353rd Daisy Trials, Sometime After the Round of 128.

  “Why don’t I just read it?” Jurgen asked his teacher.

  “I know it doesn’t make sense to you right now, but trust me. It’ll be enough.”

  Jurgen sighed and picked up the book, leafing through it. Through the fluttering pages, he glimpsed illustrations, but none of the words registered clearly. How was this supposed to help him learn?

  “Like this?” he asked uncertainly.

  “That’s right,” the teacher said patiently. “Make sure you’re looking directly at the pages.”

  “And this will help me remember everything the book says?” Jurgen couldn’t hide the doubt in his young voice.

  Instead of answering immediately, the teacher glanced around cautiously. Jurgen knew the school grounds were always covered by the chemical mist to blind Daisy’s cybermonkeys, yet teachers always checked before mentioning the secret. It was meant to set an example for the students.

  As his teacher scanned their surroundings, Jurgen’s mind automatically replayed the nursery rhyme he'd learned as a toddler:

  Before you speak of the secret,

  Look left, right, above, behind.

  If there’s no smoke, zip it.

  Silence is the only way to hide.

  The teacher’s voice interrupted Jurgen’s thoughts. Apparently satisfied that the coast was clear, he finally answered, “After taking the secret, yes—you’ll remember.”

  “Teacher,” Jurgen asked hesitantly, “have you ever tried the secret?”

  “Once,” the teacher replied softly. “A long time ago.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Like dreaming.” The answer was simple, matter-of-fact. “Like right now.”

  Jurgen frowned, confused. “Now?”

  “Yes, Jurgen.” His teacher’s voice changed abruptly, becoming louder, sharper. “You’re dreaming. Wake up. WAKE UP!”

  Jurgen gasped, eyes snapping open. He struggled to orient himself as his senses returned—the familiar softness of a woolen blanket, the smoky scent of firewood. He was in bed. He was home.

  Had it all been just a dream?

  He tried to move, but his body refused to obey. The paralysis, combined with the heightened mental clarity he still felt, confirmed it hadn't merely been a dream. He had taken the allsee and participated in the trial.

  As sleep’s confusion gradually lifted, Jurgen’s training took over. He attempted to summon the future, but all he received in return was a piercing headache and a blurry haze—clear signs the allsee’s effects were wearing off. The pain was proof enough that he was back in the real world.

  His groan of discomfort caught the attention of the nearby guard.

  “Jurgen? You awake?” called a familiar voice—his cousin, Jasper.

  “Aye. Future’s already gone. Get the chief.” Though unable to move his neck, Jurgen rolled his eyes sideways and saw wisps of smoke drifting around them. Good, the coast was clear. “Allsee’s hangover is kicking in.”

  Even as Jasper hurried away, Jurgen summoned the present and sensed the chief had recently been close. Beneath the lingering scents of burnt wood and chemical smoke, Jurgen detected the faint traces of the distinctive chemical odor the chief always left behind. He'd been here, likely within the last twenty minutes.

  Jasper’s voice echoed briefly from the next room, and then the chief chemist stormed inside, his hair disheveled and clothes rumpled. Apparently, Jurgen had awakened just as the man had stepped out to rest.

  “Jurgen, how much time do you have left?” the chief asked urgently.

  Jurgen focused inward, summoning the present again to gauge how long the allsee’s effects would persist. “We have nine minutes and forty-eight seconds.”

  The chief immediately pulled a recorder from his lab coat pocket and pressed a button. “No time to waste, then. Tell me everything you remember. Leave nothing out.”

  Jurgen summoned the past. With his brain activity still enhanced by the powerful drug, he recalled the events of the past two days with perfect clarity.

  “After my name was selected, I took the allsee and was placed into a pod. Test time lasted four and a half seconds. Daisy failed to detect the drug.”

  “Good, good,” the chief said, nodding. “Weak traits from last year?”

  “Creativity and logical thinking.”

  “Competition format?”

  “Solo, structured as a knockout tournament.”

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  “Continue, Jurgen.”

  “At first, Daisy transported me to a sterile room resembling your lab—completely white and featureless. After thirty seconds, I was moved into a pine forest and given a camera, specifically a Polaroid Spectra, 1986 model. The goal of the trial was to photograph objects, which were converted into cards. Each card carried two values: hit points and victory points.”

  He paused briefly, catching his breath before continuing. “After two hours, Daisy returned us to the white room. There, we merged cards into logical combinations, generating more powerful cards and accumulating additional points. Whoever ended each round with the most victory points advanced.”

  Jurgen deliberately kept his explanation concise. Time was slipping away rapidly; he had to deliver as much information as possible before the allsee’s effects completely faded. Already, his vision was beginning to dim around the edges.

  The chief leaned forward intently. “Now, walk me through every step you took.”

  “In the first arena, I experimented with the camera to determine the rules. I discovered I had twenty shots and could get two cards of each: Two pine trees, HP one, VP two, common. Daisy included an inventory feature in this year’s exams.

  “Then, I summoned the present and found all objects in the arena were intangible. My vision pierced through the trees as if they were made of thin air. Stretching my mind, I felt an invisible circular wall surrounding me. I headed straight toward the middle of the circle, where I felt more ones and zeros than anywhere else in the arena, and found a dead tree with mushrooms. I took pictures of all the mushrooms I could find.

  “Two dead trees, HP four, VP three, rare;

  Two fly agaric, HP one, VP three, uncommon;

  Two yellow-honey agaric, HP two, VP two, uncommon;

  Chicken heart mushroom; HP one, VP three, uncommon;

  Bear bread, HP two, VP two, uncommon.”

