A Problematic Paradox

by Eliot Sappingfield

  I also wondered if looks mattered here like they did in other schools—the students who might have been ignored or mocked at my old school were sitting and chatting with people who wouldn’t have looked directly at me if I stood on their foot. For instance: I saw a boy who could join any boy band in the world talking and laughing with a girl who was wearing inch-thick glasses and the kind of sweater a librarian might wear to her own funeral.

  Hypatia noticed me staring. “No time to make introductions now, but I’ll fill you in on who’s who,” she whispered. In retrospect, I think the School intentionally pairs new students with gossipy counterparts—it certainly proved to be useful that my roommate happened to know every facet of every social structure in town.

  One boy had hair that stood straight up in dreadlocks at least a foot long above his head. “That’s DeShawn. His brother is this famous astronomer on television, but he’s studying chaos theory dance.”

  “Pardon?” I asked.

  “He dances and uses his body motions to figure out complex chaotic systems. He can do a waltz that predicts the weather up to a year in advance.”

  I nodded in the direction of a girl in the corner who was sitting cross-legged on a clear whitish sphere. The sphere looked different from the other perches; it looked somehow . . . harder. Like it was glass. There was also the fact that she was not sitting on it as much as she was sitting above it, hovering just an inch or so above the center. The girl had long whitish-blond hair that was perfectly straight. She was tall, slender, and generally everything beauty magazines say girls are supposed to look like, only more so. It was almost too much.

  Hypatia’s eyes went dark gray as she rolled them. “Ultraviolet VanHorne—she’s human but a total brownnoser. Her mom manages the software that runs the world’s stock exchanges. Her daddy is a genetic designer, as if that wasn’t obvious.”

  “Are you sure she’s human?” I asked, realizing that a person can be so good-looking that it starts making them look weird in an entirely new way.

  Hypatia scoffed, “Aesthetic genetic design isn’t even difficult to do on humans—it’s just expensive. You only have to activate the right genes and use a bit of prokaryotic DNA or something to replace the wrong ones. Tacky.”

  I was momentarily surprised by her cattiness. Hypatia had struck me as the I love everybody sort of girl. It made me like her a lot more, to be honest. Knowing there was someone who made her insecure gave us something in common, since that was how I reacted to pretty much everyone.

  Then I saw who was sitting next to Ultraviolet, and the situation was explained in full. It was Tom, the boy who had fallen off the skateboard-with-legs thing. He had his long black hair pulled into a neat ponytail and was squirming uncomfortably on a misshapen plastic block, trying not to slide off and occasionally whispering angrily to it. As he did this, Ultraviolet leaned down without so much as a tremble in the ball she was balanced on and ruffled his hair. He looked up at her and winked.

  “That’s Tom,” Hypatia said, sounding as casual as she could. “You met him before.”

  As Hypatia continued to bore holes into Ultraviolet with her glare, I surveyed the rest of the room. There was a boy with a freckled face who could have passed for eight years old if he weren’t so tall that his head brushed against the ceiling without the assistance of a chair. Across the room, a girl so pale she seemed to blend into the scenery sat on a small shelf juggling three apples, while her neighbor cheered her on and threatened to add another apple. They were looking at me, I realized, except that they were doing it in a subtle way. Were they trying to be considerate of someone’s first-day awkwardness? Then I realized something—I was the one staring, and they were noticing it.

  “I thought parahumans could pass for human,” I said to Hypatia as I took a much more subtle look at a small blue boy with bright red hair who had his nose attached meekly to his tablet.

  “Sometimes,” Hypatia replied. “Parahuman mothers create a lot of unique genetics just before their babies are born. Some will study for years to get their kids to turn out exactly like they want. Some of us haven’t quite got it down, and some families use camouflage so they don’t have to bother blending in physically at all. Things like holographic projectors, intelligent chromatic dermal film, big floppy hats—whatever works.

