Standardized

The stale lecture hall air would’ve bit most people like mid-January Minnesota. To Sara, it was “room temperature.” This meant she had no need for the jacket shoved haphazardly under her desk, nor was there a discernible layer of perspiration on her skin despite her heart palpitating below it. Most of the air molecules moseyed lethargically about the room, occasionally ricocheting off the drywall. A few coasted in a chilled current towards Sara and her fellow academic masochists. Without this current, she would’ve glistened with stress-sweat. And if she were at a resting heart rate, she would have been submerged in fleece. But the temperature was perfect. 10/10. Room temperature. On a slightly larger scale, this is known as the Goldilocks zone. Thanks to the Goldilocks zone, Sara’s greeeeaaaaaaaaaaaat great grandblob was able to use energy to make other watery-carbony blobs. Sara could do much, much more than those blobs could. Like taking this test for example. Her great grandblobs would be proud.

A dude with a superbly symmetrical man bun (if Sara was mistaken and he was not a dude, she’d call this hairstyle a “bun”) seated two rows ahead of her was absentmindedly clicking his pen. No detectable click pattern. Kid had no rhythm. Click... Click. Click. . . . . Click. Was this what water torture felt like? Some other soundwaves sailed down her ear canals. They were what you’d call “white noise,” meaning Sara didn’t really perceive them at all. That perpetual industrial “hummmmmm” that greets you in an office. The occasional creaky chair. White noise-- (Ear) canal pond scum. Pretty much always there, but you betcha you notice when it’s not.

Sara’s chair was creak-less. It sat at the center of a small auditorium with rows of desks descending onto a stage. It was the kind of lecture hall where schools hosted their B-list speakers, or speakers who were A-list only within an underappreciated field. On the stage was a podium. In front of that podium stood a woman with impeccable don’t-fuck-with-me posture. She wore triangular frames that seemed too far down her nose to aid her vision. Above those frames, her eyes held a disinterested gaze toward the packet in front of her. A packet whose contents would take thirty minutes to read, all the while the crowd of bubble-filling machines would radiate anxiety, pumped up with adrenaline and caffeine (nevermind other uppers of choice) like a pack of balloons ready to burst. Sara was a leg-bouncer. So were 3/4th of her peers in the auditorium. She read somewhere that leg-bouncing and fidgeting can burn 350 calories per day. This seemed like an over-estimate to her. 

The clicking had stopped. Man-bun had joined the other 3/4th of the room and was now releasing his frantic energy via leg bobs. A much less distracting tic. Thanks, mirroring. A small-framed assistant sporting a corduroy blazer dropped a sealed packet on Sara’s desk without making eye contact and proceeded down the aisle. The clock at the center of the auditorium faced Sara dead-on. There was really no need for the watch around her wrist, but it comforted her anyway. She was ready, or, “as ready as she'd ever be.” Typically, people use this phrase after hardcore procrastination. This was not the case with Sara. She was as ready as she ~could~ ever be. She concluded that she was “ready” based on her estimation that she had studied the maximum number of hours before hitting the number at which her mental health and sleep would be damaged to the point of making her perform worse on the exam. She had dedicated the past eight months to studying and it had consumed her “like a newborn baby.” This was the metaphor her mother, who had herself cared for three newborn babies, used when Sara took her dinner to her room. Sara’s mom often worried about Sara. Sara knew this. Sara also knew that she was ready. Her sleep the night before had been satisfactory. 6.5 hours. 9 hours set aside for sleep. 1 hour laying motionless catastrophizing. 1.5 hours talking herself down from anxiety. 6.5 hours of snoozin’. Not bad for someone who dabbled in insomnia. She had one cup of coffee that morning. Enough to season her brain, but not enough to send her bladder on red alert mid-exam. 

“In box number one, write your last name in capital letters.”