  Jurgen wasn’t sure how useful knowing the individual stats of each card would be to the chief, but he had to use the eidetic memory allsee provided while it lasted.

  “The dead tree, like everything else, was an illusion. Inside the dead tree, I found one termite nest, HP seven, VP one, legendary. From there on, finding nothing else noteworthy, I took photographs of whatever else I could find.

  “Two dry pine needles, HP one, VP two, common;

  two pine bark, HP two, VP one, common;

  two moss, HP one, VP two, common;

  two lichen, HP zero, VP three, common.”

  Jurgen kept dumping all the information he had collected from the exams. Hearing himself go through all the recipes he had tried and how he went about the quarry arena felt so strange. It felt like hearing someone else recite everything he had gone through. From his training, he knew that this feeling of distance was common as allsee’s effect wore off.

  As he recited the recipes he had attempted in the quarry arena and how he had unlocked the [Stun Bomb] upgrade, he used his last few seconds of vision to study the chief’s facial expression. The chemist regarded him stoically, patiently waiting for his hyped mind to finish the report.

  Once upon a time, he had dreamed of having his job. What was it like to champion the battle against Daisy? To live in constant fear of being found out for stacking the deck? To see people around you die of blight, but keeping the sector’s stock of allcure under lock and key, so that they could make allsee, and then, in turn, gain more allcure?

  As the residual healing agent of allcure passed, and only the mental accelerator remained, the distance between what he said and what he thought grew. Jurgen hadn’t been able to compute the future from the moment he’d woken up, but now, deprived of his senses, he was losing his grip on the present.

  After losing his vision, his sense of smell started disappearing. The strong smell of smoke had already become a faint wisp. It almost felt like he had just developed strong flu symptoms in seconds. Nevertheless, he pressed on, regurgitating all the information he’d collected for the chief to analyze later.

  “I was knocked out in the third stage,” he heard himself say. His voice sounded dragged and tired. “It was a desert, and it was nighttime. When the round began, I had already started to lose clarity. I could barely stretch my mind enough to locate the walls and the center and realized I had the bad luck of being transported to the farthest point of the arena. I used my two bomb upgrades to delay my opponent in case they had been transported closer to the center.

  “Reaching the part of the arena with the biggest concentration of ones and zeros, I photographed all the elements I found there. Acacia tree, HP three, VP one, uncommon; acacia bark, HP three, VP one, uncommon; acacia leaf, HP one, VP two, common; acacia tree branch, HP four, VP zero, uncommon; acacia trunk, HP three, VP one, uncommon…”

  “He’s almost out,” he heard his cousin whisper.

  “Silence, Jasper. Don’t distract him.”

  “By then, I could barely pierce through the data, and my present had a shorter range. Still, I was able to find a cave hidden under a pit of quicksand. Quicksand, HP zero, VP four, uncommon. There was something written on the walls of the cave. It was a recipe. Sand plus glass equals an hourglass. Just that.

  “I arrived at the crafting…” Jurgen lost his train of thought. What was he talking about? Where was he? Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he see?

  “The crafting stage, Jurgen?” prompted the chief.

  “Oh, yes. The crafting stage. I followed the recipe in the crafting stage: sand plus glass equals hourglass, HP zero, VP seven, rare. My mind had slowed down immensely by then. I couldn’t compute. I… I couldn’t…”

  Jurgen felt as if he were in a quagmire. His forehead was burning up, and his thoughts felt sluggish and foggy. He couldn’t feel the softness of wool nor smell the smokiness of fire. He couldn’t see the chief nor taste the medicine they had given him. All he could do was listen. He heard himself go on.

  “Stone plus stone equals mortar and pestle. Mortar and pestle, HP four, VP zero, uncommon. Mortar and pestle plus acacia bark equals acacia medicine. Acacia medicine, HP two, VP two, uncommon.”

  Jurgen heard his voice become slower and fainter until only loose words came out.

  “Two hundred and four points. Lost. I…”

  And then he heard himself let out a deep sigh.

  “He’s gone, chief.”

  “Thank you for captioning the obvious, Jasper,” answered the chief. He didn’t sound angry at Jasper nor disappointed at Jurgen; he just sounded tired.

  “Did you hear what he said? The way Daisy put up walls? Do you think Daisy knows?”

  “No. Relax, Jasper. The walls were just a boundary for the test. Didn’t you hear him talking about seeing the zeros and ones? Allsee did its job, unbeknownst to Daisy. She doesn’t know.”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t do better!” he heard his cousin say in his hoarse voice.

  “It was just a long exam, and he couldn’t fully use allsee. Had it been a five-hour-long exam like two years ago, we would have won.”

  “What now?”

  “We still have enough allcure to keep us going for a few years if need be. It’s not a problem. Even though he was knocked out in the third stage, he still brought home tier-two medicine and tier-three rationing. It’s all good. We’ll do better next year.”

  “If you say so. How long will he be like this? A week?”

  “He pushed himself to the limit. It wouldn’t be unusual for him to stay in a coma for a month. Don’t worry, though, Jasper. The vestiges of allcure in his bloodstream will aid in his healing process.”

  Jurgen heard the chief chemist stand up and then his distant voice, “Watch over him. I’ll be back later.”

  “Sure thing, sir.”

  After a few moments of silence, he heard his cousin eat something crunchy. His cousin had always chewed with his mouth open. He couldn’t help feeling annoyed at his cousin’s bad manners, even in his feeble state. The sound became fainter and fainter, and Jurgen realized he was losing his sense of hearing, too.

  Finally, all became silent.

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