Marymarymary was always the first, this year. She stood in front of the transmitter opening, let the electronic beam play on her forehead identification disc, then stepped in.
Swup. She was gone, delivered to her home, delivered to her mama and papa—and she wouldn't remember a thing of the "story hour," Miss Hippiness thought happily. But maybe when she grew up, maybe when they all grew up, things would erupt here and there from their subconscious and—
They each stood their moment for the beam to catch their discs, stepped in and were swupped off. At last only Charley Tencharles was left and he scurried around, like teacher's pets immemorial, helping Miss Hippiness do the last things a classroom needs to put it to rest for the night.
Miss Hippiness gave his shoulders a last motherly squeeze and pushed him in front of the matter transmitter.
"Tomorrow?" she said. His young grin was like wine in her blood. He stepped in and was swupped instantly.
Miss Hippiness sighed and went back to sit on her straight chair. It wasn't comfortable and it wasn't pretty. But it somehow fit whatever had been happening inside her the last year or two.
She glanced at the faint shimmer inside the transmitter where Charley had been swupped. He was such a darling. Quiet, shy, adorable. If they had allowed her to have a son, instead of decreeing that she be a childless teacher, she said. But she couldn't finish the thought.
It was when the children went that she felt the growing anger and unrest and sickness inside her. It was terrible when the children left. She wondered how long it had been now since she had seen the real surface of the earth. She swupped back and forth, morning and night, from her sleeping room to her classroom. They were a thousand miles apart, actually, but an instant apart through the transmitter.
And she had been swupping to that old library in the south of what had been France to browse in the forgotten ancient books there. But she never went outdoors. She never saw the sky anymore.