A Taste of Things to Come

The sun always rises late in the day in the Citadel.  The might conifers and the towering mountains to the east cast long shadows over the chilly valley.  The mid-spring fog was thick in the air, and Stefan was conscious of his breathing as the vapor added a familiar weight to his lungs.

Stefan had been sleeping restlessly for most of the last month.  His mind darting in every direction with anticipation of the Exam approaching.  He, like all 25th cycles, would receive their schedule at mid-day.  For most it was a bittersweet moment.  The Exam brought an end to an unfocused youth, and began a new phase of glorious purpose.  For those who fail in their tasks, expulsion from Citadel was the only life they would know.  The Order doesn't want their members to fail, and works tirelessly with the youths to teach them their ways, but there are a few that still cannot make the cut.

Failure was never a worry for Stefan.  He was a competent student for the most part.  Never outshining the other youths, but always completing what was needed.  He lacked the passion for his studies; always hoping that some day his passion would rise in him when he joined a clan.  Maybe even being a sub-clan regent one day.

But this morning, only one thing weighed on Stefan's mind: “Will I make it through this?”  The professors of the five clans had a passion for teaching, but were not the examiners.  The Order council chose the examiners every cycle from each clan from a pool of regents.  Those with the knowledge and experience to administer an entire sub-clan.

The Council had chosen Grigsby from Clan Gibson, the engineers, for the last fourteen cycles, since showing an aptitude in both architecture and electronic engineering.  Regent Grigsby is a fair and gentle man in his seventieth cycle.  He, like most from Clan Gibson, is a quiet contemplative man.  He calculates his words with great care and rarely speaks in a tone above a loud whisper.  His portion of the Exam has been said to require the greatest care of detail of the five, but a larger latitude for youths that show a marked ability to try their hardest.  Stefan was comfortable with his mathematics that he would succeed in at least trying hard enough.

Clan Krinler's, the warriors, internal council has insisted for centuries that their examiner be chosen internally.  Of their ranks, the Krinler's have the fewest number of sub-clans, and no regents.  To that end, the Council chooses an examiner only between thirty and forty cycles clans-folk.  A disciple that shows a more interest in form than in the fight.  This is to ensure aggression is never absorbed and reason will prevail in the most stressful situations.  A Krinler's suit will fail if too much aggression floods it's inputs.  Stefan knew only a handful of Krinler's but knew his ShaMok training all youth gain would serve him well.  His emotions would not be a problem as he never felt them as important as his overall knowledge of facts.  Stefan still had very little interest in being a Krinler, only to pass the Exam of the unknown examiner.

The Council chose both of the Clan Barhus regents.  Raleph and Seriana represented the dietary necessity of the entire Order and provided the surplus needed for Clan Hanlier to do their work.  Raleph was a master of botany.  He could turn salt plains into fertile fields in five cycles if he were so inclined.  His drive and passion for plants, did not extend into the social world.  He would rather sleep in his cathedral of plants than experience the annoyance of people.  Raleph begrudgingly takes in the fewest number of people every year.  Only taking in the best and the brightest botany students so his Cathedral has the wandering priests to do his bidding.  Seriana, on the other hand, relies on her Clans-folk more than anyone else.  She is the master huntress, and her pack of people know she is the rightful alpha.  Her hunting parties leave the Citadel walls in a blur, diving from the towering walls, and disappearing into the canopy without a crack, woosh or yelp.  The packs only come back if their hunt is successful, and they are always successful.  With thousands to feed in the Citadel, and many more thousands to bargain with in the badlands, Seiana provides without diminishing the bounty of the forest.  A knowledge that only she and her pack know.  As Stefan thinks about Clan Barhus, he despairs.  The Barhus regents are hard to please, and harder to communicate with.  If he is to have a chance with their two-part exam, he will have to tap a part of himself he has never enjoyed.  He will have to intelligent but silent, pensive but but with action, and most of all, take the leap off the wall.  The leap was making his heart pound even now.

Clan Hanlier held the most enjoyable exam there would be, field work.  The Council appoints it's own Hanlier member each cycle.  This cycle's council member is Jerma.  Her rise to power was meteoric by some, but by her own account, the only thing she ever felt comfortable doing.  While working a trade mission to the badlands four cycles ago, she convinced two warring fiefs to trade their leaders with each other for a week.  During the handoff ceremony, she drank herself into a stupor and woke up the next morning married to both dukes.  The trade deals that have followed have provided some of the finest youths in recent memory, but also the raw materials to expand the decryption server supercomputer 2 fold.  Jerma's exam would be exciting, and would put anyone's alcohol tolerance to the test.

