“Ah,” I say, then gasp as something ice cold is applied to the back of my neck.
“Electrodes,” she says, placing another on my left arm and two larger ones on either temple.
“What for?”
“The simulation.”
I instantly perk up. “I thought this was a written exam.”
“Traditionally, yes. But last year they developed a program that evaluates participants with a much higher rate of accuracy.”
“Higher rate of accuracy? What is a computer going to tell me about me that I don't already know?”
Instead of answering, she straps my arms and legs loosely to my chair and hands me a small, simple remote.
“When you're ready, push this button to start the sim, and this one if you need a small break. Please understand that you must finish the test for your results to be conclusive. The bottom button lets me know you're finished; push it and I'll come release you.”
Then she leaves.
For a full minute, I do nothing more than try to slow my racing heartbeat. I've never even played a sim video game before, despite their growing popularity among my peers. The idea of having images projected into my brain absolutely scares me silly. But the thought of waiting here in this tiny room until I die isn't particularly alluring, either, so I force my trembling fingers to push the start button on the remote.
At first my vision goes completely black. Then, suddenly, I'm drenched in heat and light. Looking around, I find that I'm standing in the middle of a flat plain of tall, dry, yellow grass, baking in the brightest sun I have ever experienced. From videos I've seen in my science classes or online, I would guess this is Africa, or at least a representation of Africa before the Great War. With surprise, I notice I'm sweating, and my tongue is dry. I look around for water or shade. In the distance I can see single tree; I make my way toward it.
Suddenly, my eye catches movement to my right. A gazelle.
It is yards away, but I can tell something is wrong. I've seen similar creatures in the City Wildlife Research Center. The grace and delicacy inherent in those animals is not present in this one; it limps heavily on its right hind leg. In a heartbeat, I can guess what I'm about to see, and I spin around in a circle, scanning, searching.
There. Crouched beside a sun-bleached boulder, almost impossible to see through the tall grass. A lioness.
I immediately get the impulse to shout – to distract the enormous cat, or frighten her away so the injured gazelle has a chance to escape. But although I know none of this is real, I'm also uncomfortably aware that my legs sting where the rough grass has cut them and my skin is already reddening in the punishing light of this sun. I'd hate to experience the sensation of teeth tearing through my flesh before I come out of the sim, so I keep silent and watch, feeling useless and sick.
The lioness waits several more seconds, letting her prey limp closer, before she explodes across the savanna. It's over so fast I don't have time to blink or breathe, only stare as the gazelle goes rigid with fear, looks right and left for a refuge, staggers on her injured leg, and is overtaken. Tears of helplessness and anger spill down my cheeks as the lioness turns to look right at me, the lifeless gazelle dangling from her jaws. Then everything goes dark again.
When I regain vision, I'm standing in the perfumed air-conditioning of Marquis, an expensive, designer boutique in the finest of the city markets. I'm holding a gorgeous, forest green satin dress up to my face, checking in one of the shop's many mirrors to see if the color complements my complexion. It does, beautifully. I look around for an attendant, hoping the store is not too fancy to let me try things on before purchasing them. In my experience, assuming something is going to fit is the quickest way to a closet full of clothes I never wear. But before I locate anyone to help, a tall, glamorous woman with long, blood-red nails and a sleek, platinum bob marches over to stand in front of me, one hand on her tiny hip.
“I'm sorry, darling,” she coos, her voice molten honey, “but that dress belongs to me.”
“Oh!” I say, surprised. “But....I mean, I just picked it up from that display over there. It didn't appear to be reserved for anyone...”
The woman laughs, flashing two perfect rows of stunningly white teeth. “Silly girl,” she says, smiling with one side of her mouth. “I didn't reserve anything. I saw you holding that dress, and I want it. And now you will give it to me.”
Her smile disappears. She stands with her brilliant blue eyes flashing, one elegant hand outstretched, clearly expecting my compliance. I stroke the soft fabric of the dress, imagining how it would feel to wear it, knowing, somehow, that it would be the prettiest thing I would ever own in my life. Then, I look up. Smile. Hand it to her.
