“Are you out of your mind?” Brinda’s aunt cut off Brinda’s pitch and grew livid, “I have a million things on my to-do list and I worked for 20 hours, on holiday! You expected me to give free help?
“You’re wasting your time writing literal junk!” She lifted a piece of paper from the scattered papers on the ground. ”here’s what it says: ”
Aunt read in a chipmunk voice:“ ‘An illusion is when our senses create a concept which contradicts reality, such as watching a video from a series of moving pictures. However, when we are using a computer interface and dragging a file into the trash can, it is an abstraction from the changing voltages inside the computer rather than an illusion’. Now think about consciousness. . . ”
Aunt paused, rubbed the paper into a ball, and chucked it out of the window. “That’s what you get for writing about trash! This is for losers. Real deals, like my boy Tristan, do math.”
She gestured to a pale-skinned boy with glasses in the corner. Tristan was hitting the computer space bar while nodding his head rhythmically; neon colours flashed on his face. He lunged forward and bulged his eyes. Now he started hitting the space bar with even more force and concentration.
“And how do you know you’re not the loser?” Brinda inquired.
“Because I actually tried for the exam and did not cause havoc.” Aunt announced with glee, “You’re officially disowned! You have precisely 3 hours and 40 minutes until midnight to pack up and vanish from my sight.”
----------------------------------------
Brinda remembered being forcibly dragged to the exam centre by her aunt.
“No way this is happening! I’m on 1 hour of sleep for each of the past 8 days!” She wailed.
Huge yellow signs that said “Life Aptitude Test” were stuck onto the wall and hallways. Swarms of students crowded the hallway. Some made rigid small talk and forced themselves to giggle.
Aunt, who smiled ear to ear, spoke to Brinda: “Don’t worry, you’re a genius! You’re gonna top the exam, get 1600 and make your aunt proud!” Aunt patted her on the back.
Students streamed into classrooms. Brinda sat down and dread flooded her.
A guy marched to the front of the room and begin reading from stapled sheets of paper.
“Guhd morning poys ent gils! Mah name is Jens." He spoke with an East German accent. Brinda listened attentively to make sense of him. "Today, you’re writing an exam that will change your life. No matter where you come from and who you are, this exam will give you an equal opportunity to succeed in your career!”
“…The Life Aptitude Test spans 3 days:
On the first day, you will be tested for 3 indices:
1. working memory
2. processing speed
3. relation of ideas
On the second and third day, you will be tested fur 8 more indices:
1. visual-spatial
2. Linguistic
3. Logical-mathematical
4. bodily-kinesthetic
5. musical
6. interpersonal
7. intrapersonal
8. naturalistic. . .”
The computer read out a jumble of numbers through headphones. The voice entered Brinda’s head and instantly evaporated in a white mist.
A textbox glowed blue: Please type in the numbers in reverse!
Seconds later, the textbox was locked, and another string of numbers was read out.
There’s a war between betrayal, hopelessness and anger at once in Brinda’s head. Imagine your house is on fire and you’re tied to a chair in the basement!
She recalled when was a child on the playground. Her dad got off a mysterious van and told her about hunting for treasures together in a distant land.
It was night. The adventure stretched from a few days to years. An older Brinda lied on a dusty mat. She closed her eyes and opened them again in fear, revealing streaks of blood. Stray cats wailed on the street with bangs. In response to threats, she developed Da Vinci sleep—napping several times a day lasting 2 hours.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
It’s not uncommon for her to get no sleep at all for weeks.
How nice would it be to just take an exam and be a neuroscientist, rather than be commanded around called instantly? Brinda thought.
When she finally snuck out of the distant land, Da Vinci tagged along.
The clock on the wall moved by 5 mins. Sounds of breathing now became amplified; She could hear people swallowing and was now impossible to focus on a single question. Brinda looked around instinctively. Everyone else was buried in their computers.
Jens, sitting in a corner, started walking towards Brinda.
“Attempt to cheat and I will knock you off by a standard deviation!” Jens admonished.
“Sir, I’m not cheating. I haven’t gotten sleep in 8 days.” Brinda explained. Everyone turned their heads toward her, “I can’t perform well, but maybe better with extra time!”
The classroom erupted.
“I didn’t get sleep either!” Ten students spoke up at once.
