Choices

 Kyle found himself at the National Testing Centre for the third time that week.

The first time was just a tour of the building, a long walk through strangely coloured rooms with shape patterns on the walls and floors. Stark white testing rooms, with large screens near the front. Bigger rooms with cube shaped boxes piled high nearer the end of the visit. It was a silent tour and most places were unlabelled, but it left an impression none the less.

The second day was more of an orientation. Something about picking a qualified candidate for some mysterious job. They explained the test would cover all sorts of things from spacial reasoning, number logic and basic physics. There was a small aside about the final question that stood out to Kyle. They said it was a bonus question, but they way they said it had him intrigued. They very clearly went over exactly what that question would be and a sample answer. They could pick 5 shape/colour combinations, but no further instruction was given.

This third day was the first actual test.

Kyle sat down at the white painted desk, looked at the last page of the stack of paper and made his choices.

It was the same options as the orientation, and he made a point of going with the sample answer.

Green pill, red door, purple hallway, blue box, yellow circle.

He went back to the main part of the exam. It was as they described earlier - a kind of IQ test with varying difficulty of questions on it. Kyle didn’t think he did great, or badly, just somewhere in the middle.

A woman stepped out from behind a white door and grabbed his exam. She looked it over, said nothing, and left. A monitor in the room flashed some words on the screen “You are free to leave now. Thank you for your participation”

The man at the door on the way out didn’t say anything, and Kyle didn’t feel like starting a conversation.

Kyle was called into the NTC another three times that week.

Between tests, it seemed like his family was changing somehow. Not good or bad, just odd things that seemed out of place. Hair style, favourite clothes and other small things. It inspired him to change up the answers on his tests a bit.

Each time he went to the last question and picked a new small variation on the sample answer. He remembered the tour and the shapes he had seen along the way. He wasn’t entirely sure, but it seemed like the ones listed in the sample answer were most prominent. Not that many triangles or anything beyond squares and cubes. The colours varied quite a bit, but again, mostly ones listed in the orientation. He thought he had better stick with the shapes and only change the hue.

*Blue* pill, red door, purple hallway, blue box, yellow circle.

Green pill, *blue* door, purple hallway, blue box, yellow circle.

And so on, week after week he’d pick a slightly different set than the day before, doing his best to not double up, or choose simplistic, single colour choices. He didn’t have anything written down, not his plan, or past choices. Kyle did have a pattern though, and that kept it relatively straight in his head.

He would cycle through the colours so that the pill, door, hallway and box would change, but the circle colour would stay the same till he had finished a set.

The rest of the test was secondary for him. The quiz seemed to get harder each time through, but Kyle would always go to the last page first, in case he didn’t have time to get to it later.

Outside of the tests, Kyle’s life was getting a bit odd. Different people would show up on his social media feeds, and he’d have a long history with them that he didn’t remember. Then after the next visit to the NTC things would go back to normal. Almost.

Some days the monitor in the testing room told him to exit a different way, but he always ended up near the main exit relatively quickly. Some of the rooms and hallways seemed to have changed. Painted a different colour, or different shapes on them. The guard at the front always seemed to have a small collection of items on the table in front of him. Keys, rings, fidgeting aids. Kyle mostly ignored them.

By the end of the second month the lady checking the tests seemed impressed.

Green pill, red door, purple hallway, blue box, *red* circle.

The video at the end of the test was a little different that time. It showed a breakdown of everyone else taking the tests. The scores for the main part of the test varied greatly. As suspected Kyle was in the middle, near the upper end, but by no means the best. The surprising part was the report on the last question. It seemed to be analyzed more than anything else. It alone seemed to be the indicator of who got to stay in the program and who wasn’t asked back. The number of participants going down as people were removed as their choices were blank, repeated or patterns became random or too far from the sample answer given in the introduction.

Kyle didn’t know they were going take the end choices so seriously. Or maybe it was meant to be a joke. Some of the other questions in the test seemed deliberately silly as well.

The presentation ended with the usual message “You are free to leave now. Thank you for your participation”

In the lobby the guard near the door was at his desk. He seemed to have a set of pills in front of him.

“Green pill” said Kyle. The man stood up and motioned for Kyle to follow him. He stopped in front of a series of doors. Kyle noticed a small coloured sticky note on each of the doors. Kyle walked over to the door with the red note on it.

“Are you sure?” asked the guard. “Quite” said Kyle. The guard stepped forward and put a key in the door. On the other side was a purple hallway. The guard waited for Kyle to step through and then he closed the door again.

Kyle turned around and tried the door, but it was already locked. Having nothing else to do he set off down the passageway to see where it would lead.

Around the first corner was an archway off to a different room, with a large blue box with an open lid and an expensive looking suitcase in it. Kyle almost went in the room, then he noticed that below the blue box was a floor with green circles. He went further down the hall and saw other rooms.

He couldn’t see any rooms with yellow circles on the floor and wondered what he should do.

Kyle thought back to how much they had been analyzing the last question. Then the fact the presentation changed when he finished the first set, and moved onto the red circle.

There was a room with red circles on the floor. If his choices mattered as much as the quiz seemed to imply surely that would be a part of this second test.

He stepped into the room. He looked at the blue box, it was the same as the first room, but this one was closed. He turned around to the entrance of the room when he thought he heard a noise.

It was the lady from the exam room. “Open the box” she said. Kyle did so.

Unlike the first box, this didn’t contain a briefcase, but simply note saying “Congratulations Kyle you’ve saved us all” and a small key.

The lady explained “The NTC actually exists across several different dimensions. We had an accident here a few months ago and we have been trapped in an ever changing building. Any time we would go to exit, we’d find ourselves in a different, but similar dimension. We had been trying to find someone who would act as an anchor, someone who would notice patterns and help us make sense of things. We had to see if you were suitable for the dimensional mapping, so you can help us all. Your test results, mainly the last question, and the quick exits from the building proved that you already had the answer.”

The guard appeared as well. “She’s saying you can find the true exit, and if not, you can go through the patterns in a sensible way.”

Kyle was confused “Why didn’t you find your own way out?”

The lady sighed. “We opened up more possibilities than we could manage. We were also dealing with candidates and Kyles from other dimensions. We were never sure which one we were talking to and how to explain the problem. Most of our work was trying to keep the tests in the right piles and keeping you from going to a dimension too different than your own. And from meeting yourself too soon.”

The guard interjected. “When you saw the green pill, and reacted, we checked over your pattern system and noticed you had the right idea all along. The other Kyle’s had a different sample question, so we could sort the papers the rest of the way, ”

“So I helped map out the dimensions?” said Kyle.

“Along with the rest of us” said another Kyle, rounding the corner. “So you’re ‘Green Pill’,” and looking down at the floor “and red circle. What’s your family like? We can get you back there.”

Kyle breathed a sigh of relief. Now it made sense.