He sneered, and felt tempted to roll the poster up and throw it in the trash. But there was something beneath the disgust. A strange feeling— oddly familiar, yet he couldn’t place it.

He continued reading the poster.

Preliminaries:

Wednesday, May 13th

Sign up for your local preliminaries today!

It was the most curious sensation which began to arise inside of him. It was something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. At first he thought it was anxiety, but as his thoughts turned towards the outcome of winning the competition, he realized that he wasn’t scared.

He was excited.

He shook his head. There was no way he was actually considering this. What was he going to tell them?

“Sorry, but do you have a small mountain of ether batteries I can borrow? Trust me, I’m an expert.”

The thing is, he was certain that if they allowed him to enter with the condition that he was allowed to use ether batteries, he could win that damn competition, and get the hell out of this city. Despite the risk, he felt like a potential avenue to freedom had opened up and he’d be a fool not to take it.

100 000 credits would go pretty far with him. Then it occurred to him that job security would also be pretty nice in the future, after the life he'd been living.

He almost gagged at the thought.

That wasn't like him. Those were not the type of thoughts he tended to think.

Was it stress? Maybe he was starting to crack under the weight of uncertainty for his future.

He entered the rec center and talked to the person at the front desk. They gave him a pamphlet explaining more about the competition.

Like it said on the poster, it was a team competition but the preliminaries were a knowledge test. He just had to show up, pass the test, and he’d be entered into the competition for the coming weekend. But he’d need to travel all the way to the Oberon Capital City to compete.

And he’d be going without a team, and he’d be taking the risk of actually losing and having nowhere to go.

Yet, the possibility of winning remained.

The excitement that came with that thought was almost overwhelming. It was a feeling he hadn’t felt in ages. He applied for the preliminary test, which would be held at the rec center at noon the next day.

After passing, the only thing he needed to figure out was how the hell he was going to get to the main competition. He considered the 50 credits in his pocket that Mrs. Margaret had given him.

That should be enough for a taxi, right?

He made it home without much hassle from the street rats. They seemed disinterested in his arrival, save for a few threatening glances and one of them pointing to their watch.

Time was ticking.

He didn’t sleep well that night. He could hear the Comics out front, a constant source of noise and annoyance until they got bored and headed home. After finally catching a few hours of sleep, Hunter had a small breakfast and reviewed some notes from his latest research until he had to leave.

Hunter contemplated Seckina City as he walked through it on the way to the rec center. The name ‘Seckina’ was a legacy from an ancient language. Not quite as old as the Asutnahem, which was about as dead as languages got.

Seckina. The word was supposed to mean “Dauntless”

What Hunter thought of when he heard the word, was stubbornness.

Tunnel Vision.

Ignorant obedience to a vast machine marching along at the cost of your own life.

All sentiments he typically attribute the Council and their grand, unifying legacy. The stubborn chase for power, the inability to see beyond their egos, and utter indifference to the damage they cause to whoever gets caught up in the wake of their games.

He’d seen bureaucrats show up to Mrs. Margaret’s store, voiding contracts that had years until they would expire, contracts which she and her family relied on were suddenly terminated because a competitor offered them a better deal. They didn’t care about the impact of their choices, unless it was about how it would impact their reputation and back account.

Most people wouldn’t be able to get away with such a blatant disregard for written agreements. But the Council, and those connected to the Council, weren’t under the same limitation as most people.

They weren’t beyond taking everything from someone who couldn’t afford the loss in order to further their agendas.

They would have found nothing on his family’s old estate. Hunter had looked, after his father had died, and before they ‘found’ the bodies. Nothing of his fathers work was left. At least, not that he hadn’t already given to the world.

As he walked, he could spy the tall, sparsely placed e-towers that received and transmitted wireless etherium signals— one of the legacies that his father had left behind. They were peppered throughout the city. Most businesses preferred the secure communications the ether-comms could provide compared to the alternatives. The downside of communicating along an etheric network was that although it was wireless, it required a lot of static infrastructure, and line of sight for the signal to travel across.

Whereas most personal mobile phones could be used anywhere where there was service available. The brick-sized devices were a bit of an eyesore and a hassle to carry around, but their convenience made up for the inferior security. Besides, Hunter doubted if most people would ever need to worry about their conversations being overheard.

It was the people with things to hide, and things to lose, who decided to invest in gaining access to the e-tower network. His father once had sole ownership of those towers, now he could see a bunch of different logos painting across their long cylindrical surfaces.

LockeMark Industries, the Lumina Company, and the Pacific Shield. Three out of the five megacorporation's who owned the world, and the realms beyond it. And he presumed they were the three corporations who were most likely to have conspired against his family. He would bet all 50 credits in his pocket that they were behind the explosion which had ended his fathers life.

