Cindy Psi: Spy In Training
Chapter 2: Exam Day

As the monobus hissed to a halt outside the school Cindy grabbed her coat so she could jump off as soon as the door opened and escape the continuing scorn of her fellow students. She made her way up the path to the picturesque little boutique school house. Copied straight from the history pages on colonial America, the school looked like something from one of the children’s streams Cindy used to watch as a young child – all red roofs and picket fences. It’s funny what the people who designed these buildings thought would have universal appeal, thought Cindy. Her musing was interrupted before she could delve too deeply into the minds of the GCC design team though, as Tess Chamborg came up to her demanding “Why do you do these things?”

“I know,” Cindy replied, “I always fall for it. Jacinta was deliberately steering me into that trap from her first message. I knew she was doing it but she just pushes my buttons.”

“You have to learn to be more discreet. I know you don’t care how many of the other girls like you but you don’t want to hate going to school every day, right?”

She was right, of course. Tess was the one girl Cindy could always rely on to talk sense and be straight with her. She guessed that’s why they had stayed friends through their whole time at school so far. Tess was another girl who didn’t really buy into the fripperies of pre-teen, school girl life (although, if we’re honest, she did maybe a little bit more than Cindy), and Cindy took great comfort in the fact that there was at least one girl she could hang out with, even on a day that started with Cindy alienating, well, pretty much everyone else.

Taller than Cindy, and sporting long, straight blonde hair, Tess was one of those girls Cindy imagined could feature in an ancient romantic stream – you know, the kind where the previously always prim, proper and pinned up librarian has her hairpin taken out and glasses taken off by the suit-wearing hero who then takes a sharp intake of breath and exclaims “Good heavens, Miss Penelope, but you’re beautiful!” Yes, that was it. Tess was a Miss Penelope. In looks that is – in demeanour she was anything but.

Proving this, Cindy’s reverie was interrupted for a second time – this time by a clout on the shoulder.

“Wake up, dozy. Nervous about the big exam?”

“No, not really,” Cindy replied. “But you are, aren’t you?”

“Yes I am. And you should be too. It can decide your whole life!”

“Do you really think it works like that? One exam at age twelve and that’s you done, career chosen, life mapped out. Surely it’s not as straightforward as that?”

“Well, not as much as that, but it does have a huge bearing. The senior school subjects you take will be determined by what you’re good at on this test, and then your university course will be determined by those subjects, and then your career will be decided by the uni course, so actually, thinking about it, yes. Yes, it works exactly like that. And that’s why you should be nervous.”

“Oh well, I should be maybe, but I’m not. I can’t fake it.”

“I hope I get something sciencey. Or sporty. Sports science! That’d be awesome. I hope I get that.”

“I don’t mind really,” said Cindy. And she didn’t. No matter how much she thought about it, Cindy couldn’t bring herself to be enthusiastic about any potential career. No matter what she thought of, they all seemed ok, but none seemed 100% right. Cindy tried really hard to imagine what her future might look like ...

A funny thing happened then. Cindy suddenly had a razor sharp image of a girl in a silver space suit, holding a strange-looking tool with one hand, and hanging on to a protrusion from a massive – was that some kind of space ship? – with the other. The girl was peering intently through a gap in the metal shell of the ship at something going on in the distance. She started to raise the thing in her hand slowly, and then stopped, and turned, and looked straight at Cindy.

Cindy gasped. It was her! The girl in the suit was her! A little older maybe, and (thank goodness!) a little taller, but her all the way. The other Cindy smiled a wry smile, raised a finger to her lips (well, her visor anyway), and offered the current Cindy a conspiratorial wink. Cindy noticed she had a little tag over the pocket of her space suit that read “Cindy ψ” with some kind of crest above it, and a purple sash around her waist. She also noticed how sporty and fit she looked.

Just then something happened behind other Cindy, like a big area of space collapsing in on itself in utter silence but with massive weight, and then everything happened at once. There was a huge BANG! And other Cindy was jerked upwards and outwards towards where the lack of noise and now the noise had come from. The thing in her hand went flying off just as the watching Cindy realised it was some type of gun. And something appeared from out of the centre of the now shimmering grey area where the noise/no noise had come from – something green. With tentacles. Other Cindy was being pulled toward it, spinning in space to face it as she did so. Watching Cindy wanted desperately to cry out, but before she could make a sound she became aware of another, darker, evil presence beside the green thing – and, somehow, she knew the presence was also aware of her. And it didn’t like her. It didn’t like her one little bit. She felt its awareness starting to weigh upon her, like she was some kind of insect pinned in a museum. And, more worryingly, she felt trapped...

Cindy rubbed her shoulder after another clout from Tess brought her suddenly back to reality. “Will you stop doing that?” they both said at once. After a pause Tess added, “Are you ok?”

“I’m fine. Something ... weird ... just happened. I saw something.”

“What, like something behind the tree over there where you were staring?

“No, no, not like that. It was ... weird. It’s like I was watching a 3D stream, but I was in it, and ... oh never mind,” she finished on seeing the long suffering look on Tess’ face, “I’m sure it was nothing.”

“Good. Come on then, that’s the bell.”

The two girls ran into the school and made their way to their classroom. Ms Primp raised a single eyebrow at the pair of them as they took their respective seats just as the bell finished sounding.

“Good morning girls,” Ms Primp began, addressing the whole class. “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your lives. Some people will tell you I should be down-playing the importance of this exam. That I don’t want to worry you or put you under too much pressure. I say rubbish to that – you SHOULD be under pressure. The A&P exam is the single most important thing any of you will have yet done in your young lives.

“Let’s think about those two words, and perhaps more importantly, their order. Aptitude and Preference. What the GCC is most interested in is not what you are most interested in – it’s what you are best at. The system works because although due consideration is given to what people want to do – after all there’s no point putting someone on a career path that they’ll hate – the primary emphasis will be on what society needs from you.

“There is the occasional misfire. Sometimes people end up changing paths as they go along, often due to changes in their lives causing changes in them. But the test seldom gets it wrong – getting placed in the wrong stream is so rare these days that when it happens it’s likely to make the news, and it’s never happened with an Oliver County student.

“Remember, this exam is not about finding out who’s clever and who’s not, it’s about finding out who might make a good engineer and who might be better as a chemi-chef. You can use your PCDs as much as you like – after all, you’ll have access to that resource throughout your life so testing what you know without Omninet access would be a pointless exercise.

“In a moment a local representative of the GCC will be here to invigilate while you undertake the exam. As per GCC ordinance I will not be in the room. The exam will take two hours, and your results will be sent to your PCDs immediately after that time. If you finish early you will still have to wait for your results so I suggest you spend that time further reflecting on your answers, although think very hard before changing anything as in my experience the first answer is nearly always the best one. After the two hours is up you will have an hour to talk amongst yourselves and figure out who your classmates are likely to be from next year, after which standard practice is you can have the afternoon off.

“Good luck,” she finished, and with that there was a knock on the door. Ms Primp let the invigilator in and took her leave. The invigilator was a smartly dressed man who simply said “Look to your screens. In 20 seconds, the test will commence.”

And so it did.

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