Story:Examination Day

I find myself in a room, and snap to my senses.

There is a man here. A licensed Officiant, the name of whom I do not know. I sit in a chair on a bedsheet-thin cushion. There is a table in front of me, seeming somehow to sag in the room's stagnant air. The room and its contents are possessed of seemingly no color whatsoever, as though frozen in time and space. It must be 12:00 by now, though there is no clock mounted on the room's smooth walls. I breathe in. I awoke nine hours ago, unable to sleep further. I tuned in to the study program on the radio to pass the time. The words and phrases repeated endlessly by the program host's calm voice have formed themselves into a looping mantra in my head: Examination, intelligence, future. I feel suddenly thirsty. The Officiant stands stock-still. The rest of the morning I do not remember, apart from a gathering in my apartment which I acknowledged but did not process the meaning of, and a kiss on both cheeks from my mother, and a word of affirmation from my father. Now I am in a room, the past nebulous and requiring active focus to visualize clearly, reshaping itself while I am not paying attention.

The Officiant rustles and produces a stack of papers, a pen, and a pencil. The objects are placed neatly out in front of me on the drooping table. I am instructed to use ink only for final responses and reminded that cheating is highly illegal and will result in swift disciplinary punishment, statements I have been drilled on since age five. I am sixteen and a half now, an adult. For the past month a curious phenomenon has seemed to occur within the space I occupy, one which repels people; initially only when the topic of the Examination was raised, but now it is as though I am translucent, only partially visible. Presumably this behavior is due to fear. It is another highly illegal offense to aid a student in cheating, intentionally or otherwise. The Officiant inhales. I exhale. You may begin.

Of course, there is no established time limit. In theory, I may spend as much time as I please to respond to each prompt. This is only the belief of the naive and the dim-witted. It is common knowledge that time is included as a factor in your final score. Thus, the Examination becomes a frantic race against an invisible clock, the score dwindling by a quantifiable value with each moment that passes. To dwell on this fact would not be to my benefit. I take a slow breath in. Supposedly they monitor your stress level during the Examination, though I can conceive of no way this could be done. A schoolyard rumor, most likely. Better to be safe than sorry. The paper at the top of the stack reads SECTION 1I in flat, emotionless letters. The pen is in my hand, now. Exhale.

§1I PROMPT ONE

THE SUM OF THE ANGLES IN ANY GIVEN TRIANGLE WILL ALWAYS MEASURE ___.

◉ EXACTLY π

◎ EXACTLY 2π

◎ GREATER THAN 2π

◎ LESS THAN π

― ◔ ―

Simple. I allow myself to relax slightly. The subject matter of Section 1I is minimally difficult and maximally tedious. I manage to lose count of the prompts even though they are numbered. I struggle to recall what I have eaten this morning, if anything. I risk a glance at the Officiant, who stands in a corner, eyes on the verge of glazing over or perhaps naturally dead-looking. Supposedly they are permitted only to stand and watch during this process. This seems cruel for all parties involved. I return my focus to the papers in front of me.

Sections 1A and 1O continue in a similar manner. Minutes pass without the formation of a single complete thought within the room, my motions practiced and calculated and rehearsed thousands of times over. The Officiant appears to be sleeping with his expressionless eyes dilated and wide open. My years-old robe, once a vivid blue, now resembles the color of a pale winter sky. The pen's ink is black and final. My parents insisted that I wear this robe to the Examination, for apparently superstitious reasons, though I do not much like it. The tip and body of the pencil are the same uniform shade of hazy gray, a gray that sort of melts and blends into any environment it's exposed to. It is not dissimilar from my own skin tone. If there was one word to describe the room it would certainly be gray. Until now I have put no thought into how I entered this room. There must be a door just out of reach of my peripheral vision. Craning my head to look would appear suspicious; I opt instead to press my face even closer to the rectangular stack, inking the final responses in Section 1H. I remind myself of the Examination's importance. There is nothing. Nothing greater, that is. Inhale. Exhale.

