Test Day

Test Day

At sunset the day before the Starbrite Aptitude Test was held, churches would ring their bells, temples banged gongs, and civic groups would drive around in buses, reminding people, via bullhorn, that tomorrow was SAT Day. Absolute silence was to be observed until sunset tomorrow. Or else. When the sun vanished below the horizon, so did the noise. It was the one night of the year that didn’t belong to the Ghūl. It belonged to the parents.

Mom and Dad were so excited. It was finally their time to show that they were good parents. Sure, they forgot groceries most of the time. And sometimes the kids needed a good smack to remind them about respect. And sometimes, yeah, they lost their temper and hit each other. And the kids. And took their money. And took their dreams. And took their hope.

What, are you perfect?

Besides, it was all good now. It was the Silent Night. Dad favored one centimeter wide synthetic rope. Strong enough to hold weight, he claimed, while easy on the hands. Mom thought that was terribly common and not good enough for their dear, sweet boy. Mother knew what her baby really needed. That’s why she used a length of twisted copper wire formed into a garrote. She had painted the handles with gold nail polish.

They were so proud. Tonight, they would patrol the neighborhood and make sure that no one was making noise. If they were- the rope! In the morning, they would, along with tens of thousands of other parents, escort their kid to the subway which would take him to the testing center. In as close to perfect silence as possible. Then, during the day, if someone was noisy, once again, the rope! It was exactly the sort of feel good thuggishness they could lose themselves in.

Most years, they just participated for fun. This year, it was for THEIR boy! Nothing, nothing (they drunkenly slurred) was going to interfere with his test. Which he was going to ace!

It was pass/fail based on subject area and how Starbrite was scoring it this year, but they surely didn’t care.

Truth spent a little time revising, but mostly concentrated on eating a good meal and cultivating. He found that the more he cultivated, the more the mental boost from leveling up seemed to stick around. He knew it faded away eventually, but urban legend said that the longer you can keep it, the smarter you will be when it does go.

Then to bed. The sibs were tossing and turning all night. Truth just concentrated on breathing steadily and let his mind drift. The old man on the long stone porch appeared in his dreams again, draped loosely in undyed wool cloth.

“You cannot control what others think or do. You cannot control the gods, nor fate. All you can do is your best to follow the four virtues. That is enough. It may not bring you everything that you want, but it will bring you everything you need.”

Finally, since he had declared a chosen profession, he was tested on his fundamental understanding of talismans. What they were, how they worked, and why they needed careful maintenance. What frustrated Truth the most was that all the “right” answers were factually wrong or incomplete. Things like:

What is the expected service life of a Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman, assuming eight hours in operation every day?

The answer it wanted was “Five years.” The actual answer was “It depends. How cold was it on average? Was there a significant variation in average rainfall? What was the degree of fine particulate matter in the rain, and was the rain more caustic or acidic during this period? Have Ghūl been trying to break it? Have locals been trying to strip it for saleable parts?” In fact, it would be a minor miracle for the streetlight to make it five years in Harban City. On the other hand, since it was the Starbrite Aptitude Test, and the Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman was manufactured by Ke-Te Commercial and Municipal Lighting Solutions, LLC Part of the Starbrite Family of Companies, and since the Ke-Te manual said five years, it was five years.

Test takers were expected to know it too, because Talisman Maintenance Techs fixed a lot of streetlights. Lights that, inexplicably, did not reach their expected service life. What could he do? He gave them the answers they wanted and pressed on. He finished thirty seconds before the invigilator called time.

The test had one final “Completely Optional, Voluntary, Purely For Statistical Purposes, No Individualized Data Retained, Not Scored” section, just for the Level 1 test takers. If you opted in, you walked out of the test taking center through a tunnel lined with sophisticated medical measuring devices. Apparently, they could passively measure the size, ductility and resilience of spell apertures. Allegedly, this was Starbrite checking on Harban City’s developmental conditions, and didn’t count towards your evaluation.

Not a soul believed it. The single, token, “Opt Out” line was so empty, it qualified as a vacuum. Everybody knew this test measured your compatibility with the System. And there was nothing more important than that. You can teach everything else. You can learn spells anywhere else. But if you want to wear the mantle of a spell slinging demigod, you HAD to be compatible with the System. The test gave absolutely no feedback. You just walked down a medium-long hallway by yourself, touching nothing, looking straight ahead. The security guard at the end of the hall didn’t even nod at you. You just walked past, through the sliding doors, and out into the light.

Truth looked around in a daze. He had never been to this part of the city before. Nothing here for a slumrat. Towering buildings, offices and apartments, soared into the sky. Some were literally soaring, a cluster of five apartment towers gently rose and fell around a three hundred foot tall pine tree. There were buildings that seemed to bubble away from the basic concrete shapes they were born in, stretching and twisting like clouds before being trapped back in the material world. Contract beasts like dreams of fire and smoke lazed in the sky, giving their masters the best view of the celebration to come.

The test survivors trudged silently to the Call to Glory Temple, one of the city’s largest, though far from the oldest. Everyone gathered silently in the temple courtyard, waiting for the sun to sink below the horizon. Some prayed. Some collapsed on the ground. Truth was one of the collapsers.

It was finally done. Nothing more he could do. He had the horrible certainty that he had failed. It just felt obvious. He had failed. All that suffering. All that hope. He had killed for this chance! And it was for nothing. Nothing at all. He looked blankly at the orange clouds. There will be two more corpses tonight. Not that the sibs will mind.

The sun teetered on the edge of the horizon, then sank below it. The gongs started at Call to Glory, but were picked up almost instantly across the city. Then the bells, and the cheers! The whole city roared “Victory! Victory! Victory!” The Grand Abbot floated out of the Temple and waved his five pronged spear at the sky. His spell tore open the twilight and revealed the night sky above. From that infinitely wondrous cosmos, starlight drifted down. Anointing the darlings of fate.