It's Not Worth It
Chapter 2- Star Sickness
"Part of her was subject to this tide that was moving through the cosmos. And so were the mulefa, and so were human beings in every world, and every kind of conscious creature, wherever they were. And unless she found out what was happening, they might all find themselves drifting away to oblivion, everyone."
-Mary Malone, The Amber Spyglass
- - - -
Kyle Walker woke up to the stream of California sunlight pouring through the window. He groaned with sleepiness as he realized why he had to get up so early—it was the first day of school. He got dressed quickly, then stumbled downstairs to pour himself a bowl of cereal. His mom had left him a note-"Fix yourself breakfast and go to school, I have to work late again."-so he did just that. He pulled on his backpack, got on his bike, and rode to Redwood High School. It was the first day of ninth grade, and he didn't want to miss getting his course schedule.
When he arrived, he picked up his schedule and stopped to talk to his friend Roger.
"Hey Kyle, this year is going to be the best one yet," said Roger. "I stopped to talk to Jason, everything's ready, now we just have to find a stupid enough teacher to pull our prank on."
"Our homeroom teacher, Mrs. Whatshername, Beatty, Betty…everyone said she's a complete retard. They say you can hit her in the ass three times with a piece of crumpled up paper and she won't even notice. You can use the same piece of paper—throw it, go back up and get it, throw it again—and as long as she's teaching class, she can't even tell."
"Perfect," said Roger, smiling, "she won't know what hit her."
Just then, the bell rang, sending students scurrying off to try and find their homeroom classes. Kyle found his homeroom teacher pretty easily, but then he'd always been pretty good with directions. He slipped into the desk next to Roger's just as the teacher turned around.
"Well, it's always nice to see the new ninth graders," said his teacher. "My name's Mrs. Biddy ("Not even close," said Roger), and I'll be your homeroom and English teacher for the next year. Now, I know that I have gotten a bit of a reputation of being very involved in my teaching—Kyle snickered loudly—but I want you all to know that although I am not very involved in what goes on while I'm not teaching, you will all learn a little something this year. Okay, dears? Now open your books to page 112—oh sorry, 107, I was on the wrong page there..."
"It's perfect! Priceless!" exclaimed Roger. "We pull the prank at the Halloween party."
Mrs. Biddy droned on and on, getting half the word spellings wrong herself and constantly having to check her answer key, until mercifully the bell rang, signaling the start of second period. His second period was Algebra I, and he prepared himself for what was said to be the most boring class in all of Redwood High School—and given Mrs. Biddy's teaching style, that was something special. Right before class started, though, Kyle felt a weird feeling in his head, almost as if he was standing at the top of a large cliff. Suddenly, unexpectedly, he found himself drifting away from his body. Something was pulling him...but he could see himself right there, in class, blank-eyed...
Kyle blacked out.
- - - -
It wasn't until 4th period-P.E.-that Roger found out Kyle was missing from class. Jason told him that Kyle just blacked out in math class for no apparent reason. Kyle's math class had been momentarily evacuated, because everyone thought that some poisonous gas may have been released into the room—but testing showed everything was fine, so class resumed, and no one else blacked out, as far as Roger knew.
In P.E. they were running sprints, so Roger got in line between Jason and some new kid named Carl, and waited his turn.
"So who are you, then?" asked Carl in front of him.
"Oh, I'm Roger, only the best prankster that Redwood school district has ever seen," replied Roger.
"Really?" said Carl. "Can I see your work?"
"Come to the Halloween party next month, and you will," said Roger mysteriously. Roger was very proud of his pranks, but he didn't know Carl, and telling him the plan beforehand might blow his chances of pulling it off.
The coach's whistle blew, and Carl in front of him took off. Carl was a pretty fast runner, thought Roger. Once Carl finished he turned around and walked back to where Roger was standing. Carl was sweating ferociously. The whistle blew again, and Roger took off, but he was one of the few that did. Everyone else was staring at Carl, whose eyes suddenly went blank, and who then blacked out.
Everyone was sent home from school, but investigators came and couldn't find anything wrong with Redwood High School. There was plenty of oxygen, no poisonous gases—although there was a slightly high presence of carbon monoxide, it was nothing that would bring down two perfectly normal, healthy kids. Two days passed, and still nothing unusual was found at the school, so all students were sent back. But five more students didn't return to school, and this time Jason was among them. Roger went over to Jason's house to see if Jason was sick. His mom said that Jason had just passed out, for no reason, while he was skateboarding at the skatepark behind his house. He had been sent to the hospital, along with Kyle, Carl, and the other four students who had the same thing happen to them. Then news of the mysterious illness spread throughout the nation and even the world. It was called "star sickness" because the victims' consciousness seemed just to float high up into the sky. Many experts were called, but none could figure out what was happening, and the only three people who knew of it were in another universe, blissfully unaware.
- - - -
Will and Lyra sat on the bench in the Botanic Garden and talked about their previous adventures, arguing about who found who first, or who was braver. Their daemons were entwined at their feet, Pantalaimon and Kirjava sharing their love with one another. It was their tenth anniversary, and they were now living in Lyra's world, after passing their first six years in Will's world. Pantalaimon had been feeling badly, but was getting better now, and everything looked good for them, until they first heard of the mysterious sickness in which people's minds seemed to just drift away. Called the Driftbreeze, or just the "Drifts" in Lyra's world, it was almost as big a problem in her world as in Kyle and Roger's. When Mary Malone had first heard about it, she knew exactly what had happened, and she tried to tell Will and Lyra about it, but she couldn't bring herself to. And besides, she thought, nobody had died, everyone had woken up...but they had behaved so strangely...
