Slumrat Rising

At sunset the day before the Starbrite Aptitude Test was held, churches would ring their bells, temples banged gongs, and civic groups would drive around in buses, reminding people, via bullhorn, that tomorrow was SAT Day. Absolute silence was to be observed until sunset tomorrow. Or else. When the sun vanished below the horizon, so did the noise. It was the one night of the year that didn’t belong to the Ghūl. It belonged to the parents.

Mom and Dad were so excited. It was finally their time to show that they were good parents. Sure, they forgot groceries most of the time. And sometimes the kids needed a good smack to remind them about respect. And sometimes, yeah, they lost their temper and hit each other. And the kids. And took their money. And took their dreams. And took their hope.

What, are you perfect?

Besides, it was all good now. It was the Silent Night. Dad favored one centimeter wide synthetic rope. Strong enough to hold weight, he claimed, while easy on the hands. Mom thought that was terribly common and not good enough for their dear, sweet boy. Mother knew what her baby really needed. That’s why she used a length of twisted copper wire formed into a garrote. She had painted the handles with gold nail polish.

They were so proud. Tonight, they would patrol the neighborhood and make sure that no one was making noise. If they were- the rope! In the morning, they would, along with tens of thousands of other parents, escort their kid to the subway which would take him to the testing center. In as close to perfect silence as possible. Then, during the day, if someone was noisy, once again, the rope! It was exactly the sort of feel good thuggishness they could lose themselves in.

Most years, they just participated for fun. This year, it was for THEIR boy! Nothing, nothing (they drunkenly slurred) was going to interfere with his test. Which he was going to ace!

It was pass/fail based on subject area and how Starbrite was scoring it this year, but they surely didn’t care.

Truth spent a little time revising, but mostly concentrated on eating a good meal and cultivating. He found that the more he cultivated, the more the mental boost from leveling up seemed to stick around. He knew it faded away eventually, but urban legend said that the longer you can keep it, the smarter you will be when it does go.

Then to bed. The sibs were tossing and turning all night. Truth just concentrated on breathing steadily and let his mind drift. The old man on the long stone porch appeared in his dreams again, draped loosely in undyed wool cloth.

“You cannot control what others think or do. You cannot control the gods, nor fate. All you can do is your best to follow the four virtues. That is enough. It may not bring you everything that you want, but it will bring you everything you need.”

“Following the four virtues won’t necessarily fill a hungry belly, will it?” Truth heard himself ask.

“It might! Wisdom is part of the virtues, after all. It is wise to keep an adequately stocked larder. Though one should not be excessive. Moderation is another of the virtues. But your error, young Truth, is in thinking that your hunger or survival are good or bad. They are neither virtue nor vice, so they are merely indifferents. The worth of “hunger” or “survival” is entirely in your mind, and if I teach you well, you will find them of little importance. In truth, you are already dead. Your death was utterly fixed by inescapable destiny, and exists as solidly in the future as the stone beneath you does today. You are already dead, and the sooner the you of today accepts that fact, the sooner you will be content. Be grateful for the time allotted to you, and do your best.”

Truth woke. He didn’t remember his dream, but he felt calm. All he could do was his best, and accept whatever came. Time to take the test.

His parents, bleary eyed and proud, marched alongside Truth and the sibs, ropes swinging. So did every other parent. Silent police officers were on hand at the subway, directing the parents and families to fall back as their children went down the steps. There were no cheers, no cries of “Good Luck!” “Certain Victory!” “You got this!” No comforting reminder that, if they didn’t pass, there were always the lower tier employers. Not as honorable, not as lucrative, but still decent. Respectable, if not something to boast about. Better than those who failed to join a corporation at all.

Truth rode the subway to the test center. Not his first time on a subway, but it was still rare enough to leave the slums that it felt exciting and alien. Non-citizens weren’t permitted in the better parts of the city. There were entire neighborhoods that required such stratospheric status that it was literally a life sentence to turn the wrong corner. Not that you could do it accidentally. There were golems at the foot of the road, enforcing standards.

Force of habit led him towards the “Denizens” staircase. He then stopped, and took the escalator. His new identity sigil glowed softly on the underside of his arm. He was a citizen now. He had taken one enormous step to change his life.

Head now firmly in the game, he strode directly towards the Level 1 line to get into the test center. The convention center (owned by Starbrite) was converted into an anti-cheating fortress (by a Starbrite subsidiary security company) and staffed by yet more Starbrite employees taking the chance to do some volunteer work. He was inspected by a floating spirit before he reached the door, then a bright green light shined down on him. The sign said to empty his pockets into the provided bin, so he did.

