One, Two, and Three live in the perfect world—so why aren’t they happy? “One!” The Perfection teacher’s shrill voice sliced the silence of the still room like a knife. One jumped, startled. The teacher’s voice sounded flat. “Please pay attention!” One shifted in her chair. She decided to try to concentrate on the teacher’s lecture to the class. The teacher droned on, her toneless voice never changing: “Perfection is part of life. Without it, no one can live. That is why we teach it.” Then, quite suddenly, a bell rang. The sound was like a wake-up call to the sleepy and bored students. One lined up with her classmates in a long line, then followed behind them as the teacher led the class to the cafeteria, a train of children following behind her as she went. At the cafeteria, One took her assigned seat at the front of the table, next to Two. A multitude of unappetizing white cubes adorned her plate. The food tasted bland like it always did. But even though it tasted like a piece of thin cardboard, as the teachers always said, it was “perfect.” After lunch, it was time for English. The kids lined up again and trailed behind the teacher like a snake of silence. In English, One practiced her handwriting on a sheet of milky-white paper, enjoying the perfect shape of her handwriting. She was copying a sentence from The Book of Perfection, a leather-bound tome on how to be perfect, when a sudden abnormality in her handwriting made her hand come to a stop: an a had not turned out the way it should. The curve of the letter was lopsided, like it was leaning out. One frowned. Whenever she practiced her handwriting, her a’s always turned out perfect. But this one hadn’t—was there something wrong? One shook the thought out of her head. Nonsense, she told herself. It must have been a trick of the light. She looked at it again. A now-perfect a stared back at her as if daring her to believe it had been imperfect a second ago. After school, One walked home with her friends Two and Three. Two was a shy boy who never said a word. Normally, he preferred to walk alone in silent thought, but today he walked with One and Three. Three was an energetic girl, much like One herself, but since talking to each other was not allowed in school, she expressed herself while walking home with One, when no teachers or parents could hear them. One told her about the lopsided a. She asked Three, “Could it be that this world is not perfect?” Three stopped and looked at her. “Of course not! Why would we be learning Perfection if not to help ourselves become perfect?” she said. “However, I always feel like I don’t fit in for some reason.” Saying this, she skipped up the road and, after saying goodbye to One and Two, walked into her house, a sturdy brick structure painted a deep shade of brown. Of course, in this perfect world, all houses are like that, thought One, whose house was identical to Three’s. After walking with Two a short way down the street, they arrived at his house, which, of course, was completely identical to Three’s in size and color, except for a number painted on the door: 2. Two said his goodbyes and stepped into the house, leaving One to walk to her house, which was adjacent to Two’s. One happily walked down the street, searching for her house. There it is! The yellow-colored house with a brown 1 on it—wait. Why is it yellow? One was flabbergasted. She knew that all houses had to be identical in size and color. Was there a logical explanation for the bright-yellow color of her house? One stood in front of the yellow house, pondering how it had turned yellow. She heard her parents inside the house doing chores. They worked at a factory that produced copies of The Book of Perfection. She finally decided to go inside and ask her parents why. “Mom? Dad? Why is the house yellow?” Her mother turned to look at her while sweeping. “What do you mean? It’s brown!” she said. “No, come look at it! You’ll see what I mean!” said One. Her mother stepped outside and peered at the yellow house. “What do you mean?” she said again. “It’s brown.” * * * Selena waited outside her mother’s office door. Ever since she was six, she had been picked up from school by her mother, a private practice psychologist. But today, her mother had told her to take the school bus to her clinic, which was just adjacent to a glistening lake that shimmered in the sunlight. Suddenly, the door beside her opened. Her mother, Dr. Monica Grayson, stepped out. She looked distracted. Strands of her chocolate-brown hair were escaping her ponytail, which was normally pulled tight. She crossed the room, not noticing Selena as she ducked into another door adjacent to the one she had come from. Selena was bewildered. She had never seen her mother so frazzled and stressed! She decided to investigate and slipped unnoticed into the room her mother had come from. Inside, Selena found herself in an immaculate computer room. She saw several TV screens on a wide wall, all showing three kids, two girls and a boy, walking home from school. She heard One and Three’s conversation as they passed many identical houses. “Could it be that this world is not perfect?” asked One. Three stopped. “Of course not,” she answered. “Why would we be learning Perfection if not to help ourselves become perfect?” “Why would we be learning Perfection if not to help ourselves become perfect?” By now, Selena’s head was full of questions. What perfect world are they talking about? What is Perfection? And why haven’t I seen these kids before? She surveyed
Science-Fiction
In a Jar
Before a long heat wave turned the Earth into a desert, one person preserved each season I live in a tiny town. It’s not on any map you’ll ever see—except these days a map won’t help you. Everything looks the same. There are no landmarks. Things are being destroyed as fast as they are being built. The world is barren. I’m so old I’m the only one left who remembers why it happened. It happened because of us. The wildfires, the hurricanes, occurring one after the other, the heat wave that began when I was 12 and never stopped. I knew something like this might happen. I was very curious in my day. ‘Pensive” might have been a better word. You might say I was a scientist, or I would have been one if my parents had been able to send me to college. I studied weather patterns and read books on every topic you could imagine. In autumn, I watched the apples fall from the trees. In spring, I watched the children jump in mud puddles. In summer, I saw the rabbits frolicking in the dancing grass. And in winter, I saw the seasons die. The seasons were transient but transcendent. Then things began to change. I knew it had been mentioned in books. I had not thought much of it. They said one day it would ruin Earth. I thought it was a hoax. When the weather patterns started to change, the polar bears began to die, the biomes grew desolate, I started to believe. And then when the migratory