She points to someone behind me.

“Yes?”

A voice echos out from one of the furthest back rows:

“You haven’t really told us anything. If you’re gonna shut off the slides can you at least paraphrase what they were gonna say?” They shout.

“Sure, let me go ahead:” She replies, grabbing the remote from her pocket and turning the slideshow back on, before pretending to return the remote to her pocket, snapping her arm back, and aggressively turning it back off. “PSYCH!”

The room is silent.

“What part”, she lectures, “Of ‘I’m a busy woman and will not be answering questions’ don’t you understand? Just download the fucking slides when you get home for christs sake, they’re open source.”

“What house?!?” a voice cries out from the room “I’ve never even been here before!”

The lecturer loudly moans as she begins walking out of the room. “Look, I’ve got an important Irish Coffee to get to.”

Before she can get to the door, a voice I recognize interjects. It’s the guard from earlier, Stephany.

“Could you at least explain the shackle row to them, thanks? We’ve already had an attempt.”

“That would be nice…” a tiny voice from the back hesitantly adds.

The lecturer huffs, “It’s for their own safety, alright? Don’t believe me? Go ahead, be a hero; see what a mace to the side of the head feels like. Fucking dunces.”

She opens the door, walks through, and slams it on the way out.

The room goes completely silent.

Someone in the back rapidly begins hyperventilating. Their neighbours talk to them in a soothing voice, attempting to calm them down, but eventually the hyperventilation comes to a peak and they scream: “What the fuck is going on?!”

They immediately break down into a fit of tears, and after a while their neighbours give up on consoling them.

The rest of the room stays silent, presumably contemplating the situation, or busy in the middle of their own (significantly less verbal) panic attack.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably more like thirty minutes, a similarly suited but significantly shorter man walks into the room.

“I hope you all enjoyed the presentation!” He cheerfully projects into the room. “Ms. Yamada is consistently one of our top rated presenters. The transition can be tough, but we’ve got the best of the best on your case!”

He scans the room, rolls up his sleeve, and jots down a note on his arm. “Only one crier! I don’t know how she does it!”

“Anyway,” he continues. “It’s about time for your mandatory cognitive testing! ♫Gu-arrrr-ds♫!”

Guards flood in from the door and line up towards the back of the room.

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“Alright, let’s start with the back row!” The presenter shouts over the clinking sound of dozens of guards armour.

I turn towards the back, hoping to get a better look at what’s going on.

The guards form an orderly queue and march in line behind the back row. There’s exactly one guard per prisoner, standing squarely behind them.

In perfect sync, the guards pull out black metal paddles from their breastplates and swipe them across the chains restricting their prisoners necks. Slowly, the chain-link closest to each prisoners neck begins to shrink, pulling them back slightly and restricting them further. Some prisoners go slightly red in the face and begin to cough.

At the same time, just a few centimeters away, an identical chain-link begins to grow out of nothingness in space.

Soon, the original pieces fully disappear, and the chains go limp; clanking on their chairs.

The guards immediately seize their respective prisoners and walk them out the door.

I pulsate in fear. I want to run, help the prisoners, do anything. Instead, I sit still, not moving a muscle. I’ll be a sludge of brains on the wall before I get anywhere near the prisoners.

Soon enough the prisoners have all been marched out, and they continue with the next row up.

Anyone with half a brain can see what’s happening. The room’s exiting one row at a time, and I’m sitting in the front. That must mean something, but despite wracking my brain I can’t come up with anything solid.

They’re only evacuating one row at a time, meaning that each attendee gets a full guard to themselves. Why would they need such a high ratio? And why start at the back, with the most presumably dangerous of us?

Are they afraid of a riot? Where are they taking us?

I tense and look around me, some others seem to have gotten the same idea; but it’s too late to do anything. By this time the room had dwindled down to five rows, not a chance I was willing to take.

I calm myself down, breathe in and out, and await my fate.

A few minutes later, the guards finished evacuating the row immediately behind us, loudly locking the door behind them.

...

I look around, unsure. Why’d they leave us behind? What do they have in store for us? Before I could work myself into a full blown panic attack for the third time today, the presenter puts a big smile on his face and pans his eyes over the front row.

“Now that we’ve gotten rid of the riff-raff” he cheers, “it’s time to chat with you people. The good ones.”

He looks distraught for a minute but quickly adds:

“Well, some of those we just sent off are good too. About 15% statistically, but we need a bit more time to classify them, you know? Can’t have bad types hanging around just so we don’t misclassify anyone”.

He scans the row again, clearly looking for some type of reaction.

“None of you get what’s going on? Remember what Ms. Yamada was saying earlier: ‘Aleph, Bet, Gimel’?”

None of us say anything, the row stares at him with a complete lack of comprehension.

He continues, clearly somewhat shocked by our profound lack of reaction. “I get it, my first day was overwhelming too, but rest assured: You did well, you’re in Aleph, and we’ll do our best to support you through this trying time.”

He ends his speech facing the row with his hands open infront of him. Saintly in appearance.

“You, uh, still have to do the cognitive training though. It’s mandatory.”

He walks to the door, opens it, and gestures. “Come with me, we have a special room for all of you.”

We stand up one-by-one, left to right, and follow him into a uniformly lit hallway. Down it are several metal sliding doors, each of which are flanked by a small black rectangle plastered into the wall next to them.

He takes us several doors down, then touches his wrist to one of the black rectangles. It draws a singular drop of blood which slowly eeks its way through a maze of rune-like capilliaries. Soon, the blood recedes, the rectangle turns green, and the door rockets open.

We make our way into a plush room. In the middle is an intricate Afghan rug displaying a Seraphim surrounded by rings of reverent worshipers; along my opposite side are rows of bookshelves flanking a roaring fireplace. A couple of singed pieces of paper are visible near the hearth, clearly someone had thrown a book in before.

To my left however, was another row of doors. Each door had a golden name emblassened on its front, and to my shock, one right in the middle sported my name. “Alex White. ℵ”.

“Take a seat everyone, and relax” the presenter tells us, “your doors will open shortly, and your guides will take you through the rest.”