Sara paused from the frenzy and drew a capital “A” at the top of her packet, a faint stroke of graphite light enough to be fully erased. It was a silly habit, she knew. In grade school, her teacher told the class about a study that concluded students who drew “A”s at the top of their papers before an exam scored better than students who drew “F”s. Get yourself in the mindset was the idea, literally visualize success. Sara had never followed up on reading the actual study. And of course, she had no idea how the “A” students would compare to students who drew nothing at all. But ever since that day, she drew “A”s on the top of her exams. It was probably the most religious thing she did.

“You may begin.”

The usual oh-shit tension spiked as she bubbled in her best guess, but there was something... else. A twinge of unease boiled up in her stomach, a discomfort whose source she couldn’t quite place. It was distinct from the typical exam-generated adrenaline rush. It was like a sort of hollowness was expanding at the core of her abdomen, and a single pinball was bouncing about the void.

Seriously, why didn’t the testing powers-that-be use simulations? Like, you had to pass a SIM test to get a driver's license. (Not a gun license. The NRA wasn’t particularly a fan of statistics.) Her SIM driving test experience wasn’t like her SIM exposure therapy because they didn't implant the memory of any of the hundred or so driving simulations into her “real” brain afterwards. So for her, the driving test wasn't an experience at all. Unless you count the experience of three hours in a sticky DMV waiting room chair. (“Bureaucracy’s a leaky faucet no wrench can fix,” was one of her grandpa’s anthems.) Finally get your name called, fill out some paperwork, ten seconds of SIM, exam passed. Check. Thanks, sim Saras. In some of these simulations, Sara the sim probably died. In a few, it may have killed others. But, it died and killed others a sufficiently low percentage of the time to pass the test. This would have been troublesome for teenage Sara if SIMs weren’t a fact of life she'd grown up with. She’d been SIM potty trained, she learned how to ride a SIM bike. She’d had her first make-out sesh in Luna-down-the-street’s “The Sims: Next Generation” as her real lips sagged motionlessly with the rest of her bod on Luna’s family couch.

Sara’s “gut” initially told her to pick A. But after further analysis, D seemed like the way to go. Conventional wisdom said go with your first guess, your gut instinct. But Sara'd read that this strategy was less effective than picking the option that seemed most likely after deliberation. Brain instinct over gut instinct. She circled D.

But chances are really fucking high this is not reality. That in this reality, I disappear once the timer buzzes. That I disappear… Where?

The instruction phase had begun. No one listened. They plowed ahead, filling in bubbles like they were holes in a sinking boat.

The test packet was translucent enough that Sara could see questions directly beneath the cover page, but she couldn't quite make out the words.

“In box number five, write your current address.”

Sara had a flashback to grade school when exam time meant encircling your desk with textbook fortresses. You’d do this to shield your test from others’ nosy eyes. Nose-y eyes... She then wondered what eyesy noses would be. Maybe those pro wine tasters who could identify the varietal, vintage, and origin of a wine all through taste and smell. Like they had tiny eyes perched on their noses. Eyesy noses... Then she wondered what if she didn’t know any of the answers and she had actually been studying the wrong shit this whole time or maybe she would know the answers but second guess herself and pick the wrong ones or even worse fill in the wrong bubbles like she did when she was in eighth grade and she skipped number 16 and every answer after number 16 was wrong and would she make it into med school and what if she didn’t then what the fuck would she do would she have to live with her parents until she was 32—

B r e a t h e. You’re ready. You are ready. Chances are you’ll do well. And if you fuck up, you take the exam again. You are capable. You are valuable.