“Of course,” I say, pleasantly. “I hope you enjoy it.”
The woman rolls her eyes. “Let's be honest, sweetheart. You were going to do this dress a huge disservice. We're both doing the world a favor today.”
Stung, I feel my mouth drop open and tears pricking my eyes. This is ridiculous. Am I going to spend the entirety of my exam crying about things that haven't even really happened? Hurriedly I turn away and wipe my eyes.
When I look up I'm standing at the top of a building so tall it couldn't possibly exist, looking over the dangerously low guard-rail. Fat, marshmallow clouds float several hundred feet below me; far below them, I can see swatches of green and blue. The view makes me feel dizzy, but also strangely alive. I wish I had a tablet - or better yet, a journal - to write in; the situation seems to call for introspection and tactile expression.
Suddenly, I look down at my hands. They had been empty, but now they're holding a baby-soft, gray leather notebook and matching gray ink-pen.
“Oh!” I murmur to myself, delighted to discover the sim can be manipulated by my wordless desires and curious to see how much I can control. I smirk. Ahem, I think casually. Sure would be nice to share this fantastic view with a hot, available guy about my age...
I don't really expect anything to happy, but mere seconds go by before I feel a warm hand on my arm. Heart in my throat, I turn to look beside me at the most beautiful human being I've ever seen – dark chocolate eyes, wavy hair, mesmerizing grin. He leans closer to me until his lips are next to my ear. “Be careful what you wish for,” he whispers, sending shivers down my spine. Then he puts his hand on my back and pushes me, hard over the guard-rail.
For the first 30 seconds I scream, unable to suppress the blind panic gripping my entire body. I'm gonna die, a terrified part of my mind wails at me. I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die. But eventually another part of me speaks drolly back. Well...why don't you DO something about it, birdbrain.
Birdbrain. Of course.
By now I'm falling so fast I can't open my eyes and can barely breathe. I have no idea how close I am to the ground, or to anything else, really. But I figure I have about one option right now, so I take it, forcibly spreading my arms wide. In the next instant the horrible feeling of plummeting to my death is gone and I open my eyes to see that I'm doing exactly what I hoped I would be – flying. I have somehow managed to turn myself into a falcon. Elated, I swoop toward the ground, skimming the grass of a lush green meadow before I soar over a fantastic expanse of water, waves brushed gold in the light of a brilliant setting sun. The ocean. I had no idea that seeing it up close would make me feel this way – like there is nothing on earth I couldn't do if I wanted it enough. I could look at this forever. I could die like this.
All too soon, the glory of the moment fades away and I'm transported to another scene.
This time i find myself pressed on all sides by a throbbing mass of people that seems to stretch for miles in all directions. Multi-colored strobe-lights slice through the heavy cloud of smoke hanging above our heads and the pulse of a powerful dance beat vibrates my bones, setting my teeth on edge. I look down and gasp, appalled to find that I'm wearing only a thin, glittery slip-dress and no bra, which is, unfortunately, a far more conservative get-up than t
he bits of leather and lace covering most of the girls I see gyrating wildly around me. The need to escape covers me like a rash; I try to think my way out, but nothing happens. Apparently I've used up my freebies for the time being. I push my way through the sweaty crowd, feeling my heartbeat in my head and hearing my breathing pick up. But I'm getting nowhere. Every few people that I push past only give way to some drunken shirtless guy nearly falling on me and pushing me right back to where I was. I'm starting to panic. "Help!" I shout desperately. "Is there an exit nearby?" No one even looks at me. I might as well be whispering next to a rocket launch. "Please! I just want to get out of here!"
Suddenly a dark, skinny girl with waist-length dreadlocks stops dancing, turns around, and hands me a remote.
“Point this at people,” she shouts over the noise. “They'll get out of your way.”
I stare at the device, which looks more like a , wondering how on earth it works. Is everyone here a robot? “Will it hurt them?” I shout back at the girl, who rolls her eyes and shrugs.