And finally, what Stefan dreaded the most, Clan Skrift examiner.  Clan Skrift was the most arrogant of the Clans.  They saw themselves as the most important part of the Order.  There is of course reason for them to think this.  They were keepers of the knowledge, decryption, coders, researchers and hackers.  They were the first clan.  Their founder, Francis Skrintess, was commissioned by the ancient empire of the region for the project.  He foresaw the fall and organized a business into a way of life.  Clan Skrift holds this power as if it was their own personal achievement.  The Skrift examiner would be none other than Kyl.  A man with no sympathy or remorse.  Aggressive and ambitious, he believes that all 25th cyclers should only wish to join the Skrift and failing that would be allowed to stay in the Order only at the acceptance of the other Clan examiners.  Stefan knew that he was being targeted by Kyl to be a Skrift, but knew that is something he knew he didn't want.  And his dread worsened thinking about Kyl.

As Stefan continue to lay in bed in his meager dormitory, bright shafts of light begin to stream through the east facing slit that his dormitory patriarch dared call a window.  The morning congregation meal would be half through by now, but Stefan could not bring himself to rush.  He was much too tired from his heavy thoughts to crave his usual morning comforts.

Suddenly, there was a rap on the door that could have woken the dead.  With all the energy he could muster, Stefan lurched out of bed and dawned his apprentice robes of black linen and white sleeves.  Reaching for the door, expecting to be confronted by the dormitory patriarch, Friely Gibson.  Instead it was Haley Ren, the best news possible  on this dreary sun soaked spring morning.  The glower of Stefan's face melted into surprise and relief.

“Oh, thank god.  I was sure you were Friely.”  Exclaimed Stefan.  “He was the last thing I would need on a day like today.”

Haley was Stefan's favorite person.  She was rambunctious and intelligent, and knew just what to say to get him to stop being sorry for himself.  She was a 25th cycler too.  Being traded for in her 8th cycle, she save Stefan from a life of boredom.  With the Exam coming up and the Clan choice arriving, Stefan worried that they would soon have to go their separate ways.  He was ready to try to follow her but her path was much more boisterous than his own, so he would need to take the path least traveled and maintain a friendship across Clan lines.

“You know better than that.  He knocks more like a tree falling in the woods.”  she said, as she beat on his door with a complex series of disturbingly loud explosions that echoed down the long dark hall. “Why are you still in bed.  I went down to congregation hall and didn't see you.  I know how you hate to miss your sausage.”

“I am just running late today.  I was going to come soon.” He lied.

“Well then, now is as good a time as any.  Besides, today is a big day.  The Exam starts in a week, and the schedules are posted.”  She said with more exuberance in his voice than Stefan had felt in all his cycles.

“Alright, I am coming, let me grab my bag.”  Stefan grabbed his dirt colored leather satchel and rushed out of his room, closing his the door behind him tightly.  He  eagerly chased after Haley who had begun walking with a noticeable skip toward the  naturally lit stairwell that led to the congregation hall.  She was already lightening his heart for the day, but nothing could make all of his dread evaporate.

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The walk to the congregation hall was more pleasant than Stefan expected.  After leaving the dormitories the pair entered a large grassy activity field.  The field had five equally lengthed sides with nearly identical squat dormitories, hewn of hand carved stone twice the size of the treaded tractors the Hanlier used on their trading missions, on each of the five sides.  At the key of the lopsided hexagon, towering above all other buildings on the youth campus was Congregation hall with a deep tunnel sliced through the base.  The hall extended straight from either direction of the tower and where the building began to overlap the corners of the two flanking dormitories, the building partially wrapped around the buildings at a forty five degree angle.

Beyond the tunnel was a pathway that split the four more buildings in half.  Like the Congregation hall, their architecture was a throwback of academic buildings that were ancient, even when the old empires were new.  Tall skinny windows, thatched with a dark pattern separating the panes of glass.  The stonework was course between the large facades of rust colored bricks.  Stefan thought to himself sarcastically, as he usually did, peering through the tunnel, that someone was given far too much attention to design buildings of such an overdone style.  Still, he knew the reason for such a style.  The youth campus was the original campus of Skrintess Corporation.  Which is why the eccentric private owner/founder of the corporation, Francis Skriftness, assigned Congregation hall as not only the central meeting and dining hub for the youth campus, but also housed Clan Skrift centric teaching labs.  Skriftness wanted all of Citadel to remember that they served a single purpose that only his future Clan could perform.  All other disciplines, in his eyes, were to look up to his followers.  Stefan hated the “faithful” philosophies that Clan Skrift espoused.  But what is a youth to do?

