On the way to the thermal transfer test, Shon noticed a group of students crowded around something. He stood on the outer fringe to sneak a peek, but someone grabbed his hand and pulled him into the crowd. It was Zora.
“Come over quick. Squad Osprey is here!”
It was the opportunity of a lifetime. Shon quickly followed Zora’s lead, shoving past confused faces. Since Squad Osprey was always battling the toughest storms on the front, even many currently serving Stormrunners did not have the chance to meet them in person.
Near the front, a tall, lean man was encircled by a group of students, with both Fraxians and Valerians. The man stood firm and upright, with an unusual stillness and brevity in his motion, as if he would never waste a second performing a useless act.
However, the most noticeable feature of all was his lightly glowing orange eyes. Although he was a Fraxian, all Valerian students and adults treated him with the utmost deference.
That was Captain Lynx, the leader of Squad Osprey.
“Captain, can I get your autograph,” one Valerian student said. “You saved my mom from Storm Aries. She would be so happy to see you.”
“You probably don’t remember me,” said another Valerian student. “But your squad saved my town in the northern basin.”
There were so many Valerian fans that Shon did not want to squeeze in. However, Captain Lynx spotted Shon and Zora, and he invited them in.
“Tell me, what are your names?” asked Captain Lynx in a kind and gentle voice.
Shon’s head went blank, and he began to stutter. However, Zora was quick to respond.
“I’m Zora, a student of the Deercreek Academy. That’s my friend Shon.”
Typically, introductions like this would invite sneers from Valerian students. However, in Captain Lynx’s presence, they maintained a nonchalant expression. Some even squeezed out a smile.
“Ah, Deercreek Academy, how I missed it there,” Captain Lynx laughed. “Is Professor Lilah still teaching meteorology?”
“Indeed she is. I’m gonna miss her so much. Though I have to admit, her lectures do put me to sleep from time to time,” Zora joined Captain Lynx in laughter.
“Wait,” Shon interrupted. “You’re from Deercreek?”
“Yeah, I miss those days,” said Captain Lynx. “You know that some of the best Stormrunners came from Deercreek. You are lucky to study there.”
“Wow. I - I just never thought that you’d go to the same school as me.” Shon stuttered. “No, sorry. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just meant -”
“I know what you mean,” Captain Lynx smiled. “Everyone sees Squad Osprey as something out-of-touch. But we are just like everyone else. In fact, I am probably just like you.”
Shon was surprised. Captain Lynx, the face of Fraxian legacy, perhaps the second most popular Fraxian next to XetaCorp’s Theo Xeta, just told him that he had the same potential. Shon stared introspectively. Could he also become a Stormrunner as great as Captain Lynx?
As Shon and Zora left the crowd, they were met with stares of envy. As for Shon, whatever frustration he had felt earlier on the train was completely gone.
However, it was not typical for Stormrunner celebrities to come to the Exam.
“Zora, did you feel like there was something different with this year’s Exam?” Shon asked.
“Now that you speak of it, the written test was certainly… different,” said Zora. “Not that it’s hard. But it seemed to test something more practical.”
Shon thought about it. A different test meant a different set of criteria for selecting Stormrunners. This could only mean one thing.
“The sandstorms must have changed. That’s the only reason.”
Shon hurried off to his testing room for the thermal transfer test. Just like he had suspected, the thermal transfer test became much more different.
Typically, the thermal transfer test involved extinguishing and re-igniting a fire. It was a test of concentration and brute force.
However, this time, instead of a lamp in the middle, there was a matrix of eighteen by eighteen candles, each spaced a foot apart. Some of them were ignited.
“Candidate, please sit in the center of the candle matrix.”
Shon walked into the candle matrix. He felt as if he was sitting in the center of what was a blend between a spellcasting circle and a chess board. The candles extended away from him in every direction, creating glowing orange lines of geometric patterns.
However, Shon soon noticed that these candle flames each danced to their own patterns, causing the resulting geometric patterns to mutate quickly from one shape to another.
This was the second difference. In the past, the thermal transfer test always took place in a room with stable currents, which allowed Fraxian to manipulate molecules in a much more predictable setting. However, this time, there were dozens of warm and cool currents in the room. Some collided against each other, while others interweaved together. Every few seconds, one current would die out, while another two would be created. The entire system of airflow felt like a shapeshifting mesh, enveloping Shon and the candles around him, folding and molding the flame patterns into arbitrary structures.
