A Matter of Speed

The simulation room was a true spectacle the first time you entered; it was like really entering the heart of the training programs. Fortunately, fortunately after a year of going to the simulation cabins several times a week and having fought in real combat with an old B29, they were just relics to stimulate the cadets' reflexes, and a tool to save costs and repairs on combat ships for the Star Navy.

Eneas put on his combat suit and grabbed one of the helmets from the shelf. He saw the rest of the nervous applicants whispering around the room; this was where the talented applicants would stand out from the rest. In his first time, and despite how affected he was by the death of his mother, the scores he achieved in these tests brought him up to a creditable 76 in the joint evaluation.

What would he achieve now? The upper part of the cabin closed, and many screens began to appear on the display. Eneas, like a true expert, began to configure the system settings. There was only one way to exceed the minimum of 85 to pass; the trick was to remove all the aids automatic controls and sensitivity adjusters. The more real and the experience, the easier it was to beat the system.

"The first shooting test will begin when you press accept. Aim to shoot down as many enemy targets within 5 minutes." Eneas did not rush, this time he would do it well and leave everyone with their mouths open, and what better way to do that than to follow the ritual he had followed since he first entered real combat.

"Ogmios, play the album Pure Metal, by the Fireflies." It had been his mother's favorite group, and her way of having her with him gave him luck.

Despite all his preparations, thanks to his habit as a veteran soldier who had gone through these hundreds of times, he was the first to finish the preparations.

ACCEPT

Turning the controls in one go, Eneas fired at the first target. With sudden blows, he began to direct his shots in a crazy and disorganized way; all the manuals said the opposite: follow a scheme and attack in sectors so that the movements were smaller, but That in the end was unrealistic. That was intended as a tactic for people without the ability to surpass the minimum score of 50 to be able to enter the academy as a soldier, but it was not the tactic to aspire to a score higher than 85, which should be. What was precisely to avoid was that the screen was filled with incoming enemies in areas that were not clean of targets," as that would only slowly slow down their reaction speed.

To beat a score of 85, he had to shoot down a minimum of one hundred targets, which was just over one enemy every three seconds...

The shots followed one another in all directions, moving the controls at unbridled speed, demonstrating incredible hand-eye synchronization... when he was 30 seconds in, his counter was already at 12 kills, but he had to go much faster.

The movements accelerated and became more fluid as his mind became accustomed to the patterns of the targets; he shot by instinct, by intuition, by memory, by skill but above all with the desperation that comes from the rage of having lost so many good companions in the first space battles in which he participated... He promised himself that he would not just be another pilot, he would be the best, and he would return as many as he could to their homes.

When the timer showed sixty seconds, the score was 26. The objectives increased his spawn rate, but with that elimination rate, his simulation speed was not reduced or affected. More enemies only meant more points for Eneas at that moment; it didn't matter how many movement patterns they had. When he saw them, he let them link the movement, so that the movement of his controls was a line of death in his path between the points of the screen.

The music resounded loudly in his head, helping him set an increasingly frenetic pace. Eneas had one goal in mind: to reach the record of an old hero of the Star Army and founding leader of the Falcon squadron, Sopdu. The record never beaten in the simulator was 343...almost a target per second, but he had to accelerate much faster if he wanted to get there.

It seemed that Eneas was shooting uncontrollably; so abrupt were his movements in the simulator that the cabin moved on the outside, causing several officers to come closer to check if everything was okay...

"Lieutenant Achilles, put the data from that capsule on the screen." Admiral Odysseus was in charge of supervising the practical tests.

The data from the Eneas Simulation Capsule appeared on the large central screen...

"Time elapsed 3 minutes ///// Enemy downed 138"

A clamor was heard in the room among the officers; he had already passed the level to be an officer. But the counting not only did not slow down, but rather increased the speed.

"Time elapsed 3 minutes 30 seconds /// Enemies downed 181"

Eneas had surpassed the level of one enemy per second, and he still had a minute and a half left to finish the test...

The excitement spread throughout the room; only Odysseus's face was hieratic. Were they witnessing the arrival of a new genius, or would it be another partial failure that would have failed due to poor results in the rest of the tests?

"Remaining time 4 minutes /// Enemies downed 221" The progression kept increasing.

Inside the cabin, Eneas was sweating as the music reached the final crescendo of the song. The percussion reached its climax, at which point, normally in discotheques and nightclubs, the people in the room go crazy, and stop dancing to jump or move in crazy, syncopated movements.

"Time remaining 4 minutes 30 seconds /// Enemies downed 268"

With more than two targets per second, how could he achieve that speed in the old simulator?... The cabin seemed to be showing signs of the many years of use and the extreme activity to which it was subjected.

Could they be witnessing the birth of a new genius? Admiral Odysseus chewed every second as the countdown appeared on the screen and the number of downed enemies increased.

With four seconds left in the test, Eneas broke the old record... a new genius had been born.

"TEST COMPLETED ENEMIES DOWN 351"