Flare (27 page)

/***/

The next room had a seat in front of a small column with a button on it that glowed white. Ash pressed the button and sat down in the seat. A projector from behind the seat lit up the opposite wall to reveal a clean-shaven man with smooth skin and dark, kind eyes. The projection made the man’s head the size of Ash’s whole body, but it didn’t have an intimidating effect.

“Hello,” said the man, in a robust, clear voice. “My name is Gabriel, and I congratulate you for making it this far, to the outer gates of the Salvation. The following rooms have some simple tests for us to better get to know you, and to see if this place should be your home. This is neither a contest nor a competition. This is simply our way of knowing if you are a good fit for us, and we for you.

“So in the upcoming rooms, answer every challenge truthfully, and do not try to
game
the system by answering what you think we want to hear, or by answering what you think will gain you full access to the Salvation. We don’t want lies, and we will know if you do. We want you to be yourself and nothing else.”

Ash could sense that this projection was a recording, and not an actual person speaking to him. The recording of Gabriel paused for a moment and then spoke again.

“And do exactly as we tell you to, because we’re not out to trick you. There’s no virtue in refusing our commands, even if what we ask is odious. We live in a tough world, and we need our citizens to abide by certain rules. If you fail to do
exactly as we tell you
in this last step before the Salvation, it will mean that you are not a good fit for our society, and you will not be let in. Good luck.”

/***/

The fourth room held a seat with medical equipment around it. It also had a toilet and a tray covered in cups. Ash sat down in the seat, and the medical equipment started to move around him mechanically. A soft female voice gave Ash commands, and Ash could tell that it was a real person watching him, not a recording. The voice told him to hold his hand out, and the machinery extended one of its limbs and pricked him with a needle and drew blood. The voice told him to hold up his hand once more, and another limb stuck him, and took more blood. The machine asked him to raise his other arm, and it drew blood once again.

This process lasted two hours. The machine drew more blood, bone marrow and platelets and scraped the inside of Ash’s mouth. It tested his vision, his hearing, and then his pulse rate as he jogged on a treadmill that came out of the wall. It took his sweat afterwards, and when he calmed down he blew into a tube as hard as he could.

He peed into one cup, and evacuated his bowels into another. He had a machine scrape his inner elbow and then drank from a large, sugary cocktail and urinated into cups every fifteen minutes. One projection on the wall lit up with questions about his medical and family history. He was able to touch the wall to answer. Most of the questions required him to check
yes
or
no
, and he usually answered
no
.

He spent another hour being poked, prodded and siphoned. They asked him to expectorate, and he complied. They asked him to drink a thick, chalky liquid, and he stood still when they X-rayed him twenty minutes later.

After the analysis was done, he was exhausted. A panel in the wall opened to reveal a bed with no covers, and the voice asked Ash to lie down on it. Ash did, and he noticed that there was a small cup of blue liquid in the wall next to the bed. The female voice asked Ash to let the liquid sit on his tongue and then drink it, and he did both without hesitation. It tasted thick and sweet, and Ash’s eyes became heavy. The voice asked him to lie flat on his back, and he did so. He saw the machinery approaching him as he lay there, preparing to poke, prod and scan his body while he was unconscious.

/***/

Ash woke up in the room an unknown time later. The bed was still out, but the machinery had disappeared. Ash wondered if someone had come in and taken all the instruments away while he slept, or if they had folded themselves back into the wall somehow. He decided not to think about that and walked out into the center room.

/***/

The fifth room had a chair, a table, a metal rod the size of a pen and nothing else. The female voice spoke to him again, telling him that he would need to take four tests, and he must choose which four.

“Tests, like an exam?” he asked, not knowing if she would respond. “Problems, and things like that?”

“Yes,” said the woman, immediately responding to his query. “Precisely that.”

“Let’s do it,” he said.

The wall showed an array of disciplines, indicated by symbols and words. There were mostly scientific subjects, like physics and astronomy, but there were many of the liberal arts disciplines, like languages, poetry, and even piano.

“Pick four subjects, and we will test you on them,” said the female voice.

“Can I pick more than four?”

“Pick four.”

Ash felt at ease; he was in his element. He wanted to maximize what he could do, so he picked disparate subjects: math, biology, literature and piano.

“We’ll start with mathematics,” said the woman. “Please use the metal stylus to write over the projection upon your table. Good luck, and you have one hour for each test.”

A projector above shone a light down, and the table showed a diagram of a test. Ash looked up and saw that other projectors in different spots were shining down as well, and reasoned that was why the test still showed when he leaned over it, slightly dimmer but not covered by a shadow.

Ash found that he could easily write on the table with the stylus and that he could navigate through the pages with a swipe of his hands. The setup was quite intuitive, and he began the test immediately.

The math problems started at a difficult level, perhaps those of a college course meant to weed out misguided students. The problems became harder from there, eventually leading to open-ended questions where he would have to create his own answer. The final question was beyond difficult, the kind that would remain unsolved on a university’s basement chalkboard for a decade or more. Ash quickly realized that there might not be an answer, and he did some calculations and figured that
this
was the solution. There was no answer to the question, and Ash wrote that, followed by two proofs showing why he was right.

Ash looked up at the clock projection on the wall and saw that he had ten more minutes left.

“Next test.”

