Poor Man's Fight (5 page)

Tanner blinked at her like she had two heads. “You seriously think I’m the military type?”

“I think you can do anything you put your mind to. You’re smart.”

He thought about it as they walked. “Join the fleet?”

“No. Not the fleet. The Union fleet stinks for enlisteds. I’ve done my research. Only good way to go into the Union military is as an officer like I’m doing. And don’t join a corporate security force, they’re just debt traps. You’ll never get out again. But you could sign up with the Archangel Navy. It’s actually got some pretty good options.”

“I don’t know. I thought for
a while about doing a reserve term for the educational benefits, but Dad hated the idea. Said it’d screw up all my plans. I looked into it and it turned out he was right.”

“No, don’t go reserves. I looked at that, too. Even the regular Archangel Navy treats those guys like a joke. No, you’ll have to go full-term. It’s only five years.”

“Five years? Everyone else will be done with university by then!”

“Life’s not a race. This isn’t about everyone else. It’s about you. And don’t act like it’s a waste of time. You know it’s not.”

Tanner scowled. “You really think enlisting is a good idea?”

“It’s not as good as the options you had yesterday,”
Allison answered honestly, “but you’re running out of those, right? And you said that you need to feel like you’ve got a plan to get through The Test today. So, there’s today’s plan. If you really do crash, you’ll go see a recruiter.”

“I guess I could…”

“You know you could. I’m surprised you didn’t think of this on your own.”

“I just…didn’t really consider it. Dad would go into convulsions.”

“No, Mrs. Hayden-Malone will go into convulsions ‘cause it’ll remind her of your mom,” Allison smirked. “But she’ll be convulsing on Arcadia, so screw her. We should all be so lucky.”

They walked together silently.
He hadn’t expected Allison to remember so much about his family situation. To his thinking, they had never been close despite his efforts to the contrary. Finally Allison prodded him with an elbow.

“Fine! Fine. I’ll do it. If I crash The Test, I’ll join the Archangel Navy.”

“Good,” she said. She fell quiet for a moment and grinned again. “So you should know, there’s a rule about fraternization between enlisteds and officers.”

“Huh?” Tanner blinked.

“If you enlist, you can’t see me naked,” she winked.

Tanner moaned and looked at the ground at his feet. “What about before then?”

“Shut up and buy me lunch.”

***

“In less than 1500 words, compare and contrast the themes found in the major works of pre-Expansion literature with the common themes of post-Expansion literature.”

That question couldn’t be serious. Tanner read it over and over again, even tracing it with his finger and reading it aloud to make sure he didn’t miss something as a result of fatigue. Nothing
this broad or vague appeared in practice tests. Pre-Expansion literature? All of it? Going all the way back to, what, the Epic of Gilgamesh? Or just Anglophile literature? Did the scorers intend for respondents to focus on their own systems and cultures?

Frowning, Tanner reached for the “help” menu at the bottom right of his screen to summon a test proctor. While he waited, he continued to ponder the essay prompt. What counted as a major work? Did he have to justify the “majorness” of his selections in his answer? Did they expect him to limit himself to works studied in NorthStar classes? The curriculum changed almost annually. Variations existed between schools.

An older man in the bland, business casual clothes that everyone seemed to wear here came into Tanner’s testing space. “Hello. Did you summon help?”

“Yeah, thanks for coming so
fast.” Tanner gestured back to the question. “Is that all there is to this question? It seems awfully broad.”

The proctor read it aloud. “It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“But there are no qualifiers or context at all,” Tanner said. “I mean, not everything written after Expansion began is actually about the Expansion era. The only accurate similarity is that they all have to do with the ‘human condition’ or something really broad on that line. And am I supposed to just pick examples out of thin air? This is open to thousands of books. I have no way of knowing who’s going to read my essay and whether or not they have any familiarity with the texts I choose.”

“Ah,” the proctor said with a reassuring tone, “don’t fret over that. Certified scorers grade only a random sampling of tests. The vast majority of responses go through the scoring A.I., and that’s loaded up with practically every work you could name. I wouldn’t worry about it
lacking familiarity with anything you cite.”

Tanner’s eyes practically shot out of his head. “An A.I.?”

“Yes,” the proctor smiled. “It just came online last year.”

“What, for checking grammar and mechanics? That’s not a true AI.”

“Oh, it’ll do that, too, of course, but it will weigh and evaluate the content of your essays.”

“My
literary analysis
is going to be judged by a fucking computer?”

“Son, you need to watch your language,”
said the proctor.

Nothing about this
appeared in any of the published updates on the test. Tanner had dutifully read them for the last three years. “You’re telling me that NorthStar has come up with a computer that can accurately judge the validity of compelling arguments about a potentially limitless range of entirely subjective issues?”

The older man’s eyes fluttered with worry for a moment. He wasn’t used to these sorts of arguments coming from teenagers. “Er, yes,” he said when he finally caught up to the question.

“Bullshit. ‘Artificial intelligence’ is just an advertising term to sell expensive programs to ignorant consumers. Do you even know what you’re talking about?”

“Young man,” the stiffening proctor growled, “apart from not knowing how to address your elders respectfully, you seem like a bright boy. I’m sure you’ll come up with something adequate.”

Tanner’s eyes flared. So did his suspicions. “Do students in the Society of Scholars get graded by real people, or by this alleged artificial intelligence?” The proctor inhaled sharply. He opened his mouth to speak, but Tanner cut him off. “I’m right, aren’t I? We’ve got to pay thousands of extra credits just to have our tests graded by live human beings!”

