Pulse

scientists worldwide agree with. The five percent who don’t are idiots, which apparently means that five times out of a hundred even dumb people can attain a degree in the sciences. Not long after Hotspur Chance shares the findings, New Orleans is gone and so are another million people. That pretty much shut the last five percent up.”
    “Then what?” Dylan asked. He’d turned attentive instead of condescending. He was looking at her with those big, dark eyes, hanging on every word.
    “Uh . . . ,” she stammered, looking down at the table and spinning her plate in little turns with her fingers. “Hotspur Chance and the rest of the group went back underground or whatever. They’d proved that global warming was going to destroy vast areas of the world in under a hundred years. That was the big news. A couple of coastlines were one thing; but according to Hotspur Chance’s report, it was going to get a lot worse, and fast. There would be no way to stop it entirely—the world was going to get tougher to live in no matter what—but there was a way, if we were fast enough, to stop the damage.”
    “How?” Dylan asked. “How did he propose we do this?”
    “States. That was the short answer.”
    “But why States, what was his reasoning?”
    “They all agreed on building States—every country, every scientist—for a lot of reasons. Getting everyone into small spaces would open up vast portions of land. They estimated that the North American landmass would need to be eighty-three percent empty, seventeen percent full in order to survive. That’s not including agriculture, just humans. Everyone had to populate in the same places, huge places. And those places had to be created from scratch as clean, modern, perfect atmospheres for living. No more gasoline-fueled cars; those would fall under a worldwide fossil fuel ban. Using gasoline or oil would have to land you in jail or worse; that was critical.”
    “And people really bought into this?”
    “Not at first, no. But then there was the global drought, followed by sections of Japan and China going under sea level. And the 2029 quake—that was what really did it. The earthquake really woke a lot of people up.”
    “So far you’re doing great. What happened next?”
    “Well, that’s when Hotspur Chance and all the other scientists went back to work. Only this time they invited the smartest engineers, planners, and architects to join them. There were thousands of people working in relative secrecy for a while. I mean, people knew what they were doing, but they lived on a closed campus and didn’t release reports or news very often. The world kept falling apart while they worked.”
    “How many of the thousands of people who went in came out at the end?”
    Faith thought this was a weird question.
    “I guess I don’t know what you mean. A lot of them never did come out; they just kept working. Hotspur Chance was the only person the public saw very much of.”
    Dylan nodded like he understood and motioned for Faith to go on.
    “The first States were started in 2032, and people began moving in a few years later. The States were designed to grow outward as more people arrived, but I don’t know too much about what they’re like on the inside. You know, since I’ve never been in one.”
    “And what percentage of the world population now lives in a State?”
    “More than ninety percent. It’s shocking, really. Just twenty years, and the world is nearly empty. Crazy, right?”
    “It shows what we can do when we put our mind to it, but, yeah, it’s a lot of people.”
    Faith shrugged. “I don’t know; I guess it’s perfect and clean and fabulous inside. My parents are so headstrong about it. They’ll never go inside the State. I think that part of them may have rubbed off on me.”
    “It’s not a crime, living inside a State.”
    “Might as well be. Can’t drive, can’t burn wood, no pets, can’t go wandering off into the middle of nowhere in search of some peace and quiet.”
    Faith was always bothered by the conformist aspect of the States. It wasn’t in her nature to walk in the same direction everyone else was walking.
    “Freedom is pricey, no doubt,” Dylan said, then he turned his head sideways slightly and looked at Faith like he were trying to read her mind. “Did you ever hear anything about the intelligence movement?”
    “The what?”
    Dylan nodded perceptively, like Faith’s ignorance was the only answer he