Gen rubbed at his eyes to banish the simulation message, blinking a few times afterwards for good measure to ward off any more weird flashes of light.

The blinking didn’t do much to deter the actual light levels, though. Gen noticed as he finally opened his eyes and looked around himself that he was standing outside in a field, sunlight streaming down on everything around him.

The tall boy squinted under the harsh rays of the sun, holding a hand over his brow to shield his eyes from its blasting light. It took a few seconds for them to adjust, and even then, the field seemed unnervingly bright.

It must be pretty close to noon for the timeframe in this sim. That meant that whatever agricultural work he was going to have to put in, it was going to be under some long, hot rays.

But that also meant he had a decent amount of daylight to work and plan in, so it was still a plus!

Gen examined the field he was in closely, trying to wrack his brain for the agricultural knowledge he’d crammed into it over the past few days since his last failed test.

He could see what the teacher had meant by a strange disease. All the plants in the field – plants he assumed were supposed to be some kind of squash – bore the evidence of some sickness. Their smooth, colorful sides were interrupted with jagged gashes of gray, wrinkled flesh, hollowed-out marks of decay bitten into them by nature. Gen could see a weird black liquid oozing from some of the decay-marks, almost like pus welling up on the shriveled squash skin and running down it like tears of tar. He could even smell the rot from where he stood at the field’s edge, a sickly-sweet odor that crept like a rancid animal into his nose.

Something was definitely wrong with those squash plants. Every bone in Gen’s body was telling him that, just like they had told him the last time he’d tried this sim.

This time, though, he wouldn’t act on his instinct as fast. He’d give it some more time before jumping to conclusions or wild solutions.

Hopefully.

“Okay. Dead plants to the front. Sun up above. What else is here?” Gen hummed aloud, finally looking away from the pitiful field at the rest of the sim’s landscape. There was a small village laid out behind him, it seemed, with a few more fields of squash and other vegetables scattered around.

The village houses were all basic wooden ones, with thatched roofs of pale straw that reflected the bright sunlight. He could see people milling about the village, their clothes plain, dirty sheets of rough fabric that marked them as the farmers of these fields.

No one seemed to be looking twice at him, the random guy that had popped up in their mutilated pumpkin patch. The few that did gave him these looks of shock, and then ran off immediately. Strange.

Usually, Gen drew a lot of stares upon his arrival almost anywhere. Being six feet tall with a beacon of red hair on your head did that to a guy. However, indifference and pure fright were never the immediate reactions people tended to have on seeing him. The sim had probably given him a new appearance or something.

“Well, that’s new.” Gen remarked aloud, looking around quickly for the obligatory reflective surface that the sim included whenever it altered personal appearance. “On the second-year test, we had to go in as ourselves.”

Maybe they were making it easier on him for the second time around, throwing him a bone by giving him the guise of another villager or something. Perhaps a well-known tax collector, judging by the fear in some of the farmers’ eyes.

But as Gen looked around himself, squinting at all of the ruined squash and quiet houses, he couldn’t find any kind of reflective surface anywhere. Not a cracked mirror, not a windowpane, not even a puddle of water at his feet. There was nothing he could check his reflection in.

And when he glanced down at his body briefly, he was greeted with the familiar, tanned skin of his arms and the muscular build of his body, looking and feeling exactly like his body generally did outside the sim. The only thing that was different were the brown, ragged clothes draped over him. He looked like himself.

Which meant he probably was himself, again.

So then why were people reacting like this to him? What was going on?

“It’s him! I told you! I told you it was him!” A high voice screeched, drawing Gen’s attention to a huddle of farmers rapidly approaching the field where he stood.

At their head was a frowning woman with stormy-gray eyebrows and an even stormier expression, her wrinkled hand wrapped around a short wooden cane.

“This is him?” The woman in the front suddenly croaked, stopping just a few feet short of Gen and squinting up at him with rueful eyes. “He seems like a responsible enough young man.”

“It’s him, I tell you!” A teenage girl suddenly danced out of the group of farmers, pointing an accusing finger at Gen as she shot him a suspicious glare. “He’s the one who burned down all the crops in the next village over!”

With that single phrase, Gen’s heart dropped into his stomach and out his holy grail.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Of course. Of course the sim wouldn’t be throwing him a bone on his second time around. He’d bombed the test and this was the EON program, after all. You didn’t just get to walk away with terrible grades and expect to keep progressing with the rest of the candidates.

Gen’s second test wasn’t going to be easier at all. It was set up so that all of the villagers here knew about the fields he’d burned down last time.

Well, that was certainly less than ideal.

A crowd of farmers was now gathering in front of him, their eyes looking him up and down uncertainly as the girl accused him again. The ones who’d looked at him in fear before were nodding along with the girl, clearly the ones who had recognized him from the story of the burning crops. The others were simply watching him in confusion and suspicion, not quite sure what to make of this random, yet supposedly destructive stranger.

Not a single one of them trusted him, and they certainly wouldn’t trust him around their crops thanks to his stunning reputation.

Gen shifted in place slightly, thinking about what he should do.