  “Take Juan there as an example,” Hypatia continued, nodding at a boy with a third arm growing out of the left side of his abodmen, just over the ribs. The boy was reading a book with his left hand and left eye while playing a video game with his other two hands and eye. “He’s three world-famous painters. He sees color variations human eyes can’t pick up on, and the third arm helps with holding the palette and tasks that require more dexterity. He has a load of other things going on in his brain—six lobes or something. He’ll do two canvases at the same time, in different styles.”

  “Don’t his fans know he’s an alien?”

  “I doubt it. He has others sell the paintings for him. Besides, once he tucks that third arm away, there’s no telling anything is out of the ordinary.”

  I had lots of questions on the subject of camouflage, but Hypatia had moved on to another subject. She singled out the blue-skinned, red-haired kid. “That’s Bob Flobogashtimann. He’s parahuman, and I guess his folks wanted to make him good at making predictions or something, but instead he came out blue like that and can see forward and backward in time by a few minutes.”

  “That’s awesome!” I said.

  “It’s a serious disability,” replied Hypatia. “Imagine trying to cross the street and not knowing if the truck you see will be there in a minute or if it was there five seconds ago.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He’s a really nice kid, though. We had Remedial Hacking together.”

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to find a boy of about my own height standing immediately behind me. He was glancing around the room in a way I’d call nervous if he hadn’t appeared to exude an aura of extreme boredom in every other way. He had a huge pimple under his left eye, and his hair was plastered to his head like he was on a mission to use up the world’s hair gel singlehandedly. “I’m Mike,” he said.

  Now, my first reaction when people at school talk to me is to figure out why. But Mike wasn’t giving me much to work with. He didn’t seem like he wanted to make fun of me, he wasn’t smirking like he was going to pull a prank, and he didn’t seem like he wanted anything, so I had to resort to my socializing option of last resort.

  “Hi, Mike,” I said.

  “Human?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I just got here. I’m from North Dako—”

  Mike turned and walked away. For a second, I stood there with my mouth open, like he’d come back so I could finish saying Dakota. But instead, he walked across the room, sat in his own white chair (which looked like a folding chair), and started playing on his phone.

  Hypatia saw all this happen and only said, “That’s Mike. Parahuman. He makes hats and collects paper mail. He thinks physically transporting pieces of paper to communicate is fascinating.”

  “Is he like that with everyone?”

  The question didn’t seem to make sense to her. “Like what?”

  At that moment, I spotted a familiar face, the girl who had directed me to the courthouse when I first arrived. She was looking concerned and a little irritated. Standing next to her was a woman who could not be younger than eighty-five. Despite the woman’s age, she was dressed like a little kid in a cartoon panda T-shirt and polka-dotted skirt over striped tights. The old lady was bouncing from one foot to the other and singing some kind of song to herself. She saw me notice her, and that I’d noticed her noticing that, so despite my nervousness, I threw her an understated, friendly wave hello. She waved back.

  “You know Rubidia?” Hypatia asked.

  “We met right after I got here. She was with her sister—her
sister knew my name, by the way. It was like she recognized me. Is that weird?” I asked.

  “They’re Dr. Plaskington’s granddaughters, so they are pretty unusual, I guess, even for parahumans,” Hypatia said. “Fluorine is one of the smartest kids the School has ever seen. She probably hacked the Chaperone over breakfast to see if we had any new students. I’ve heard she can break 2048-bit encryption in her head. Maybe she can read minds. It wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “Who’s the old lady?” I asked. “Is she the teacher?”

  “That’s . . . I don’t know. Never seen her before,” Hypatia said, confused.

  Rubidia was trying to steer the old lady in our direction, but the lady lost interest about halfway over and went off to try to borrow the ball Ultraviolet was balancing on. Rubidia threw up her hands in frustration and came over to us. “She’s driving me insane today. I hope she’s not still senile at dinner,” she said, mostly to Hypatia. “You’re Nikola, right? How’s it going?”

  “Pretty good, I guess,” I said. “I’ve survived an abduction attempt and an exploding chess piece in the last twenty-four hours, so I can’t complain.”

