Aptitude by Cooper Shrivastava

Author:Cooper Shrivastava
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

* * *

1:00–2:00: Lunch

Without any jarring motion, they were back in the reception room. The number of candidates was less than half of what it had been during the meet and greet. The Ancient Mathematician looked dizzy.

The Beautiful Gardener was back to being beautiful again. Even though she hadn’t produced anything as far as Alena could tell, she looked extremely content.

There were plenty of empty chairs, and the Ancient Mathematician was doing the complicated calculus of where to sit that was close enough to show enthusiasm but also wasn’t awkwardly in the front row, near enough to his competitors that he wasn’t being antisocial, but still far enough that they wouldn’t have to necessarily speak to each other.

The Beautiful Gardener returned to where she had been seated earlier in the morning, and as if remembering that this problem was reduced to one that had been previously solved, the Ancient Mathematician collapsed into the same row, two seats down. Alena remained standing.

There was something touching her hip. Alena reached down and felt around in her pocket. It was hard, and cold, and shaped like a marble. She rubbed her thumb against it, tried to dig in with her nail, but it was solid and almost frictionless.

The Proctor returned to tell them to help themselves to lunch and that they would be pulled out one at a time for individual interviews.

This was it then. Finally she could sit down face-to-face with one of these so-called gods and demand to know. Were all universes destined to end horribly, or had hers just pulled the unlucky straw? The simple marble in her hand seemed to prove otherwise; she didn’t think that the application of any amount of time would be able to break it. But then, anything complex enough to be livable had been beyond Alena’s abilities to create.

She clenched the marble in her fist. If only she had been able to create a universe as complex as the Ancient Mathematician’s or as detailed as the Beautiful Gardener’s. Or at least something that could score a single point for habitability. She didn’t have a smoking gun, proof that they should have done better for her universe. She couldn’t use this to demand answers, only to beg for an explanation. And if they admitted it to her and told her it was all just a big mistake? Or that it wasn’t, and for whatever arcane reasons the Builders had chosen her universe for death, what was she going to do about it anyway? Alena didn’t know. She was just angry.

Her plan had only extended as far as preparing herself for the test by connecting to the mothership’s resources. Once she had figured out how to do it (breaking dual pole low-phase encryption, and smashing a deadbolt with a hammer), she lay back in the warm pocket of the ship testing out her new mental functions. The next thing she knew she was here.

Alena inspected the room-temperature lunch spread thoroughly, but her stomach felt high and tight, like a fist under her ribcage, and she didn’t want to put anything in it.

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