“I request double time! What about kids with ADHD and dyslexia!” A boy yelled and slammed his table.
“What’s the point of having 11 indices, when we could just have one? Not to mention, I could just lie in a machine and get scanned!” Someone questioned.
“That does not solve the underlying problem of index being unreliable.” Brinda replied, “If someone’s brain activity is reduced, then it will likely appear on an fMRI scan too.”
A Persian stood up and strolled towards ADHD-boy and Brinda. “Accommodations take away our valuable spots for weak students like you!” He looked down at her. “If you have some ability, it will naturally show on the test!”
A dark-skinned girl stood up and refuted: “In my culture, we value social harmony more than the ability to logic. Of course the test is unbiased. And don't forget to thank your elite education, upbringing and and supportive parents.” A bunch of people giggled.
The Persian shot back: "Environment matters little. No experiment had shown one’s index could improve more than one standard deviation."
Jens knocked the table: “Speak again and I’ll bring you down by 2 standard deviations! Right now!”
The classroom hushed. Brinda spoke again: “This is corruption! Sir, one hour without sleep, and your index falls by 10 points. Two hours, 20 points. 3 hours, 40 points. And soon by a whole standard deviation. So to be fair, you must actually increase my score by at least 1 standard deviation.”
Brinda started chanting: ”1 sigma! 1 sigma! 1 sigma!” Other students joined along.
It was then everything flipped upside down.
Jens picked up a chair and hurled it at Brinda. He yelped and sprinted towards the door.
“Is that all you got?” Brinda challenged and dodged. As if to her request, a transparent slice was taken out of her view of the classroom, one after the next. It looked as if someone cracked a window into multiple panes. As if there’s a bluetooth speaker in the sky, an EDM song was blasting.
What is happening? Brinda’s heart started racing.
Through the biggest slice, she could see the wall clock dissolve itself like latte art, swirling into a coconut. The whiteboard faded into a video of the room, within it so many classrooms all recursing into infinity.
Pencils began evaporating like mist and transformed into swords; The ceiling lightbulbs flickered into pineapples, zooming mightily towards her with watermelons and coconuts. Brinda diced the fruits.
“3 fruit combo!” A computer voice spoke from the sky. Jens was nowhere to be seen! Brinda rushed out of the hallway.
The sun was replaced by a white, meshed sphere. It was quickly shaded orange and had a Voronoi texture added to it.
The lighting of the sun changed so that the bumps grew detailed, and the sky grew so white. Brinda got scared by the second but was running regardless.
Other students seem to have rushed out with her, flickering into miniature ninjas with swords.
Below, a ninja was speaking to a crowd of muscular ninjas. It was Jens’ voice. Brinda rubbed her eyes. The ninja gang looked up and started running toward her.
Brinda fled.
On the oily black tiles, white squares grew in the middle of nine grids. A Sierpinski carpet was emerging.
Sierpiński carpet - YouTube [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/33JKkPt2TtE/maxresdefault.jpg]
Sierpinski’s carpet
Brinda hopped through a white square, falling through a kaleidoscope of infinitely many lit squares, as if falling through the hyperspace in Interstellar.
The ninja gang punched through the Sierpinski pretense with the sound of broken glass: “Brin-da Vinci, you will never escape the curse of insomnia!” The voice boomed.
The next morning, Brinda woke to the sound of TV: “Breaking news! Student Brin-da-Vinci guilty of unleashing a computer virus—now called the Brin-da-Vinci virus—at an examination site, threatening the lives of students and the exam proctor!”
There was a footage of Brinda talking about the crime preparation gregariously, with a voice just like her and a white M, standing for Menace, flashed on the forehead.
Brinda gasped: “No!”
The news report continued: “The computer virus has been developed by a group of anonymous hackers, 2 days after the ‘Thinking Reed’ community living space had been established last week.”
The view switched to a protest on the street.
“End Thinking Reed before it Ends Humanity!” The signs read.
Numerous reporters circled Dan Dan, a famous elderly philosopher. He stretched his syllables and elaborated slowly: “Thinking Reed, is a community, founded in the 2000s that, aims to refine human cognition. Nowadays, it has strayed, from its original mission.” Dan Dan took a long pause. “It is not, a terrorist, or hacker organization.”
My reputation is ruined. How now? Brinda thought depressingly.