Self-soothing was a skill Sara had developed after teeth-grinding dedication and three years of therapy. Like many people society labeled “smart,” anxiety was her built-in BFF. She’d never been diagnosed with anything besides lactose intolerance until high school, but she had probably fit GAD DSM-XII criteria since kindergarten. Control was precious to Sara, so she had a high incentive to learn self-calming techniques. And like most things Sara sought out to learn, she mastered the art of pacification. It wasn’t an easy ride. Her therapist used SIM Therapy to force Sara to confront her fears. Not just confront, bask in. Exposure therapy: expert level. Simulations designed with your fears in mind; digital madhouses that thrust you into a world swarming with your triggers until they weren’t triggers anymore. Or at least, until you could stand them. SIM tech allowed therapists to do this with terrifying precision. Sara had given dozens of speeches to a class she was programmed to believe was real. She'd arrived late to interviews, stood frozen mid-stand-up routine, shit in a first-date’s car. (That last one was for sure an ethical gray area on her therapist’s part.) And then there was the final level. Full-blown panic attacks. In a café, a classroom, a bank. Until she learned to stop them in their tracks. The simulation would always start at the same mental moment, her thought loops twisting round and round, warping, intensifying, until they were a cyclone hurtling through each nerve in her body. Heart pounding. Chest locked. Air ungraspable. The treacherous cycle: symptoms recognized <=> panic increases. A positive feedback loop that couldn’t be more negative.

But Sara had become an anxiety pro. If anxiety was a car with failing breaks, she had learned to create traction that slowed the momentum. And more importantly, she learned how to not grease the wheels. The car was still swerving, but the damage was minimized. And so she sat anxiously in the auditorium. But the anxiety filled ten percent of her brain instead of ninety five. She had a solid ninety ready for the exam.

If exams were stores and exam questions the merchandise, this exam was Costco. The text that stared back at Sara could have been a giant plastic engulfment of cereal boxes, or a crate of tuna cans massive enough to cause irreparable brain damage. Sara imagined a detective stroking his mustache as he peered dubiously at the freshly-smushed tuna-fied corpse: “Very fishy indeed...” 

4 to 5 questions on each side of the page, 5 answers A-E accompanying each. Section one was math, the section with which Sara felt most comfortable. Math wasn’t her best subject, but it was her favorite to be tested on because it was the most fair. That is, most of the variance was due to ability. Not luck. Not phrasing. Sara’s speed and accuracy at solving g(x)=sin(4x2+3x) shouldn’t be much different than g(x)=cot(x). However, if Sara spent more time studying Mendelian inheritance and Man Bun spent more time studying antibody variability, Man Bun would be at an advantage if there were more questions on antibody variability. Or if the questions on Mendelian inheritance were easier than the questions on antibody variability. Etcetera. This was true for math as well, but to Sara, math skills were easier to generalize. The exam powers-that-be tried to account for this by being consistent with the number of questions on each topic, but there was no avoiding the fact that the questions’ context would affect your score. And there was no way you could find the time or money to take the test enough times to account for this variance. It was all such an archaic system. It would make sooooo much more sense to use some kind of simulation: 100-1000 simulated exams, take the average. Or the high score, or some better algorithm altogether. They used SIMs for just about everything else. Why not exams? Especially the exams that determined your future. The ones that determined who society's future batch of doctors would be. She probably had some tradition-clenching lobbyists to thank for this vestige.

Maybe I’m in a simulation right now.

A half-smile darted across her face.

Question 3 asked Sara about a synthesis pathway for an amino acid with which she had no particular associations. That is to say, she drew a blank. A big fat double-stufed Oreo blank.

Where do I put my mind?

This was a question that often writhed through Sara’s head when her anxiety flared and outside stimulus was low. In bed, for example. Or during a commute when she’d forgotten her headphones. Sometimes, no matter where she attempted to guide her thoughts, anxiety persevered. Being in her brain was uncomfy. She did not know where to put her mind. For this reason, during high-anxiety periods, Sara sought out Doing. Activities, information, goals, productivity. Do. Do-mode made Sara particularly effective at task completion, and particularly ineffective at introspection. But it helped. And this exam gave her an excellent opportunity to Do. Her cognitive resources were devoted almost entirely to the question in front of her. Problem solving. Her anxiety was a tool she could leverage to improve her performance. Reframing technique: It’s not a heart attack, it’s an energy boost. The pinball was almost undetectable. But it was there.

