Trekker
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:18pm
Thread Topic: Trekker
-
I gripped the narrow piece of graphite wrapped in thick purple enamel. I didn't know what they expected to find, but everyone had to take this test. Before they let us in, before they made us smart, before they made us beautiful.
The woman from The Hub stands stiffly, white starch blouse tucked neatly into grey, uncreased pants. Her shoes make only a slight click as she walks to a large desk at the front of the room, under a large electronic clock. She glances at it as it changes from 9:99 to 10:00.
"Begin."
The clock changes from the time to a countdown. Two hours exactly to finish a five page test. It couldn't be that hard.
The first question is one about geometry. Easy, as far as the comeulative goes.
The next twenty questions are easy question we've learned in school. How to conjuate verbs into the other leading lanugages, how to use nessecary computer programs to run serving bots.
It's all simple stuff, until I get to questions thirty-five.
"What caused WW3?"
I sit, puzzled. WW3? I only vaguely remember reading it in a book, having it snatched away and thrown into a garbage chute. It had been in the Fields, plowed up by the rotators from a chisel plow. I'd found it when I was looking for forgotton marbles like Margot had found last year.
I stretch my memory. WW3 is World War Three, and it had been caused by a shortage of something.
The four answers are A) Global Affairs; B) Gasoline; C) Nuclear Warheads; D) Oil.
Gasoline is made from oil, and it's impossible to have shortages of Global Affairs and why would you be dismal over having a shortage of Nuclear Warheads? I circle D.
The next questions are like #35. But oddly, I remember them from somewhere. I answer them all with ten minutes to spare and bring my booklet up to the front. The woman smiles and places it into a pile inside a metal box labeled comeULATIVE.
I pick at the enamel covering the smear-prone graphite, wondering where I'd heard of global warming and opeum wars. I'd never heard them in school, or at home. Maybe a friend had mentioned them? They seemed vague, yet familiar, and all too real. Like I'd seen it myself. Each question I read a small memory would run through my mind.
But I'm kidding myself. Those questions are the Trekker questions. Nobody knows what they're about, not even the teachers, or why they're on the test. I'd asked Goya, but she'd only says that the they're pre-cautionary. I asked for what, and she said Trekkers.
I don't know what a "Trekker" is, but maybe the questions are for the wildest imagination. However gets the most outrageous answers gets to be one of the recreational spokes, or an art teacher.
I look up from my musings when I hear the loud buzzer. Only a handful of the fifty people in the are not done, and the lean back tiredly in their chairs, handing their tests to the woman. She wears a tight bun, every hair in perfect alignment. She walks authoritantly to each of the slow-pokes and drops their test into the bin.
"Lunch," she says.
Everyone gets up to go. We get the results afterwards, along with our assigned job. I'm just meeting up with Zane when the woman calls out again. -
"Exception of Fabian Moresby and Elora Solomon."
For a moment everything is stil. Everyone is staring at the woman with the same look of surprise I must have on my face. Then the moment breaks as everyone starts moving towards the door, heads down. My name, why did she call my name? I feel like Im having one of those out-of-body moments. I move towards her, and dread fills me. Zane calls my name and I look back only for a second because now two guards are with the woman.
"Run." He mouths, then he's pushed out the door with everyone else.
The door closes and clicks, and I take a seat at the front of the room. Run? I look around the room. Its bare grey walls have no windows, and the door blends flawlessly into the wall, undoubtedly locked. Theres no where to run to.
Then my eyes land on Fabian. Run. Escape. Two weeks ago, at the doorstep of my families floor. Way past curfew, darkness shrouding the homes. Telling me to run. -
He'd been dumped into the middle of the dirt road that ran through our ring, dripping wet, hands tied behind his back with two strips of metal, unconciousess.
"This is what happens-" the guard demans as he stands over Fabian.
"A once in a lifetime thing has happened," says the woman, in between the memory playing through my mind.
"When someone-"
"Elora and Fabian," she muses.
"Tries to escape."
"We have found the Trekkers."
The guard pulls out a narrow black stick and puts it to Fabian's side.
The two guards in the room pull out metal strips. Ultra magnetic, thin as paper, yet impossible to break.
The crackle of electricity ignites the air.
A silent snap of the metal as it forms to my wrists. I'm being arrested...
Fabian's scream as he is awoken into conciousness, writing on the ground as the guards go back to other duties.
Fabian's quick escapade. A back handed punch and a quick swipe of the black shock stick from one of the guard's belts. Three electrocutions later and he's cutting my hand-cuffs.
"Hurry, we have to go. You have to run now." Fabian is frantic, dialing a code into the pad by the door, grabbing two guns and a shock stick for me from the guards.
I run. There's no time to question whether this is right or wrong, if he's freeing me or leading me into another trap.
This thread is locked, therefore no new posts can be made.
