Free Flight by Neil Hetzner

perch.
Within seconds after changing perches and idea recorders, Prissi’s
thoughts were flowing so fast that the tool she held in her hand
for recording those thoughts could barely keep up. The ancient
golden fountain pen had been given to her by a retired diplomat in
Bujumbura on her tenth birthday. Even as it hurried across the
paper, the pen was losing ground to her spate of thoughts. That
feeling, of thoughts spilling out faster than the ink could record
them, was glorious to someone whose writing usually was laborious.
Finally, there came a break in Prissi’s stream of ideas. The
self-satisfied teener took advantage of that synaptical
short-circuit to glance out the windows at the rippling waters of
the pond and look up at a bowl of puffy popcorn-like clouds,
iridescent above and dark gray beneath, being blown across the
sky.
    Forty minutes later, when Prissi paused a
second time, the clouds looked like inquisitive sheep.
    After an hour and a half of dedicated work,
and with nine pages of words and ideas that made sense to her,
Prissi redacted her earlier view of herself. Even if she was a
techinept, she had lots of friends who were techadepts. She got
along with them fine even if she wasn’t one—maybe that was from
growing up in Africa, where a whole night of uninterrupted
electricity was cause for celebration. As Prissi flipped through
what she had written, she reassured herself that most of the
world’s great literature and, for that matter, the foundation of
most of the sciences, had been created with pen and paper, quill
and vellum.
    As she often did with words that drew her,
Prissi said the word, “vellum,” aloud. She imagined what a piece of
that old invention must feel like between one’s fingers. Just the
name suggested how smooth and sensuous it must be. What fun it
would be to draw a pen nib across a piece of vellum. Voluptuous
vellum.
    Prissi mused about being in an alchemist’s
laboratory, literally burning the midnight oil, mixing philters
with phlogiston and recording the results on velvety, voluptuous
vellum. When Prissi next looked up from her reverie, an angry wind
had pushed the sheep into a tightly huddled frightened herd. She
shifted from her history paper to a set of bio-stat problems, but
despite the urgency of getting the homework done, Prissi kept
finding herself looking out the large windows to see if the
predicted snow had begun to fall. The Ice Age Cometh. Prissi forced
her head down. A few minutes later, when, despite her best efforts,
it popped up again, Prissi noticed a pair of state hawks circling
over campus. Besides wondering what might cause the police to be on
campus, Prissi also felt jealous. Flying through the snow was a
rare treat. Something mysterious, something attractive. Ugh. She
forced her eyes back down to her work. The eyes remained where they
were supposed to be, but the mind continued to wander—although
there were scores of teenerz from some of the world’s wealthiest
families, security at Dutton was mostly handled by the campus
officers. Only a handful of students were considered so attractive
a target that their parents hired private security firms. When the
hawks from the Connecticut State Police became involved it usually
wasn’t because of a danger to a student, but, instead, because of
some incredibly stupid prank by a student—usually a lower-mid
trying to make his reputation, or a senior losing his.
    Prissi was sprawled in her reclining perch
feeling good, except for the occasional late afternoon stomach
growl when Nasty Nancy, whom she had been trying to avoid since
their ride back from the Bissell dedication, came rushing up.
    “Did you hear? Your NQB is gone?”
    Prissi’s stomach rolled over, but not from
hunger. “Joe’s gone?”
    “Like smoke. Like youth. Like love. Like a
Friday night peetsa.”
    Although Prissi prided herself on her
cynicism, she immediately felt angry at Nasty Nancy’s cavalier
words. Her roomie’s large head, made