“Candidate, as you may have noticed, you are placed in a room with airflow pumped out in random directions and temperatures. Your job is to extinguish or reignite candles according to our instruction.”
Then Shon noticed a large thermo screen hanging off the ceiling. There were three lines, each representing a mathematical function. For every round, Shon would be given fifteen seconds to solve the system of functions, locate the corresponding area of candles, and ignite them while extinguishing all others.
Shon wondered about the changes. The complex air currents and the candle matrix all seemed to be emulating a sandstorm. This, combined with the weird essay question earlier, all seemed to be screaming that the nation was now looking for Stormrunners with practical skills.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
But why the sudden shift? Shon’s worry grew beyond his personal future. Could it mean something bad would happen to the nation? To his family?
The clock buzzed, signifying the start of the exam.
Numbers and equations flashed on the screen. Shon dived into his headspace, pulling apart each equation and realigning the numbers and variables. He felt as if he could see the shape of the function graphs in front of him, and he layered each graph on top of another, finally locating the intersection that represented the target area of the candles.
Fraxians were always stereotyped to be good at computation. Shon, in particular, was the top among the Fraxians. The computation was not difficult. The real challenge was extinguishing and reigniting the flames.
Shon quickly did a few big sweeps, extinguishing rows and rows of candles. However, he realized he misstepped, and a couple of candles in the target area got put out.
Shit, Shon cussed quietly. Compared to extinguishing a candle, reigniting one required way more energy. Shon tried to locate the heat from the recently extinguished candles, but like a paper bag caught in traffic, the heat had long been dissipated by the unpredictable air currents pumped from the machines in the walls.
Finally, Shon grabbed onto the heat from a hot air current. He tried to bring it down to the candles, but he lost focus on the environment. A stream of cold air flew past and knocked the energy away, causing it to dissipate into the ambiance.
The buzzer sounded.
“Stage one failed.”
Shon froze. How could these tasks possibly be performed in fifteen seconds? There must be some mistake.
However, the examiners gave no time for Shon to feel sorry for himself. The second stage began immediately.
Shon jumped into action. However, this time it was even harder, as many candles were put out already and had to be re-ignited. This required even more energy.
Shon tried to optimize the problem, trying to transfer each already-ignited flame before starting to capture new heat. However, while this saved energy, the optimization problem itself took up more capacity in his brain. Even after optimizing, Shon still had five candles to light up.
Just like last time, the unpredictable current patterns knocked most thermal energy out of Shon’s grasp. It took too much mental capacity to both hold onto the heat while minding the surrounding airflow.
When the buzzer sounded, Shon was unable to bring enough heat into the candles to ignite the flames. He failed again.
Shon became visibly anxious. The air around him began fluctuating in temperature. He couldn’t afford much more failures. He didn’t know the exact cutoff number, but he felt he was close.
Stage three. Stage four. Stage five. Shon failed every one of those. Either he had his heat killed by unseen currents, or he was too careful and ran out of time.
This task simply seemed impossible. Shon’s breathing quickened, and different thoughts and emotions gushed out of his mind like a barrage of water breaking through the dam. He imagined failing the exam and having to work two minimum-wage jobs like his immigrant mother. He imagined facing his sister’s disappointment, telling her that he had failed despite her giving up her own higher education to pay for his academy.
As the thoughts raced in his head, the temperature around the room began fluctuating wildly, until it reached a point where Shon couldn’t even ignore it.
Shon raised his hand.
“I’d like to use my allotted break.”
“Do you understand that this is the only break left for the remaining twenty rounds?” asked the examiner.
“Yes.”
“Granted, you have five minutes.”
Shon took a deep breath. He spent the first thirty seconds readjusting his emotions. Like what they taught in the Academy, extreme emotion was the killer of Stormrunners.
Then Shon quickly began looking for a new strategy. Evidently, he was running out of time every round. Shon reviewed every step he had taken. Performing the mental arithmetics was an inevitable step, and Shon knew that his mathematical capabilities already lied in the top percentiles. That meant he must develop a new strategy to reignite the flames.
However, Shon was already taking the most efficient approach to reignite the flames. He always transferred heat from one candle to another, extinguishing the old candles in the process. Of course, some energy would always be lost in the process of transfer, as proven by the second law of thermodynamics.