“Does it matter?”
She goes back to dancing, and I'm left to myself in the writhing mass of people, trying to decide what to do. Tentatively, I aim the remote at the palm of my own hand and push the button; my hand immediately goes rigid and drops to my side, apparently immobilized but unharmed. Still, I'm reluctant to use it on anyone else until my arm becomes fully functional again.
Just then I feel someone grabs my waist from behind and starts dancing with me. I spin around and push at the guy's chest, but he's built like Frankenstein's monster and probably doesn't even feel it. “Let go,” I order him, as fiercely as possible. He just laughs in my face, his breath reeking of gin, and pulls me closer. So, I jam the remote into his midsection and hit the button. Instantly, he releases me, and stands at attention, his hands on his thighs and his eyes staring straight ahead. I smile as the scene blacks out and the sim ushers me into another landscape.
On it goes. I am swept through so many different scenarios that they start to bleed together. Occasionally, the sim lets me alter my surroundings or ask for props; more often, it refuses. In every scene, regardless of the location, I find myself either elated, uncomfortable, distraught, or threatened mentally, physically, or socially. I'm starting to feel absolutely drained, to think that I've overtaxed my emotions to the point that nothing can possibly shock or alarm me anymore. I'm wrong.
After leaving a scene where I've accepted an award for charity work, I open my eyes and immediately gasp, staring at what I'm confident is the last scene of the sim, for a multitude of reasons. One, I'm standing on a hovering granite platform no more than two feet across, with nothing at all to use as a brace against a powerful, swirling wind that whips against me. Two, my mother and father, Johanna, Harlow, and a blond woman I don't know are all hovering fifty feet in front of me, each of them standing on platforms identical to my own. Three, all six of us are surrounded by a roiling, red-hot, ferocious mass of boiling lava. And it's on the rise.
I had thought that falling off the building was the most terrified I would ever be, but this is ten times worse. The heat rises, moving with the wind, coming at me from all sides. My t-shirt and jeans are stuck to my body with sweat that is rapidly turning to steam in the heat; my bare feet are slick against the hot surface of the platform. The horizon is completely empty of anything but more lava – there is nothing and no one to help. Death is creeping up on me slowly, and with each mounting second I think my heart is going to explode. I frantically hurl thoughts at the sim, trying to turn the lava into dry land, or garner all of us heat-proof life-suits, or have an alien race beam us onto another planet, but nothing happens. I stare at my family, friends, and the strange blond woman, wondering if my eyes are as wide and horrified as theirs.
Suddenly the wind becomes even stronger and we all look up; a helicopter has come out of nowhere and is hovering above us, lowering a man in a black suit down on a rope. He lands on my tiny platform, gripping my arm to keep the two of us balanced, and hands me an earpiece and speaker.
“We only have room for one of you,” he says when I've secured the earpiece, his voice sounding tinny and broken. “You'll have to choose.”
“What!?” I shriek in disbelief. “No! I can't!”
“You have to,” he repeats, resolute. “I can take you, or one of them, but that's it. And you don't have much time to decide.”
My eyes flick to my father's strained frown, my mother's fear-stricken face, my friends' desperate, hopeful glances. And the woman on the end...
“Who is she?” I ask the black-suited man, stalling. “Why is she even here?”
The man stares at me. “Don't you know?”
I start to shake my head no, but even as I'm doing so I'm hit with the answer. It doesn't make sense. I've never seen her before. There's no reason for her to be here. She's dead. She died a long time ago. She doesn't mean anything to me.
Does she?
“Samantha,” I choke, my eyes prickling with tears they are unable to cry. “Oh my gosh. That's Samantha. That's my sister.”
Through the waves of heat, I can see the ghost of a smile cross my sister's lips, as though she can sense my recognition. She's older than me by sixteen years, but I can see now that she's lithe and beautiful, full of life in a way that makes even Johanna seem rather inanimate by comparison. My heart aches to reach out to her, to hear her laugh, to find out whether we have anything in common. But the lava has reached the bottom of my platform, now, and the heat is almost unbearable. Tiny splatters of liquid rock shoot into the air; in moments, they'll be landing on my bare, heat-reddened skin, burning holes into my body.
