through the empty seats. The quiet out here was a relief from forgotten lines, implausible blocking, and Ms. Parker’s demands for drama.

  I sat down in the last row, a few seats in from the aisle, and tipped my head back. My eyes closed automatically, and I felt the soothing darkness close around me.

  Sleeping, it turned out, was awesome. I was clocking six hours a night now, plus naps. The lost time was killing my grades, but I loved slipping away into oblivion and consummation.

  And the psycho prince guy had been wrong to worry: Stage 5 sleep wasn’t a rub at all. It had all the drama our production was missing, and I was devoutly addicted to it.

  Since that first real sleep, Maria had been reading to me every night. It was an actual olden-day tradition called “bedtime stories,” according to Maria. And even though her journal was just random sentences, she did spin stories in my head. The sound of her voice made dreams happen.

  It felt like talking in Shakespeare’s old-speak, using “dreaming” to mean Stage 5. That old definition had disappeared along with sleep itself. Nowadays people only “dreamed” of bigger houses or getting famous.

  But I kept wondering how close the two meanings were. Did I really want everything I saw in REM sleep? Should I risk making real what I did there, or should I keep it safely hidden in my dreams?

  “Kieran,” came a whisper from right beside me.

  I jumped, my eyes flying open.

  “You okay?” Maria asked softly.

  “Oh, sorry.” I blinked, for a moment wondering if this was real or not. “I was just napping.”

  “Awesome.” Her smile glimmered in the stage lights. “How’s the Bard going?”

  “Not dramatic enough for Ms. Parker.” I let out a sigh. “I’m not sure what would be, except maybe a hurricane blowing off the roof.”

  “Ooh…” she breathed softly. “A hurricane would be fun.”

  I smiled. She’d told me about her trip to the roof, her wild dancing and her skin hunger—all of it had wormed its way into my dreams.

  She leaned in close, her breath in my ear. “I have a question for you.”

  “We don’t have to whisper,” I said. “We’re on break.”


  “But I like whispering. It makes things more…dramatic.”

  A shiver went through me.

  “Speaking of which.” Maria turned back to the empty stage, where the lights were shifting between palettes, sword-fight red to soliloquy blue. “Tonight when I read to you…maybe it would be better in person. I mean, more dramatic, from right beside your bed.”

  I knew what she was asking, of course. I’d been asking it myself a moment before. But I wasn’t sure how you went from dreams to reality without the magic leaking out—or becoming too wild and powerful.

  Truth was, I was kind of scared of Maria these days.

  Her stare had grown more intense every day of the project. Here in the darkness of the auditorium she looked ready for one of her prized bouts of insanity. Especially if I said the wrong thing.

  “Maria, it’s awesome when you read to me. I love your voice, I don’t think I could go to sleep without it. But I think that…”

  “That you only like my voice?” she asked.

  “No!” My dreams had gone way beyond Maria’s voice. Images flashed in my mind’s eye, as vivid as memories of real events. But how could I say that out loud? “It’s just that…dreaming can be weird.”

  Her breath caught in the dark. “You started dreaming? Since when?”

  “Since the first time you read to me,” I said.

  “And you didn’t tell me?”

  “Well, it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  She leaned closer, her mad eyes flashing. “What’s embarrassing?”

  I squirmed in the hard wooden chair, my brain rejecting this collision between dream life and reality. I thought of how Stage 5 sleep makes your eyelids twitch, your hands quiver, and how I woke up every morning with drool on my face. Maybe that was something she’d understand?

  Here in the second week, all the projects were getting weird. Barefoot Tillman’s common cold had turned freakish—her eyes were all puffy and red. Strange colors of goo ran out of her nose, and she had to carry around paper towels to collect it. Even Dan Stratovaria—his eyes were milky white and his skin riddled with white veins—steered clear of her. He’d gone blind over the weekend, but had learned to avoid the honking noises Barefoot made.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. But it’s weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  I swallowed. Did I really want to tell Maria about my drool? “Well, you know how Barefoot—”

  “Barefoot Tillman!” she hissed. “You’re dreaming of her!”

  “No! I was just—”

  “Just using me!” she shrieked. “It’s my voice you go to sleep to every night!” A scream spilled from her lips and through the auditorium. “What am I, some kind of Cyrano de Bergerac for bimbos?”

  “No! Um…Cyrano who?”

  “You illiterate, pathetic excuse for a rogue! I can’t believe you!”

  She leaped from her seat and stormed away up the aisle.

  “Maria, wait!” I called. “That’s not what I—”

  “Goodbye, Kieran…and have a good night!” she screamed from the exit.

  The door slammed behind her, a vast boom echoing through the silent auditorium. As I slumped back into my seat, I realized that stage and audience had been reversed: the assembled cast and crew were staring at me, eyes wide and jaws dropped open.

  I leaned my head back, praying that this, too, was a dream.

  The silence lingered for a moment, and then a single pair of hands began to clap out a slow beat. It was Ms. Parker perched on the edge of the stage, applauding with a broad smile on her face.

  “Take notes, people,” she declared. “Because that was drama!”

  Eight

  MIDNIGHT WAS ALMOST HERE, and Kieran still hadn’t called.

  The bathwater burbled just beneath my nose, its warmth enveloping me, keeping my skin hunger barely in check. I closed my eyes and sank down until its rumble filled my ears, shutting out the deafening silence.