These tests were supposed to show that you could handle true crises. If you screwed up one of them badly enough, you had to prove that you could fix what you’d done. That you could handle the consequences of your failure and pass the test you’d failed before.

EON wouldn’t let you run away from your problems. And if you couldn’t overcome them, then you’d get run over instead.

A determined grin slowly spread across Gen’s face as he turned to face the crowd, fists clenching at his sides.

It was a good thing he was just a wall of muscle that didn’t know how to back down.

“Yep. I burned down those crops.” He chirped cheerfully to the crowd of farmers, planting his hands on his hips and giving them a friendly grin. “That girl is right!”

There was a few seconds of shocked silence as the old woman and all the farmers gathered around her processed his honest confession. Then they honestly took the news about as well as he could’ve expected.

“Get this lunatic out of our village right now!” The old woman ordered, waving her cane at Gen with fury in her eyes. “The last thing we need is the likes of him, stirring up trouble around our crops!”

“Get out!” One of the men screamed in agreement, gripping a hoe tightly in his hands and pointing it aggressively at Gen.

“You aren’t burning down anything here!” A woman shouted, pointing a rake at him from the other side.

Many of the farmers took up the aggressive chants, surrounding Gen with sharp farming implements or the good-old raised fists, chanting at him and demanding that he leave immediately.

Gen held his hands up in the air to try and make himself look more harmless, steadily backing away from the angry farmers and their glinting tools.

“Look, I get that you probably don’t want a crop-burning maniac in your village. Really! I do!” He called over their shouts and jeers, grateful for the booming voice he’d been endowed with. “But don’t you think I deserve a chance to explain why I burned everything down?”

“You don’t deserve anything!” The old woman snapped from the back of the crowd, watching him with a scowl. “Burning away our livelihood without a second thought? Destroying all of our crops in the middle of a famine, when we’re short on food?! You’re a criminal of the worst kind!”

“Go away!” The shouts and demands continued, the farmers driving Gen around the crop of diseased squash and towards the edge of the village.

Yeah, diplomacy had never been Gen’s strong suit. Nor had public speaking. But he was pretty good at one thing: demonstrations.

Without thinking, Gen dove to the side, back into the field of rotten squash. The farmers shouted in panic, as though he was somehow going to light everything on fire with just the touch of his skin.

Before any of them moved closer, Gen ripped one of the closest squashes off its vine, ignoring the gross feeling of his fingers sinking into the wrinkled, rotten flesh and the sickly smell starting to coat his hand. He held the squash high above his head so all of the farmers could see it, their panicked faces looking up at him in horror.

Then he lowered the squash to his mouth and took a massive bite.

A warm, sticky liquid filled his mouth, sloshing around with the crumbling, flimsy skin of the rotten squash. The black pus-like sap of the squash was sticking to his teeth, his tongue trying its best to work it off and swallow it down with the rest of the vegetable. Most of the too-soft flesh seemed to disintegrate in his mouth, leaking an offputtingly sweet flavor onto his taste-buds for a few seconds that matched the rancid scent in his nostrils. After a few bites, though, the sweet melted away into something disgusting, his tongue feeling practically seared by a grossly bitter flavor.

It felt like an eternity passed before he managed to swallow every piece of the rotten vegetable, Gen’s body already shuddering at the disgusting food slowly creeping down his throat.

He let the squash fall from his fingers to the ground in front of the shocked farmers, the vegetable splitting open and revealing its blackened, shriveled insides.

The farmers stared at the fallen squash for a few seconds, their hands shaking a little like they couldn’t believe it was actually that bad on the inside. They looked up at Gen, their faces unsure of what he’d just done and how they should react to him.

For the moment, not even the old lady or the girl who’d accused him before spoke, everyone just staring at Gen and trying to comprehend his actions.

Thankfully, those few seconds of silence gave the squash the time it needed to begin the next delightful segment of Gen’s demonstration.

A churning feeling twisted Gen’s gut, and stabbing pain seemed to shoot through his stomach. He clutched at it with a groan, grimacing as the stabbing increased every second. He could feel something coming up the back of his throat, and he quickly stumbled over to the side of the field, the villagers’ eyes all on him.

As soon as it reached his mouth, Gen didn’t try to hold it back.

He immediately began retching off to the side of the field, his shoulders shaking as black, melted gunk came dripping out of his mouth. He hacked up pieces of rotten squash, the smell of his vomit and the too-sweet vegetable making his head swirl. He barely managed to stay on his feet as he threw up, squatting slightly and leaning over to the side in the hopes that none of his vomit would land on him.

The farmers all watched him in horror, their hands gripping their tools uncertainly as they eyed his misery.

Gen just kept vomiting, praying it would be over soon.

Finally, his body coughed up the last glob of rot, and Gen felt his shoulders slump in relief. He breathed hard for a few seconds, staring at the stinking pile of black mush and stomach acid that had just come out of him.

Dang. This squash worked fast.

Shakily, Gen straightened to his full height again and turned to face the farmers, wiping his mouth with one ragged sleeve as he did so.

If that didn’t drive home Gen’s point, he didn’t know what he’d try next.