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So you might wonder what was so special about someone who got fired every month? Was I the Chosen One? Was I the illegitimate son of a VIP? Could I foretell the future? NO and NO and NO!
My family was average and unable to buy a seat on the starship that brought me to Plovdi. They could pay for the Procedure, though. I had to be selected from a random group of about twenty boys my age from the city where I lived. The Procedure differs from planet to planet and sometimes from nation to nation.
Each challenge (most of which took place on a Sunday in local schools during the summer holiday) led to the dismissal of one boy, the worst performer. First, there were the endurance tests:
running laps around a school building. The first boy to stop had to leave. (1)
walking up and down stairs. Same idea. (2)
cycling (3)
swimming in a pool (4)
skipping rope (5)
a combination of exercises like jumping jacks, pushups, and squats (6)
Secondly, holographic games:
killing alien spaceships (7)
killing aliens in a maze (8)
killing robot spaceships (9)
killing robots in a maze (10)
Note that there was little difference between the aliens and robots. Probably to make us upset by the pointlessness of it all.
Thirdly, written tests:
spelling (11)
simple arithmetic (12)
logic puzzles (13)
They must have thought the written tests were too easy because they tried everything to distract us, including playing loud music, holographic shows, and random sounds.
Four, popularity (I guess) challenges:
we had to collect as many signatures in a day as we could of supporters (14)
we had to stand in a straight line, facing the eliminated boys, while they were asked one by one if they knew who they wanted to be kicked out. One of us had been mean to all of them. He was unanimously voted out. (15)
a jury of random citizens came to ask us random questions. They got rid of someone who lived near me and couldn’t handle the more personal questions. (16)
A year passed after that. One of the boys didn’t make it through the training to become a Passenger. Another was diagnosed with some serious disease which though curable made him a problem. A third boy decided to drop out for religious reasons. He even tried to convince the remaining candidates that Slow Aging was murder.
I killed the other boys. Officially, it was a training accident. Unofficially, between you and me, and don’t tell anyone else… They pissed me off in the previous days like something else. So I might have done something in a split second that I shouldn’t have.
No one forgave me, but they tried to forget it. Restarting the Procedure was not an option.
On the bright side, as a former Passenger, I have no trouble finding jobs. That and the protection of privacy laws helped a lot. But keeping the jobs was hard. Why?
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