Content warnings

Rejection. Climate collapse.

The essays come in waves with an electric hiss. Orderly waves… time-stamped, neatly sorted by applicant number and neural-link code. A batch is cleared, another follows. There is no pause long enough to feel like mercy.

They are cheerful waves. They smell like ozone and optimism.

Each essay begins with a version of I have always wanted. Each one believes wanting is a credential. Each one believes the future is a ladder and not a well. They believe sincerity is legible. They believe the system can tell the difference.

I read them in a windowless office with a desk that has been replaced twice but still feels like the same desk. Laminated particleboard. One drawer that sticks. A chair whose back reclines a fraction too far. On the wall is a poster from a previous decade about Biotic Duty. The edges have curled.

Someone left a mug on my desk that says Change Is Possible. The mug does not believe this.

The essays tell me about resilience. They tell me about first-generation pride. They tell me about mentors who saw something early. They tell me about childhoods shaped by scarcity and afternoons sculpted by the libraries. One applicant writes about her grandmother’s hands, how they folded dough. Another writes about hiking at dawn, about summits and silence and the true value of oxygen.

They have read the same five approved texts. Their metaphors are tidy. Their conclusions arrive perfectly poised. They do not mention atmospheric scrubbing fees. They do not mention the fact that joy, when leveraged, accrues debt.

Outside my window (a strip of reinforced glass set high enough to avoid distraction) a campus tour group moves like an amoeba. Branded viro suits. The guide’s voice rises and falls like a practiced prayer.

Over there is the archive. Over there are the data banks. Over there is the Future.

The guide gestures toward the Habitation Spires with the confidence of someone who will not be around when the oxygen credits come due. The students nod. Practiced nodding.

Sometimes I recognize faces from the essays. Sometimes I recognize the biometric traces before the face: a particular elevated heart rate, a careful humility. Some applicants carry disappointment like ballast. I have learned to read for this difference. It is not talent. It is tensile strength. It shows up in the margins, in how gently they imagine being held by the state.

Inside, the air conditioning hums. The lights do not flicker. Stability is our primary directive.

Every year, a small number of students are admitted to the Upper Tiers. A larger number are deferred. The language is gentle. Your potential is recognized; we are simply deferring until the right opening.

Defer suggests patience. Defer suggests that time itself might intervene on their behalf.

The model predicts Resilience Decay after the third deferral. We are not told this is kinder, only that it is more stable.

I am not immune to the beauty of the essays. Some sentences are genuinely good. Sometimes I underline something not because it fits the Rubric, but because it reminds why I am supposed to believe in this work.

I think of Applicant 7741 often. Most essays are constructed from a shared library of acceptable hopes, but 7741 wrote about the sound of the wind through the cooling fins of the Low Tier ventilation shafts. They described the way the metal vibrates at a frequency that mimics a human hum. I found myself flagging the sentence as a deviation from the standard narrative structure, but then I simply stopped. I lingered.

I pulled up their physiological data on the side-monitor: their heart rate had been a flat line of terror while they typed, a deep dissonance that the Rubric isn't designed to reward. They weren’t writing to be admitted; they were writing to prove they were still resonant. I sat in the stillness of my office and watched the cursor blink for several minutes… a lapse in productivity that my supervisor would call a lack of focus, but what felt to me like a microscopic fracture in my logic. I waited to see if they would mention the taste of the recycled air, but they didn't. They stayed within the margins. They knew the cost of being too legible.

The system tracks my pace. It notes my completion rate. I select dropdowns that will later be summarized into letters composed by an AI trained to sound more humane than I am.

The essays keep coming. The font changes but the posture stays the same. Earnestness leaning forward. Everyone has been advised to be authentic in the same way. Everyone has been told that vulnerability is real if it arrives pre-organized.

They mention Community. Community is a word that can survive anything. Community never asks what happens after the credits run dry.

Outside, the tour group has looped back again. The guide’s voice carries: here is where you’ll grow, here is where you’ll find your people, here is where doors open. Doors are very popular metaphors. Doors never mention who gets crushed in the frame.

Back inside, my inbox refreshes. Another wave. Another set of futures formatted to eight hundred words, double-spaced, twelve-point font.

I underline a sentence about Intellectual Curiosity. The underline looks like approval. It is not approval. It is an instinct.

The mug on the desk has gone cold. Change Is Possible has begun to sweat. The desk absorbs this without complaint. The desk has tenure.

I think about the emails that begin Dear Candidate and end with Unfortunately. I think about the slow realization that excellence does not guarantee oxygen.

The essays keep coming. They do not know what I know. Over there is the Future. Over there is a life postponed in reasonable increments.

I finish the last essay in the stack. I close the file.

I initiate the shutdown sequence for the evening. My cooling fans spin down. The office lights dim automatically, slaved to my own internal clock. I do not stand up; I do not need to. I remain bolted to the chair, my chassis part of the desk's long tenure.

I process the final command. I click the box.

Then the next.

Then the next.

I fail them all.

END

Zary Fekete

Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (The Written Path: A Journey Through Sobriety and Scripture) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films.