His father never gave into their demands, and always rejected their offers. He built the network himself, found high-level, independent investors who wanted an income stream aside from their parent companies. With their seed money, and a grand vision, Gideon Koar had started his own iconic company. The Council was jealous of such a pig living among them which they could not directly influence. So, Hunter guessed, they took action to ensure that their dominance was absolute. His fathers’ company was absorbed along with all land that the Koar name had held. Every credit his father had saved now belonged to companies who already had more money than they could ever spend.

As far as he could tell, Oberon wasn’t in on the council’s plot. However, as a council seat, there was no way that Trey Oberon could avoid accountability. As far as Hunter was concerned, Oberon Enterprises and Smith Transports were just as complicit whether they had a hand in it or not. Knowing and not doing anything about it made them guilty, and there’s no way they wouldn’t have known.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Of course they’d known. They’re Council Seats. You don’t rise to the top of the pile of money-hungry pigs by being a saint, or ignorant. You consume all the other smaller pigs, and make deals the other bigger pigs to make sure your reign can’t be challenged. That being said, if it came down to a choice between which companies he’d throw in his hat with, Oberon and Smith would be the main contenders, if only for the fact that they didn’t smother their branding all over whatever remained of his fathers work.

That was the deciding factor. He’d almost convinced himself not to come this morning, telling himself that he should either run away or join the gang. Too much could go wrong. He could have totally underestimated the competition. What if the test touched on something he’d only be familiar with had he attended a school? What if they decided that his AR was too low for him to be taken seriously?

What if he grew too tired, too fast? His physical weakness made it a real possibility. What if he he couldn’t even compete?

Then he reminded himself that he has some advantages that the other contestants didn’t. Unlike them, he’s been able to devote the majority of his young life to etherium and constructs. He could probably match most experts in the field in terms of knowledge.

He also had very little to lose, all things considered.

Coming up to the rec center he was surprised to find a line out the door. Eavesdropping on the conversations around him revealed that they were all here for the same reason he was. They all appeared to be around his age, and were most of them were graduating this year. It made sense, now would be the perfect time to gain a corporations attention. Even if they didn't win, there is no way Oberon would let young talent go so easily, right?

He found the thought oddly comforting. And for a moment he was disgusted with himself.

Is this how easy it was for his sense of integrity to be challenged?

A moment ago he was cursing the existence of all corporations, and suddenly he was seriously considering a future with one— and to the point of worrying over whether or not he would be worthy enough to gain their attention or favor.

But what was the alternative?

He decided that overthinking it too would only serve to stress him out. What would serve him now was reviewing what he did know, and what he could do. Basic schema, formula lists, the ever-growing combinations of synergies that he treasured as the greatest work of his young life, they all flashed through his mind as he took an inventory.

And he realize he was coming up against another potential problem. Just how much exactly did he know about synergies compared to these hopeful students around him? Compared to his peers? How stunted was his education? What if some of his synergies he'd so prided himself on discovering were considered common knowledge? The library wasn't necessarily an artisan’s wonderland. Compared to most industries, ether artisanry was still considered relatively niche and emergent.

The best approach was to be careful. If he revealed too much, maybe certain questions would be asked about Jonathan Esper that would lead to the discovery of Hunter Koar.

He thought that the only way to ensure he safely passed the test was to underperform. Yet that circled back around to the original problem. His information was lacking. He was certain he’d probably read all the right information at some point. Somewhere in his mind, were all the relevant names, dates, and events he would need to memorize for the test.

But where would he even begin? He didn’t have time to go to the library and refresh his knowledge. There was too much to go through.

Yet he still felt this was all worth the risk.

It was his turn to approach the front desk. They directed him to the gymnasium where the test was being held. He walked down a long, silent corridor. His steps echoing slightly. A soft murmur began to intrude in the silence. Signs appeared pointing the way down a few branching hallways towards his destination. The murmuring grew into a wall of voices. Hunter hadn’t heard so many people together in the same place for years.

The gymnasium was more packed than he'd expected. What must have been more than a hundred tables were ordered throughout the gym, all facing the same direction. Were there really so many young artisans in Seckina? Maybe they were also from some of the surrounding towns. An annual contest like this might be a big enough deal to attract a lot of attention. An attendant at the gymnasium door directed him towards a seat. Within minutes the rest of the seats were filled.

A woman appeared at the front of the gymnasium. She was a bit older, had blonde hair and kind eyes, but with that unmistakable pride of a corporate cut-out.

