Dong..Dong......Dong

  In a small and dark room on the fifth floor of a large dilapidated building surrounded by dozens just like it, there lay a thin body twisting and turning violently on a narrow bed. It was silent, save for the creaking of a cheaply made bedframe under duress and a heart beating hard, racing wildly like a beast attempting to escape the thin cage of the chest. Suddenly, a pair of eyes opened widely in the darkness as their owner gasped desperately for breath. Dark and round pupils enlarged to their greatest extent darted around the room instinctively, taking in the white walls, a low ceiling with a single dim artificial light, and a stainless steel bedframe next to a small window that overlooked a dimly lit street.

  Haaaaaah....haaah...haaah

  The shallow, ragged sound of his breathing and hot sweat sticking to his skin reminded Min that he was still alive, while the familiar surroundings of his assigned living quarters slowly pulled him into reality. He closed his eyes and covered them with a forearm, breathing deeply and slowly as the last of the frightening images flashed rapidly under his retinas and dissipated with the wakening of mind. Gradually his breathing became smooth and the beating in his chest subsided into a barely noticeable murmur. Haaaaaah........a long sigh came out, filled with a sense of exasperation but also relief. After laying still for an indeterminate amount of time, he groaned and stood up, walking groggily to the corner of the room next to his bed where a small metal sink with an oval mirror was attached to the wall.

  Min, better known to some by his Ward name Zafta, stared at the dimly lit reflection of a thin young man in the mirror. Dark and deep pupils, with a hanging inner and raised outer lid peered back at him set in a pale, almost alabaster, face that could perhaps be called handsome but truthfully leaned a equal way towards 'beautiful' with a broad forehead, a long and high nose with a slight bump and a graceful jawline. The image was slightly marred by a tangled mess of long and somewhat matted black hair that framed the face wildly, extending past the shoulders in the back. Min yawned and started to take care of himself mechanically, washing his face and brushing while reflecting on his dream. I really need to get to the bottom of this, I cant be losing sleep every day only months before my first trip to the Afterworld. Besides, my performance in the recent drop simulations has fallen behind and its worrying old Ben.

  Mins brow furrowed as he thought of what he had seen in his nightmares. It had begun nearly a year ago without warning, when he "woke" in his sleep or so he thought, and had a lucid hallucination. He had awakened suspended and floating in an endless dark void, surrounded by a sea of stars that seemed distant and near at the same time. At the time he had thought it was an exciting experience, after all his greatest dream was to leave the small rock of Zafta and explore the vast interconnected galactic empire of Ea with its millions of True Planets and strange cultures, he even wanted to go beyond, to see the alien worlds and miraculous cosmic phenomena in the deep reaches of the universe far beyond the scope of the empire. Reveling in the feeling of unlimited freedom in the vast expanse of the universe, he felt a sudden subconscious urge to look at the distant stars. At first nothing had seemed off, but gradually something began to sneak upon him, upon his consciousness creeping through the void. The stars, they were staring back. Although it was a dream, he had felt the hairs raising on the back of his neck as the twinkling and distant stars peered at him, scouring him with vast and limitless inhuman attention. It was as if countless 'eyes' were watching, and countless 'ears' were listening. At the same time, his consciousness had begun to change as he felt smaller and smaller and the stars became infinitely larger in his perception. Then 'They' had reached out to him, with invisible tentacles stretching across the void as if they had always been, and whispers began to fill his ears that said and meant nothing, but were filled with an inviolable sense of certainty in their own logic that lulled his gradually distorted mind. He struggled, fighting to push away their overtures as they entrenched themselves. Just as he was about to sink completely in the sea of his own consciousness, he saw a dark star closing the distance, far more 'real' than any of the rest. It drowned out and pushed away the seemingly infinite sea of stars as if his eyes and ears and all his senses were entirely meant for It. The star moved closer and closer and he regained more and more of his mind until he had almost surfaced again. Then he 'saw' what was on Its surface, which filled him with an unspeakable sense of horror as he woke up. Every week thereafter he sporadically would have the same dream. What was it that I saw at the end and forcibly awakened me? What are all those stars? I just can't remember no matter how hard I try, but would I really want to see it? Min was conflicted, but he had steeled his resolve to try and find out, because he really couldn't figure out the key or crux of this matter and he needed to get it resolved before it began to affect his Last Assessment.

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  Speaking of which, Min was deeply worried about his final Assessment before true adulthood and citizenship. The Ea empire spanned countless starfields and ruled over a vast collection of planets, including the small resource planet Zafta where he was born. Under the rule of the empire, the countless numbers of pre-imperial planetary class education systems had been standardized and reformed into a singular system of yearly Assessments run by the Artificial God, who stored all the knowledge in the empire and oversaw the development of the imperial education system among other rules and regulations in conjunction with the Council of Elders. Min didn't know too much about the intricacies, his access to information was relatively limited as a Ward, but the key points of the imperial system were well known to all inhabitants of the empire.

  The very first Assessment was the Birth Assessment, which tested the genetic quality of an individual at birth and assigned them a genetic quotient value ranging from one to one hundred. A value of ten or higher was considered to be a "viable" offspring with training value and meaning of existence who qualified automatically for further Assessments and potential full imperial citizenship. Min didn't know much about what happened to those who fell below the cutoff line, because Wards never fell below the cutoff line, but he had listened to stories from older Wards of garbage dumping planets where they sent the unregistered which were full of poverty, crime, and untamed wilderness. After the Birth Assessment, barring any extreme outliers, there were Theoretical Assessments every year for ten years following imperial guidelines on development in the sciences, physical education, politics, art, religion and so on. A qualifying score of at least ten out of one hundred in each of these assessments would qualify for citizenship. Then for seven years the Assessments changed focus, rather than being purely theoretical knowledge tests prospective citizens were sent into practical courses where they applied their understanding in real life situations ranging from tasks like cooking or overseeing tamed alien beasts to fighting as soldiers against space pirates and alien races in so called True Assessments. The scores here varied wildly as it depended entirely on the choices of the examinees, and the differences widened vastly between candidates with a good background and talent and those without. Finally it all culminated in the Last Assessment, held in the so-called Afterworld where candidates from across the empire would enter a semi-artificially generated reality which contained theoretically unlimited generated worlds and a chance for Awakening upon entry, within the Afterworld there was a designated trial zone for candidates that would be judged by the Artificial God, and on occasion overseen by the Council of Elders and other great dignitaries depending on if there was a truly stellar level performance.

  Min was relatively confident in himself, after all although his genetic quotient value was just fourteen he had never believed that genetic quotient would determine everything despite the value the empire placed on it. He had worked hard enough in the Theoretical Assessments and proved to be of sound mind, scoring sixty to seventy out of one hundred in every domain he put his effort into, which had shocked his Warden at the time almost enough to report it to the District Governor. Unfortunately, the next seven years of True Assessments were mediocre, due to various reasons such as his Ward status and news that the Planetary Governor had offended a big shot from another planet, he was completely unable to leave Zafta to do any high value missions. As a result of his low genetic quotient and practical assessments, his overall grade was only enough to qualify as a low to mid level citizen, unable to leave the planet on a whim and unable to join the star explorer association he had always dreamed of. This left his only chance at completely changing his fate in the hands of the Final Assessment, where every candidate that entered would have a chance at Awakening and becoming a true strong man and valuable individual in the empire.

  Min took one last look at the mirror, staring hard at the man in it and encouraging him mentally Its all or nothing now, I can only count on you