Probably nothing, she figured, just shock. So she couldn't ruin the two lovers' lives; they did, after all, save the world.
So the Dust leakage went unnoticed, and Will and Lyra went uninformed, and the worlds drifted closer and closer to oblivion.
Roger woke up on Halloween feeling pretty good about himself. His friends Kyle and Jason, although still in the hospital, were showing more life signs, and were expected to wake up soon. He would still pull the prank that night on Mrs. Biddy, then when his friends woke up, he could tell them about it, and they would all have a good laugh at her stupidity, and everything would be back to normal.
That was how Roger pictured it.
But in other parts of his world, the sickness was spreading even more, and the scientists were no closer to finding a cure for it. The President of the United States was now getting personally involved, as his Secretary of State had come down with the mysterious star sickness right in the middle of a very important meeting, and blacked out, face-down on the table. The nation's best research scientists were summoned to diagnose him, and they confirmed that he had the mysterious star sickness, but they had no cure, not even a reason for the sickness. All body signs were still there, the brain was still working, but something had happened to their consciousness, and, although the scientists didn't like to get involved with this type of thing, it seemed as though the victims had lost their souls.
But the first star sickness victim, Kyle Walker, was drawing even closer to waking up, and he could provide them with a lot more information.
- - - -
Roger met up with his group of friends that day at school, minus Jason and Kyle, and set up the plan for the prank.
It would be Jeff's job to lure Mrs. Biddy outside, somehow, and given her stupidity, it would probably be pretty easy. From there, it would be Roger, Ryan, and Matthew's job to put the blindfold on her and subdue her if she tried to get away. From there, they would drag her into the forest behind the school; it was a huge clump of trees, stretching fifteen miles or so, and was said to be haunted.
Once Mrs. Biddy got out, Roger was sure that she would be so afraid of her students that she may even quit her teaching job. And the best part was, she wouldn't even know who did it.
After school, they met up at Matthew's house to discuss final plans and get the materials (just the blindfold and masks so they wouldn't be discovered before they put on the blindfold). Finally the time of the party came, and they walked to school with a large group of kids, and hoped nobody would notice the supplies they had dumped right by the entrance to the forest.
The teachers met the students by the entrance to the school, and welcomed them to the Halloween party.
"There will be a hayride, pumpkin carving, and party games on the other side of the school," said Mrs. Bean, the principal, over the loudspeaker. "At least it keeps the kids off the streets...hey, is this thing still on? SHIT! click"
All the students had a good laugh, and then split up depending on what games they wanted to play. But Jeff proceeded into the school, where Mrs. Biddy was working at her desk, dressed in a witch costume.
"Please, Mrs. Biddy, you've got to come with me," said Jeff. "One of the students has been hurt, and we know you're the only one in the school who's smart enough to save him, please, Mrs. Biddy," he said. Mrs. Biddy, being generally a complete moron, followed him, basking in the apparent attention and admiration that she was getting, which was exactly what Jeff intended. Once they came out the back door, Roger and Ryan slipped the bag over her head, while Matthew grabbed her arm and began to drag her into the forest. Once they had come far enough (about two miles in), they left Mrs. Biddy there, asking in a high voice, "Is this a surprise? Mrs. Bean, is that you? I always though I deserved something special for my hard work..." Then he said to Matthew, "Okay, now let's see that map and get out of here."
But Matt was lying on the ground next to him, face down, and the map was nowhere in sight.
"Oh, crap," said Roger angrily.
- - - -
Using the Amber Spyglass, Mary Malone had charted the progress of the escaping Dust ever since the Driftbreeze had first been reported in Lyra's Oxford. What she had found was that, surrounding Lyra and Will, a Dust cloud of mythic proportions swirled and thrived. Some of that Dust was escaping into the air, and nourishing the consciousness of the people around them. For this reason, the Driftbreeze had not been as bad in Lyra's world, in fact had been so invisible that Lyra and Will, love-stricken even after 10 years, didn't even notice it at first. But one day as Mary was watching out the window with her spyglass, she saw someone stricken with the Driftbreeze stumbling around, and decided to observe him with the Spyglass, this being the first time she had done so. As the man blacked out, she watched the Dust cloud around him shimmer and disappear into nothing, as she had expected. But she noticed something different, something special.
Even as the man was still thrashing around, his daemon, a tawny fox, was lying on the ground, eyes closed, showing no signs of life.
- - - -
Roger, Matt and Ryan had been wandering through the forest for a few hours now, looking for an exit, but just seeming to draw even closer to the center of the forest. Finally, they had to stop to rest, knowing that now even Mrs. Biddy would probably find her way back before they could, and they would be in big trouble.
They all took seats on big rocks, and Roger had begun to describe their situation when suddenly he glimpsed a shimmering in the air. He beckoned Matt and Ryan over, then viewed the shimmering from another angle. It was not just a small disturbance, as he had thought, but it was as if a large patch of air had simply been cut out, and where there should have been trees and foliage there was instead a large city square that would have looked perfectly ordinary, except everyone that Roger could see had some sort of animal with them, and some of these animals were talking.
"Come on," said Roger, "it can't be any worse than what we're leaving behind."
So Roger and his two friends left the world they were born in and followed the window into Lyra's world.