“Son, the longer you whine about this, the less time you have on the test. Just do the best you can.” With that, he walked out.

“There’s no such thing as an AI!” Tanner shouted at his back.

***

Pure rage probably wasn’t the best emotional state for writing a comparative literary analysis, but Tanner pushed through it. The literature portion of the Test was the shortest, reflecting NorthStar’s view of the worth of the subject. Aside from the essay, there were a mere twenty vaguely worded multiple-choice questions.

From there, his test shifted to social studies, another of his usual strong points. The
Test strongly emphasized rote memorization of names and dates. As with so much of the rest of the Test, Tanner found many of the questions entirely arguable.

The timer ticked down. Three short answer questions to go. Ten minutes.

“
Briefly describe the primary points laid out in the Articles of the Union of Humanity. What did it do? What didn’t it do?”

Tanner expected this. It was easy enough. Then, as he began to write, he stopped.
What determines “primary?”
he wondered.
Is my answer supposed to be exhaustive? Shit. This is another goddamn trick question.

He answered as best he could: “The Articles established a confederation of human worlds (a semantic irony
cherished by historians). They established and limited the office of the president and general assembly; bound member worlds to mutual defense and unified diplomacy with regard to nonhuman powers; commissioned the Union fleet and set funding quotas for said fleet and set up basic regulations to astrogation.

“
They pointedly did not ban war between member states, establish basic human rights, create a universal currency or codify extradition standards.”

Seven minutes, sixteen seconds.

“Illustrate the difficulties encountered in forging stable, mutually-supportive alliances between the Union and its starfaring nonhuman neighbors.”

Oh God. He knew what NorthStar’s scorers would want to hear: that aliens were just jerks who didn’t understand economic necessities. Seven minutes wasn’t long enough to come up with bullshit that would please a corporate scoring machine. There was only time to tell it like it was.

“Human self-interest and the fractiousness of our governmental and corporate entities have been the primary obstacles for the influential Krokinthian and Nyuyinaro states. Krokinthian negotiators walked out on treaty discussions to officially end the Expansion War within the first two minutes of talks. They later cited an expectation of bad faith negotiation on the part of the Solar Coalition. The Krokinthian viewpoint can be supported by one hundred fifty years of broken treaties on the part of the Coalition and the Union as its successor state.”

Wrapping that up with a few more points of support took another minute. Tanner winced as he submitted his answer. H
is social studies teachers had been far from corporate loyalists. While they had broadened his world-view as a person, they didn’t exactly train him to give responses palatable to people—and computer programs, probably—who graded with a pro-corporate bias.

Three minutes, twenty seconds.

Dammit! Standard weights and measures!
How could he forget that for the Articles? Son of a bitch! Tanner looked for a way back to the previous question to enter corrections, but found none.

“Provide a brief narrative of your system’s foundation and social development. What government or corporate entity was the system’s primary sponsor in colonization? How is your planet’s population still similar to its founders? How has the population changed?”

“Who the fuck wrote this test?” Tanner screamed in aggravation. This was insane. How open-ended and vague could this get? How could Tanner even be certain his Test would be scored with the right system and planet on the rubric?

Three minutes, seven seconds. Tanner got hold of himself. Once more, he
had no time to come up with anything fancy.

“The primary colonizing
sponsor in the development of the Archangel system was neither corporate nor governmental, but rather the Catholic Church. During and after the Expansion War, the Church saw interstellar colonization as a way to spread the faith and ensure its own survival. The Church leveraged its considerable resources to finance Archangel’s initial terraforming and colonial development. The majority of early colonists were expected to be religious conservatives.

“However, many applicants, particularly those from North America and Western Europe, either deliberately deceived the Church’s selection process for colonists or later reconsidered their positions upon arrival. Regardless, many colonists still harbored a great attachment for the concept of a separation of church and state. Political struggles such as those over birth control and the immigration of non-Catholics broke the Church’s hold on political power within the Archangel system.”

Tanner didn’t like any of his answers, but then, he didn’t have much time left to come up with anything better. On an ordinary school test, he would’ve been among the first finished. He usually had a lot of time to kill on exam days. The fifty-plus minutes he lost by being late hurt him badly.

“This completes the
Union Academic Investment Evaluation,” said the warm, feminine, soulless voice of the testing cubicle. “Please wait.”

Tanner’s shoulders slumped. He remained jittery after lunch, but he at least felt a bit better after talking with
Allison and coming up with a backup plan for the next few years. Still, he thought, he might not need that plan. He could potentially come up with another option. And, really, perhaps he simply read too much into the questions on the exam? Maybe he was more upset with his performance than he needed to be?

Trying to release stress, Tanner stretched his arms and legs out where he sat. He wondered how long it would take to get his final results back.
Then the screen flashed again.

“Your financial obligation for your compulsory educational benefits is 67,879 credits.”

“We talk a lot about hope and aspirations this time of year. We talk about awakening potential and reaching for the stars. We talk about achievement. About the long, hard road through twelve years of primary education. About how ‘mandatory’ education is really only the beginning of what is truly mandatory to succeed in today’s economy and today’s society. We tell success stories.

“What we only briefly acknowledge, however, is the fact that on this day, on the day of The Test, hundreds of thousands of Archangel’s young people and, indeed, many millions throughout the Union are hit with their first major financial debts. While we highlight our most successful students, while we encourage every student to reach for the stars, the vast majority have lead weights attached to their feet.”