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Casper shifted uneasily in his seat. His nerves were jumping with every sound he heard as he glanced around the room, looking for familiar faces. He immediately noticed two boys from his AP English class, and a girl from his gym class. The building he had entered was newly constructed, and the smell of metal and fresh paint was stinging his nose. Setting his book bag on the ground, Casper turned to the person slouched in the seat next to him. There were about a hundred people in this room. He had passed many rooms, all full. It was surprising how many people had earned scholarships from the American Rewritten Consortium. Maybe each room was a different program in itself.
"Hi," Casper half-smiled, half-grimaced at the boy seated beside him. The boy was smaller but very lean. "Are you going into the literature field?"
The boy looked at him oddly through his sweep of black hair. "Not at all. Why?"
"Oh." Casper sat back, wanting to disappear. "I just thought...um... because of the scholarship."
"For athletic achievements and commitment?" The boy frowned at him, giving him a judgemental glance. Casper opened his mouth to question further as his face fell, but someone came into the room. It was a man, thick and muscled, with cropped orange hair. The words "In A Blink" were threaded onto his breast pocket, and the ARC initials on his hat. His eyes traced across the room sternly.
A woman with a pine green shirt, an emotionless face, and a slick blonde ponytail serpentined through the room, pulling a bar above each table down. The gears shifted and clicked as it lowered. Casper watched it hover before him, attached to a long black rod. A weird device was connected to the bar, in front of each seat. He inched closer, leaning forward to examine it.
"Pay no attention to D—" The intimidating, unauthor-like man said suddenly, his voice reeking of authority and demanded obedience. "...my colleague. You will need to fill out these forms. We will be paying for your schooling as promised in your letters,"
The people around Casper fell into a round of applause and eagerness, all bristling with energy. The man nodded tightly, a dismissive thank-you. Casper hesitantly joined in. Another green-shirted person flitted through the room. They placed a mountain of stapled papers in front of each student.
"But as you all should have read in the agreement, was that for this educational support, we require a couple years of service here." The man crossed his arms. "Fill out these forms to assure you are eligible for the work."
A girl in front of Casper slowly raised her hand. She brushed aside her purple hair, revealing swirls and hooks of tattoo designs snaking around her forearm, and slithering up her shoulder. The man, who had yet to share what his name was, did not acknowledge her, but she spoke anyway, "Was the letter not confirming our qualifications and eligibility from the application's requirements?"
The man glared at her beneath his orange eyebrows, "If you'd like to leave then feel free. Anyone is welcome to follow as well, the door is right this way. You will not be allowed a second chance." The girl hushed, her cheeks stained pink and dark lips pinched shut. Casper had the same inquiries in his mind, but decided to not risk his place for... a well-justified question, to be honest. Casper reached for a pen from the cup on the table and flipped to the first page of the lengthy booklet.
You stand before three doors as you find yourself in a room with an unarmed, but dangerous criminal. It is dark, and you cannot check what is in each room. One will have an exit. Despite the darkness, you can only choose one door to go through because the doors will turn on the lights as they are opened. The criminal will be able to come running once they see the three doors. So you listen and you smell, anything to help choose a door. The first door on the left has the sound of a faint dripping and smells of leaden water and lavender. The second door has an inconsistent low hissing sound, almost a whistle. No smell comes from the slit in the second door. As for the third door, there is no sound coming from the other side. Though it does smell of stagnancy. You are losing time. Which door do you pick?
Casper stiffened and reread the question. What was this nonsense? There were about thirty of these questions. He wondered if it had anything to do with following a story line, creating a plot. Maybe it was just understanding of the things around you, or senses in literature. No. He had no clue. But he answered as he could.
Time passed quicker than he thought as Casper found himself getting a hang of the mind-twisting scenarios. The snobby boy next to him had not yet written anything. Casper pretended to not notice him looking around the room, arching his neck to peek at papers.
You are a doctor in a hospital, and a series of ambulances brings five patients from a car accident. They are all very injured and each need a different organ transplant or else they will die. You have another patient sleeping in one room over, who is perfectly healthy and is just resting after blood collection, which made him/her a bit faint. You recognized them from the news, as two years ago they were arrested for a serious crime, but was never found guilty. The whole town knows they were guilty. You are the only doctor. Would you kill this patient to save the five dying patients by using their needed organs?
Casper chewed his lip and found himself grinning. These questions were interesting, so he scribbled down his answer eagerly. The raven-haired boy's gaze followed each word he wrote. After two grueling hours of silence, the tests were collected whether one was finished or not. The black-haired boy hadn't answered one question, not one. Casper looked up hopefully at the first colleague as she swiped his completed papers away. She inserted each into a slot in the front wall that pulled them in hungrily. The buzzing of machinery whirred and scraped from where the slot was. The blond lady handed several tests that were untouched, including the one of the boy next to him. The man at the front of the room broke into an approving smile and chuckled.
"Good work," He said, voice lacking a drop of sarcasm. He was serious. Casper was taken aback. He resisted the urge to raise his hand. Had he screwed up big time? Was his scholarship lost already?
"Don't dwell on it," The orange-haired man grunted at the concerned faces. "Put on the device before you. Don't worry, it only needs to go on for a moment."
Casper instantly forgot about his test and peered up at the machine. It looked like Virtual Reality goggles, like ones for a gaming system. A band wrapped around the back to keep it sturdy against its user, making it like an open-top helmet. Casper pulled it towards him, breathing in the smell of bleach and sterility. He scrunched his nose, the sharp smell reminding him of a hospital. Nonetheless, Casper didn't hide his curiosity and zeal. This place was so advanced. No wonder they had so much money to throw around at students nose-diving into a bottomless swimming pool of debt and loans. Placing the cold metal onto his face, it perched well on his nose and clasped automatically around the back of his head. He couldn't hide his gasp as it adjusted itself perfectly to the shape of his head. The words "Waiting to begin" glowed before him on a white screen, very much like a gaming headset as he had assumed.
"Everyone has their band on?" The man's gravelly voice asked. A colleague hummed an answer, a yes. "Good. Now follow the directions as they appear. Begin."
Casper bit his lip and fiddled his fingers. The white screen changed to full black. The words had disappeared along with it. He waited a moment. Another. The screen didn't change. People around him stirred in their seats.
Shyness be damned, Casper asked anyways, "Um, I think mine is broken—"
His muscles went slack and heavy as Casper June and every student in the room blacked out.
YOU ARE READING
The Shell of Casper
Mystery / ThrillerImprisoned, manipulated, weapons in progress. What would it be like to kill every creature you laid eyes upon? Having the ability to reduce a being before you to a crumbled corpse in a breath's worth of time? And what might a person do with an army...