The second law of thermodynamics. Shon gasped.
This was the key to this challenge! The second law of thermodynamics stated that the entropy of a closed system would naturally increase, meaning that elements inevitably tended toward disorder. It would be easy to scramble an egg but virtually impossible to unscramble it into yolk and whites.
A sudden realization dawned upon Shon. The entire environment, with its interweaving webs of hot and cold air currents, represented a disorderly system of high entropy. Shon’s attempts to separate certain streams of air were akin to isolating egg yolks out of a beaten egg. It was arduous if not impossible.
The buzzer rang, signifying the end of his break. Shon still had not figured out the details yet, but he had a strategy of some sort.
Shon closed his eyes. As he was computing the target location, he also tuned up his senses of heat perception. He felt the interweaving web of hot and cold air, like cars in a busy city.
He positioned his consciousness on one stream of air, letting it carry him through the traffic of air. He imagined that he was riding the same train he took earlier this morning, except he was not on one single train, but on all of them simultaneously. He felt the train accelerate, taking multiple loops around the city each second.
As the air streams encircled the room, he felt the flames on each candle turning on and off, forming a slideshow of illuminated geometry like blinking constellations in the dark night. The entire room was enveloped in changing hues of yellow, orange, and red from the shifting flames. Shadows raced along the walls, combining, dividing, waning, and growing every moment.
From all the positions at once, Shon focused his consciousness on one single stream of air. He found himself on the train this morning again, soaring past the junctions of traffic and people. He thought about the damp, musty air. He thought about Zora. He thought about the Valerian construction workers and the little Fraxian girl.
Right when the train soared past his stop, Shon leaped off the train. He aimed his consciousness at the target area and let everything implode at once. He felt a surge of heatwave. Then everything calmed as quickly as they began.
He opened his eyes. He ignited every target candle except for one.
Shon smiled. It was imperfect, but much better than before.
Suddenly, the examiners called for a technical pause. A few examiners came in and replaced a few candles. As they disposed of the old ones, Shon noticed that the glass cylinder of the candle was marred by dark scorch marks, presumably from the heatwave he caused earlier.
“Damn son, you burnt the wicks into a crisp,” one of them patted him on the shoulder.
Shon felt confidence rising again in him. While this new way of thermal transfer was strange and foreign, he was confident he could control it well enough for the remaining rounds.
And indeed, he passed every single round after with perfect precision.
As Shon was about to depart the room, he heard a man laugh. The man clapped as he slowly approached him.
Shon turned his head. The man in front of him was tall with shoulder-length hair. His glowing orange eyes sat behind what seemed like an ordinary pair of glasses, but Shon could see small gadgets retrofitted on top. In fact, every piece of accessory he wore, from his watch to his chains, all seemed to be an instrument from the future.
Shon had seen that face in commercials and magazines too many times. It was Theo Xeta, inventor, philanthropist, and the first Fraxian billionaire. He was the CEO of XetaCorps.
“Good job. Not many managed to pass my test, especially not quite like you did,” said Theo Xeta.
“I’m Theo,” he continued, extending a hand.
“I’m Shon,” said Shon, trying hard not to stammer like he did earlier. “Wow, Mr. Xeta… I didn’t know you’d be here!”
“Just Theo, please,” Theo Xeta smiled. “Now I know I’m not allowed to interact with candidates directly, but I must tell you, I’m very impressed.”
“Thank you, sir. I mean, Theo,” said Shon, trying hard to search for words but failing to find any.
“I will not interrupt you any future, Shon,” said Theo. “Best of luck to you.”
Shon walked away from the testing room with a dreamy smile. He couldn’t believe it. It was Theo Xeta, the pride of the Fraxians! Like what his mom always told him over and over again since he was a kid, Theo Xeta was the embodiment of the Fraxian-Valerian dream.
However, Xeta’s presence, combined with that of Squad Osprey earlier, further confirmed Shon’s suspicion that something was different this year. He was dying to figure out what it was. However, with the time constraints, he could neither investigate the subject of his curiosity nor indulge himself in the feeling of success.
Still undergoing heavy and mental fatigue, Shon stepped into the next testing room, ready for the test rumored to be the most psychologically intimidating — the test of political loyalty.