Poor Man's Fight (4 page)

Tanner sank into the couch and put his face in his hands. He knew his father was focused on pleasing Sharon. That wasn’t anything new, and ultimately, Tanner couldn’t hold it against him. His mother’s death had been crushing to son and father alike. Sharon lifted Stephen’s spirits when Tanner thought nothing would. They were good for one another, and genuinely happy together. As embarrassing as it was to have his father fall in love with and then marry one of his teachers, Tanner endured it all for the sake of putting Dad back together again.

Yet Sharon fit every stereotype of flighty artists as if it were a conscious goal. She also seemed to see Tanner as a constant reminder of her predecessor… who had always been the real source of strength in the family. Stephen’s late first wife was also a much more sensible and practical person.

Tanner’s hands fell away from his face. He stared off at the opposite wall. Stephen sat beside him. Having gone through gene therapy at twenty-five, Stephen could easily have been taken for Tanner’s older brother rather than his father. “I’ve got to do this, Tanner,” he said quietly. “I know you think it’s about Sharon, but it’s not just that. The company
won’t wait on me.”

“I know,” Tanner said glumly. “I just… you could’ve timed it better in telling me.”

“A lot of things could’ve been timed better.”

***

“We begin with basic astronomy,” the computerized voice of The Test explained. The spoken words also flashed across the screen in text.

“Okay,” Tanner sighed gratefully. That was good. He was good with astronomy.
At least he could start off with one of his strengths.

“Using the palette provided, illustrate and label your star system. Please remember to consider proper scale, distances and orbits.”

Tanner’s jaw dropped. “Wait, what?” he blinked. The instructions repeated, but he paid them little heed. The scope of the question stunned him. It would be one thing to label a picture or provide an answer in text, but to draw one from scratch? And to create a proper scale all on his own?

The palette program offered by the computer wasn’t like anything he’d ever used, either. Struggling with its counterintuitive interface, Tanner created images of the star of Archangel and its planets. “Ambrose, Michael, Raphael,
Jerome, Gabriel, Uriel, Anselm, Gregoria, Augustine,” he murmured to the tune of the nursery song. The rhyme scheme never really fit. Nor did the rhythm.
This is what happens when you let popes name planets
, he thought with a grumble.

Shit. Do I need to do moons, too? Asteroid belts? Inhabited stations? Do I need to work out their orbits, too?
He scribbled out answers, adjusting as best he could. Tanner noticed the clock ticking down and realized what a time sink this project could be. He wrapped it up quickly as he could and moved on.
Hopefully they’ll ask some actual astronomy questions
, he mused.

“Using the palette provided, illustrate and label the Solar system. Please remember—“

“Holy shit, really?” he interrupted.

“Please remember that you are in an academic setting and choose your language carefully. Using the palette provided…”

An hour into The Test, Tanner knew he was in real trouble. Normally calm and competent at math, Tanner now found himself making simple arithmetic errors. He caught and corrected some before submission as final answers, but not all of them, and he knew it.

He
thought, repeatedly, that he should’ve forced himself to eat something before leaving the house. He could have consciously controlled that much, at least. Forcing himself to sleep wasn’t possible, so he’d lain awake all night—which, with the planet Michael’s nineteen-hour rotational period, was somewhat subjective. Tanner stared at the ceiling all night, thinking about where he could possibly stay during his internship, how much rent and food and all the rest would cost, and what he would do if all the stress made him blow The Test so badly that it affected his loan standings. He thought about how much his internship meant to his plans to become a planetary survey specialist. He always dreamt of exploring new habitable and near-habitable worlds, of being the a guy who got to make the real discoveries and slap whatever names he wanted on every new fungus or bug or whatever turned up. Now he could think only of his dismal chances of attaining his dream job if he blew everything.

“Remember,
” the computer noted at the beginning of each section, “this portion of the evaluation is timed.”

“No shit,” he mumbled, “it’s all timed.” He let the time tick away. Better to be a little late than completely wrong.

He found no Periodic Table of Elements for reference in the chemistry section. Several of the questions were misleading. Others lacked critical details. The clock kept ticking away.

Life sciences, encompassing some of his greatest academic strengths, turned out to be considerably shorter than he expected. His hopes of making up for lost time and points soon evaporated.
The questions were either of dry, rote knowledge or of interdisciplinary matters that required some pondering.

Before long, Tanner had the response pad in his lap. He gave up on answering orally when his mouth felt too dry and he stuttered so much the testing program kept displaying errors in his answers that required correction. He stared, blankly, at the extended response question on the paper-thin pad.

“Discuss in detail the unique role producer organisms on Raphael played in enabling early settlement and terraforming projects in the Archangel system,” the pad read.

Tanner knew this. He had practically written this answer two years ago in another exam, one without such dramatically high stakes. Early surveys of Raphael revealed an oxygen-rich atmosphere without nearly enough plants to explain it. Eventually, scientists discovered that metabolic processes in a large swath of its smaller animals closely mimicked photosynthesis. Tanner knew all about it. He knew who the discoverers were, could
reconstruct several pertinent DNA sequences of Raphael’s prairie rats from memory… except now he stared at the black response pad, drawing a complete blank. He didn’t know where to start.

“Remember,” the pad flashed helpfully, “this portion of the evaluation is timed.”

***

Three hours and four essays of
thinly disguised bullshit later, Tanner staggered out of his testing cube and squinted at the comparatively bright lights of the testing center. Someone promptly punched him in the arm.