Haley, chatting to daydreaming ears, sauntered into her favorite dining hall to the left of the tunnel they had just entered.  The heavy door was always a challenge to open, made of what looked like dark oak, but was likely an steel core.  The room had taller than usual ceilings with round tables that could seat as many as ten people per table.  The tables had a crease down the center so they could fold in two and be placed against the wall so the room could be used for other functions when needed.  The chairs, almost an afterthought in design, served function over form.  They had a cushioned base and a tall metal back, welded in haste by what was likely an apprentice.  For all the expensive that was put into the campus' appearance, little time was spent on the comfort of the youths.  Haley and Stefan zig-zagged through the round tables that were almost deserted to the buffet style nooks beyond.

Stefan filled his plate with meager amounts of food.  He still had no appetite, but knew he needed something to withstand the day.  He grabbed a biscuit and some assorted cheese on his plate, and after catching Haley's eye, begrudgingly spooned pine nuts and some apple slices in the far corner of his chosen meal.  He chose a table as far from people as he could and sat down heavily.  He poked his biscuit with a fork and realized, with disappointment, that it was the first batch of the day.  Many hours old and hard as a rock, determined to enjoy it, Stefan dug his molars into it and hoped for the best.  

Haley sat two seats down around the table to Stefan's right and nibbled at her fruit mix.  Then, without warning, a light under the skin on the back of the right hands began to flash, and a familiar buzzing vibrated their bones.  Sub-dermal implants were standard for all in the Order, and impossible to ignore.  Implanted, among other relics of the old empires, during the medical exam given to everyone who was just purchased in the badlands.  They both fingered the outline of a circle on the back of their hand and waited.  Their implants read their biometric readings and cross referenced them with the mainframe computer.  If anyone was in the order was ever in distress, messages could be hidden and memories could be locked away, even from the individual in trouble.  An interface appeared before their eyes like a holographic display.  But unlike the holographic displays used in the labs, this display was a trick of their minds.  Projected on their visual cortex, the images appeared before them like real life.  If a physical object needed to be represented, the implants could even modify the tactile information coming from the user's body and simulate contact.  To the uninitiated, it was unnerving, but to most in the Citadel, it was an indispensable tool.

The message that popped up in the pairs vision was simple text.  An anticipated schedule for the Exam.  Testing was to begin in three days.  For Stefan, day one was to be Kyl Skrift's Exam.  This was an annoying relief for him.  He was very good with computers, an almost magical way about them.  But being good at Skrift teachings meant being pigeon-holed into Clan Skrift.  Sure he was good at it, but being good at it and WANTING to surf the ancient data for bad blocks, or crack data stores of encrypted mail about company employees going out to long forgotten restaurants for the rest of his life were two different matters.  

“Great, I get to be pressured for the entire Exam into being in Clan Skrift.  Talk about excitement.”  Stefan said with a loathing, but upbeat smile.

“Just bomb Kyl's exam.  Just enough for them not to want you.  Then they will just think you can't hack it in the real world, so you can choose something better... Like the Hanlier.”  Haley said, ending her sentence with reverence and excitement.

“They will see right through that.  No one can bomb a test if they wanted to.  Its not like it matters if you get something right or wrong when answering the questions, its how the examiner thinks you did.  The only way out of Skrift at this point is doing better with another clan.  So much for that, right?”

“You're smart, I am sure you will come up with something.” Haley said joyfully.

“Well, at least I get to end with the leap.  I have to admit, I have been waiting to take the leap for a long time.”  Stefan said with real excitement in his voice.

“You're crazy.  They loose a 25er off the wall every year.  Sometimes more than one.  The Barhus have no care for life.  I think I am going to see if she will take a bottle of rotgut I borrowed from one of the Gibson labs.  I mixed in some tree berries a week ago.  Should taste like the forest and get you wasted.  Then we will see if I have to take the leap.”

“Good luck, that Seriana can be tough I hear.  You make too much noise and she might chain you to the wall so you don't ruin her hunt.”  Chuckled Stefan.

“Better that than spending my first months in Clan Hanlier in the infirmary.”  Scoffed Haley.

