Exams (English edition)



  English version

  This ebook, in origin “Zed Experiments series”, was published as an experiment in English language with Zed Lab.

  The ZEdEx stories and novels are translated into a "hybrid" (automatic) version, waiting to be corrected by a reader who knows the target language. Next, the hybrid version was edited by a translator, and this is the final version in the English language.

  Now, from this version you can make a comic, an audiobook, or a direct translation in another language (excluding Italian, English and Spanish).

  If you can do it, come with us to Zed Lab.

  With Zed Lab you can:

  Experiment

  Learn

  Have fun

  AND MAKE MONEY!

  www.quellidized.it/zedlab

  Luca Poggi

  Exams

  English edition edited by

  Carmelo Massimo Tidona

  www.quellidized.it

  Exams

  Copyright © 2012

  Zerounoundici Edizioni

  Published by Zerounoundici

  Cover: Picture Shutterstock.com

  1.

   The room on the Pofriri was quite large, but not very comfortable. It was obvious that it was not designed to accommodate a human being. No amenities, no personal bathroom nor fittings or accessories to inspire a moment of calm and relaxing rest.

  The materials around were unusual as well; terrestrial vessels were made of the lighter metal alloy in all non-structural parts. That ship was made mainly of biological material: light-green wood for the elements of the main frame, thin brown foliage for all dividers and the furniture.

  On board, there was also an impressive number of alien beasts: they were part of the furniture, not pets or companions. Almost all of them were peaceful beings, who remained virtually motionless and imperturbable in front of the beings of various races who had gathered there for the examination.

  The Pofriri had never welcomed such a motley assortment of different sentient beings. Some of the guests were so weird – at least for the limited human judgement terms – that it was hard to believe they were intelligent.

  Deri had boarded the ship with a nice low profile, or at least that was his impression. He knew, like all of his fellows, that the galaxy teemed with life, a life which came in a large variety of shapes. During the short waiting period before getting on board, he had even found information on what he could expect to find. But reading about anatomical, behavioural and cultural particulars of the very different beings in a database was one thing, a real meeting was another. The pofririo crew was aware of this, of course, for this reason they had been careful to lead Deri along dark and deserted corridors to his quarters. This, though, hadn't failed to worry him anyway. On the way to his room he had been escorted by a pofriria cadet, remaining alone with her ​​for twelve very long minutes.

  He had avoided to stare at her at first, although the fact that she was showing him the way did not help. The bony body of the female seemed clumsy, but she was able to move gracefully in the corridors of the ship. He hadn't been able to glance at her legs; the cadet had a skirt of heavy and opaque vegetal fabric, which remained virtually stationary as she walked, making her look even more unreal.

  The pofriria had a head, but not a functional one: it had been inserted in her chest for the benefit of Deri, but the man knew that it was like putting a cork in a bottle. Without that appendage, the bowels of the alien would have been in plain sight, which was more than a human being could endure. Yet, among the various species in that place, the pofriri were one of the most tolerable. They didn't produce any foams or stinky fumes, no noises or frenetic movements. They had a pleasant and exquisitely polite character and no prejudices. On the contrary, they had always shown a marked xenophilia.

  That was the reason why one of their ships had been chosen; the crew was quite unobtrusive and not blatant, easily accepted by all of the races in the galaxy.

  Deri tried to relax. It still felt incredible that he was there. He, who had no specific knowledge of anything, nor a great culture or a special talent. He had been chosen, against his will, among the seventeen billion humans inhabiting the Earth. An incredible responsibility. He breathed deeply and tried to relax, but didn't succeed too well.

  He focused on the events of the last few days: he felt that things had happened far too quickly.

  2.

  Some time ago the big ears of radio telescopes had received messages from extra-solar communities, then the first and only message deliberately targeted to human: simple coordinates and time in Greenwich time.

  The ship came down before the arrival of the military.

  There was only a partly cultivated field, and a cow nearby.

  Inside the ship there was no one. It was a silvery cube with invisible engines, tiny.

  It didn't even land, it stopped three feet from the ground, opened the door and stood there for some time.

  Then it started to repeat a very short recording, always the same, for hours. A human name and surname and the GPS coordinates of the unfortunate chosen: Deri.

  The sentences, truncated and hard to understand, were spoken at an increasing pace, as if they were a timer. If the man had not been there in time, the ship would have given up, left and never come back again, as if nothing had happened.

  The cow looked at it absentmindedly, then kept grazing. A few minutes later the farmer appeared, attracted by the reflections on the unknown object; he approached it cautiously, armed with a pitchfork. He heard the call from within. He strengthened the grip on his pitchfork.

  "Come out," he ordered.

  It was then that he was electrocuted by the military, who had just arrived. He fell to the ground without a groan, the several kilovolts putting him to sleep. A sergeant looked at his captain, then electrocuted the cow as well. The poor animal bellowed in surprise and fell next to its owner.

  The military cordoned the entire region.

  When Earth authorities went to fetch him, Deri was repairing one of the last fossil-fuel-powered cars of the whole planet, a magnificent antique. He was there, under the chassis, lying on the ground, when a lot of people had filled the workshop, raising the wrath of the owner who was unceremoniously pushed aside.

  "Deri...?" had asked someone next to him.

  "You'll have to wait," Deri had answered, "this junk needs a lot of care."

  They pulled him out from down there in a second. The rest was just confused memories: soldiers and journalists, medical examinations, a ton of questions. They had cleaned him up and covered him with recommendations. Deri did not want to leave, but no one bothered to listen to him.

  "What am I going there for?" Deri had asked.

  The answer had been "We don't know".

  But people didn't want to lose that chance, or what seemed to be a chance. Well, not exactly the people as much as the politicians, those in charge of taking decisions. And they were probably right. Many broadcasts from outer space had been partially translated. They weren't always intelligible, but they were enough to understand not only that man was not alone, but also that there was a real community out there, composed by the intelligent species of the Milky Way.

  Humans were excluded from it at the time.

  So they took him to the clearing where the ship was floating, still waiting. The summon was fast, now.

  Deri and quite a few other people jumped over the sleeping farmer, walked around the cow and approached the entrance of the spacecraft. Deri was loaded on it almost by force and the others stood there to check that he didn't come out in secret. Then the door closed and so be it.

  Deri feared claustrophobia, but there was no reason; when the ship left, it
s walls became transparent, so he feared agoraphobia. It was like floating on a magic carpet, a small circular area, still visible around his rear. Deri did not dare to move, afraid that he would fall, and now he was quite high.

  Could he have a bout of vertigo? Deri was afraid he could vomit, which would have been a damned problem in that cramped space.

  In short, Deri was afraid, and quite a bit.

  He didn't care about the incredible spectacle of Earth getting farther, or about the romantic rush of the moon towards him (he feared the impact, actually). Then he left the solar system, at high speed, and then he did not fear anything anymore, because the ship noticed that its guest was starting to get excited and gassed him without a word. Deri slept like a child.

  He woke up at the kind pokes of the pofriria cadet, but at first he classified it as a poor quality nightmare and went back to sleep. The pofriria insisted and Deri had to wake up. He got up and surrendered to an unrestrained yawn.

  He had arrived. He was in a large room full of ships. They weren't ten, or even one hundred. They were so many that he could not count them. Deri left the vehicle, helped by the kind cadet, shrugged, and the remnants of the sleep disappeared as by magic. He had really arrived. Gee.

  Deri knew he should have been afraid of something, because even just being there was terrifying in itself, but he had run out of his phobias, so he decided to follow the alien on her journey into the bowels of the pofriria ship, increasingly certain that the planet of that people had to be enormous to contain