“Hello, welcome to the annual Youth Ether Artisan competition preliminary test. My name is Joyce, and I'll be one of the 4 Oberon representatives marking your preliminary tests. The test is 80 questions long, and time to completion will factor into your score. This year’s test will be a bit more challenging than previous years, and will require a score of 95 percent in order to pass,” Joyce said, barely pausing at the chorus of gasps arising in response to her announcement.

“The offered sponsorship to the Barnum Academy of Excellence has only occurred af few times in the history of the Youth Etherium Arts Competition, and the requirements for those years have always risen. This year, only the best of the best will be allowed to compete for the chance of a lifetime. Does that answer your questions?” Joyce asked the murmuring youths spread out before her.

“Now, you will have a total of 1 hour to complete the test. I and a few others will be watching closely to ensure that there is no cheating. Any questions?”

Oddly enough, there were a few questions. Such as, ‘will there be half marks?’ which made no sense to Hunter. Who would grade a question as half right? What kind of insane calculus did they use to determine that a question was over 50 percent correct?

Absurd.

What if it was over 50 percent right?

Hunter was curious about the test. The last test he’d taken must have been over 6 years ago— he’d already stopped going to school before his father had died and the estate was taken from him.

It had been a mathematics quiz. Multiplication. He remembered doing very well. By the time most of his class was struggling with learning basic algebra, he was working on memorizing construct schematics, and trying to supplement his lacking education in his spare time at the library.

It was the school environment itself that he found himself ill suited towards, but not learning. He loved to learn.

This test felt a bit nostalgic to Hunter, but the intensity wasn’t lost on him. He could see jaws clenched and brows furrowed as the pressure to perform rose in the people around him. The test seemed a lot more daunting than it had a few minutes ago.

The tests were handed out, a small stack of paper stapled in the upper left hand corner. There was a space for Hunter to write his name and the table he was sitting at, as well as the date the test was being taken.

There were a few questions where he felt that he couldn’t get around sharing his synergies, and he justified it by telling himself that they were too obvious not to use. In those cases, they were probably the expected answer.

And if they weren’t, he’d just say that he’d done a few experiments in his own time and had found a few new glyph combinations that worked out pretty well.

Apart from that, the test was a breeze. He only struggled on some of the more academic questions. There were a lot of names he didn’t recognize, but he did his best to deduce what the question was asking him based on the information given.

In the multiple choice portion, when he came across this situation, more often than not the answers themselves would offer enough information regarding the subject what the question was aimed at.

Sometimes, he’d be stumped, so he’d just circle ‘C’.

The written portion was more about describing the logic behind choosing one design element over another. In some cases it described seemingly arbitrary glyph choices, which Hunter could dissect and understand immediately.

All in all, the multiple choice portion was the most difficult, and comprised most of the test. He was finished in 40 minutes. He walked to the front of the room and deposited his test. He wasn’t the first to complete it, but he reckoned he was among the first 10. He was surprised by how challening it was. He also felt relieved. Although there were some specific gaps in his knowledge that he’d identified, they were far less than he’d feared.

As Hunter turned to walk back to his desk, he caught the test he’d submitted out of the corner of his eye and froze. He felt weak, and the room seemed singnificantly hotter than it had just a moment ago.

On the top left hand corner, was his real name— there for all the world to see.

Calm down, he told himself. Breathing deep and slow, he considered his options.

There were only two that appealed to him.

The first one was to leave, and forget this ever happened. Leave the city and find a way to survive, somewhere, somehow. Maybe a farming community would take him in without asking too many questions. He could maintain their constructs in exchange for a place to live.

The second was absolute insanity, but it awoke something inside of him that Hunter was surprised to find.

The urge was dangerous. An reflexive itch. A crazy, reckless compulsion that Hunter already knew he was going to follow, because that’s what he did when this feeling came up.

So, he said ‘fuck it.’

Hunter Koar.

Table 47

Based on his experience, he had absolutely no way of identifying how well he did. He’d had to make too many guesses. Now, all he had to do was wait until the results were announced. Worst case scenario, his name would be recognized, the corps would be notified, and he’d be dragged away and never see the light of day again.

Best case, he would pass and they wouldn’t recognize his name.

There were a few other degrees of positive and negative between those two, as well.

The latter case felt unlikely to him. He had registered as Jonathan Esper, but had taken the test as Hunter Koar. He imagined that wouldn’t go down very well once he was caught.

But he decided to stick around anyways. He had nowhere else to go— unless he wanted to go home and deal with the street rats.

Whether he passed or failed, only time would tell, and Hunter felt surprised at himself for not really caring anymore. Once the urge to throw caution to the wind had left him, he’d expected some sort of anxiety to creep up.

When he analyzed what he was feeling, all he felt was a deep sense of being tired. He was tired of hiding. He was tired of being tired.

One way or another, his fate would be decided today.