Alan

Sitting through a lecture on social etiquette. Reading a history of the invention of soap. Watching another re-enactment of an ancient play. All of these things would have been a million times more preferable than this.

“A-Y, two. Question: complex numbers. Hint: trigonometric lookup tables.”

Tock rattled off another set of misplaced data and Alan, seated cross-legged against a wall, jotted them down in a diagram he’d thrown together on his meus. This was, what, the fiftieth question they’d had to categorise? And they were no closer to figuring out what was wrong with these choked-up questions.

As it had turned out, their great privilege as administrators was the exciting task of figuring out which hint went to which test question. Admittedly, Alan had thought it sounded fun at the beginning. However, “fun” usually implied “variety.” As it turned out, every student had one question with the wrong hint or data and the test runners didn’t even have the courtesy to tell them which it was. Luckily, Tock had discovered that these errors were in the first five questions only, which cut their search time down by a factor of four. There were over one hundred students. Therefore, this monotonous task had long since gone from “fun” to “please just blast me through an atomic particle collider and get it over with.” Oh, and someone decided it would be extra exciting to switch off the lights and make them do everything in the dark. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

He gave his diagram a quick scan, shuffled some of the boxes around, and when nothing jumped out at him, Alan dumped his meus in his lap and stretched his arms up along the wall behind him.

“This is pointless,” Alan said.

Tock twisted around in her chair. “You got a better idea?” She stared at him with those tired eyes people did when they were bored.

“Nope.” Alan stretched his neck to the side and exhaled when he felt a satisfying pop. “I mean, we can’t sort through the questions one at a time. That would take hours! So I’ve been trying to find a pattern so we can jump through the questions and fix them without reading over everything, but…”

But nothing makes sense, is what he was going to say, but to say that would be to admit his failures. The desk letters don’t correspond with any order, there’s no meaning to the question numbers, and the questions and hints themselves seem completely random. I know there has to be a pattern—we wouldn’t be given this problem if it couldn’t be solved without having to run it through a neural network or something. But I can’t see the pattern! That’s the one thing I’ve always been good at—no, the thing I’m best at—so today I’m as useless as a photovoltaic cell under Plato.

Despite his complaining, Alan’s eyes still danced over his meus. His attention was shaken when Tock stretched her arms up high and yawned. It wasn’t the stretching that distracted him, of course, but rather the fact that her shirt was clinging to her generous chest, the curves made bolder by the shadows cast by the terminal screen. He shouldn’t be staring. They’d been schoolmates since their primary days and—urgh, what am I even thinking?

Then Tock lowered her arms and slumped onto her chair’s back. She fixed Alan with a deadpan stare. Not wanting to back down, Alan maintained eye contact. She would say something annoying any second now.

She exhaled sharply. “Why didn’t you tell me you got accepted into King’s College?”

Not what Alan had expected, but in a way it was worse than a witty jab. “Well, I was going to, but you were being really snippy on the last few days of school. I thought you didn’t want to talk to me so I just left you alone.” He scratched at the knot of black hair at the nape of his neck—a nervous tick.

Tock narrowed her large eyes. “You could have, I don’t know, asked what was wrong.”

“Well some people get angry when you ask them what’s wrong,” he replied.

“Well then some people don’t deserve to know what’s wrong,” she said, frowning at him.

“See?” Alan cried, throwing his hands up. “This is exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Seriously, how can you be this stupid? Do you not get other people’s feelings?”

That silenced Alan. He actually didn’t get other people’s feelings. Why would he need to? Most of the time people reacted to things in an irrational way. If they just tried thinking their problems through logically they’d realise that maybe there weren’t any problems to begin with. Like with drama amongst colleagues, or anything related to the opposite sex. People weren’t that hard to figure out—they were just really stupid.

But maybe I should ask, anyway, Alan considered. I still want to know why she was acting so weird, and yelling at her won’t help.

Sighing, Alan slouched forward. “Alright, I’m listening now so tell me what’s wrong.” He considered apologising since people’s brains usually turned to mush when you did, but he didn’t feel like it.

Tock scowled at him for a second longer. Then she sighed and her face softened. “So I got accepted into King’s College, which you’ve obviously figured out now. When I got my acceptance form, I knew I had to say goodbye to you, but…” she looked down and picked at the back of her chair. “I couldn’t do it. We’ve been schoolmates since we were, what, six? Just thinking about never seeing you again made me—you know.”

“Want to cry?”

Her head snapped up and she fixed him with a venomous scowl. “I’m not a baby!”

“I never said you were,” Alan cried, throwing his hands up in consternation.

Tock huffed, then peered off to one side. “I should have said something. I was being stupid. So, sorry.”

“Yeah, same,” Alan said, and he actually meant it. He felt genuinely bad about leaving her in the shadow, even if Tock was the one who started it. “I shouldn’t have let something like that bother me.”

Tock waved a hand dismissively. “Welp, looks like it didn’t matter. I don’t think anyone’s going to get enrolled in King’s College at this rate.”

“Wait, you know that was a bluff, right?”, said Alan, gaping at her.

Tock raised her brows in response.

“The Principal never said we needed to pass the test to be accepted,” Alan continued. “Like, she implied it, but that’s not the same as saying it.”

“Then why are they running this test?”

Alan shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably to figure out which classes to put us in. You know, the people who were losing their electrons out there would probably go into the idiot class, if they have one, and the people who perform best go into Class Euripides. I mean, it’s not much to go off but the notice boards in the hall mentioned Class Euripides a lot, so that’s my guess.”

Tock blinked at him, then threw her hands wide. “So what have I been worrying about?” she shouted.