The literature test was set up in a different way. They first set an array of genres and asked Ash to choose the ones with which he was familiar. He picked most of them. The projection turned into an array of books, from the classics to modern literature, and they asked Ash to pick which ones he felt familiar discussing. Ash touched most of them again.

The projection then gave him something to read, and Ash immediately recognized it as Xenophon’s
Hellenica,
a history of Greece in the fourth century BCE. Ash knew it well. Though it was dense with names and dates and vague details, he had read it four times previously.

They asked Ash several questions about the text, and he answered them quickly, adding details not in the passages that they had given him. He had a hard time stating anything profound, because the book was a simple personal history, so he ended the last essay with a quote, which he wrote in ancient Greek.

They gave Ash more literary problems. They asked him to read several texts he had not seen before and asked him to answer questions about them. They asked him about Shakespeare. They asked him to write his own story. They showed him made-up symbols on a page and told him to deduce how this alphabet was constructed.

When it was done, he had five minutes left on the clock.

“Next test,” said Ash. “I don’t need the extra time.”

“We will bring the next test in ten minutes,” said the female voice. “You may have a break now.”

“I don’t need a break,” said Ash.

“You will not be penalized—”

“Bring on the next test,” said Ash.

The next test was biology, and it covered a broad range of subjects, from organic chemistry to plant life to human genetics. Ash answered the chemistry questions first and then a series of questions about mammalian life. The questions weren’t the normal set of college-level biology questions, like labeling a cross-section of a cell, or things like that. Most of the questions were about genetics, and they required comprehension instead of memorization. He answered them quickly, because he understood genetics well.

He ended the exam with thirty-four minutes left.

“You have time to review your questions,” said the female voice.

“I don’t need it,” said Ash.

“Why?”

“Because I’ve already reviewed my questions, twice. Bring on the final test.”

The projection on the desk turned into a full-length set of piano keys, and Ash smiled.

“You have two minutes to get used to the interface,” said the woman’s voice.

Ash played the piano, and the flat keys felt odd on his fingers. He was used to pressing the white keys down and feeling the black keys on the sides of his fingers, but his father had had him perform drills on practice paper before, and he knew he could play on the projection. The keys made a beautiful, rich sound under the press of his fingers, and the tones resonated with the clarity of a grand piano. Ash noticed that the keys were louder and softer in response to the strength of his finger touch, and he realized that there were projected piano pedals at his feet. He didn’t normally rely on the pedals too much when he played, but they worked. He played a simple piece by Vivaldi that he knew by heart, and a minute later he was ready.

“Please look to the wall in front of you,” said the female voice, “and play in time with the metronome.”

The wall lit up and showed sheet music, simple chords at first, and the metronome went at a moderate speed. Backing music came from the walls, and Ash played along with the melody. He went through the bars of music easily and played through to the end, echoing the last chord with increasing octaves to resolve the song.

The metronome started up again, this time ten beats per minute faster. The song was in the key of D minor, and Ash noticed that he would have to play a melody this time. He kept in tune with the backing beat, and played a solo in the middle. When he came to the end of the song, he made a run up the D minor scale, ending perfectly on the high D as the metronome increased in speed to the next song.

The next song was the third movement of Beethoven’s
Pathetique
, sped up in tempo and transposed to A sharp minor. Ash knew they were trying to catch him with a difficult piece, because
A sharp
was full of black keys, and the piece was quick to begin with. He knew the sonata well though and was used to transposing keys, so he played in step with the rhythm, all the way to the end.

The sheet music disappeared, and the woman requested that he play a jazz improvisation; he waited for the music and then played it by ear. He played along with chords, and then soloed with the Dorian mode, keeping the backing chords with his left hand. The music ebbed and flowed, and he didn’t hit a stray note. The song ended, and the woman asked him to play whatever he wanted.

He requested a quick backing section for a ragtime song. Ragtime was deceptively hard, because the left and right hands often played completely different rhythms and tempos. He played his song all the way until the clock showed that the hour was up, ending the last verse with a flourish, precisely as the time reached zero.

“You may go to the next room now,” said the woman.

“I’ve got one more thing to say,” said Ash.

There was no response, so Ash continued.

“I don’t know what this place is, or what these tests are for,” said Ash. “I picked four, but I could have done forty others. I don’t know precisely what you want to learn from these tests, but they weren’t that hard.”

/***/

The sixth room was dark and held a large array of projected computer interfaces that made it look like it was built to help launch a rocket. The female voice told Ash that this was a simulated control center for the life support systems of the Salvation, and that training would begin momentarily. Ash familiarized himself with the basic layout of the place and got used to interacting with each projected computer screen. He nodded that he was ready, and the training began.

The female voice spoke for twenty minutes, giving instruction after instruction, and she didn’t repeat anything. The voice told Ash how to regulate the air flow and the temperature and how to route power throughout a set of rooms. The instructions were complex, but Ash noted that the life support systems and the layout of the rooms were both generic. Ash reasoned that they wanted to test his abilities in a real life situation but didn’t want to give away all their secrets.

After twenty minutes, the voice announced that there was a flood in Ash’s district, and the flood was disrupting the circuitry and causing problems, such as fires and power outages. The projections started to shake, and the lights in the room started to flicker. The temperature rose, and the voice announced that Ash had ten minutes to return the environment back to normal.