CRACKING THE TEST

“Good morning. Today is Saturday, April 21, and you will be taking Phase IV-a of the Q. Comprehensive Evaluation Test, revision 7, version KT. Do not open your test booklets until told to do so. Now, please read silently the instructions printed on the front of your test booklet while I read them aloud…”
Thus began a five-hour journey through hell for our hapless protagonist, C. The QCET, that all-encompassing behemoth of a life-determining high school standardized test, was defeating him squarely, and he hadn't even reached Phase VII, by all accounts the most soul-crushing part. 
The first five questions in Section I of Phase IV were rather easy, but after that, C. was faced with a reading comprehension passage about whales, and the description of these graceful creatures in the rhythmic waves of the Pacific was as somniferous (he had learned that word while studying) as 500 barbiturates (he had learned that one while studying, too). Then the questions were impossible: “Which of the following can be implied from lines 5-8 of the passage?” with answers that were all words C. didn’t know; “The passage hints at all of the following about the future of humpback whales EXCEPT:” with equally impossible answers to choose from. Then there was a passage about the effects of field size on loading times of a web-based database, and then halfway through the next passage (about lima beans), time for Section I was called. The other eight sections that day went similarly.
	After the test, all the students congregated outside the classroom. One young girl was smiling like a billboard and talking to her ride on her cellphone: "Yes, mom…I did super! The Reading, Math, and Writing sections were the easiest." The Reading, Math, and Writing sections were the whole test.
	C. was slouching against a wall when he was approached by a girl who had been sitting in front of him during the Tour of the Inferno.
	"Are you OK?" she asked. She had black hair and was taller than C. 
	"Yes, I'm fine; leave me alone," said C. If he hadn't done well, he deserved not to do well; the General Testing Service, GTS, producer of the QCET, was incapable of error. 
	Just then, the security guards entered the hall to herd the students outside the building. On the way out, they had to go through the same security measures they went through on the way in: metal detectors, walking through the X-ray device to check under clothes, frisking, inspection of all pocket contents, inspection of calculator memory, a polygraph test for the especially suspicious-looking characters. The usual. It was worth it to catch cheaters, though C. wished it didn't take so long.
	"You're not OK. You didn't do well," said the girl. "Redheads like you normally don't. It just works that way."
	"Shut up."
	She leaned in closer. "I can help you. We can help you. My name is A. You can contact me here." She thrust a tiny slip of paper into his palm, and he realized what was going on. She looked the exactly part of a cheater, an arrogant twinkle in her eye, a cynical, fairness-hating smile. Just like in the "THIS IS THE ENEMY" posters all over town. She was even wearing the many-pocketed trench coat. C. marveled that she hadn't been taken aside for a polygraph test or a sodium pentothal session.
	"Oh, I know what this is all about," he said. He leaned in to match A. "This is a cheating ring. You cheaters are the scum of the earth. How do you get through Security anyway? I ought to report you."
	A. smirked. "I have connections," she said. "I'm just trying to help. I know people like you have it tough. Don't judge us until you get to know us." C. blinked and she was gone.
	