The next question was about cell chemistry, using neurons for context. Although the question didn't require any neuroscience knowledge (~neuroledge~), Sara answered it much faster because of her fascination for neurology. She thought about the fact that if the nerves had been, say, liver cells, she would have likely needed an additional twenty seconds to produce the answer. Context influence in action, evidence for converting to SIMs.

Not troublesome in the least. To be fair, sixteen-year-old Sara was much less reflective than 24-year-old Sara. 24-year-old Sara occasionally lingered on visions of her sim selves in that driving test. She heard rumors that one passing criterion was refusing to drive while intoxicated. She wondered amusedly what kind of wild party the DMV cooked up for sim her. Then her mind flashed to the collisions-- blinding headlights, hands fused to the steering wheel as the aquatic ambush pummelling against her windshield transformed her domestic car into a feral stampeding sled… ‘FAIL. Too much pressure applied to brakes. Rear tires spun out. Fatality. Next,...’ 

There was a small coalition of anti-SIM activists (or as her dad would say, “luddites”) who argued that the driving test was unethical and cruel. SIM proponents responded that a safer society was worth the cost of a few brief seconds of simulated discomfort. Besides, they said, the SIMs stopped before any physical pain could be felt. Sara, like most people, was made uncomfortable by the anti-SIMers assertions. She also was uncomfortable with human exploitation and climate change, but she still owned a smartphone and drove a car to work to save twenty minutes.

SIM addiction spent much more time at the forefront of Sara’s mind. It was something she'd most definitely have to treat as a doctor. Some states had passed laws that limited the amount of time consoles could function. She lived in one of those states. The idea was that limiting console time would force people to do things in the “real” world and thereby prevent addiction. It was true that overall SIM consumption time in states like Sara’s was lower, but addiction rates were more or less the same. People either bought multiple consoles or found ways to hack the system. Or they did nothing but sleep and eat in-between sessions, waiting obsessively for their real-world purgatory to pass. Time manipulation was another issue altogether-- spending years in a SIM that lasted five minutes in the real world. This was banned nationwide, exceptions made for government agencies like the DMV. No doubt people had figured out how to hack this too. There were probably hundreds of people completing thousand-year reigns as Egyptian pharaohs in the time it took her to answer question number seven. How those people hadn’t used the knowledge you’d gain with that many years to take over the world, she wasn’t sure. Maybe they already had. 

Sara didn't use her family’s console. A SIM habit would harm her long-term goals. Plus, she felt uneasy whenever reality wiggled, wobbled, grew murky. It was for this reason that she no longer smoked weed. Smoking plus SIM was a combo that her brother indulged in almost daily. If their family was a sitcom, the director would cast him as the comic relief deadbeat. Sara was more of the adderall & chill child, “chill” = study. She had always been jealous of Connor’s ability to chill-chill. If she was the cortisol queen, he was the endorphin emperor.

Next up was a physics question. Calculating a baseball’s velocity. Sara had never been to a baseball game, but in high school she dated a baseball player for six months. He made her feel chill-chill. Although he sure wasn’t chill-chill about her unending excuses to miss his games. She wondered if he’d ever made a home run joke about her. Probab-- Nah, Absolutely. Just like his infamous locker room threesome was absolutely SIM-produced. 

Sara’s mind kept returning to sim driving test Sara, listening to Elvis Costello on a SIM highway, oblivious to the fact that her simulated existence would last a fleeting thirty seconds. Wouldn’t she have realized something was up when she noticed she was driving by herself-- no frantic mom on the edge of the passenger seat shrieking at her to watch out for the pedestrian thirty feet away god-damnit? She couldn’t drive alone until she got her license. But to get her license, sim her had to drive alone. They must have programmed sim her to believe she already had her license, or believe that she could legally drive alone with her permit. It was remarkable how fine-tuned they could alter beliefs. Scary, really. The threat of SIM terrorism was another common Anti-SIM talking point. Well, more of a yelling point. Virtual hells crafted by social-reject satans in their basements, etc. 