There were another four rounds of security and identification verification between him and the actual test. At last it was set in front of him. The invigilators gave their instructions, instructions every test taker could have recited word for word. Then he flipped his papers over, and got to work.

The first sections were always the same. Diagrammatic and logical reasoning. Essentially pattern recognition. Truth once would have said he was good at pattern recognition. He had learned humility. This was pattern recognition hidden in math problems and verbal puzzles. It was brutal.

This was followed by mathematics, then language skills. Brutality, again, with the added hint that he wasn’t understanding some of the language things because he was from the slums. You were supposed to pair “Cup” with the word that most usually accompanied it. What the hell did that mean? Plate? You usually have a drink when you eat, right? Or bowl? What the actual fuck is a Saucer? Who needs a special thing just to put sauce in? It comes in a bottle, people!

The personality assessment section was the “easiest” as there are no wrong answers. You just need to pick all the words that describe you from a field of sixty words. And then select all the words that you think would best suit someone in the job you are applying for. Field of fifty words. Some of the words are the same. Some are not. Which are the good words? Because while there might not be any wrong answers philosophically, there absolutely were right answers for the recruiters.

Finally, since he had declared a chosen profession, he was tested on his fundamental understanding of talismans. What they were, how they worked, and why they needed careful maintenance. What frustrated Truth the most was that all the “right” answers were factually wrong or incomplete. Things like:

What is the expected service life of a Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman, assuming eight hours in operation every day?

The answer it wanted was “Five years.” The actual answer was “It depends. How cold was it on average? Was there a significant variation in average rainfall? What was the degree of fine particulate matter in the rain, and was the rain more caustic or acidic during this period? Have Ghūl been trying to break it? Have locals been trying to strip it for saleable parts?” In fact, it would be a minor miracle for the streetlight to make it five years in Harban City. On the other hand, since it was the Starbrite Aptitude Test, and the Ke-Te-Wo Type 61 Streetlight Talisman was manufactured by Ke-Te Commercial and Municipal Lighting Solutions, LLC Part of the Starbrite Family of Companies, and since the Ke-Te manual said five years, it was five years.

Test takers were expected to know it too, because Talisman Maintenance Techs fixed a lot of streetlights. Lights that, inexplicably, did not reach their expected service life. What could he do? He gave them the answers they wanted and pressed on. He finished thirty seconds before the invigilator called time.

The test had one final “Completely Optional, Voluntary, Purely For Statistical Purposes, No Individualized Data Retained, Not Scored” section, just for the Level 1 test takers. If you opted in, you walked out of the test taking center through a tunnel lined with sophisticated medical measuring devices. Apparently, they could passively measure the size, ductility and resilience of spell apertures. Allegedly, this was Starbrite checking on Harban City’s developmental conditions, and didn’t count towards your evaluation.

Not a soul believed it. The single, token, “Opt Out” line was so empty, it qualified as a vacuum. Everybody knew this test measured your compatibility with the System. And there was nothing more important than that. You can teach everything else. You can learn spells anywhere else. But if you want to wear the mantle of a spell slinging demigod, you HAD to be compatible with the System. The test gave absolutely no feedback. You just walked down a medium-long hallway by yourself, touching nothing, looking straight ahead. The security guard at the end of the hall didn’t even nod at you. You just walked past, through the sliding doors, and out into the light.

Truth looked around in a daze. He had never been to this part of the city before. Nothing here for a slumrat. Towering buildings, offices and apartments, soared into the sky. Some were literally soaring, a cluster of five apartment towers gently rose and fell around a three hundred foot tall pine tree. There were buildings that seemed to bubble away from the basic concrete shapes they were born in, stretching and twisting like clouds before being trapped back in the material world. Contract beasts like dreams of fire and smoke lazed in the sky, giving their masters the best view of the celebration to come.

The test survivors trudged silently to the Call to Glory Temple, one of the city’s largest, though far from the oldest. Everyone gathered silently in the temple courtyard, waiting for the sun to sink below the horizon. Some prayed. Some collapsed on the ground. Truth was one of the collapsers.

It was finally done. Nothing more he could do. He had the horrible certainty that he had failed. It just felt obvious. He had failed. All that suffering. All that hope. He had killed for this chance! And it was for nothing. Nothing at all. He looked blankly at the orange clouds. There will be two more corpses tonight. Not that the sibs will mind.

The sun teetered on the edge of the horizon, then sank below it. The gongs started at Call to Glory, but were picked up almost instantly across the city. Then the bells, and the cheers! The whole city roared “Victory! Victory! Victory!” The Grand Abbot floated out of the Temple and waved his five pronged spear at the sky. His spell tore open the twilight and revealed the night sky above. From that infinitely wondrous cosmos, starlight drifted down. Anointing the darlings of fate.

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