“Exactly!” Alan shouted back. He’d finally got through that thick hair of hers and it was so cathartic. “Why do you think I tried to stop you from running in here?”

“Because you’re paranoid?”

“My paranoia was justified. Jus-ti-fied,” he emphasised, pointing at Tock with the arm that she had bitten. Unfortunately, he’d waved his hand around too vigorously, causing the cut Tock had given him to open again. A dot of blood pooled on his wrist. When Tock caught sight of it, she turned away.

“Well it’s still more productive being in here than out there,” Tock said.

Alan sighed. “Maybe, but not at this rate.”

The conversation fizzled out and they went back to pouring over the data. Then Tock stopped abruptly. Alan popped his head up to tell her to keep going, but when he met Tock’s eyes he hesitated.

“Do you want to get into Class Euripides?” Tock asked.

“I don’t know.” Alan rested his head against the wall and stared up at the dead light bulb. “I guess it would be good. Like, it’ll be a challenge. I haven’t found school challenging for a while now. And apparently you get access to King’s College’s archives if you’re in Class Euripides, which would be amazing.” He turned back to Tock. Her eyes shone in the darkness, reflecting the dull light of the screens. “What about you? Do you want to be in Class Euripides?”

She scoffed. “Who wouldn’t? But someone like me? I’m too stupid to get into Class Euripides.”

“Nah, you’re the smartest student I know. Well, I think Leo’s a bit smarter since he figured out the admin stuff, and that Lumia girl finished the test fast, and Morgan was answering everyone’s questions back there. But you’re pretty close.”

Tock stared off and absentmindedly toyed with a button on her blazer, which she’d draped over the back of her chair. Alan noted her expression, her posture, and the fact that she was so peacefully quiet.

She isn’t snapping back at me. Huh. I wonder if I can replicate whatever it was that made her go so quiet?

It didn’t last, however, because Tock turned to Alan and clapped her hands. “Come on, get back to work. You want to get into Class Euripides, don’t you?”

“I already told you it’s pointless. If we don’t find a pattern we won’t finish in time. I mean, I think it has something to do with order, but the question numbers are random and the desk letters are weird.”

Tock flashed a smug grin. “Then let the fourth smartest student you know take a look.”

Alan was about to say fifth, as he was definitely smarter than her, when Tock hopped up from her chair and slid over to Alan’s side. She leaned over him while holding a stray curl out from her eyes. Alan spun his meus around so it was the right way up for her. Her eyes darted over the diagram for a few seconds.

“Maybe it’s the Greek alphabet?” Tock said.

Alan blinked at her. “The what?”

“Type two.”

Alan spun his meus around and stared lasers into the screen. “That’s stupid! There’s no way it could be something that dumb.”

“Sure it could.” Tock squatted down beside Alan, her shoulder warm against his. “See, they’re probably using standard letters but in the order of the type two alphabet. So Y is probably upsilon and we place it before X, which is chi. Z is zeta so we put that after E for epsilon. The rest just follows the type zero alphabet order.”

Frowning, Alan stared at the assortment of letters. In his mind they were already rearranging themselves according to Tock’s suggestion. His fingers seemed to act of their own accord, swiping and tapping and bringing those internal images to life on his screen. When he was done, Alan read over the question-data pairs, and immediately the answer jumped out at him.

“It’s the student in front!” Alan gasped.

And that was when the stupidity of it all began to dawn on him. He let out a chuckle which gradually turned into a proper, bellow-aching laugh.

“Literally,” he said between gasps. “They—all they had to do was—was look over the shoulder—of the person in front of them.” Then he lost complete control, rolled onto his side, and cackled maniacally. “They’re—they’re all going to the idiot class!”

Tock, however, was not in a laughing mood. Alert now, she threw herself into the chair. Her hands whirred across the terminal screen, tapping and sliding and rearranging.

“Alan, get up,” she snapped, urgency in her voice.

“Come on, it’s a little funny, isn’t it?” Alan said, wiping away his tears. “Literally all they had to do to pass was cheat a little.”

“You want to get into Class Euripides?” she said sternly. “Double check the solution.”

Sighing, Alan sobered and picked his meus off the floor.

True. I keep forgetting this is a test. His face split into a grin. A fun test.

Leo

Lights penetrated the dividing glass, on-off, on-off. They were calling him. They wanted the light back. He didn’t care.

Leo had his back against the window—his back to the rest of the class. He had his meus in one hand. Out of habit, he tapped the device and the screen lit up.

Don’t worry, the Bulwarks are reviewing my case and they think it looks good.

He closed the screen, waited, then opened it again and scrolled down idly.

She’s lying. She’s trying to get me Descended. She always hated me.

I’ll ask Bulwarks to call you in as a character witness. I’m allowed to bring one to my trial. Tell them I’m a good student.

He closed the screen again, then opened it.

Not only did they say I couldn’t choose my witness, they brought in an educator. As in, the one who’s been trying to get me Descended!

They’re all out to get me. I told them it was an accident. They don’t care. They just want me gone.

Leo closed the screen again and screwed his eyes shut. His one reason, the only reason, he would ever set foot in this gilded prison was to learn more about what happened to Milli. But it was over. He’d be expelled before he even began and there was nothing he could do.

The class wasn’t passing. His terminal was locked out. He was trapped in a room where he could do nothing. Nothing!

So they could go without their precious lights for a bit. They could experience just a fraction of the void that had swallowed his heart. Maybe that way they could understand how unjust Plato was. And if they wouldn’t learn, then at least Leo had saved them from a fate as terrible as Milli’s.