July 2077

It looked like any other room. Four walls dressed in faux marble paneling. Gauged slate tiles resting atop a concrete floor. Recessed light fixtures beaming with soft white bulbs. It was empty except for an amber-stained wooden table and three metal chairs behind it facing Max. The three individuals occupying these chairs, two middle-aged men and an elderly woman wearing matching professional attire, seemed pedestrian enough. Even the line of questioning could have been confused as nothing more than a college admission board weighing the application of a prospective student. But this was no ordinary room.

“Please state your name and date of birth,” the man in the middle said.

“Maxwell Hawthorne, July 9th 2059.”

“Mr. Hawthorne, welcome to your Triennial Competency Review. Please acknowledge your understanding of the proceedings for the record.”

“Confirmed,” Max managed to tremble out.

The man cut through any pleasantries and got right to business. “Your Academic Profile shows proficiency in English and the Sciences but a significant deficit in Math.”

“I’m putting in extra work and expect my scores to reflect such on my next evaluation,” Max said.

I should have been a little more specific. Three of the walls looked normal enough but the fourth behind Max and facing the panel was a one-way mirror connecting the observation area behind it. This was probably an interrogation room or a laboratory once upon a time. It was there where my father and I anxiously looked on.

“Mr. Hawthorne, if you were stranded on a deserted island for an unspecified period of time, would you rather possess double the resources in isolation or half the resources with a co-inhabitant?”

Auditors will often toss questions like this out to keep Reviewees on their toes. I’m not sure there’s even a right or wrong answer. It’s designed mostly to gauge critical thinking skills.

“It would depend on the co-inhabitant’s Competency Rating,” Max replied.

My father pumped his fist behind the glass. I guess he figured there was a right answer in this case.

“Your medical records showed heart palpitations at your most recent physical,” the female Auditor said.

According to my father, physicals were historically only required once or twice a year to ensure you were healthy enough to participate in team sports or in good enough shape for life insurance. They’re now required bi-monthly for reasons that will be obvious later.

“The physician is wrong. I’m in peak physical shape.”

“That’s not what your Athletic Assessment suggests. You tested significantly behind the other peers in your age cohort.”

Age cohort is a fancy term for people born the same year as you. The Chancellor tends to lack creativity.

“I was ill on the day of my assessment. I recently placed second at the Supplemental Endurance Competition.”

“Our records indicate you placed sixth,” the Auditor said.

Max shifted in his seat and swallowed hard. My dad and I cringed behind the glass mirror. The primary rule during a Competency Review is if you’re going to lie, make sure a Specter hasn’t already reported conflicting data. Tie always goes to the Specter. Max must have been positive there weren’t any at the competition that day. Perhaps the results emerged during somebody else’s Competency Review. Perhaps a bystander wrote in to the Sector Municipal Board. Perhaps a Specter was dressed in plain clothes. It doesn’t matter. The Review Board doesn’t discriminate the sources of its data. Outside of the mandatory psychological, academic, and physical assessments, they rely mostly on word-of-mouth information to build profiles on Reviewees and assess their competency. All data is supposed to be corroborated but with the amount of pressure coming down from the Oasis to get Censuses in line, I’m not so sure it is.

“Did you think we don’t have access to that information, Mr. Hawthorne?” the Auditor in the middle asked with an air of satisfaction.

“I’m sorry, I’ll work harder and climb into the top quartile. Just this morning I was—”

“Do you feel lying is an acceptable practice, Mr. Hawthorne?” he pressed on.

“I don’t. I’m sorry. I’m just nervous and didn’t mean to—”

“It’s time to score,” the Auditor interrupted.

Reviewees don’t get much time anymore. When Restoration first started, it was a far more thorough process, diving deeper into the detail. A chance to rationalize the quantitative results. Nowadays it’s mostly just an exercise to sprinkle a pinch of subjectivity to objective data. That data comes in three metrics: Academic, Physical, and Social.