	C. arrived home after taking the bus. His father, D., wasn't home from work yet, so he was home alone. All he could find in the kitchen for lunch was bread and peanut butter. Likely they would have that for dinner, too, and for their meals tomorrow, until D. scored high enough on the Adult Remedial Assessment Test to earn food stamps. 
	Munching on his bread-and-peanut-butter, C. sat down on the couch in the living room and grabbed the newspaper. He flipped through, seeking for QCET Tutoring services. The first one he found was for a certain Dr. T. Hawat, a large man with a red stain on his lips. The ad read:
	"In order to pass the QCET, any of its phases, one must train oneself mentally and spiritually. In effect, one must be capable of achieving inferential linkages through gestaltic spasms of pure insight. One must develop his or her skills in propositional and predicate logic, modal deduction, transfinite induction, multivalent analysis, conceptual synthesis, N-dimensional geometry, formal linguistics, and transcendental phenomenology. As one masters these skills, he or she will find that the QCET is not impossible to pass."
	It was his civic duty to enroll with one of these tutors, but it all sounded very boring. He dropped the newspaper and headed to his room. There, lit by a lava lamp, he had tacked up poster reproductions of paintings by an obscure twentieth century artist, Harold Bauer. One showed an ice cream truck, something he had never encountered but thought was a wonderful idea after his father had explained the concept. Another showed a man playing a trumpet; the instrument was surrounded by a pale yellow glow, as if the music were radiant and warm. C. wanted to play the trumpet. He had never touched one and had only seen one once in his life, during a parade he had seen with his mother. But he imagined playing: the notes would tumble out like water over stones in a creek. A cool creek he could walk down forever. He closed his eyes and daydreamed for quite some time.
	The door slamming broke him out of his reverie and alerted him that D. had arrived. 
	"C.! C., I'm home! How did the test go?" he heard him call. 
	"Not well at all," C. called back as he headed to the living room, where his father had collapsed onto the sofa in full security guard uniform, only with an empty gun holster. He hadn't scored high enough on the Firearms Safety and Utilization Test to carry a live gun. 
	"I'm sorry. What happened?"
	"I don't know. I just…couldn't concentrate, you know? I didn't know the words."
	"What words?"
	"I don't remember…'interview.' What's that mean?"
	"Oh, that's an archaic word for 'interrogation.'"
	"Well, I guess it's not important now. I'll do better on Phase IV-b, next month. How was work?"
	"Bad. They're going to fire me soon, I think. They only want to hire security guards with above a certain score on…what is it. What test is it they give us now? I don't even remember. It's not like a water tower needs security guards anyway."
	"What'll you do then?"
	"I don't know." D. seemed disturbingly resigned. "Just try to do better on the tests than I do, or your mother did," he said, turning to face C. "So you don't get phased out like us. I don't know how much lower I can go, but I doubt I can keep up the payments on the house."
	D. turned on the TV. The Chairman of GTS, Dr. John K. Freudentod, was giving a speech recapitulating the company's philosophy. "…the idea of truth is a fallacious and arbitrary concept," droned Freudentod. He looked the same every day: white shirt, black tie, a pen and a yellow card protruding slightly out of his shirt pocket. And this speech was a rerun anyway. "Ergo, although GTS's judgments are not 'truthful', they are superior to so-called 'truthful' statements executed by individuals erratically upon others and themselves, in that our judgments are consistent and objective. Despite the tireless efforts of cheaters, GTS has centralized correctness, standardized judgment, and eliminated ambiguity, to the great benefit of mankind…." C. had heard this speech uncountable times before, but it seemed to have made more sense earlier. 
	"I'm going outside," said C. He pushed open the screen door and stood in the backyard. 
His mother had been a writer, but she had never had anything published because she consistently failed the Literary Aptitude Test, her works being, therefore, trash. He could barely remember her. Two memories stuck out in his mind: the parade with the trumpet and the time he had tried to "run away." That day, when he was about five years old, she had left him sitting on a lawnchair in the blight that was their backyard while she was on the telephone. C. had gotten bored of the practice test he was supposed to be working on, so he threw down the pencil and packet and decided to explore around the corner of the house. His mother had nearly had a breakdown trying to find him, but before she did, he managed to find a pile of papers under the house that he now knew must have been some of her novels. He'd never found those papers again. D. said that she'd burned them before they came to arrest for joining a cheating ring.
As C. reminisced about that day, he caught a glimpse of something white under the house. He reached down there and brought out a disorderly bunch of lined paper. Could they be his mother's?
He skimmed through them after trying to order the pages, reading of courtly intrigue in a far-away country, of the king and queen of the Riverrun, guardians of all the streams and free-flowing rivers of their land, who fought against the kingdom of dragons to the north. The stories were delightful, though simple and lacking the polysyllabic Latinisms that quality modern style mandated. 
	He walked inside to find D. still sitting on the couch. "I found some of mom's papers outside," he said.
	"She burned them all. Besides, if they were there you would have found them before."
	C. dropped them on his father's lap.
	"Oh—these are them. Yes. Yes, this is her first novel—where did you find this? Let's look through—"
	The phone rang. It was a GTS machine; C.'s QCET scores from earlier that day had arrived. He picked up the phone and repeated the machine's words so D. would hear: "Reading—30/120. Math—20/120. Writing—20/120. Overall rating: Unacceptable. It is mandated that you register with a GTS-accredited tutor within one week—" He hung up, simmering with anger. These people had screwed over the rest of his family, and now him. His mother had been right to turn away from them.
	"Dad," he said, "Can you tell me how to get to this address?" He fished A.'s paper out of his pocket. His father stood up slowly and sauntered over to look at it. Then he looked at C. with weary eyes. "Yes," he sighed, "Take the grey line, then the black line until you get to Birch Street. It should be around the stop there." 
	
	When C. returned, he had in his wallet a laminated yellow card that A. had handed him, identifying him as a member of the ring. He was in high spirits; he imagined earning himself a car and driving around with his trumpet, the music flowing everywhere. A. even seemed to show an interest in him. She would love his music, and did in his fantasies. They would drive away from this country, tooting all the way! He entered into his house from the night outside to find his father still watching TV. 
	"Hi," said C. nervously. What if his dad knew? "Anything good on TV?"
	"No. Nothing new." C. craned his neck to see the screen. A commercial bloomed on the screen advertising a dentist's office: "He scored 120/120 on the DSAAT! Come see Dr. Carlgrove today!" with a shot of Dr. Carlgrove's cozy waiting room.
	"So, C.," said D., his face illuminated by television. "let me see your yellow card."
	The commercial ended. Now the screen showed two men and a woman lying strapped to three tables. A uniformed official read their verdict. Years ago, GTS scientists had discovered that the ink used to print their tests, injected intravenously, was far more lethal than potassium chloride. The men on the tables were waiting for their injections. Such executions of cheaters came on every night at eight and nine thirty. C. stood with his eyes fastened in terror.
	"My—what! You knew? You know about—"
	"Your mother and I were a members of that ring. We joined so we could score well enough not to be sterilized. So we could have you."
	"But—why didn't they arrest you too?" Why didn't they execute you too?
	"I kept a low profile. B. didn't. Everyone I know is a member. Everyone you know probably is too. I'm surprised it's taken you this long to join. That's bad, joining late. It means you won't have any seniority."
	C. derived no comfort from this revelation.
	"Hell, even Dr. Freudentod is a member," D. mumbled, "What do you think that yellow card in his shirt pocket is all about? It's to remind us. We can't escape."
	
The officials in charge of C.'s execution a month later quite likely also had yellow cards in their pockets.