The Test

7.

DEEP SITS ALONE AT the desk and watches Idir scream and fall to his knees on the big screen in front of him. He smiles. He’s proud of himself. He went where no one had gone before, boldly. That was science. He observed, theorized, then proved a hypothesis. Maximized group dynamics. He won’t say it himself, but he’d like someone else to say his K3 was a work of art. He did it. He’ll make Idir a citizen.

Laura storms back into the control room and turns on the lights.

—Have you lost your fucking mind?

—What?

She is followed by her own supervisor, a balding man in his fifties wearing a beige cardigan over his government-issued grey shirt. The balding man is Tom. He’s been here since the very beginning. He was a tech when it all started, and now he’s responsible for a small army of operators. He was once proud of that. He doesn’t remember ever being as eager, as ambitious as Deep, but he was. Over the years his ambition has made way for an even stronger desire for comfort, peace, and quiet. All Tom really wants is for things to run smoothly. If it were up to him, no operator would ever quit or retire, and the program would never expand. All these things mean new people and new people mean…

—You! What’s your name?

—Deep.

—What you just did…

Aside from a slew of medical issues—heartburn, high cholesterol, high blood pressure—Tom has some anger issues to deal with. He’s doing his best to breathe in and breathe out, calling on every trick he’s learned in group sessions.

—What you just did… is wrong.

—What? What did I do? He passed K3!

Deep rewinds the video to show Idir begging the terrorist to kill him. Tom is well aware of what transpired; he saw it from his office. But watching it again—Idir’s son putting his hands over his ears, Idir’s wife putting her hand on the window, the terrorist firing his gun—Tom realizes how much trouble they’re all in. This isn’t just highly irregular. It isn’t just the kind of thing that gets people fired. This is the kind of thing that gets out. There have been mistakes in the past, plenty of them, but never anything this juicy. This… it’s too good not to leak. It’s a bloody piece of meat in shark-infested water. It’ll get out. It’s only a matter of when.

—It’s… his family, you gormless git!

Tom regrets using those words. Deep is obviously an idiot, but that’s no reason to be unprofessional. What matters now is containment.

—So what? He passed!

Tom no longer regrets using those words. He’s getting agitated. He can see it all. A minister resigning. The Prime Minister denying everything. They’ll find a patsy, or two, or three. Containment.

—Laura, close the door. No one leaves this room.

Laura gets up and locks everyone inside. Deep resets the big screen to a live view. Idir is on his knees, crying.

—Guys! What’s going on? He passed K3. He volunteered. He volunteered like… five times! He was willing to die right there and then! Did you see that?

Tom’s furious.

—You. Stupid. Little. Shit. You can’t use the man’s family!

—He. Passed!

—You can’t do that! You can’t use his family!

—Why?

—Because… it’s against the rules.

—No. It’s not! You’re talking about Appendix A, item number four. That doesn’t apply!

If Deep is guilty of anything, not knowing what’s in the manual is not a part of it.

Tom takes a deep breath.

—Don’t you think that, maybe, being his wife and kid qualifies as “having a connection”?

—Yeah, maybe. But it only talks about one! There’s nothing in there about using two people he knows.

Tom wonders how much more trouble he’d be in if he also beat some sense into this kid.

—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?

—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.

—Can we give him another chance? Erase his memory and let him try again?

Tom waits for Laura to answer.

—Can’t do it.

—But the manual says it’s completely safe.

—It is. It won’t kill him. But I’ve put people on the plane, and it’s not as pretty as what the brochure says. He’ll forget everything that happened, that’s for sure. He’ll also forget he has a dog, or where he went to school. He might forget what he likes for breakfast, how much he loves his wife. He won’t be the same man, and if he fails again… We do this to him twice and we’ll turn him into a vegetable. I’m sorry.

—He won’t fail! He hasn’t failed! He passed!

—I know. I know. I wish there was something we could do, but there isn’t. It’s time to let go.

She turns off the monitor showing Idir in the hospital bed. She hands Deep his manual and his notebook. Deep picks them up and grabs his backpack from the floor. He gets up and walks away with his head down. He mumbles:

—He passed….

Laura reaches forward to turn off the large screen. She pauses.

—Wait. Wait.

—What?

—Look!