  I still couldn’t believe what he’d done, stealing my poetry to dream about Barefoot. And added to his theft was cowardice, hiding the betrayal inside his own subconscious. And he still hadn’t called.

  Maybe the rest was silence between us.

  I stayed under the water, holding my breath, imagining Kieran’s face when my tragic death by drowning was announced. After my explosion in the auditorium, everyone would realize he’d killed me with his dirty little dreams. I visualized the whole world knowing, my poems found and posthumously broadcast throughout headspace, along with cruel comparisons of my angelic death mask with Barefoot Tillman’s puffy, snot-filled face.

  As the fantasy progressed, the oxygen in my lungs ran out, my brain growing fuzzy, my heart thudding harder and harder inside my chest…

  …until my bioframe sent me bursting up into the air, sputtering for breath.

  “I wasn’t really going to!” I muttered between gasps for air. Stupid perfect world.

  I sank back down to shoulder height in the water, the memory of my auditorium outburst twisting in my stomach. All those times I’d imagined going crazy with olden-day emotions, the madness had taken place on a Scottish moor, a high balcony, or in a richly appointed boudoir—never in front of an audience.

  Apparently, hormones went hand in hand with humiliation.

  I tried to remember what had happened in the fight, exactly when and how everything had gone so wrong. As I’d stormed away, he’d tried to call out something to me, but my brain had been too addled to hear the words.

  I thought of all the books I’d read, the stories where letters went missing or were delivered too late or to the wrong person; where pride, prejudice, and accidental judgments tore lovers apart. So what had he said? It would be worth something just to know that Kieran wanted to make things right, if only to throw the explanations back in his face.

  Midnight chimed, his sleep-time officially here. I’d set the reminder after that first night, the night of his falling asleep, of my dance in the storm.

  Why hadn’t he called?

  I groaned with frustration, sinking lower into the water. I’d sworn an oath that I wasn’t going to call him. An oath on my life, which suddenly felt as powerful as the dictates of my bioframe inside me. I’d die for sure if I broke it.

  Minutes ticked away. Was he really sleeping without my voice tonight? I lay there fuming, imagining him calling Barefoot and asking her to sneeze and honk him into dreamland. Fat chance. He needed me….

  But no way was I calling him. A true heroine never breaks an oath.

  His father looked surprised to see me.

  “Mr. Black? I’m Maria, a friend of Kieran’s.”

  “Oh?” He looked down at my long black dress clinging to wet skin, the water dripping from my hair.

  “I’m in his Scarcity class. I need to talk to him. In person.”

  “Scarcity class…?” A light went on behind the old man’s eyes, and he smiled. “Oh, yes. I believe he’s mentioned you.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, not by name.” He chuckled. “But a father notices these things.”

  “Things?” I asked. His eyes widened a little, and I resolved to rein in my intensity. “Um, I know he might be asleep, but if I could just see him for a minute…”

  “Asleep?” The man said the word like it came from another language. “Actually, he’s not here at the moment.”

  I frowned. But it was midnight…and then a beautiful realization took flight in me.

  He was too upset! Unable to sleep!

  “Tossing and turning,” I murmured.

  “Pardon me?” his father asked.

  “Where is he?” I demanded, my resolve against intensity failing.

  “Perhaps you and I should have a little chat about Kieran. You’re both very young, and—”

  “Where…is…he?”

  He paused, fear starting to show on his face. “Um, I think maybe you should go home and check your bioframe, young lady.”

  I growled and clen
ched my fists, and the old man took a step backward, setting the coats hanging along the hallway swaying.

  Thick, white, puffy parkas, with fur-lined collars…

  I smiled. “He’s at the South Pole, isn’t he?”

  “Now, young lady…”

  I grabbed one of the parkas and pulled it on. Then I stuffed my slippered feet into a pair of tall boots waiting by the teleporter.

  “You can’t go down there!” he cried. “It isn’t safe!”

  “Safe!” I laughed. “You’re talking to a girl who walks in hurricanes, Mr. Black.” Wobbly in my oversized boots, I stepped into the teleporter. “South Pole, please!”

  “Amundsen-Scott Station?” the machine asked.

  “Yes, that’s the place!”

  “Wait!” Kieran’s father said, a trembling hand raised as if to stop me. But he came from the soft, hormone-balanced world I’d left behind, and could hardly be expected to believe that some crazy, half-drowned girl had pushed her way into his house and now was headed straight to the South Pole.

  I hummed him a mad tune as I disappeared.

  The feeble sun was low on the horizon. It was dark, and cold, and white.

  I pulled the parka tighter, flipping the furry hood up over my face. On this end, the inside of the teleporter had been plastered with all kinds of warnings: climate extremes, exposure, frostbite, death. But the stickers were worn and peeling, and no calm, automated voice had asked what I was doing here. Nobody came to the end of the world unprepared, it seemed.

  I climbed down the short flight of stairs; the buildings were on stilts, as if afraid to touch the snow. The wind rushed in under my dress, hit my bare knees like something burning.

  A woman trudged by in a tempsuit and parka, pausing for a moment to stare at me with goggled eyes.

  “Where’s Kieran Black?” I demanded, my tongue freeze-drying in my mouth as I spoke.

  “The school kid?” She paused a moment, then pointed one giant-gloved hand at an igloo a hundred meters away. “But I don’t think you should be—”

  I growled and turned away from her, starting a grim march past a row of flags stuck into the ice, tattered leftovers from countries that no longer existed. My dress solidified as I walked, shedding hailstones of frozen bathwater.