by Kaylim
your Placement Assessments to determine which Task is best suited for you at this moment in your education.”
Ajita fumbles with the end of her plait; she remembers where she had last seen these Instructors. They had, individually at the time, assessed her for other Tasks before, Tasks that included calculations and wires and screens and numbers. She cringes and slinks lower in her seat. She had not been suited for those Tasks at all.
One of the Instructors uses a clicker and the screen turns on, the rest of the lights dimming.
“Student, can you identify what this is?”
Ajita freezes, before slowly sitting up, “That is a star chart.”
The skeletal figures of stars hover in the darkness, Designations blinking next to their figures.
“Correct,” the Instructor says smoothly, “do you know its purpose?”
“It is used for navigation.”
“Correct.”
The screen changes, lines begin to connect different stars and the image flattens out.
“Identify this image.”
“It is a star chart.”
“There are additions now. Can you name what they are?”
“Constellations.”
At the Instructor’s expectant look, she clarifies, “Asterisms.”
“Correct.”
With a sudden clink a small screen appears before her, resting at elbow height. It’s flat, like a counter. She’s handed a pointer.
“Can you replicate the star chart?”
She glances around at each Instructor, but their faces are blank, not giving anything away. She squints up at the star chart, and quickly draws on the blank, flat screen in front of her. She tries to be exact as she copies the stars and the constellations she sees. Rasjaurom isn’t among them.
“What is the purpose of replicating what is already shown on the screen?” she asks.
The Instructors stall, blinking more rapidly than normal.
“We are assessing your fine motor skills,” the woman Instructor finally answers.
Ajita is sure she had already done that during training at the Center. Her screen flickers once and then her drawing appears on the large kiosk screen.
“Surprisingly accurate,” one of the male Instructors murmurs.
The woman does not seem so pleased, “Yes, but accuracy is something all Students strive for.”
Ajita’s screen flickers back to life.
The woman insists that she, “Replicate my face.”
Ajita pauses in surprise, eyebrow climbing her forehead, and for the first time…studies the face of an Instructor. The woman’s face is oval and soft, her hair short and severe, her eyebrows brown and delicate, her nose long and pointy. Her lips are thin and dark peach and she has very slight wrinkles around her grey eyes. Ajita can’t remember the eye or hair color of her usual Instructors, and the way their faces slip out of focus in her mind worries her. Has it always been this way?
She has never drawn a face before, and she fears it is not accurate the way the star chart was, because the woman looks too stern in her picture, too foreboding, all sharp lines and harsh angles. She can’t seem to replicate the soft curve of her cheek, or the delicate rise of her eyebrow. She can’t even replicate the neutral expression that usually rests on her pale face.
When she is finished, her image flickers up onto to the kiosk screen and the Instructors scrutinize it.
“It is not accurate,” the other male Instructor says uneasily.
Ajita takes a good look at him, trying to burn his features into her mind: dark skin, like hers, dark fuzzy hair, crooked nose, thick eyebrows. While she knows she has seen him before, remembers his questions as he assessed her, she cannot recall his exact expressions, his exact features. It’s blurry, foggy, and she is unable to dispel the mist in her memories.
“Student, can you explain why this is not accurate?” the woman Instructor asks.
“It is impossible to replicate real life,” Ajita says warily.
“Then why did you try?”
“Because you asked.”
The two male Instructors seem satisfied, and look to the woman expectantly. The woman frowns. Ajita doesn’t like the expression. She remembers the woman’s Assessments being the most difficult.
Her screen flickers to life again.
“Student, show me what you think of when you think of anger.”
The men shift in their seats, and Ajita does as well, because this one she probably can’t bluff through.
“Student?”
Ajita grips the pointer tightly, and then draws a blank answer box. The woman sits up a little straighter when the image pops up on the kiosk screen.
“Student, show me what you think of when you think of happiness.”
Ajita draws seven stars.
“That is merely replication,” one of the male Instructors says, “She is just recreating something that she connects with an emotion. It is not a unique creation.”
The woman clicks her teeth together in agitation, and with her clicker, begins to bring up different things on Ajita’s screen. A row of circles appear on her screen, each circle a different color.
“Student, using the colors, show me what you feel when you hear the word friendship.”
The other two Instructors look perplexed as if they don’t even know what the word is. Ajita licks her lips, wondering if she should play dumb, but as the blank screen flickers before her, she realizes they are finally asking her questions she can answer.
Did Yallie have a hand in this? What she remembers of yesterday’s conversation centers around the blue and silvery ships, freedom she could see but not touch. But didn’t Yallie say she would try and have her moved to a different Task? Did she tell these Instructors about their art, about star bears and humming and kissing?
She selects a red color, vibrant and smooth on the screen, the way she imagined paint should be like. It doesn’t have a texture, but when she clicks it and draws over the screen it flows from the pointer effortlessly. She creates wicked splashes of red paint, making them spiral until they become fractal-like against the backdrop of a night sky. She draws seven bright stars and connects them with fine white lines.
