20 The Exam

The teacher looked at Enryl with a curious gaze for a few seconds then looked back to the first kid on the line. "Tap your token to this screen for verification. If the screen lighted up green then you can enter and sit on the lighted seat correspondingly." As if giving a vibe that whatever happened a few seconds earlier as something not of a big deal, she gracefully gave further instructions.

The first kid excitedly places his token on the screen and after a short beep, the screen lighted with a green glow. The sliding door that is made up of translucent glass opened silently and seeing this, the kid walked inside.

The room was quite spacious and painted with white matte color. It's similar to a laboratory's clean room setup. There are rows of seats as far as the eyes can see. Each seat is covered with a six-foot-tall transparent tubular glass with an opening on the left side so that a person can slide in. The one closest to the entrance has its tubular glass glowing green.

The kid walked with a face of astonishment. For him, the layout and design of the room is a beautiful sight. He walked towards the seat with a glowing tubular glass. As he entered the tube, he noticed that the chair is adjustable. He excitedly sat down on the rounded bottom of the chair and it wobbled. "It's a very comfortable chair", he thought. He adjusted the height of the chair for a bit then looked at the touch screen monitor in front of him. There's a graphic on the screen showing that they have to tap their token on the center.

After the kid tapped the screen, there's a sensor on the monitor that scanned their face and iris. After confirming that the token and face matched, it shows a welcome screen and then provided further instructions on how to take the exam.

Then the sliding door opened again and another kid can be seen entering the room. She went to the adjacent seat then comfortably take her seat. Every ten seconds or so, kids kept entering until everybody has seated on their respected seats.

The teacher then finally closed the door then said nonchalantly, "The exam will now begin."

Each kid started answering questions. The questions are randomized from across all the relevant subjects. Types of questions range from fill in the blanks, multiple choices, write an essay and so on. There's no way someone can copy from their seatmates not only because of the tubular glass barrier but because the questions that appear on each seat is different even though that actual questions are the same for everyone. The whole room is also made up of excellent shielding material. Any communications outside won't work.

There are a total of one thousand questions. Some are easy, some are difficult. You can skip a question and place it temporarily on the waiting capsule shown on the screen. You can keep a maximum of twenty skipped questions. If you want more, you need to answer one of the stored skipped questions or if you don't really know the answer, forfeit that question by deleting it on the capsule.

Time goes by fast. Some of the kids are having a hard time. Most of them have their capsule already filled and so they have to make the decision on whether to let go of a question or try to answer it to the best of their ability. Even the brightest kids have a frown on their face.

Enryl is now waiting outside. As the clock ticked 11:30 am, he timely tapped his token on the screen. He'd seen how the kids did it earlier. Fortunately, the screen turned green and the sliding door opened.

The teacher just glanced at him then turned back to what she was doing. She monitors each kid on her widescreen so she has an idea who will get the top score. She doesn't regard Enryl at all. For her, he is as good as a failure. How can you answer a thousand questions in thirty minutes?

Knowing that he only got limited time, Enryl run towards his own glowing tubular seat. He took a seat, tapped the monitor with his token, read the instructions then started answering questions. Nobody is paying attention to him since everybody has their own struggles in life.

If anybody looks at him though, they can only see after-images of his hand as he answers through each question with blazing speed. Not over dramatic though as he is still aware that nobody can know that he is an enhanced human but fast enough to answer all questions on time based on his calculations.

Enryl has a serious look on his face. He is fully concentrated answering the questions. In ten minutes, he answered around two hundred questions. He slightly frown as he thought, "At this pace, I can only answer six hundred in total. Need to step up a bit more."