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The Academic bucket evaluates benchmarks like intelligence quotient and quality of employment for adults. For students it’s mostly standardized testing and grade point average. Physical scores are a combination of medical examinations and fitness profiles. Social scores determine how well a Reviewee interacts with others. Are they respectful, obedient, and well-liked? Or are they a defiant social outcast? Data from each metric is aggregated into a score which Auditors use as a guide to determine their own assessment of the Reviewee on a 10-point scale.

Each of the Auditors picked up the stylus in front of them and scribbled onto the tablets embedded into the table. When the last of them finished, the lights dimmed and tense, pulsating music played through the room’s speakers like something you’d hear in an old game show. It’s as if this whole system was designed for the Chancellor’s entertainment. It was the moment of truth. One-by-one the scores would populate to determine Max’s fate.

I locked arms with my father and held his hand tight. On the screen mounted to the wall behind the Auditor on the right, the first score appeared: a Rating of 4.8 plastered in blood red. There were still two scores to go but that didn’t stop my father from shouting, “A 4.8! You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

After a brief moment, the second score populated onto the screen behind the middle Auditor: a 5.8 in glimmering green. We shared a collective breath of optimism from the safety of our seats behind the glass. The minimum passing score for a Competency Review is 5.0. The Rating is an average of the three scores. For simple math, add them all up and they need to equal 15.0 or greater. Max had 10.6 through his first two reviews so he would need just a 4.4 from the final Auditor to survive his second Competency Review and relax—at least by 2077 standards—until his twenty-first birthday.

The final Auditor was the elderly woman. I thought I recognized her from my Competency Review but I couldn’t be certain. The population in our small township within Sector Eighteen is over 187,000. With Competency Reviews beginning on your fifteenth birthday and continuing every three years thereafter, there are roughly 175 per day. They used to have the same three Auditors review everybody but a few years back each Sector began adding more. At first it was something about checks and balances. Then something about efficiency. Then something about data integrity. Who knows the real reason; the Oasis serves its own agenda and is offended at the notion it might have to explain otherwise.

The first two Auditors were concise in their decisions. They definitively etched their scores down in resolute ink and slammed the stylus down in front of them. She was more conflicted. Yeah, Max lied and is a little behind the other eighteen-year olds in Math. But a physical revealing nothing more than minor heart palpitations? It could be far worse. After all, if you’re trying to limit population growth there are assuredly others much further along in the natural process towards death as we used to know it. Then again, nowadays nothing is as we used to know.

My father and I waited on pins and needles as butterflies bounced off the walls of my stomach like pinballs. I clenched my dad’s arm so tight I feared it might shatter. I held my breath and then finally—after what seemed like an entire lifetime—the third Auditor’s score emerged on the screen behind her: 4.3. My father charged out of his seat and pounded on the glass. “This is bullshit! What the hell is going on here!”

Max had received an aggregate score of 14.9. That’s an average of 4.96. There is no rounding in Restoration. An eardrum-crushing buzzer rang out and the ‘X’ on the wall behind Max lit up in flashing red, leaving the green bulbs on the checkmark to its right dormant. The sound could have shattered the glass separating an adolescent on trial simply for being alive and his father and younger sister on the other side. A door opened and two brawny men wearing dark cloaks and executioner-style masks entered. Max sobbed and pled on hands and knees. He apologized and swore he’d do better. He even began praying to God Almighty. But it was all for naught. There are no appeals, no mistrials. There are the Restoration results and they are final.

My dad pounded the glass some more. He shrieked in anguish but his objections couldn’t be heard from the soundproof box in which we watched. “Maxy!” I cried as he was dragged out by the muscular henchmen. I was suddenly hit with a startling realization. That would be the last time I’d ever see Max. Restoration had reared its ugly face but accomplished its unruly goal. One fewer person closer to a sustainable future for mankind on Earth.