The Aether Effect (NaNoWriMo 13)

Chapter 4: Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...

After roll call and Oath Swearing the students were ushered straight to the Testing Center and assigned a testing room. There were one- hundred and twenty testing rooms and only eighty students; they were assigned quickly and sent into their designated rooms to wait for the Testers. There was one Tester for each student during the SAT and one Tester and one Cleric per student for the AAT, as some parts of that test included blood work and vitals monitoring.

Erin's room was a light gray square, with one desk, two chairs, a sink, and one obnoxiously bright over-head light. The floor was short, dark gray carpet, that made a coarse scraping sound against her heels. She sighed and collapsed into the chair in front of the desk, a second later a tall woman came in, pushing a cart that was loaded with equipment, most of which Erin couldn't begin to guess the purpose of so she directed her attention back to the woman. Tall and thin, with sharp edges to her body and sharp features to her face, she had a fair amount of fine, straw- colored hair on her head that was tied back in a severe bun and black eyes that burned with intelligence.

" I'm Instructor Michelle Vance, You may call me Ms. Vance."

"Of course, Ms. Vance. I'm Erin Slates." She held her hand out for a shake but it was ignored long enough that she had to drop it to her side; pride burning from the slight.

"I know who you are," Ms. Vance said, flipping through a folder and placing a test on the desk. " I know everything about you. Status won't help you here, Miss Slates. " Oh, so that's how it's going to be.

"I can assure you I don't need status to help me here." Erin said with a smile, then took up the pencil provided to her and began testing.

***

 The first set of tests were remarkably easy and Erin had to stifled several laughs when it came to some of the questions. The second set was a little more difficult; at one point Erin had to put together a one hundred piece jigsaw puzzle together in three minutes, it was hard but she managed it. She then played a game of chess against herself which she found quite stupid as she wasn't about to let one side win on purpose. after an hour Ms. Vance forced her to move on to something else. She had to solve large math problems in her head and spin a thousand one essay from one sentence, hours went by and she became distracted by hunger and a rising temper that was constantly  being goaded on be Ms. Vance.

The woman's attitude was haughty and rude, and she would wash away Erin's successes in snarky comments and smile smugly in the face of her short comings. By the time the Cleric came in Erin was surprised that she hadn't throttled the old hag and stuffed chess and puzzle pieces into her mouth; not that she hadn't wanted to. Sometime that truly surprised her, she had never been much for animosity, if she didn't like someone she simply avoided them, but Michelle Vance was unavoidable and it was driving Erin crazy.

The Cleric was a handsome brunette named named Andy, he had a knowing smile and an easy laugh and Erin much preferred him over Ms. Vance, even when his hands spend a bit too much time attaching electrodes to her chest .  There was also electrodes stuck to her forehead, to the nape and sides of her neck, along her spine, at her wrists and at various points on her legs and arms. The electrodes were attached to a monitor that had been set up to catalog thinks like her heart rate and brain activity, and even minute things like muscle twitches, at least that's what Andy told her.

The monitor itself looked like a small square table. One end of it was lined with tiny rollers that were attached to cylinders full of ink. A roll of paper was stationed behind that and was rotated through the monitor by a crank that the Cleric had to operate by hand. The rollers responded to her vitals and recorded them on the moving paper accordingly.  The whole thing reminded Erin of the antique polygraph machine that her father had on display in his study she started to say so when Ms. Vance snapped at her.