“Good point.  Well try anything.  Not sure anything would hurt, seeing as you are not going to... what was that word you used?  Bomb!... not like you will bomb all the exams.  You didn't 'borrow' that rotgut.  I know you better than that.  You convinced some Gibson professor to give it to you didn't you.  If you can convince a Gibson to break the rules, you can convince the Hanlier to take you with them.  Just practice with the rotgut.  I am not looking forward to the long walk home after their exam.  They always overdo it.”  Stefan said.

“Oh don't worry, I have been practicing plenty.”  Haley retorted.

As the two were finishing their small meal, Renner darted into the room and found them immediately.  Renner was a polite enough 25er, but he had a demeanor about him that Stefan couldn't quite name, but he hated Renner for it.  Maybe it was the way he was all too eager to want to be he and Haley's friend all the time.  Maybe it was the way he always seemed to interrupt their conversations with inane small talk.  Or maybe, Stefan would always think jokingly to Haley when Renner would leave the room, their implants were just tuned to canceling frequencies.  Stefan didn't really know, but he couldn't stand him.  Irrational as that is, Stefan decided that reciprocated politeness would be a better solution than slapping him for being annoying.

“Hi Renner,” Stefan said with unmistakeable disdain.  “Yes, we got the list too.  Like every other 25er.”

“I know, I know.”  Renner started out of breath.  Clearly missing Stefan's tone.  “I am just so excited, I had to talk to you guys.  Isn't it amazing.  Finally, to be in a clan.  I have waited so long.  You are going to be in Clan Skrift, aren't you Stefan?  No one knows the systems like you.  I hope I can be that good.  Skrift's are the best.”

Stefan's response was delayed, with all the annoyance he felt would come with working the most boring jobs, and the likelihood that if Renner was a Skrift himself, that he would be paired up with him for their perceived friendship.  “I guess that is the word around here.  I don't know what I want Renner, but sitting around looking at code all day is not my idea of a solid life.  What about seeing what's outside the Citadel?  I was born out there.  They took us out there when we were fifteen cycles, sure.  I need some excitement in my life.  The Joy of the chase.”

“I suppose you could ask to be in Hanlier if your scores let you do it.”  Renner said, trying his hardest to be helpful.

Haley chuckled.  “Stefan?  A Hanlier?  I guess stranger things have happened.  Old Friely a patriarch is probably stranger than that.”

“No man, I am not talking about the same old dusty fiefs.  Those people are good for one thing, us.  I am talking about new knowledge.  Why doesn't the Order send people beyond the badlands?  Why doesn't the Order try to make new knowledge?  Are the classified dealings of dead empires really that important.  Don't get me wrong, the fiefs are bronze age, and we are cyber age.  I get why we needed to save the knowledge, but what is after that?”  Stefan's voice tapered off.  Quietly, but forcefully, he found his voice again.  “What are you doing here Renner.  Get back on your schedule and leave me and Haley alone.  I am not in the mood for your crap.”

“Yeah, alright.  I was just excited.”  Renner turned slowly, and walked dejectedly out of the room.

“What is wrong with you?  All he wants is a friend and he is willing to do all the work.  And what is this about, really?  You always talk about finding that happy place in the Order.  Now you don't want to be in the Order anymore?  You want to be expelled?”  Haley said angerly.

“Oh he is fine.  The kid is tougher than you think.  Besides, just because he wants to be my friend, doesn't mean I want to be his.  He got to talk to me today.  He will think of it as a win.”  Stefan retorted with more force than he meant to.  “And yes, maybe I want more out of my life than the Order is willing to give me right now.  Maybe I need to do something that no one in the Order has ever done.  I don't want to be expelled though.  I want to do it for the Order, and make a mark on the future.  I don't want to be some drone, locked in a room, seeing through other people's eyes.  Nor do I want to live my days with the badland filth and my mights in a drunken stupor.  My dreams need room to breath.

“Badland filth?  Don't forget where we came from boy?”  Haley responded.  And with a deep breath and a collected calm that Stefan would envy.  She stood up gently and said:  “Look, finish your breakfast, I am going to get to my lessons.  Come by my room before final meal and we can link up and you can give me a tour of this dream of yours.  Deal?”

“Yeah, deal.”  Stefan said with his head held lower than usual.  “I'm sorry, we're still OK right?”

“We are.  No worries.  Just places to be.”  She said reassuringly.  “I'll see you later.”

Haley turned and gracefully exited through the back of the room.  Stefan had one last cube of cheese, got up while chewing and slowly walked out of the room in the opposite direction of Haley.  His lessons would have to get by without him today.  He was going to go for a walk around Citadel.  He could turn his day around by finding something he had never seen before.