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The beginning

All students report to your respective classes. I repeat all students must report to their classes immediately.

The school speaker was abruptly turned off. Our school director was having a hard time adjusting to technology. As most adults. I paced the hallways uncertain of my near future. The test would define if I lived or if I ceased to exist. My mother said that if I studied hard I would stay alive. I never truly grasped that concept until now. I have always had troubles with learning, mainly because I was diagnosed with dyslexia a few years into my teenagerhood. Being so that the test defined whether you lived or not nobody chose to study with me. I would always be the burden. Dyslexia basically banned me from being able to read as fast as my fellow classmates, it was bad enough that I had a hard time reading it became worse when I was told that I wasn't going to be allowed not to take the test. I sucked at writing, reading and analyzing. So it was a given, I wasn't going to pass the test. This morning I had tried to say goodbye to my mother but she wouldn't have it. She said that we would meet again. I hadn't told her that I only wished for it. I had never met anyone else in my town with the same malfunction as me. Perhaps there were pills to reduce the effect of dyslexia. Though if there were nobody ever showed them to me.
The guards pushed a kid a year younger than me onto the line, muttering something to his ear that made him turn from a zombie into a robot. Fear is an intruiging feeling. It manipulates our actions.
Everyone kept walking in straight lines with their grade. Every step down this horrid hallway took us a step nearer to our future.
I dragged my feet towards my own death, it's ironic that our own actions are the ones that get us killed or hurt. Our own decisions.

The test will be initiated in 15 minutes, no questions will be allowed nor breaks. If a guard catches one of you cheating he has the authority to shoot the kid as he has not been prepared to pass the test. Remember, we may not be there but we are watching you. May the smart survive.

That would be the last message I would ever have to hear from the government. Hopefully. Don't get me wrong, I'm terrified of dying. I'm only human, of course, i have that small hope growing inside me that maybe ill pass the test. I just wish everything could be done with. 

The test was designed to "help" our future. I can't see how it would be helping me if I don't pass it but still.  The test is subdivided into three parts: 

- Theory

- Physical

- Emotion

Those three pillars embrace the test. The first part, theory, is mainly about everything you have learned so far through high school.  If you study you pass, easy right? Of course, not, there are 35 questions about everything that you were told during high school. You only have an hour to finish that part of the test.  The questions vary through tough mathematical problems, history battles (including the year in which they happened), every single book you have read that was sent to you for your summer readings (minimum 14), physics, biology, Spanish and the list keeps going. The worse of it all is that the answers for everything except mathematics must be written in essay forms. The test sets you up for failure. 

Then when you are mentally drained you are sent to a break room for thirty minutes, which considering how much exhaustion and anxiety you have already been through thirty minutes is a joke.  After those glorious minutes and you are sent to a black room where the guards prepare you for combat. 

Combat is different than everything you have done in gym class. Of course, the training works but it is different, or at least that is what elder people have told us. The combat feels real but isn't. It is all in that black room, during the combat you can't tell what is real or not. They test you. My grandmother told me that during combat you were basically expected to survive without any of your basic needs. The black room could turn into anything they wanted, and most times as they know your deepest fears it would turn into that, so you would have to overcome your fears in order to get out of the black room. We were told that we could be held in that room for at least 5 hours. If we weren't able to overcome it we hadn't passed the test, therefore, we couldn't do the third pillar. 

The third pillar is the toughest one of them all. No one really talks about it. There are rumors going around that say that someone gets in your head and tortures you endlessly. When I asked my grandmother she simply said that I must never ask anyone about the third pillar test. She seemed unfazed. Unscathed by it. While others are appalled at even the mention of it. 

Mainly this test is meant to reduce the society. Years ago, even before my grandmother was born there was a massive issue with overpopulation. Planet earth was seriously overpopulated and there was no food nor land for everyone to fit.  There was a martial law implemented by which all countries must take responsibility for their overpopulation. Different methods were used such as only letting parents have 1 kid. Which obviously didn't work. When the Japanese government implemented this test it was at first seen as an abomination but then it was seen as the only actual solution.  It was since used in every country of the planet. 

The test takes place every 19th of July in every country. There are difficulties with hours and such so it was settled that kids would sit for it at the beginning of the day and would possibly finish it late at night. 

Personally, i believe this test only serves one purpose and it is to turn everyone into robots. I can't wrap my head around the fact that my parents are letting me sit for this test knowing that I won't come home ever again instead of proposing me to escape, or at least fight for me. All generations have surrendered to their governments instead of demanding them to find another way.

I hear a shy cry and I know who is crying. It's Sasha. She is right behind me dragging her feet. Who would have thought that the red head fiery would cry over something so trivial as a test? 

I would never get to do things with Sasha. I had known Sasha since I was 4 years old. Or at least that is my oldest memory with her. Since we met we were inseparable and unstoppable.  The dynamic duo. Joined at the hip. A void slowly grew inside of me. I resented the government and the entire world for taking away the happiness of my best friend and my own life. 

Sasha knew that I wasn't going to make it, she even asked me to be her study partner but I knew that I couldn't be a burden for her. She was the smartest girl in the whole town.  I had told her that my parents had gotten me, great tutors. In reality, they had tried to find me tutors but with our low budget and my difficulties, they couldn't get someone to help me. Eventually, they gave up. As everyone does. 

I couldn't dare to look back and see Sasha crying. I knew that if I saw her like that I would turn into a mess myself.