Pass/Fail (2012) Read Online Free PDF Page A

warm, buzzing quality, as if he were speaking through the whirling blades of an electric fan. The man behind the mask (if it was a man—it could just as easily be a woman in disguise) whispered, which didn’t help, and used no hand gestures or body language.
    Jake stared into the reflective mask, stared at his own face, and figured he understood. There was no way for him to know who was testing him, so there was no way to know which of the school’s teachers were part of this messed-up game. The voice was distorted just to make sure he didn’t recognize it. The mask showed nothing but himself. The identical suits meant there could be one teacher behind the whole thing (the odds on favorite was Mr. Zuraw, the guidance counselor) or it could be dozens of them. It could be every teacher in the school, taking turns with the mask.
    “Hello, Jake,” the Proctor repeated, patiently waiting for him to make some kind of response. “Are you ready to get started?”
Jake licked his lips. They were suddenly dry. This was his second test, and he still understood only a few basic rules. He would have to be on his guard. “Yes,” he replied. What would even happen if he said no? Would the Proctor just wait until he changed his answer? Or would he—
    “Failure to respond to a test results in a registered grade of FAIL,” the Proctor told him.
    Jake let out a little whimpering noise, despite his best efforts to contain it.
    Had this thing just read his mind?
    Or maybe he had failed to give the correct response. “I’m ready to get started,” he tried, speaking very distinctly.
    “Good! Then let’s get started. This will be a very easy test, if you use your intelligence. It is highly recommended that you pass this test, as later tests in the series will be more difficult and more likely to result in a failure condition. It’s important to accrue all the PASSes you can now, rather than waste one of your allotted FAILs.”
    “That… makes sense,” Jake said, frowning. Now he wondered if he was talking to a machine. Was there some kind of robot behind the mask? Was he listening to a recorded message?
    “There are a number of envelopes in the room behind me,” the Proctor went on. “All but one of them contain a FAIL. Please select the other one and open it.”
    The Proctor stepped smoothly aside, letting Jake enter the room.
    It was a classroom, much like all the others although the desks had been removed, leaving most of the floor empty. A little early morning light came in through a row of rectangular windows in the far wall. A single wide teacher’s desk sat in the middle of the floor tiles, illuminated as well by overhead fluorescent lights. On the desk sat nine envelopes, arranged in a grid: three by three. They were all pale blue, as was to be expected. They were all the same size and shape and nothing immediately distinguished one from another.
    That was all. There was nothing else in the room.
    He had to pick one envelope. This was supposed to be an easy test—but it looked like he had eight chances in nine to fail it automatically.
    He began to seriously worry about the harder tests to come.
    Nine envelopes. Only one right choice.
    Jake walked toward the table, intending to pick one up at random. He couldn’t see any other way to choose. Maybe he would pass his hand over each one and see if it gave him a different feeling somehow. Would he even know if a PASS was hidden inside one? He hadn’t yet seen an envelope with a FAIL in it, so he didn’t know if they were different, or if they felt any different from the PASSes. He was almost certain they would seem identical from the outside.
    Jake started to reach for the one in the middle. It stood out, a little, because it was the only one surrounded on all sides by other envelopes. But—it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Maybe he should pick the bottom-most, right-most envelope, because that was the last one in the series, and therefore least likely to be