“Please,” you whimper. “I’m sorry. It’s just, I get the headset on and I forget everything. And it’s not like pushing buttons at random is necessarily a good thing, you know? What if I were in the gunner’s chair and I just pressed buttons? I could blow up a planet!”

“You overthink things,” Instructor Terra says, her gaze softening. “These are simple exercises – and assessments. These tell us a lot about our candidates, their temperaments, how they think, what their strengths and weaknesses are. We don’t have much information on you, because you get hung up wandering around the room on the very first level.”

You’re losing yourself in her words. She has such a nice voice, smooth with just a touch of feminine smokiness in it. And she is beautiful. At least, to you she is. Other cadets have their own preferences, but you’ve had a crush on Terra, as you call her in your head, since day 1 at the academy. She seemed so strong and so elegant when she first called your name and ushered you into her unit, along with fifty other cadets. You were too tongue tied to speak to her, even when the other cadets were badgering her with questions. You’ve barely said two words to her since you got in a month or so ago. Truth be told, if it wasn’t for these single assessments, she probably wouldn’t know you exist.

“I’m sorry,” you say in a small voice. “But please… I can get it right, I know I can.”

Terra nods. “Listen,” she says. “I can’t do another assessment now. There’s another cadet waiting for the machine. But, if you come back after chow tonight, I’ll let you run through it again. Deal?”

“Deal,” you smile, relieved. “Thank you, Instructor Terra.”

She smiles back at you and helps you out of the chair. You feel a tingle where her hand lightly rests on your elbow, and your pulse races as her eyes meet yours.

“Try to relax, cadet,” she smiles. “You’ll do better.”

“Yes ma’am,” you nod, turning to leave. Just as you do, you feel a light swat land on your bottom. It sends a bolt of excitement racing through your loins. Blushing, you turn to see Instructor Terra smiling at you.

“I mean it,” she says gently. “You’re overworking yourself. No study for the rest of today.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you nod, not meeting her gaze. “Thank you, ma’am.”

You leave the room, grinning to yourself, and almost immediately run into Boris. Boris is another cadet in your unit, and he just so happens to be from your village too. You were both selected for the academy at the same time. He’s a little older than you, twenty five years old, to your twenty two. You’ve known him your whole life, and he’s like an older brother to you in some ways – a big, jerky older brother.

“Heard you failed again,” he sneers at you with his big, dopey grin.

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You turn from the buttons and examine the room. It is a large, empty space so there isn’t all that much to explore. The white walls are smooth, and taste a little like chalk. You run your hands around them to see if there are any hidden doors or switches, but all you end up with is a coating of white powder on your hands. It also tastes like chalk.

The floor is not much better. You jump up and down, hoping to detect any weaknesses or secret doors, but again, you come up without any kind of result. The room is a prison. A prison without doors, windows, or… hope?

Maybe the world is a dichotomy. Maybe you’re just going to have to push one of the buttons after all.

You walk back to the plinth and look at your options. Press. Do not press. Your path forward is clear. Press the blue button. But what if the blue button means something bad? What if the red button is the one you’re actually supposed to press? Oh god! What are you supposed to be doing? Why are you here? What is the thing of anything?

“TIME’S UP!”

The room fades and then the darkness is pulled from in front of your eyes. You blink a few times and find yourself looking into the disappointed face of your instructor, Ms Nina Terra. She is an attractive woman in her mid-forties, always impeccably presented with her dark hair swept up into an old fashioned chignon. When she smiles, her blue eyes are so warm. She is not smiling now.

“Well,” she says, her ruby lips forming the words carefully. “That was an… interesting approach.”

She takes the headset you were using and returns it to its place on the virtual training simulator.

“Remember,” she says. “This series of tests aren’t about right or wrong. They’re about reaction time. An ability to make decisions quickly and decisively. You didn’t make it past the first level. I’m afraid that’s a fail.”

You bite your lower lip to keep from swearing out loud. You just can’t seem to get the hang of these advanced simulations. If you don’t get your grades up soon, you will fail out of the academy. And if you fail out of the academy, you’re going back to your little village in a colony at the edge of the star system.

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