Psychotic Academy

Second year cadets Wall and Damerell could barely be seen behind the large piles of datapadds, hardcopy technical manuals and other articles of learning they had filled their tiny room with. After having cruised from class to class for the past two years, they were now confronted with the terrifying spectacle of Officer Training Exams. For reasons nobody in their year could figure out, Wall and Damerell had been amongst those chosen to sit the OTEs, and now they had to study for them.

This presented certain problems, as neither of them had paid particular attention to the vast majority of their classes (Temporal Mechanics: Say What? Interstellar Diplomacy: Too boring. Self-Defence: Ow!! That was my arm!) and now had to make up for lost time. They had to pass these exams, for the simple reason that it would be the end of their Starfleet careers if they didn’t. One of Starfleet’s more obscure policies was not to allow failed Officer trainees to continue as an ordinary crewman, as they didn’t think that embittered failures would be of any use to them. At least, that’s what they’d been told. Faced with the twin terrifying prospects of officership, or going on the dole, Wall and Damerell had opted to sweat blood in an attempt to get through the exams.

“What’s a Heisenberg compensator?”

“Medical cutting tool.”

“Okay. What’s the law of inverse warp thrust?”

“X to the Y is constantly decreasing.”

“Cool! We might actually pass this.”

Wall looked up from his ‘Test yourself’ book that he’d picked up in the Academy bookshop with a slight grin on his face. Damerell carried on ploughing through ‘Biomolecular Chemistry Made Easy’, making notes on a padd. Throwing the test-book behind him, Wall turned his attention to his copy of ‘Warp Geometry for Dummies’, and flicked through to the chapter on What To Do In The Event Of A Core Breach.

In keeping with the whimsical tone of the book, the first words in the chapter were ‘PANIC!!!! No, but seriously…’ before going on to a complicated technical explanation of what exactly a warp core breach entailed, and how to deal with it. Wall was having difficulties making it past ‘PANIC!!!!’ Nevertheless, he persevered, although a small rebellious voice in his head was asking what the hell was the point of asking engineering questions of officer cadets when, in the field, there’d always be an engineer on hand to deal with it. But, you couldn’t fight the system.

Well, you could, but you had to be a cadet of Kirk-like abilities to do that, and Wall had no, well maybe just a few, illusions on that score.

 

Two mornings later, it was time for their first exam. This was the General Officership Aptitude Test, or GOAT. It was a series of five hundred multiple choice questions to be answered in an hour and a half, designed to test the cadets’ reactions to a number of scenarios that, as officers, they might potentially face. Wall and Damerell joined the queue of nervous cadets standing outside the exam hall a few minutes before the exam was due to begin.

“You realise that if our marks on this test aren’t good enough, they won’t even let us sit the other exams,” Damerell said edgily. “They’ll just put us on the first shuttle home.”

“No sweat,” said Wall cockily. “These tests are simple. Just so long as you pick the common sense answer, you’ll get through fine.”

“Such as?”

“Um… well… Such as… erm… when you have a question like, um, ‘You are confronted by a group of aliens. Do you: a) Introduce yourself, b) Ask them who they are, or c) Shoot them.’ The answer is a.”

“Are you sure?”

“Is it likely to be c?”

“Good point, well made. But what about b?”

Before Wall could answer, the doors to the exam hall opened and the cadets trooped in. They were ushered to their places, and the exam began.

 

Damerell looked thoughtfully at the first batch of questions. They seemed easy enough. Question 1 read: ‘You are on the bridge when the Captain falls ill. Do you first: a) Call sickbay, b) Assume command, or c) Kick him until he comes round?’ Obviously not c. So that left a or b. But which was it? The safety of the Captain was important, but was it more important than the running of the ship? Damerell agonised over which one to cross off.

Three spaces away, Wall glanced at it, saw the words ‘Assume command’, and his ego made the decision for him. The letter b was crossed off in record time. Wall moved on.

After the exam, the cadets spilled out of the hall, chattering excitedly.

“I didn’t finish,” Damerell said glumly.

“Don’t take it too badly,” another cadet said, “None of us did. I don’t think you’re meant to.”

“I did,” Wall said smugly.

“WHAT?!!!!!” Fifteen cadets surrounded him at once, unleashing a barrage of not exactly friendly questions as to how he pulled off that minor miracle. Wall waved them away with a couple of glib comments, then hurried off.

Damerell, catching up with him, said, “You didn’t really finish it, did you?”

“Yeah, of course I did!”

“How?”

“Well, for the first hundred, I thought really hard about my answers. Well, kind of. Then, after that, I got bored and just marked off letters that spelt funny words, you know, like CAB, or ADD, and things.”

A vein on Damerell’s forehead began to throb as he assimilated that one. “I see. I guess it’s been nice working with you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? These tests are as easy as pie.”

