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. 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. The prompts remain questionably easy to answer.