The Officiant slowly removes himself from his stupor and walks over to the table, joints audibly creaking in the vacuum of sound. I am handed another stack of papers, sections 2 to 4, through a series of rigid, near-mechanical movements. I think briefly of the neighboring island of Steamworks, its millions of sentient gear-men whirring and swiveling in unison. I choose to carry my momentum from the first section into the next, starting it immediately. I force myself into a daze of sorts, hazy-minded as the ink flows and the papers pile up. An acquired skill of every T'vaqi child. A warm fog descends on the room, obscuring everything apart from the Examination. The Officiant has the sort of forgettable face that appears blurred even in clear light. Irrelevant details pile up in my head as my dissociation continues. Many breaths in and out. My robe has a greasy stain near the collar that never quite seems to wash out. I could be asleep. I see nothing.

Section 4 is complete. I nearly begin marking the table before I realize I have no paper left to fill in. The Officiant, as if on cue, unblurs himself and deposits the next few sections in front of me. What I am struck by is horror.

§5I PROMPT ONE

GIVEN EXACTLY THREE MAXIMS, AN AXIOMATIC ONTICON COULD FULFILL WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING CRITERIA?

◎ OUTER

◎ WITHIN

◎ INNER

◎ NONE OF THESE

― ◑ ―

This doesn't make any sense. My daze shatters. I reread the question several times over in an attempt to understand it. I remember none of this from any part of my education. Inhale. Exhale. Perhaps I have simply forgotten for now and will be reminded later. Inhale. Exhale. I hurriedly pencil in the last option, making a mental note to come back to it later. The next few questions require some thinking, but are intelligible at the very least.

I settle back into my Examination rhythm. The pen and I are one and the same. I will exact my will upon each question until none remain. I am the Star God of this Examination, and progress is my only motive. These thoughts are the most entertaining diversions I can allow myself during the process of filling in circles for hours on end. The fog descends again, albeit lighter than before. A familiar friend. I have not thought about this morning since before the Examination began. All is blurred apart from the present. It could have been either minutes or days since the Examination commenced. I am at peace with being watched. Examined. Inhale. Exhale.

Minutes pass. Or perhaps instants. Time. Time passes. The pages turn.

§7A PROMPT TWENTY

IF ▞▞▞▞ AND ▞▞ ▞▞▞▞ ▞▞▞▞▞, WHAT ▞▞▞▞?

◎ THIRTY

◎ ▞▞O▞▞A

◎ I▞▞▞

◎ NONE OF THESE

― ◕ ―

What?

I can't see. Tears. I do not understand this. I am supposed to understand this. I don't understand how I can't understand. At some point I have begun to sweat. I look back at the questions I have already answered, only to find rows and rows of unintelligible words staring back at me. I cannot think back to any question I have seen since the beginning. This is worrying. Fear ensues. It is too late to return to check every answer I have given. I can only trust my past self. I am intelligent, I must be. There must be something wrong. I can't understand. Thinking in circles. Inking in circles. I answer the question and move on. I understand none of it.

The past unblurs itself, so to speak. I can distinctly remember my first day at an academy, aged only five years. The very first Examination. Spatial reasoning and basic logic questions. I was labeled as "intelligent". The distinct musty odor of the trains as they bore through Ishiq's tunnels. I envisioned them as cold, massive subterranean worms at the time. The unfathomably tall buildings of the city itself, the metal monarchs of the sky. The small details, too. My mother's hairtie. My father's leather shoes, dirty around the soles. I felt as translucent then as I do now. Perhaps I have always felt this way.

The Officiant hands me a paper, for a reason I cannot decipher, and there is nothing. It appears to me as a blank sheet. I process the contents but do not acknowledge them. Something is terribly wrong. I look up at him, teary-eyed, and he stares back at me. It is the most fear I have ever felt. There is nothing in his eyes. My attention darts back to the paper, where there is also nothing. Nothing on the walls. Nothing in the room. Inhale. The true panic of the situation hits me. I am going to fail. I am going to fail, and then there will be nothing. I will die nowhere. I will be nobody. The Examination is important. There is nothing greater. Ink begins to drip from the pen onto the paper, where it too becomes nothing. I have repeated the word nothing in my head enough times that the word means nothing. I am the Star God of this Examination, fragmented into millions of pieces. I consider asking whether I could retake the Examination later, but speaking seems unfathomable to me. There is no such thing as a retake. I cannot forfeit my attempt. I cannot wait out the clock. There is no time limit. There is nothing.

Perhaps I scream. Perhaps I do not. Inhale. Exhale. I blink and I cannot see. The fog will not clear. All is blurred. There is gray and there is me. I process the contents of the room. I do not acknowledge them. The man rustles. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

I find myself in a room. There is nothing here.