Next question: something about smooth strain bacteria. Sara was having trouble deciding between A) and D).

As 75% of her brain stretched back to microbio, the remaining 25% lingered on sim Sara. If the-powers-that-be decided to implement SIM testing, how would the sim students’ beliefs have to be modified?

Her eyes distractedly bounced their way over to the next question. Sara did not finish reading that question. A realization hit her two words in--

Test-taking sims would have to believe that major exams were completed manually. Hands on, SIM-free. If not, the sim would know it was in a simulation.

The pinball was suddenly a boulder disintegrating her stomach lining. Had Sara been hooked up to an ECG, the nurse on duty would have sprinted to her room. Her windpipe was a cocktail straw. Her heart thrashed against her ribcage, screaming to be let free. 

Stop.

The sim couldn’t know that exams were simulated. It had to believe it was taking the exam in the real world. 

This is paranoia. 

Nerves tearing away at her sanity. She would not allow it.

But it would make sense, wouldn’t it? If they did implement SIM testing, the sim couldn’t know they implemented it. Otherwise it would… panic.

Panic was the current state of Sara’s guts. Terror sharpest at her heart. Slashing through her lungs.

Focus on the question.

Air grew thin. 

You’re prone to paranoia right now because this is the highest stakes exam you will ever take. When your anxiety’s high, you become paranoid. Paranoia will decrease your score. And you won’t get accepted anywhere. 

The latter fear was one that usually consumed Sara-- failure. But now she could not harness it. It didn’t matter. Existential terror > fear of failure.

The question was, would society be likely to implement SIM testing? Would the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs? Clearly, yes. As she had reasoned earlier, yes. In fact, it would be ludicrous not to take advantage of the technology. The only barrier then would be implementation. Perhaps the testing agency had no incentive to update its methods, etc. But students would demand a fairer system, and the universities would pressure the testing agencies to make the switch. 

Her body trembled. She was the pinball, stuck ricocheting about a dark cavern. Her mind darted from thought to thought, frantically probing for a way out of the conclusion she had reached. But there wasn't a soothing thought to be found. The rationalization techniques she had learned in therapy merely confirmed her terror. The alternative to her fear was much less likely.

Her eyes met the clock. Tic... Tic... Not a clock. A bomb. A bomb whose timer ticked away her remaining existence.

Stop. You have no way of confirming whether or not this is reality. You never have a way of confirming whether or not you're in reality. Fuck, chances are the “reality” you know is just one big SIM itself. All you know is that if this is the real world, you better damn well finish this fucking test. And if it’s not, there’s nothing you can do about it. Completing the test is the only thing you can control.

Okay, even if this is a SIM, maybe you should care about you-you. Real you. The only thing you can do right now is help her.

But she put you here. She’s not you. What will her getting into med school do for you? Fucking n o t h i n g. 

Ten minutes ago Sara had been annoyed that SIMs weren’t used for testing. Would she have put hundreds of sim hers into this hell to get into med school? Abso-fucking-lutely she would.

She put you here

I would have put me here

And she did

You did

I’m just a malfuncti-- “FAIL. Sim discovered it was inside SIM. Test incomplete. Next,...” 

Where do sims go?

What if there’s a glitch and my consciousness floats through empty cyberspace in complete nothingness for eternity

no escape 

!!!!!!!!!

??????

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tic. Tic. Tic.

Her skin noticed the temperature in the room plummet. The AC current had revved up to match her heart’s spit-fire sonic booms. Arctic temperature... Room temperature?

No. Sara temperature.

Something animal switched on. The heart palpitated the last bit of reason from the mind. 

OUT. NEED OUT

WHERE?!?! 

OUT. OUT. OUT

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Perplexed-looking bots peered up from their desks at the digital watery-carbony blob hurtling down the aisle.