As news of the announcement spread among the graduates, people were starting to trickle out of the gym and into the rest of the school. Kenya and I slipped out of the gym together, but the lobby was already packed with people using the walls to pull up their emails to check their status. From what we saw as we started heading deeper into the school, no one was getting the news that they were looking for. No one was getting in. Each groan of disappointment from them meant one fewer person that might have taken our spots.
We slipped past the lobby and into the hallways leading to the classrooms. The classrooms were technically off limits to the graduates, and the lights were all off for the day. The building had no windows, so even the blue light of Kep didn't permeate the hallway much past the lobby. The only light available to us was off of my implant. I shined it back and forth across the hallway, looking for other people that had slipped out there during the party. They would have been there to make out, or to destroy the school. We were there for our future.
"In here," Kenya said. She led the way to the first classroom, but the door was locked. As were the next three. The deeper we headed into the hallway, the darker it got.
"Let's just use one of the doors," I said. "They might work."
"Did they use the same paint on the doors?" she asked. The smart walls worked off of a special paint that was only slightly more expensive than normal paint. As the school had once been a transport before dropping down on New Kansas, the transport committee had deemed the expense worth it. The doors were made up of the same metal as all the other surfaces and painted the same shade of white. While no one had ever tried it, I figured it would work just the same.
"Only one way to find out," I said.
When the sixth door proved to be just as locked as the others, I placed my implant against it. The door flickered for a moment before a display popped up on its surface. The paint only projects what the implant would normally display on any surface. Even the touch inputs were detected by the implant rather than the smart wall. The wall just allowed for better conduction.
My notifications were still open from when Kenya was looking at them earlier. Right on the top was my email notification for the email from the Pilgrims Admissions Board. There was a mini-display for the contents right below it, but I quickly clicked off the display before I could see it. Kenya and I had promised that we would open them together. And together was how we were going to handle it.
"Ready?" I asked.
Kenya came up next to me, squeezing between the display and the lockers that lined the wall behind her. She smiled over at me, nodding her agreement. We each were using different email systems for the applications, using different apps that knew exactly how to be arranged on the standard desktop. Together, we both tapped our appointed icons, popping up the two apps together. My desktop vanished as the apps loaded up in its place.
I had five unread emails in my inbox. Kenya only had the one. She hadn't used her main email address for the application, just for this purpose. After glancing at the subject line for the other four emails, I hovered my finger over the fifth one. The only important one. The only email I cared about.
"Ready," Kenya said.
We both tapped our emails, opening them up on the screen. They were both identical, down to the letter, save our names across the top. That was a good sign. Either we were getting in together or we were staying home together.
The email was long winded. I barely scanned through it as it explained the Pilgrims, their mission statement, the recent activities, a statement from the president herself. We both had to scroll past two long pages of crap. Well... it wasn't crap, of course. It was very important information, that I had read and re-read several times over the years. Ever since we decided to apply.
Down at the bottom of the emails, below the signature line, was our results. Together, we scrolled to just above the line in question. I stared at the last line that was between us and our future.
"Doreen Scott. Your approval status for the Pilgrims is:"
"The suspense is killing me," Kenya said.
"Let's do this."
We both scrolled up together. We were both disappointed together. Both of our emails said "Rejected" in big red letters.
"What?" I shouted. My voice echoed around the otherwise empty hallway.
"How-how is that possible?" Kenya asked. "We did everything right. We were awesome. Who deserves to get in the Pilgrims more than us?"
"This has to be a mistake. We're third and fourth in our class. We had all the requirements for admission and more. Did Jack and Hark get in? I didn't think they were applying. I thought Jack was going to Harvard or something."
"No, Hark is going to Harvard," Kenya said. "Jack is going to Yale. There was that huge fight between them three months ago when they found out. Remember? We're the top in our class that applied for this. This doesn't make any sense."
"Maybe Dad would know why," I said.
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I tapped both of our email apps to close them, bringing my desktop back into view. A swipe and a tap opened up the video chat app and I immediately dialed up home. It was still early, barely 6:20. Not even time for dinner yet. Dad clicked on almost immediately, his face showing up on the wall at an odd angle. The camera would be in his implant, and he never got into the habit of looking at it instead of the display.
"Hey, kiddo," Dad said. "Kiddos. Shouldn't you be--"
"We didn't get in," I said, interrupting him.
"What?"
"We didn't get in. We didn't get in the Pilgrims."
It wasn't like I had to really stipulate that last part. The Pilgrims was the only group we applied to, the only post-graduation plans that we made. It made no sense that we didn't get in. That we were barred from the one and only thing that we wanted to do with our lives. Why would they do such a thing?
"Oh... Well... I guess... You could just apply again next year?"
"That's it?" I asked. "Apply again next year? No, we can't apply again next year. We'll be competing against everyone applying next year. We'd have nothing to show for the extra year. What are we going to do? How can we possibly show that we're better than all the recent graduates next year that have all been working their asses off to get in?"