“Brynn,” shouts the man's voice in my ear, more insistent this time. “I need you to decide now, or I'll be forced to leave you all.”
I nod at him, take a deep breath, and instantly regret it as I collapse in a fit of coughing. As soon as I can pull myself together I point across the angry red expanse at my sister.
“Take her. Save Samantha,” I say with finality, and my vision goes black for the last time.
It takes me a while to notice that I'm back in the tiny examination room. The last scene is still draining from my body; I have to will my breathing to slow down, my heart to stop pounding, my hands to release their death-grip on the armrests. But even as the panic caused by the sim recedes, I find myself flooded with a different, more uncertain kind of fear.
There was something incredibly wrong with what I just experienced.
The sim had been far too intense – too fraught with peril and violence - to be a mere test of my preferences and values. I don't know what this test was for, but I know it wasn't to match me with a compatible life partner, and that thought is so chilling I almost don't want to leave the room. What do they want from me? Why did I have to face death so many times, and why did I have to choose to save only one of the people I care about? How was the sim able to access my thoughts, and is it possible that, while doing so, it could have taken information from my brain without my permission? Or left it? Even more troubling was my sister's presence in the program. What was she doing there? And how did I even know it was her? What are they looking for? Who are they, for Pete's sake?
I feel like crying again but furiously stamp out the impulse. I am so done with tears for the day. Still, I'm not quite ready to face reality, so I stay where I am and do something I've only read about but never actually tried. I pray.
The practice of prayer is not completely unheard of, but it is generally considered disrespectful to God. If he wanted to speak to you, people say, he would initiate the conversation. But Harlow has been coming up with bits of scripture that suggest otherwise for years, and, frankly, I'm a little desperate right now. I hope God will overlook any sins I may be committing.
“God. Hi. I'm not sure if I should be trying to talk to you or not. Dad says...well, I guess I don't really care what Dad says...I mean, I care, but, like, I don't think he knows how you really...work. Not to say that I
myself know how you work, but...argh.”
I shake my head, take a deep breath, and keep it simple.
“I'm scared. I don't know what to think about anything. I don't know if this is your plan, and I don't know what's right. If you're listening...just...help me figure out what to do. Please.”
I wait for some kind of change to occur – for peace to settle over my heart like it does for the characters in my books. But I just feel incredibly tired. Before I can put too much thought into it, there is a knock on the door.
“Miss Bowen? The system indicates your sim finished ten minutes ago. Is everything all right?”
I sigh. Time to go. “I'm fine,” I call. “You can come in.”
The analyst gives me a strange look when she enters, but says nothing, releasing me from my restraints in silence. As she ushers me out the door, she mentions that there are restrooms across the room if I need them, but that I shouldn't dawdle.
“Your sim took a long time,” she says in a voice carefully devoid of inflection. “Most of the others are already back in the auditorium. I'd hustle if I were you.”
Nodding at her, I bypass the restroom and make my way back to the auditorium on legs made of deflated bicycle tires, wondering why my sim would have lasted so much longer than the others. The thought does little to sooth the uneasiness gripping my heart.
VI.
The moment I step through the door, I can feel the soft pressure of someone watching me. Intent. Curious. I scan the faces of the people until I'm looking straight into the eyes of a tall, bearded guy with dark blond curls standing across the room. He's wearing dark jeans and an open plaid button down over a t-shirt that reads, “Sorry I'm not better looking.” Which is funny, really, both because of how much thought he apparently put into the awkwardness of the coming situation, and because the warmth I feel in my cheeks suggests that I find him very attractive indeed. I drop my gaze to my hands, but when I gather enough courage to look back up, he's still there, still watching. He lifts his hand and waves, friendly. I blush harder. He grins.
BRINK: Book 1 - The Passing Page 4