“I have kicked ass all morning and oh my God, Tanner, are you okay?”
Allison’s voice shifted from pride to surprise as Tanner turned his head. His classmate grabbed his wrist. Ordinarily, Tanner would’ve been all too happy to have Allison grab him. Maybe this was what he’d done wrong all along? Maybe he should’ve played more pathetic with her?

“Hi,” he croaked. “Um… I’m kind of stressed. How much time do we get for lunch?”

“We’ve got forty-five minutes. What’s wrong?” Concern wasn’t one of her normal expressions. It didn’t mesh with her normal looks of “competitive,” “driven,” “amused” or “heart-wrenchingly beautiful.”

“
All my plans for life after school died in a fire last night. I’ve barely slept and haven’t eaten,” he frowned. “There’s a cafeteria here, right?”

“Screw that. Let’s go get some real food. I’m buying.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Tanner knew she meant well, but he also knew they wouldn’t be alone long. Allison would inevitably pick up several hangers-on before they got out of the building without even intending it. Such things just happened to her.

“Well, I was going to tell you you’re buying, but that’s before I realized you just pulled your face out of a black hole,” she smirked. “Come on. Mush.”

“Hey, Allison, where are you going for lunch?” asked someone behind her. Tanner sighed. She had made it three whole sentences before a friend appeared.

“Uh, wherever Tanner takes me,” she
replied quickly. “We’ve got to go talk. I’ll see you later.” Surprised but grateful, Tanner let Allison direct him into the blazing, sunny streets outside.

“Wow,” she sighed and stretched. “I can’t wait to get off this rock.”

“You know where you’re going yet?”

“It’s the Sol system for me. On my way to Annapolis.”

Tanner blinked. “Annapolis? You mean the Academy?”

Allison
grinned. “Yeah. I’m accepted, soon as I graduate.”

“I didn’t think you were the military type.”

“Are you kidding? I spent every recess period playing space marines in school.”

“Wh
en, before puberty?”

“Don’t go all sexist on me, jerk!” she grinned. “There’s a whole galaxy of ass out there to kick, and I’ve got just the feet for it.”

Tanner shook his head. “You’re more man than I’ll ever be and more woman than I’ll ever be with. When are you leaving?”

“Couple days after graduation,”
Allison shrugged. “It’s kind of sad. Not so many graduation parties for me. Anyway, what’s going on with you?”

“I crashed this whole test already,” Tanner answered, rubbing his eyes.

“What? You? No way. I thought this thing was written just for you. God, that biology section was huge, and the astronomy stuff… crap, I sat there thinking, ‘Can’t I just draw this out?’ I’m better with visuals!”

Tanner stopped in his tracks. “You’re serious.”

“Well, yeah. What?”

His eyes narrowed. “Those sons of bitches,” he growled. “The computer probably tailors The Test to hit you in all your weak points and to avoid your strengths!”

“Oh, whatever, people say that every year,” Allison countered with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t buy into every conspiracy theory you hear. You know better. Anyway, something bigger than that is going on with you. Spill.”

He swallowed his anger. He had no way to prove his suspicions, anyway.
“I got home last night and found Sharon packing. Dad got a lead designer spot on Arcadia, only he has to leave in about a week and that leaves me out in the dust. I just found it all out about twelve hours ago.”

Allison
whistled appreciatively. “What are you going to do?”

“Hell if I know. But I’m already in trouble. I didn’t think I was going to have this many problems on this test, and all my plans counted on having to pay for only half a year of school at the absolute worst.
If I come out of this with 20k or worse in debt, a bunch of my financial support floats away. I looked for hours for a loan for situations like mine and came up with nothing. I just can’t stop thinking about what the hell I’m supposed to do now, and it’s only making it worse in there,” he finished, jerking his thumb at the evaluation center.

“
You can’t do anything about all that today, so you’re just going to have to focus past it.”

“I know, I know,” he groaned. “But I just… can’t. I need a plan.”

“Well, the astroecology thing was part of what made your university applications look so good, right? So it’s still worth doing even if you rack up more debt. You’ve got friends. Lots of friends. I’m sure you can crash at someone’s house.”

“I don’t have friends who are in any position to take me on as a burden, even if I were willing to do that to them. Almost all my friends are leaving for their own universities, anyway.”

“Okay…stay with my family. You can have my room while you do your internship, at least until you come up with a better plan.”

Tanner looked at her dryly. “I can’t do that.”

“You can. My parents always liked you better than all my other guy friends.”

“They did?”

“You’re the only one who wasn’t obviously trying to get me naked.”

“What, they respected my subtlety?”

“Yes. Shut up. Okay, you’re right, that won’t work…” She thought for a long moment. “Fine. Do what I’m doing. Join the military.”

“What? Are you kidding?”

She threw him an indignant look. “What’s wrong with that? Your mother was a veteran!”

He blinked, surprised she would remember personal trivia about him like that.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, I just… Can you honestly see me running around with a gun? I’ve never been in a fight in my life! I’m the guy who got Professor Jenkins fired over how he treated the lab animals!”

“
You don’t have to go infantry or marines. There are more non-combat roles than you can count.”

“Besides, where would I even begin? It’s too late to get into any of the academies for this year.
Applying for admission for next year doesn’t do me any good for the situation I’m in this year. It’s still the same problem.”

Allison
shook her head again. “You couldn’t get into an academy anyway. No team sports. I told you to go out for some teams. Might’ve taught you to keep your eye on the ball at a time like this,” she said, nudging him gently. “Maybe some time in uniform would do you good. Anyway, there’s really not an academy option you could swing at this point. I mean you should think about enlisting.”