  “The old knightbomb, huh?” Rubidia guessed.

  I nodded, trying to think of a tactful way of asking Rubidia how she had gotten saddled with babysitting the crazy woman.

  “You want to know who the obnoxious hag trying to steal Ultraviolet’s ball out from under her is, right?” Rubidia said, not waiting for a response. “That’s Fluorine. You met her before, remember?”

  I did remember Fluorine, but I was pretty certain she had been a little girl before. Her hair hadn’t been gray—I was certain of that. Some people don’t age gracefully.

  Hypatia was horrified. “What happened to her?”

  Rubidia shrugged. “The nurse says she’s come unstuck in time. Probably caused some kind of paradox in Temporal Mechanics class. They were only moving things back and forth a minute or two, so it should go away before long. She was a baby just before this. That was cute, at least.”

  Fluorine had gone from attempting to grab the ball while Ultraviolet crouched on it in an attempt to fend her off, to begging her to just give it up for a short time. “I just want to sit on your ball!” old lady Fluorine pleaded dramatically. “I’m so old and so tired. I can’t even make my own chair. Oh! I think I might faint!” Fluorine staggered back and forth in a way that didn’t look completely staged. She clutched at her chest and groaned in pain.

  Ultraviolet rolled her eyes. “Gross! Don’t have a heart attack. Just don’t get that . . . old-lady smell all over it,” she said, and made as if to step down.

  The moment the ball was unguarded, Fluorine recovered from her heart attack, shouted “Yoink!” and snatched the ball from Ultraviolet’s hands with a completely unnecessary shove, sending her sprawling onto the floor with an audible thud. Ultraviolet’s eyes went wide with fury, her lips parted to reveal her teeth, and she actually growled audibly. Maybe her parents had mixed in some wolf DNA to ensure her coat was shiny.

  If this intimidated Fluorine, she hid it well. In a flash, the old lady had seated herself on the ball, cross-legged, and was zooming around the room on it like it was a go-kart, crashing into walls and any students not quick-witted enough to get out of her way. “Make way, ladies!” she crowed triumphantly. “The Hells Angels are in town!”

  As Fluorine made her third trip around the room, Ultraviolet stepped out in an attempt to reclaim her ball. The two of them met with a crash that sent both them and the sphere skidding across the room.

  A moment later, there was a flash, like someone had taken a picture, and Fluorine was suddenly a younger adult woman, instantly concerned with the hurt girl. She helped Ultraviolet to her feet, returned the ball, and admonished the rest of the children for horseplay. “It’s all fun and games till someone crashes and ends up with permanent brain damage,” she warned.

  “I’m not brain-damaged!” Ultraviolet shouted, rubbing her head uncertainly.

  “Are you sure, honey? Your eyes look a little crossed. Or is that normal? You should ask for a CAT scan after class.”

  Rubidia was stone-faced with embarrassment, but the look on Hypatia’s face was pure glee. The girl liked a little chaos. Either that or she just liked seeing Ultraviolet get hurt. Maybe both. I’d be okay with that.

  All the hubbub stopped cold a second later when a section of the back wall separated like a pair of elevator doors.

  Behind the portal stood a portly, balding man. He wore bifocals, brown corduroy slacks, and a truly hideous green, orange, and brown paisley blazer that was obviously far too small to fasten around his considerable midsection. The class straightened immediately. Even Fluorine stopped what she was doing and stood facing the teacher with rapt attention.

  The man stepped inside, and the wall slammed shut behind him. He sauntered around the room in a wide circle, surveying everyone and everything with what looked like intense disdain. As he rounded the corner near Juan, the painter, he locked his glare on me and marched straight over with his head cocked at an unnatural angle—ignoring everyone else on his way as if he’d spotted a fire that needed putting out. A moment later, he was standing in front of me, his thumbs locked underneath his bright green suspenders.

  “YOU ARE NEW, ARE YOU NOT?” he screeched, at such sudden and extreme volume that everyone in the room jumped.

