Excerpt of The Perpetual Motion Club by Sue Lange

Northawken High, Northawken, PA. Fourth Period: Geometry. Mr. Brown, the teaching associate, has just stepped out for an illegal smoke. As a result, all hell is breaking loose.

Over in the back corner the Martians have landed. Deb Sway is streaming Orson Welles via Mubi on her cellphone.

Five seats in front of her Jed Moonfeather is checking in on his stocks.

Directly to Deb's right and three students over, Josh Williams is playing DeathHockey with some student in some other class, maybe even some other high school miles away and in a totally different time zone.

Two seats in front of him, Cynthia Nickello is using her desk InterConnect to create a wicked etch–a–sketch of the Tasmanian Devil, complete with cartoon sound effects.

Most of the other students have plugged in an earbud and are downloading a good dose of iHigh, the current digital drug of choice. The earbuds receive the iHigh signal from a local illegal transmission station, and at the same time highjack part of the information the wearer's subcutaneous RFID chip is sending out. The two signals are mixed and shunted to the inner ear where the hairs vibrate at a higher rate than usual. The vibrations are amplified by the surrounding Pharyngeal apparati, eventually traveling beyond the mandibular bone to where the brain finally picks them up and realizes something is going on. It erroneously thinks the organism (the teenager in Mr. Brown's fourth period geometry class) is in pain and orders the pituitary gland to send out an increased supply of endorphins to relieve the suffering. Since no suffering other than a slight elevated tingle in the ear hairs is being experienced, the teenager gets a quick high. If the teenager is really radical and brave, he or she is tuned to channel44, the turbocharged version of iHigh that induces hallucinations. People have been known to die while imbibing channel44, so few kids do it. Still, there's always one who has something to prove and winds up a statistic.

Up in front of the students, the huge, wall–wide Dell Calcuscreen is illustrating the age–old Pythagorean Theorem. It squares the hypotenuse, but hardly anyone is paying attention.

Just like any regulation maelstrom, a pool of calm exists in the center of the classroom. As the rest of the room quickly spins out of control, there in the eye of the storm, Justin Blaine, May Sedley, and Elsa Webb embark on a more subdued drama.

Half–way to the back, Elsa sits in rapt attention to the Calcuscreen. She taps her teeth with her fingernails as she watches the action up front. Two rows over May, her best friend, attempts to pay attention as well. In between the two, Justin Blaine is sleeping. He snores a tiny snore.

Only May and Elsa hear it. They turn to look at him. May is bored and glad for the entertainment. Elsa, perhaps the only student in school that actually likes geometry, watches but does not comprehend as her mind is still on the hypotenuse up on the screen.

At the very moment Elsa and May turn to look at Justin, Jamie Rector, sitting directly in front of Justin, turns and aims an electronic pulser at Justin's forehead. He clicks the trigger, shooting just enough high–pressure air to throw the sleeping boy ever so slightly off balance. Justin's neck muscles catch and overcompensate, pitching his head too fast and too far. He ends up slumping forward with his head at a right angle over his textbook open to the page on triangles. A string of drool soon connects his fleshy lip to the text. A perfect Pythagorean moment.

Because of who she is and how her mind works, Elsa thinks of Newton and his reactive forces.

Watching from Justin's other side, May is less impressed with the physical forces. She does not care for math or physics and can't get past the drool. She remarks on that instead of the equal and opposite reaction. "Eew!" she says.

At just that moment, Mr. Brown returns.