The woman tilts her head triumphantly when Ajita’s image comes up on the large screen.
“You see? A unique interpretation,” the woman says.
The other Instructors look vaguely uncomfortable.
“It is just a collage,” the other Instructor says, albeit feebly.
The woman purses her lips and says, “Student, can you create something that is not a replication?”
Ajita blinks, “Create something that neither exists in nature nor has been manufactured?”
“Yes.”
Her hand hovers over the screen, pondering how to create something that has never been created before. She selects the blue and paints in long lines. With the silver she outlines them, hazy and indistinct, like fog before a sunrise; and behind the long lines and silvery clouds, dominating the majority of the screen: darkness.
The woman studies the image intently and asks slowly, “Student, can you explain this picture?”
“This is freedom,” she says.
The lines cannot be recognized as rockets, and perhaps the Instructors do not see that the blackness is supposed to be space. The woman turns to the men and cocks her head to the side.
“Are we done here?” she asks.
She doesn’t wait for an answer before she stands up, turns off all the screens and heads for the door.
All Ajita is told is, “Attend to your Task, Student.”
Since Yallie is not there when she arrives, Ajita slowly works her way through the scanners, scrubbing their eyes clean. They stare back at her blankly. When she finishes she stands in the middle of the room and waits and waits and waits until she finally hears that clink.
“You weren’t going to see me today,” she says, without turning around.
There’s a soft sigh from the doorway and Ajit
a crosses her arms, waiting for the Click. Clack. It doesn’t come. She twists her torso to look over her shoulder, and Yallie stands there, staring at the ground, hands on hips.
“Why did they ask all those questions about drawing?”
Yallie brings her head up, frown on her face, as if being drawn away from a far off thought, “What?”
“Today various Instructors asked me questions about art. They pulled me aside and had me draw for them.”
Yallie’s gaze flicks to the side and back, and then again to the side. She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth, “Uh-huh.”
Ajita swivels completely around and leans against the counter. Yallie says nothing else.
“Did you tell them about my art? You did mention that it was possible for me to be assessed for a new Task.”
Yallie swipes a hand over the back of her neck, “Right.”
She pushes herself off the counter and stalks, slowly, to Yallie’s side. She waits until Yallie looks up at her. Though she meets her eyes, her gaze is not unwavering. There are no stars, no light, in her eyes. Ajita rarely thinks of death outside of her dreams, but she wonders if this is what it feels like.
“I waited for you,” Ajita whispers.
Yallie doesn’t react beyond a slight twitching of her shoulders.
“Did you get in trouble for showing me the ships?”
Yallie looks up at that, and her cheeks have the slightest red tinge.
“I figured it wasn’t something you were supposed to do. Why must Students not know about the ships?”
Yallie opens her mouth, closes it, and then walks to the scanners. Ajita follows her, not letting the space between them grow.
“Why did you show me them if I shouldn’t know they exist?”
Yallie turns on a scanner and Ajita is by her elbow, trying to catch her eye. The scanner floats in the air and follows Yallie as she sweeps to the door.
“Why did you wait so long to train today? Why is it that you didn’t want to see me?”
They stop in the training room and Yallie’s posture is rigid, her gaze averted, and though they are almost touching, Ajita feels as if there is a wall between them and she doesn’t know how to scale it. She slowly releases a breath, and once she is sure the trembling anger has left her skin, she raises her fingers to cup Yallie’s jaw. Her skin is soft, and smooth and sweet just like when they kissed, but Yallie snaps her head away and punches the control to open the door.
She points to the entryway, “Leave or I will be forced to summon an Instructor.”
Ajita swallows, “Yallie.”
“Do not call me that.”
This is what it must feel like to be struck by an arrow. She leaves, walking slowly past Yallie and her blank gaze, and when she leaves the room, hearing the clink of the door shutting and locking behind her…she falls.
She lies in bed, cold and distant, as she waits for sleep to greet her. She fingers the tag on her wrist and wonders, for the first time, what it would be like if it were gone. Would she be free then, to go gallivanting among the stars? She hums deep in her throat at the thought. Cuddling her head in her arms, she wonders what it would be like to leave. What is outside of School? Do other Schools exist, other people, villages and chapels and caves with paintings? She closes her eyes, but can’t remember any doors at School that would take her outside. Perhaps the silvery blue ships are the only way out. It is no wonder, then, she thinks soberly, that Yallie trains so desperately. Maybe she just wants to escape too.
Her dreams are full of blinking fluorescent beams, sleek grey-silver and gleaming white, hoses and wires and static. It’s a jumble, a swirl, of color, with big voluminous balloons shooting up into the air, and metal wings with propellers and inky smoke, and a tiny sphere winking around a planet, and then people talking: ya chaika and that’s one small step. A step for whom, she wonders. Her vision plummets into darkness, and the voices surround her with beeps and grainy noise, before blinding light bursts out from behind a curved horizon.
The light escalates, and slowly coalesces into one bright point of light…the sun. A giant star, yellow and warm and beaming over the