  “I AM!” I shouted back, which startled me more than his shouting.

  His voice became a nasal growl, almost too quiet to hear. “You were not on my class roster this morning, and I check my class roster EVERY MORNING.” When he said “every morning,” his voice returned to the deafening screech, and everyone jumped a second time. It was a lot like the screech a falcon makes when it’s about to dive-bomb some unsuspecting bird at two hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  “Do you know why I check my class roster every morning?” he asked.

  “No . . . ,” I said, bracing myself.

  “I check it to make sure that none of my students have succeeded in KILLING THEMSELVES since the last CLASS PERIOD. And I have very grave concerns about the prospects of several students in this class. MR. GILLMAN, am I to assume you have not managed to off yourself in some fascinating way since last we met?”

  Tom stood and addressed the teacher clearly while at attention, as if speaking to a drill sergeant. “Sir, no, sir. I am still alive at the moment.”

  “Then you have EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS once again.” He pointed a finger accusingly at Tom. “Nicely done! I’m granting you five points extra credit for not dying. Do not take my generosity for granted. I’ve seen your scores, and you need EVERY POINT YOU CAN GET.”

  His back was to me now, and I assumed he was about to go terrorize other students, but he spun around. “I am MR. DOLPHIN. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss . . .”

  “Thank you,” I said, suppressing a snicker. Hypatia had mentioned his name, but hearing it screeched like that was more than I could handle.

  “That was your opportunity to introduce yourself. Proper manners dictate that as you do not appear on my class roster, you should MENTION YOUR NAME, so I can have something to SHOUT when you invariably FAIL at the tasks I assign. Your parents might not have schooled you adequately in the ways of ETIQUETTE. Or are you an ORPHAN?”

  “I . . . guess I am, in a way,” realizing as I said it that it was true. My throat felt a bit raspy all of a sudden. “As of last night.” I focused on his tie, trying not to think about it. His tie was paisley, and the pattern reminded me of amoebas hanging around and handing little bits of ugliness to one another.

  “Hm,” he said, stroking his chin and using his lower growl voice once again. “Well, this is awkward. Let’s ignore the whole situation. I’ll call you Tammy for the time being.”

  With that, he stormed across the room to the gothic throne upon which perched a tiny b
lue boy. At first I thought he meant to knock it over, but he stopped short. I realized the boy must have chosen the spot to put himself as far from Mr. Dolphin as possible and was clearly reconsidering the strategy. “MR. FLOBOGASHTIMANN. WHAT IS THIS AUDACIOUS MONSTRRRRROSITY?”

  “You said to make chairs today, if we could,” the boy mumbled from his perch.

  “Quite so,” said Mr. Dolphin, as if he’d forgotten. “And nicely done. You will be earning something HIGHER than an F for this session, I suspect.”

  He then rotated around the room, delivering the slightest of glances at the other projects. He held a pointed finger out, almost as if he intended to curse us all. “CLASS, those who bothered to make chairs, they are ADEQUATE, but MERELY so. Those who did not or COULD not make chairs, know that I consider this INADEQUATE. WORK HARDER! CHAIRS AWAY!”

  With that, the students who had been sitting on chairs seemed to gaze off into the distance. At first I thought this was some kind of silent protest—like they were refusing to comply—but each of the white objects simply descended into the floor and disappeared.

  Mr. Dolphin took up residence on one end of the room and stomped his foot on the floor, and, like magic, a tilted podium rose up in front of him. “Today, we have a new task. Because so many of you either failed to complete the assignment or found yourself UNABLE to do so, the new task will be to complete the OLD task in a new way.” He stomped his foot once more and banged his fist on the podium. Since he had no papers, I guess the only point of the podium was to have something to bang his fist on.

  “We will NOT be conducting the quantum suicide experiment on the grounds that a plurality of you do not seem up to the task. Also because we have a new student, so some review is in order, and lastly, because several of your parents have become aware of the activity and have protested that it is highly dangerous and probably illegal. All of these things are true, which is a shame.”