The Test

Prologue

The room is white. All white - only white.

There is a chair. A table. Nothing else.

A screen slides from somewhere onto the desk, accompanied by a stylus. I step forward into the room as a recorded voice from somewhere in the room I cannot see says: "Please sit."

I sit.

The voice speaks again.

"Welcome to The Test."

I blink. Test? What test?

"You cannot prepare for it, so there is no need to worry. You are required to answer the questions on the screen in front of you. There is no time limit. Whenever you are ready."

It seems like the automated voice is telling me to start, so with shaking hands, I pick up the stylus. I write my name in annoyingly wobbly, looping cursive. Ariana Blackthorn.

Aria, I think in my head. I've always hated the stuffy, stuck-up name my parents chose for me.

The first question stares up at me. The words are nonsense, jumbled.

I write my answers in slowly, letter by letter, number by number. They are easy, though, after I stare at them for only a few seconds. The pieces click together in my head and my pen flies across the page, answering all the questions in, as I see when I glance up at the clock on the wall, under ten minutes.

When the last word has been written, I lay down my stylus on the desk. The screen and stylus are immediately sucked back into the desk.

In its place is another, different, screen. It reads;

Please press here

I press. What comes up is another menu. I swipe my finger across the screen as indicated, then type in my name, which zooms out and stays in middle of the blue-tinted screen in ugly white - block type.

A percentage comes up, and a message.

Two numbers.

Seven words.

With them, the power to ruin my life.

My heart sinks, then freezes.

No.

This cannot be happening.

Not to me.

My parents are some of the richest in the state - they can afford the best tutors, have done for the duration of my education. I have the best grades in my class.

Not anymore, apparently.

I read over the words on the screen one last time, and then it goes back to where it came from with a faint hiss.

The automated voice speaks again.

"Ariana Blackthorn, please stand and make your way over to the doors."

I get up as if on autopilot, pulled by the voice, and begin to walk.

There are, now that I look closely, two doors in the startlingly white wall. They were barely visible from across the room, outlined with a single line to mark the fact that there is a door there at all.

"The door that opens to you will be your fate." the voice says when I reach the two doors.

I wait a few seconds, having no clue what is abut to happen, whether death will be my fate through one of those doors.

The one on the left opens suddenly, silently, into a blindingly while, empty, seemingly endless, hallway.

"Ariana Blackthorn, you have met your fate. Please take this path. We wish you well.'

We? I think. Who's we? The government?

I do not dwell on it for long. The hallway calls to me, beckoning, making me promises.

As I walk without hesitating into the light, I run over one last time the words that are burned into my brain.

Ariana Blackthorn

Score: 24%.

You have failed The Test.