Cort felt bile rise up in his throat just thinking about it. He quickly accosted himself for being judgmental, remembering what his mom had said—
Something hit the back of his heel, nearly pulling his shoe off. Cort stumbled, hopping on one foot, and knocked into the kid ahead.
The one behind shoved him. “Watch where you’re going, freak!”
The kid’s voice was perfect. Deep, gruff, and enunciated with crisp precision. Cort didn’t dare turn around and try to reply. It would just make things worse.
When the flow of kids started branching, Cort concentrated on moving with the fewer number, trying to find air, some room to breathe. He used his thumb and finger to pull the saliva away from the corner of his mouth, then wiped his chin with the back of his sleeve. He really wanted to tear the plastic tube out, but, impossibly, he was able to resist.
He needed to get in a pod before his head exploded.
Cort followed the masses down another hall, this one lined with individual learning units. He scanned ahead for “unoccupied” lights, but each one was grabbed by one of the other kids, usually a bigger one.
As the crowd thinned, Cort could see an end to the agony—a line of pods with green lights. Two kids wrestled with each other after choosing the same one. Cort slid past and grabbed the next one, practically falling inside before ripping the tube out of his mouth. He sucked in huge lungfuls of glorious air, nearly hyperventilating himself with relief. It had been like a kilometer-long swim underwater, blending in with the fishes.
He bent over, both elbows resting on his knees, and tried to take slower, deeper breaths. Sweat—partly from effort, partly from nerves—dripped off his nose. He rubbed his hands up his face and wiped them off on his thighs.
There was no way he could do this twice a day. Every day.
He wanted to go back to Earth.
The first lesson flashed up on the pod’s screen: a mixture of history and math. It leaned heavily on the Martian perspective, looking for calculations with dates he hadn’t yet memorized.
After a string of ten incorrect answers in a row, it kicked him down to fourth-grade history, which just made it harder to concentrate.
Luckily, the next few had a mix of Earth dates, but with a strange bias. He keyed in his answers quickly, watching the clock, and got back into fifth-grade history. Once again, the instructor wanted information he just didn’t have. Cort wiped more sweat from his brow, which just made the keyboard slick. For the next hour, he felt like he spent more time between the two grades than he did in either one of them.
When the Mathory lesson concluded, he had a few minutes to relieve himself in the suction potty before the next course. He was hoping for Englo-Bio, but got Poli-Theism instead.
He groaned to himself. Not only did he hate politics—he could never tell the Roman and Greek gods apart. He tried his hardest to stay out of third grade, but it was no use. The political structure of Mars made even less sense to him than Earth’s. And why teach this stuff anyway? It’d be eight years before he could vote!
He read the questions and typed in his best guesses, his concentration waning and waxing.
Had he known recess was up next, he would have at least enjoyed the opportunity to breathe freely, unmolested.
At the end of the Poli-Theism lesson, Cort’s morning report flashed up, along with a list of the people it would be sent to. He wondered if his mom would be one of those doting and bored parents, waiting on the real-time status update for everything their spawn were up to.
He looked at his dismal performance and hoped the report would get flagged as spam and never be delivered. In a smaller window, an instructor popped up and informed them that it was recess, a map underneath him showing directions to the gymnasium.
Cort immediately felt the urge to use the suction potty. He wondered if he could just stay in the pod, if anyone would notice. The sight of the three cameras mounted to the testing wall provided the answer. Not a good idea.
He took a deep breath and inserted the tube, trying not to think about breathing through his nose. The door behind him popped open on its own; he turned around to see the opposite wall disgorging a line of students. In the pod directly across, a mane of blond hair spilled around a face—a face as pretty as one can be with a tube pumping oxygenated fluid into it.
Cort smiled, but the flash of niceness was lost in a sea of passing kids. He waited for the flow to weaken before moving out into the hall and trailing along with the other stragglers.
The games were already underway when he arrived in the gym. The sounds of metal clashing against metal drifted up from the pit, the kids along the balcony leaning forward to look down through the glass.
The upper level looked completely full, so Cort followed some kids heading down a flight of stairs. They came out in an identical room—a large, rectangular doughnut of a balcony overlooking the gym’s pit—and the kids ahead of him took the few remaining spaces.
One of those spaces had been right beside a wild mane of blond hair. Cort felt his heart thumping in his chest. The girl turned, shifting her chair over, as another boy took the space beside her.
Once again, their eyes locked. Cort felt his breathing constrict even more. He started to wave, but someone knocked into his back, sending him sprawling forward. Scrambling to his feet, he rushed to join the kids moving down another level, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.
The nearby spots were already taken on the lowest level. That was fine with Cort; he wanted to sit on the other side. He fought the urge to run and shuffled as fast as he could, working his way around the balcony. He ignored the clashing of the large robots beyond the glass.
On the other side, he took one of the empty spots directly across from the girl. He could look up through the glass and see her blond hair waving as she concentrated on the games below.
He had to tear his eyes away to view the action. Dozens of robots clashed across the parquet floor of the gym, each one controlled by a team of kids.
He looked at his controls. He’d been assigned to the green team, left leg. Cort saw his robot immediately, but the lower-level seat meant it was hard to gauge the overall action. He grabbed both his sticks as the AI relinquished control of the green bot’s left leg, handing it over to him. Pushing and pulling on the two sticks, he did his part in keeping the thing upright, watching his display for instructions from whoever controlled the head.
The stress and exertion forced him to hold the tube with his teeth, breathing around it and through his mouth. He did his best to not be a hindrance. Cort wasn’t very good at bot-ball, but at least he could keep his side of the green team upright, not tripping over anything. He even had a few good plants while the right leg got some good shots off. It wasn’t bad playing a support role, especially since he didn’t make a fool of himself.
In the first fifteen-minute period, they got two shots on goal and did adequate damage to the yellow bot. Everyone received the exact same score, of course, but Cort kept his own tally and thought his team had done well. Not that he would say such a thing. Not on Mars.
When the horn sounded, signaling the first intermission, Cort glanced up to catch the girl’s attention, maybe see which team she’d been on.
But she was gone.
He looked around as the kids on his level ran for the exit to get refreshments and use the public suction potties. Cort used the time to gather his breath. He watched the kids file out of their level, all in the same direction, clockwise around the glass partition. He turned back to his controls.
The blond girl sat beside him, arriving from the opposite side.
“Hello,” she said through her computer.