The Test(18)

—That’s because they didn’t think anyone would be stupid enough to ever do that, you . . .

Pillock. Plonker. Prat. Tosser. Tom realizes he doesn’t need to say the words out loud to get the satisfaction.

Deep still feels he should be congratulated, not scolded. He goes on to explain that item number four was, in his humble opinion, meant for all the other kills where the subject has to pick between two people. Obviously, in that situation, choosing between your best friend and someone you’ve never met wouldn’t be much of a test. But K3 doesn’t require choosing. It requires self-sacrifice, and Idir did that, several times. Deep’s spirit-of-the-law speech doesn’t seem to move Tom, or Laura, for that matter. Deep doesn’t know Tom, but Laura . . . he thought Laura of all people would understand.

Deep is beginning to realize the depth of the hole he dug for himself. Tom grabs Deep’s BVA manual from the desk and flips it to Appendix A.

—How about this one? Did you think about this one?

Item 11. Under no circumstances shall an operator create a minor as a candidate during a kill exercise.



—Create! It says create. I used his real family.

—No you didn’t! How do I know you didn’t? Because none of it is real, you moron. None of them are! If they’re in there, you made them. Now grab a pen and start filling out forms. We’ll be here for a while. . . . You better hope that little stunt of yours doesn’t land us all in jail.

Jail? Deep doesn’t understand.

—What forms? We need to finish the test! He hasn’t done K4 yet.

Laura shakes her head.

—You really don’t get it, do you?

—No! I don’t get it. He passed! . . . What kind of forms?

—There’s the incident report. You’ll need to explain what happened. I have to sign off on the test interruption.

—What? He—

—He passed, I know. But it’s over now. . . . Then we need authorization to erase this whole mess. They’ll want to make sure this never happened. We need a warrant to wipe his memory without a failed test, another one for deportation.

—Stop. Stop. You just said this wasn’t a failed test. I know I’ve said this before, but he passed K3. He did! You saw it! Don’t punish him for a technicality. Don’t . . . don’t send his family away. Can’t we just keep going? Finish the test?

—No. That’s not possible anymore.

—Why?! He’s here. He’s doing it. He can do this.

—K3 doesn’t count, Deep. You fucked it up. Even if it did, what are you going to do about K4?

—What do you mean?

—Imagine you just escaped the zombie apocalypse and watched all your friends being eaten alive. Now I’m asking you which fabric softener smells nicer.

It is just now dawning on Deep that no matter how clever his rendition of K3 may have been, he didn’t anticipate the problems it might cause for Idir in K4. During the BVA, subjects are placed in traumatic situations. While government studies show that the vast majority of subjects recover completely given the right medication, most show symptoms of Acute Stress Disorder in the immediate aftermath, often during the test. ASD is similar to PTSD in many ways—patients suffering from the former will be diagnosed with the latter if the symptoms persist—but with a focus on dissociative symptoms. These include, but are not limited to, derealization and depersonalization—nothing around you feels real, not even your own thoughts or emotions. Detachment, emotional unresponsiveness, and a general feeling of numbness.

—You’re saying he won’t make the right decision because of his dissociative symptoms?

—I’m saying he won’t give a shit! It doesn’t matter who or what you put in front of him. He won’t care! This is a man who just watched his wife die! You made him kill his wife! Do you get that? Do you really think he’ll care about the asshole or the single mother now? He can’t continue.

—Is there any way to fix this?

Tom emerges from the filing cabinet with a stack of paper in his hands.

—What are you two talking about?

—Deep here wants us to finish the test.

—It’s over, son.

—No, it’s not! He can continue! He can!

Tom looks for the score sheet on the desk but can’t find it.

—What did he get on the written test?

Laura gets the score sheet from underneath Deep’s manual.

—He . . . he did question nine, but one of them he didn’t know the answer to. We had to give it to him.

Tom whispers to himself. He’s never been good with numbers and needs to do the math out loud.

—Eight points won’t do it, son. He needed K3 to pass. Even if he aced K4 now, which he won’t do, that’s not enough. Wipe him clean and put him on a plane.

No one is noticing Idir on the large screen. He’s pounding at the floor with both hands.

—No! He passed! He’s selfless, and courteous, and environmentally conscious. He passed!

Deep is upset. He’s not thinking about himself at this point. Surely he failed his own evaluation, but he wants to see Idir through this. He needs Idir to succeed. Guilt hasn’t set in yet. What Deep is experiencing is just narcissistic identification and a very strong case of narrative transportation. At this point, Deep is incapable of separating Idir’s success of failure from his own. He’s so caught up in the simulation that his feelings and opinions are filtered through the rules of the game. He’s seeing the world in BVA terms. Idir is environmentally conscious because he recycled the plastic wrapper. He’s selfless because he chose the preferred option in K3. He’s a good man because he has thirty-two points. Good men don’t get put on the plane.