 

It was an old tradition of Starfleet cadet exams that the tests are hand-marked. It is felt that, since the cadets put a huge effort into revising for the tests, it’s only fair that their instructors put in some hard graft marking them. The system was, of course, designed to cope with hardworking, intelligent cadets. It had never come across bone-idle numbskulls like Cadet Wall before. So when the instructor marking the papers glanced down at the box at the beginning of the test where the cadets had to fill in the number of questions attempted, she nearly fell out of her chair when he saw the number ‘500’ staring back up at her. She began to mark. After the first ninety-three, it became obvious that the cadet was middle of the road, not too brilliant, but not too bad. But to have answered all 500!

She took the paper to her C.O., whose reaction was roughly the same. The coffee he was drinking found its way from his cup into his lap.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!” he bellowed, as the scalding liquid did unspeakable damage to his social life. Once he had mopped the coffee up, and stopped whimpering, he said, “Have you marked all of them?”

“No sir, but then, if they’re all going to be like this…” She showed the mark to him. Sixty-two out of ninety three. If that mark was kept up, it would be a comfortable passing grade.

“I see. Well, we’ll have to give him a commendation for that.”

“Should I mark the rest of it, sir? I’ve got another two hundred papers to get through.”

“I wouldn’t bother. That lad shows promise.”

 

When, a week later, the results were published, there were surprises all round. Damerell, much to his shock, had found that he had passed with a decent margin, but Wall was frankly astounded, however hard he tried not to show it, to discover that he had been awarded top marks in the class and a commendation for his test result. It did have the unfortunate side effects of making the rest of their class want to kill him, though. Very quickly, their tiny room became besieged with angry cadets demanding to know just how he’d got hold of the results in advance.

After fighting the first few back, Wall and Damerell were able to close their door and apply a security lock. This, however, left them stuck. The door began to heave rhythmically, as if there were a battering ram being applied to it (in fact there was, as several cadets had grabbed a passing Horta and were using it to break the door in).

“What do we do now?” Damerell wailed.

“I don’t know!” Wall replied. “It’s the first time I’ve had to deal with hero-worship.”

“Um, I don’t really know how to break this to you, but that’s not exactly hero-worship.”

“It isn’t?”

“No.”

“Oh. Oh dear.”

“Exactly.”

“What do we do now, then?”

“That was my question, idiot!”

They glanced around their room, hoping for inspiration. As per usual, the place was a mess. Damerell’s suitcases occupied a large proportion of the room, while most of the floor space was covered in padds and hard-copy tech manuals from their studies. Swept into a corner were the pile of worthless knick-knacks, tacky souvenirs and other sundry pieces of junk that formed Wall’s collection of valuables. None of these items seemed to hold the solution to their problems. However…

Wall looked up at the tiny skylight.

“D’you think we could squeeze through that?”

Damerell looked up also. “Possibly. It’d be a tight fit, though. And how are we supposed to reach it?”

“Um… that’s a good point actually… erm… Got it!”

“Is it catching?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“If we pile up all our stuff, we might just be able to make it to the skylight.”

Quickly they dragged Damerell’s suitcases into the centre of the room, and piled them up. However, as soon as Damerell tried to stand on them, they sagged down, and he was no closer to reaching the skylight than before.

“We’ll have to fill ’em up,” Wall said brightly.

They quickly packed the masses of padds into the suitcases, bulking them out.

“Hang on a tic,” Damerell said. “Mightn’t some of this stuff get broken?”

Wall glanced at the padd he was holding. “This claims to be Advanced Warp-Field Mechanics. Do we understand this?”

“Well, not exactly.”

“Are we ever likely to understand this?”

“Now that you come to mention it, no.”

“Well then, who cares if it gets broken! Come on.”

So saying, Wall stuffed yet more of the padds into the suitcases. Finally, all the cases were full, and Damerell gingerly clambered up to the top. With no mean difficulty, he prised the skylight off and pulled himself up. He found the only way to get through was to push one arm through first, then pull himself up with the other arm pressed against his side until his waist was clear. Even then, he could only just make it through the gap, and the bruising he could feel developing down his sides would no doubt be with him for a long time to come.

Then, it was Wall’s turn. He pushed himself up into the skylight, right arm first, as Damerell had done, then yanked his other arm through. Supporting himself on his elbows, he looked around at the evening sky.

“It’s pretty up here, isn’t it.”

“Hurry up, will you? We haven’t got long until curfew. Hopefully, the other cadets will go back to their rooms then, and we’ll be able to get a good night’s sleep.”

“Right.”

Wall attempted to pull himself through… and couldn’t.

“Ahahaha,” he said.

“What now?”

“Ahem. I, erm, seem to be stuck.”

“Serves you right for tucking into all those illicit snacks during training exercises!”

“I don’t!”

“Yes, you do! I saw you, the other day, trying to hide that danish pastry up your sleeve in the simulator room! Helm consoles don’t work too well when you drop crumbs all over them. And as for the cherry…”

“I don’t like cherries!”

“That doesn’t mean you can just stick ’em over warning lights!”

“Why not? It’s still red.”

“Oh, never mind.”