"Well, I don't think many of them were working them as hard as the two of you were," Dad said. He was trying hard not to laugh, and it was showing on his face.
"Exactly," Kenya said. She was yelling into my implant, which means she was yelling into my ear as she leaned across my body to it. "We've worked so hard for this. If we weren't targeting their coursework, we'd have gotten first and second, not third and fourth. What is Dor even going to do with that many language courses? It's not like many people are looking for untrained linguists these days."
"Well, there is one--" Dad started to say. I ignored him, as usual, knowing exactly what he was going to suggest.
"Was there anything in the news this morning?" I asked. The only thing I could think of was that the Pilgrims weren't taking anyone. Or that they weren't taking anyone from certain planets. Or they were favoring other planets over us. As backwater as we were, we still had our own share of talent.
"I don't think two girls from New Kansas was newsworthy. At least not on the alliance newspapers. We might see something in the locals tomorrow, but... Well, unless you girls made a public announcement, I doubt it."
"Maybe there's something on their website," Kenya suggested. "We've been so busy today that I don't think either of us had checked it."
Not even thinking about it at the time, I clicked off the video chat without properly saying goodbye to Dad. The website took forever to load, even on the school's wifi. The Pilgrims were a major group, part of the alliance government, and had a dedicated local mirror of their website. The lag on the site meant that either everyone on the entire planet was looking at the site right then, which was possible given how many people had applied, or the server was busy copying the main server from Earth. The ansible would be working to pull the data across the lightyears between our systems. Earth was practically on the other side of the galaxy from Kepler 1985, but the ansible was designed to send that data instantaneously.
But instantaneously to every mirror server on all the known worlds wasn't instantaneously enough for us.
"There, finally," I said, as the page loaded at last.
The main page didn't have anything new. It was just a banner scrolling through pictures of the last few planets that the Pilgrims had visited. There were thirty exploratory vessels traveling around the galaxy, as well as three other galaxies in the neighborhood. While the fleet focused on patrolling the areas of space around our colony worlds and those planets most likely to bear life as we know it, the Pilgrims had a broader mandate. They explored everywhere. And there was a lot to everywhere. And most of everywhere was beautiful.
I scrolled down to the bottom, where the usual tabs were. The Apply link was disabled, as it had been for months. The other links would just have old, stale information that wouldn't help any. Our only hope was that something was posted on the News tab, so I clicked on that. There was a new News item at the top, posted just a few minutes ago. The timestamp matched the one on our emails, so it must have all gone out at the same time.
Acceptance Messages Posted
The 3205 graduating class of the Pilgrims have now officially been invited to join the visiting ships as they travel through the colonies during their annual restock supply. Emails have gone out to those that have been accepted into the program. To those that have been accepted, we at the Pilgrimage would like to congratulate you. You are truly the finest candidates that we have had the honor of reviewing in all the years of this program.
In light of recent events, however, we had to adjust our usual acceptance criteria. As there are now ten more colony worlds that will be providing viable candidates for the program, as well as the recent budget cuts to our program, we will no longer be accepting a set number of candidates from each colony world.
We will still strive for diversity from out candidates. In fact, this year there were only two colony worlds were more than one candidate was accepted, and none had more than two. As the program continues onward through its lifecycle, we hope to revisit this decision at a later date. For those of you who had applied to our program and were not accepted, we do so humbly apologize.
The list of new candidates will be posted in the next few days, once all accepted candidates have responded. Unlike on previous years, we will not have a waitlist of other candidates. We appreciate all the hard work and sacrifices that all of our candidates have put in over the years of their education. We wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors.
"That's... That's it?" I asked.
"Budget cuts?" Kenya asked.
"Why didn't we hear about budget cuts?" I asked. "Dad would have known about them, wouldn't he?"
"Wouldn't he have told us? Why didn't he say something?"
"It's the stupid fleet again, isn't it. Those stupid politicians, always wanting a higher defense budget. There hasn't been a war in a thousand years. Not since the alliance was formed. Why are they so worried about it now?"
"There you guys are," Fom called to us from the lobby. Evan was standing with him, looking our way with a broad, dopey smile.
We both looked back to him down the hallway. Neither of us wanted to move back towards the light. I liked it there, in the dark. It matched my mood. We had slid down to the floor as our depression settled in. The floor felt nice. If I had been in a better mood, I might have worried about my dress being ruined by sitting there. At the moment, I couldn't care less about the dress.
"So? Did you guys get in? Of course, you got in. Why wouldn't... Oh... Why wouldn't you get in?"
"The stupid fleet," I yelled.
My voice echoed around the empty hallway, heading for Fom and Evan. Evan wisely hid himself, and his stupid uniform, behind Fom. However, Evan was much taller than my boyfriend, and I could still see him. I just shook my head before getting up and walking further into the darkness. Kenya soon followed behind me. We both just wanted to be alone, but at least we could be alone together.