birds stopped coming I had to believe it. The oil companies tried to suppress why this was happening, but everyone knew there was an impending doom chasing behind us. By the time the oil companies claimed that fake news was being published about them, everyone had a deep and passionate aversion toward them. When the weather patterns started to malform, I started to plan ahead. I wanted a way to remember the seasons when they were gone because this change seemed inexorable. As a way of not forgetting the seasons, I decided to put a memory of each season into its own, separate jar. I collected some mud from spring. And then in the summer, I scrambled through a hurricane to get a dandelion. In the fall, I raced through a flood to get the most beautiful leaf you could ever imagine. Green, orange, and red. Then when winter came, there was a snowstorm, and I collected a prism-like ice crystal. I put these all in jars. Ever since the seasons died, there was this abstract feeling of dread—dread that the seasons would never come back as I remembered them. There was tumult all around me as people experienced spring for the first time in many years I still have those jars—well, except for one. I have no one else left in this world who loves me as much as I love them. There is something odd about the jars though: The dandelion hasn’t wilted, and the mud hasn’t dried. The ice hasn’t melted, and the leaf hasn’t become crinkly. Maybe it’s magic, maybe there is a scientific explanation for it. I don’t know. Some people ask me why I kept the seasons in the jars. I did it because I don’t want anything from before to go away. I knew I couldn’t stop what was happening. It was like a train, and it wasn’t going to stop. So, I did what I thought was best. I didn’t pray to God for everything to stop. I didn’t cry for Mama. I decided to take matters into my own hands. I said to myself I will have these memories forever, no matter what happens. So, I tried my hardest to make that dream come true. I meant to keep that dream to myself, but that’s not how it went. One morning I turned around to grab my tea from the kettle when I noticed the spring jar that was on the windowsill was gone, and I became very scared. I heard a crash outside. I ran to the door and saw the jar on the ground and the mud lying on the hard earth in a blob. Then something started to happen. There was a flash of brilliant light. Then there appeared lush green grass, verdure, streams, the gleaming sun. There was a moment of silence. Not a forced silence, but completely necessary and natural. After about five seconds, my neighbors ran out in disbelief and sat down in the grass, ran their hands over the leaves, and stood with their arms outstretched toward the sun. There was tumult all around me as people experienced spring for the first time in many years. I just stared. Everything I had hoped for as a child, a teen, and an adult, memories that had once seemed remote, had just come true before my eyes. It was manifest that these children would have the same memories that I have today. In contrast to the felicity all around me, a boy was sitting against a tree crying. I walked over to him. “I did it,” he said. “I broke your jar.” “I’m not mad at you,” I said. “I’m grateful.” “Why?” “Because I had been living off of memories of the past, but now I am really experiencing it for the first time since I was a child. So come and enjoy it.” As he went out to play with his friends, I felt the part of me that had been missing had finally returned. Hudson Benites, 11Excelsior, MN Analise Braddock, 8Katonah, NY
George’s Dream
My name is George. I’m a six-year-old boy. I have a nose-picking brother who annoys me constantly. I want to be a scientist. Specifically, I want to make a drink that will make people live forever. My mom and dad tell me that I have a good imagination. I tell my parents that I have 100 in science, and in every other subject, my grade is an 80. Also, I have won four science fair projects. Like my parents, my teacher also says that I have a good imagination. My teacher says that I could be in the fifth grade science class, but my parents say that I am good where I am. It is not fair, but people in fifth grade may pick on me, so I agree with my parents. I’m in college now; I skipped middle school and high school. I attend Harvard University, and I still want to be a scientist. I told Mr. Johnson that I want to make a potion product that will make people live forever. He almost expelled me because he said it was impossible. I decided to quit Harvard and begin working. I use very complex math and science. After many years of challenging work, I knew that I did not have one material. For two decades, I have been looking for the right material. I have tried everything—sticks, rubber, liquid, fruits, rocks, and more. The weather reporter stated, “There will be a meteor crash on the border of Georgia and Florida.” I live 25 miles from the border of Georgia and Florida. The following week, the meteor crashed in the morning, and I went outside to see. I picked up a bluish red rock. When I returned to my house, I tripped, and the rock fell into the drink that I almost finished. When I looked at the drink, it looked and smelled like it was supposed to when finished. I took a sip, and it tasted as it was supposed to according to my calculations. I knew that this was the last ingredient. I gathered all the bluish red rock I could. A year later, I went on television and showed my product. Ten minutes later, companies gave me billions of dollars for my product. My parents called and asked if they could have some of my product. I refused because they hadn’t believed in me. Within an hour, I received trillions of dollars from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett because they asked for some product. One person said they would trade their baby for my product. I am very rich. Over the next two years, I got married, and we had two children. The children are twins. They once switched their classes, and no one knew until I saw their handwriting. My children have millions of dollars, and they spend their money on candy and mansions. Two-thirds of the Earth’s population has purchased my product. I have everything I need: a hot pool, a house as big as Minnesota, limousines, a puppy, and even a McDonald’s in my house. The problem is that I have too much paperwork. I also have complaints that my product doesn’t work for cancer. I wish I could just discontinue my product and create something else. I asked the president to discontinue my product, so I can have my normal life back again. However, I did not receive an answer. The next morning, my family was robbed. I lost billions of dollars. I asked the president to close my product again, and the answer was finally “yes.” I’m now a normal man with trillions of dollars who will live forever because I drank my own product. Yanni Yohannes, 9Alpharetta, GA
