Road to Arcadia: the Path East

Chapter Six: Brains without Brawn

There was a flurry of swishing papers, sounding like a flock of birds had taken off inside the multipurpose room. Kai turned his over and took his first look at the written exam.

It was a simple, typed document with numbered questions and blank spaces left for answers. He didn't know if he was expecting something else, but there was something unexpected in the way it triggered the familiar. He was instantly thrown back to his days in school. He couldn't help recall the last time he'd been in a similar situation, sitting in a room amongst rows of students, filling out answers on an exam.

University. It wasn't long before they had to shut it down, either.

There was an alternate world out there, a world dreamt up by someone with a refusal to accept the truth, where Kai was back in his old classes today, perhaps starting the new semester or finishing up a summer course. He would have only had a few left by this point, after all.

He stopped himself. It was a dangerous trail to get thoughts lost on.

Kai took a long, deep breath, wavering only slightly, trying to channel the wisdom of Eleanor Morrison (of which he would never tell her). He scribbled his name at the top of the page and began reading.

The first couple of questions asked the test-taker to recall their knowledge about the founding of Arcadia and the R&R. Most new residents received the entire history during their initial orientation, which Kai missed on account of the unusual nature of his arrival, but thankfully there was some review during the first week of training. It was easy to remember the timeline of Arcadia's expansion. The more terrible the world got, the more people Arcadia took in.

The history of Arcadia's Recon and Rescue division followed much of the same. While Arcadia was technically two decades old, its department focused on helping others only gained prevalence partway through. The assessors in the room were amongst the first to venture out in the name of the moving city. In a way, the row in front of him was less of a panel and more of a pantheon.

For as much as he tried to push the past behind him, Kai was pretty good at reciting history. After all, those who fail to study it--

Well.

The next section was science based, questions ranging from safe food and water practices to meteorological warning signs. While he had a tendency to space out during instruction, his attention was laser focused the day they learned about chaotic weather. It could have been a sick fascination or a genuine desire to learn, but what he thought most about was of Dani, the mother with the map, who had survived one of those all too common herculean storms. He couldn't help but use the instructor's lessons to paint the backdrop of the story of her failed escape. He would try to imagine the wind speeds. The buckets of water. He would try to eject the nagging thought that repeatedly told him it was a miracle she even got out alive.

He did fairly well on that section, too.

There was a geography portion as well, naturally. As much as most would like to believe the R&R was only about swooping in at the last moment to save people, it was called recon and rescue for a reason. R&R recruits had to be good at reading maps and surveying landscapes to form a complete understanding of the environments they were travelling through. In Kai's case, basic comprehension was the best they were going to get from him.

Kai was never one for maps. His eyes had only ever grazed one a handful of times throughout his travels. His understanding of direction was innate and his insistence on going with the flow did not make him a good planner. He could point out a river on a map, etch out changes in elevation, but the finer intricacies of cartography were not meant for him.