The Test

You find yourself sitting in a room. You have no idea where you are, or how you got there. You are sitting in a lightweight metal chair, with one of those tiny swivel-up desks attached to it. The lights are bright, but flat, and the air is stale. You look around. The walls are a flat, patently inoffensive gray color. Slowly you come to realize you are in a classroom, and a test is being administered.

The person next to you looks up from their hasty scribbling, and notices your confusion. She directs you to the front of the classroom, where the tests are being handed out. You walk up, and find an extraordinarily long table, with hundreds of stacks of paper, laid out in a line. You pick up a packet from the first stack. Someone behind you pipes up, “no, wait, that’s the wrong one.” You are embarrassed, because you can’t even remember signing up for this class, or really anything before this point. You ask which is the right one, and it is pointed out for you.

You pick up the new packet and someone to your right snickers. “You’ve got to be kidding me, you’re actually going to take that one?” Apparently you’re having a tough time finding the one meant for you, though you still have no idea why you’re here in the first place. But you take the one you were eyeing anyway, because the first person was so polite, and this second one has done nothing but mock you, so you distrust him.

As you return to your seat your attention is captured by an apparent shouting match at the other end of the table. “You’ve got to be out of your bloody mind!” someone shouts. “This test is so much easier, why the hell would you pick that one?”

“Because this one is the correct one!” the other person shouts. A crowd has gathered around the two people, and through the uproar you can’t make out what they’re saying anymore. Soon the situation turns into an all-out brawl, with the entire group punching and kicking each other. You look around, trying to find some way to call for help, but are shocked to see nobody doing anything, only concentrating on their own tests. Finally a gunshot rings out. You seem to be the only one who notices. The crowd returns to their seats, and the only remaining evidence of any conflict are some scattered papers and a bloody corpse on the floor. Two men enter the room through a door you previously failed to notice, and carry the dead man out through it on a stretcher.

Still not believing what you have just witnessed, you figure it best to just return to your seat and finish your test so you can get out of this crazy mess. The questions are all either common sense easy, ridiculously unknowable, or just plain crazy. You return to the front and flip through some of the other tests, and though the contain different questions, they all follow this pattern.

Finally you guess your way through the entire test, and you turn it in. You return to your seat. As you look around, you realize that several others around you have turned in their sheets as well, so you begin to make small talk to pass the time while they are being graded. Some of the people you meet have been waiting for their results for a very long time. Days, weeks, years, some have even been there for years. You ask if they’ve ever witnessed anyone actually get their results back, and none of them have. You decide there’s no point in potentially waiting decades for the results of test you didn’t even know why you were taking, which would likely never even come. As you make for the door, the other students start laughing at you. “Gonna give up, eh?” “Guess you didn’t have what it takes.” “I feel so sorry for you, to come this close, it truly makes me sad.” You feel bad, so you turn around to walk back, but as you do you once again see the situation as it is. You are in a dull, horrible place, and you just can’t bear the thought of staying here. You ignore the barbs of your classmates, and run through the door, flinging it wide and rushing out.

At first you are blinded. The room was actually fairly well lit, but the clarity of the sunlight outside is staggering. As your eyes adjust, you see beauty unlike anything you’ve ever imagined. The natural world unfolds in front of you, so many colors, and such staggering detail. You just stand there appreciating everything, from the tiniest blade of grass to the tallest redwood. You think to yourself, “I could stay here forever.” Suddenly you think of the people you left inside, the ones you got to know, the ones you could have called friends. You rush in, and you tell them about all the amazing things right outside the door. You ask them to come with you, if only just to see. They tell you they can’t come, if they leave, they forfeit their right to the rewards of passing the test. You beg with, you plead with them, until they ask you to stop. You shuffle back out toward the door. As you leave, you notice that everyone seems to be regarding you with scorn. One of them says to you, “you know, if you apologize, they might let you retake the test.” You reply you have no interest in taking part in this futile activity. They reply that on some level you must, because after all, you did come back. You curse this person under your breath and leave.

At first it’s difficult to leave behind the people who you care about. You come back a few times to see if maybe they’ve changed their minds, but eventually you come to accept that they never will. You make new friends on the outside who you can truly share yourself with, but you still make sure to visit the old ones who are still trapped inside that expansive room. When you do visit, you mostly make small talk. You tell them what’s been going on in your life. But sometimes, very occasionally, you still show them pictures of the outside world. Just to give them a taste of what they’re missing and hoping they’ll still come around. You don’t ever press the point anymore though. Occasionally they still ask you to think about retaking the test, but you politely refuse, saying you’re done with that. And then you leave them in their state of suspended animation, desperately waiting for nothing, clinging to the hope that something will come of all the time and effort that they’ve put into it. And every time you see them in this state it kills you inside just a little bit. And there’s nothing you can do, except continue to live your life the best way you can.