Damerell looked around helplessly. As he did so, he noticed a cadet looking around furtively, and sneaking towards the main administration buildings.

“I wonder what he’s doing?” Damerell pondered.

“Who?”

“Him. Look.”

Wall followed Damerell’s pointing finger.

“Oh yeah. I dunno. It doesn’t look too good, does it?”

“No.”

Damerell pondered the situation.

While he was thinking, Wall said, “We should follow him.”

Damerell looked down. “In case it’s slipped your attention, you’re wedged into that skylight pretty securely.”

“Well, then you’re going to have to follow him.”

“What?!”

“Well, go on then.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes!”

Reluctantly, Wall watched his roommate go, then, realising that he didn’t have a chance in hell of getting unstuck in a hurry, tried to make himself comfortable. That was made doubly difficult when the pile of suitcases collapsed and left him hanging there.

A few minutes later, the door broke down, and a barrage of angry cadets stormed into the room. They looked around the room, screaming, “Where did they go?”

None of them thought to look upwards, where a pair of legs were hanging down from the skylight. After a few minutes, they left, and Wall remained hanging there, heartily glad no-one had noticed him.

Some time later, it began to rain.

 

Damerell tiptoed along, pressed against the wall of the main admin building, in hot pursuit of the other cadet. Try as he might, he just wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of having to chase after somebody. It was Wall who enjoyed the thrill of the chase, or so he claimed; Damerell would have liked nothing more than to have stayed inside where it was warm and dry. Ahead of him, the cadet entered the building. Damerell made it to the entrance a few seconds later. He looked in. The cadet was making for the turbolift shafts. As the doors to the turbolift closed, Damerell dashed in, intending to catch the next turbolift up. Unfortunately, the rug he was standing on had other ideas. As he reached the edge, it slipped out from beneath him. Thus denied his right to stand on a solid, non-moving surface, Damerell went base over apex with a groan.

He stood up again, rubbing various parts of him that had just sustained serious bruising, and limped over to the turbolifts. It was then he realised that the universe hadn’t finished having fun with him yet. The cadet had jammed his turbolift at the top, and the other one was out of order. Damerell hobbled as fast as he could for the stairs.

 

Wall was not having a fun time. It had been raining for quite some time now, and he was getting thoroughly soaked. Unbeknownst to him, the rain had also saturated his clothing, and lubricated the edges of the skylight. The combination of increased weight and reduced friction suddenly resulted in Wall slipping back through the skylight and landing in a heap on the floor. He sat there for a few moments, savagely cursing Starfleet’s lack of foresightedness in not placing crashmats on the floor of every cadet dormitory. Once the immediate pain subsided, he stood up, anxious to continue the chase. Wringing out the worst of the water, he hurried out of the dormitory, and towards the admin building.

 

He caught up with Damerell on the seventh floor. Damerell, in severe pain, didn’t have quite as much speed as Wall, and so Wall found himself having to drag Damerell up the remaining ten floors. When both cadets reached the top, then, they were practically dead on their feet, and decided to take a five minute breather. The five minute breather rapidly became a ten-minute breather, and, before they knew it, they had been sat on the floor breathing heavily for twenty minutes. Finally, Damerell staggered to his feet, and kicked Wall.

“Come on then. We came in here for a reason, didn’t we?”

Reluctantly, Wall stood up, looked around him, giggled, and promptly fell over again. Before Damerell could bend down and pick his colleague up again, the mystery cadet came hurrying past them. Absorbed in the package he was carrying, he didn’t see the unconscious shape of Wall lying in front of him, and consequently fell over Wall.

A pile of disks flew across the floor as the cadet began to groan. Damerell, hit by a sudden wave of activity, dashed over, picked a disk up, and checked the label. It said: ‘Starfleet Officership Exams. Do NOT remove.’ Frowning, he made his way back over to the cadet, who was just starting to pick himself up. As the light caught his face, Damerell realised that the cadet was none other than Cadet Norbert, his nemesis right from the first day. Damerell took malicious pleasure in landing a sharp boot to the head, returning Norbert to the land of Nod until security personnel could be summoned.

 

Once the hustle and bustle of the exams had died away (including those old favourites the Standard Officership Decathlon, or SOD, and the Binaric Integrated Temporal Chemical Heliotrope, or BITCH), there was the usual awards ceremony, where those cadets who had passed their officership tests were awarded their new uniforms, and required to fill out the myriad of paperwork that let them into the next two years of the academy.

The ending of the ceremony had a different twist, however. Cadets Wall and Damerell were called to the stage, to receive congratulations for uncovering Cadet Norbert’s (now an ex-cadet) attempts to cheat at his officership exams. Damerell then received a commendation, while Wall got a handshake from Vice-Admiral Forster (because, as the Admiral said, “We can hardly give him a commendation for acting as a tripwire, can we?”) They were then told that they had passed their officership exams (just), and were to undergo the officer training programme for the next two years.

Unheard at the back of the auditorium, Commodore Dillard was heard to mutter, “God help Starfleet when those two get out into the real world.”