“I’m not sure how much any of you have been told about what to expect here,” Aaron continued, looking back and forth across the two dozen people gathered in the room. “It should be basically nothing. If everyone did their job right, that is.” He crossed his hands behind his back. “But, of course, many of you received your invites from people on my team, and I know some of them love to talk. But considering that we finalized this test literally two hours ago, none of you should have had any time to study.

“Yes, there is a test. Don’t worry, it’s not really a pass-fail kind of test. It’s to help us sort and organize your feedback and experiences. Although the results could possibly find you…” He searched for the word, rolling one hand in the air before continuing: “unsuitable. To be frank, we don’t want to put anyone in the test who is not going to produce usable feedback. This is also for your benefit as well; due to the nature of this testing experience, we need to make sure everyone is going to be able to find some way to enjoy the game.

“There might be some instinctive desire to succeed at this test, and some association with being disqualified with failure, but I urge you to cast that notion aside.” Aaron’s expression grew a bit more grave. “If this test determines that you will not continue on to participate in the beta for Project Rundan, it is not because of any failing on your part. It is because the test told us that you will not enjoy your participation, either in the game or in the testing aspect of it. Please do not lie on this test to try and figure out the ‘right’ answers.”

Aaron paused for a moment for dramatic effect, and then cleared his throat. When he spoke again, it was in a much gentler tone of voice.

“There will also be a physical assessment. A bit of an obstacle course.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, it’s a blast. Some of our team members have been running it for fun on their lunch hour. The course is part of the assessment because the immersive VR tech involved with the test will require a certain level of physical fitness. You don’t necessarily need to complete the course, but if your performance is poor, then we won’t be able to admit you to the beta simply for liability reasons.”

Dylan grimaced. He wasn’t the biggest fan of strenuous physical activity if he was wearing a button-up shirt and slacks instead of less restrictive clothing. But the last time he’d moved, it had been such an unpleasant experience to try his doughy hands at moving his overstuffed book boxes. Something had had to change. And he certainly wasn’t going to get rid of any books. A few free weights for dungeon queue times had got him started, and adding a yoga mat to his morning routine kept him going. He wouldn’t call himself a physical exemplar, but he was in decent shape.

The door opened and the man from the desk outside entered with a stack of papers. “Jack will distribute the tests.” Aaron explained as the man made his way up the front row, handing out the packets. “You may begin as soon as you have them. There’s no time limit or anything.” He stopped and snorted a quick laugh. “Actually, I should probably define some number of hours as a limitation, but I don’t think it’ll be a problem. We just can’t have our staff here literally all night just because dummy Stevenson said there was no time limit, and some pedant decided to just sit there and stare at me for six hours.”

There was a slight laugh that went around the room at that, but Dylan was distracted by accepting the four-page test document from Jack. It looked fairly simple, with ten multiple-choice questions at the top of the first page, and then four questions at the bottom of the page with space left to fill in an answer. He flipped to the next page, and saw another ten multiple-choice questions, and then larger spaces at the bottom for just two questions. The third page was a block of multiple-choice sections all the way down, but they were all marked on a range from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” for the choices. The fourth page was more in that same vein, but instead were marked from “love” to “strongly dislike” instead.

He grabbed his pen and set to work on the first page immediately, pressing the document against his thigh. This page was mostly obvious answers, as many of the questions were about Monsoon’s history and games. Some of these questions brought up cherished childhood memories - Who was the primary antagonist of Teufel 2? Just seeing the name Carreau on the page made the hairs on the back of his neck prick up as his remembered feeling genuine terror at the enormous demonic figure that skittered across the screen while demanding “Show me no fear, hero!” - and other questions demanded more specific knowledge - One asked about the release year of Colossus 1. Dylan didn’t know the exact answer, and so skipped it over to get through the other easy answers before wasting time racking his brain for something that was going to take him a few minutes to figure out.

Dylan struggled making his selections clear and obvious; writing on his lap didn’t work great. The papers were thin, and despite his workout habits - or, perhaps, because of their casual nature - his thighs were not rock solid, and so he could only lightly mark the page, since he didn’t want to stab through and mark his pants.

Somewhere else in the room, someone asked about pens, and Dylan realized that he was one of only three or four people who had brought their own. Aaron gestured to Jack, who did not roll his eyes, but made a face much like he had at Dylan for not having a physical copy of the invitation and left the room to return shortly with a mug full of pencils to pass around. Dylan just continued to power through the multiple choice questions. He hesitated to get onto the written responses right now, since there was still a half-page of multiple choice on page two. He skipped ahead and got to work on those. They were more of the same, and Dylan suspected that these were two drafts of the same test, with ten multiple choice questions about Monsoon characters and history, and then a couple of written responses.

There was a grumble next to him as the person sitting on his left side had the tip of his pencil poke through the page. The man was suspending the document by holding it taut between his knees, and so the pencil just stabbed through the thin paper. Dylan frowned. He wasn’t having that much trouble, but he had to admit that when he tried to write out a for the written response questions, he might do the same. It wasn’t stopping him just now, but it was annoying. There was no table or anything to use, and though Aaron stood at the door at the far end of the room, trading small talk with Jack, there was no motion to provide any sort of substitute.

A glance around the room showed that he and his neighbor weren’t the only ones struggling. Some people had braced the page against the palm of their hand, and seemed to be making progress, but there was a collective sense of chagrin floating in the air. Dylan hadn’t tried to write out any responses yet, but he could see that the time was coming when he would be facing the same challenge.

Dylan moved to stop the struggle before he got to it. The linoleum on the floor was clean and smooth, so he slid himself out of his chair and set the test on the floor before laying down on his belly. He felt a spike of self-consciousness as he realized he probably looked like a kid with a coloring book on the living room floor, but when he saw the clarity of the next mark he put on the page, he was able to stifle the concern.

“Are you done with this?” Dylan’s neighbor asked, gesturing at the vacated chair. The sudden breaking of the room’s silence drew a lot of eyes, and Dylan fought his self-consciousness back down.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Dylan said, turning back to his test.

“Thanks.” The man set his test down on the seat of Dylan’s chair, using the seat as a writing surface. It worked out for about fifteen seconds, before the padding on the bottom of the chair proved too soft, and the pencil poked through the page, drawing a soft curse from the man.

The rest of Dylan’s test came together very easily. The written responses were asking for information about his favorite games, favorite MMO activities, and his favored classes. One of the questions on the second page was about reputation systems, and Dylan managed to stop himself from writing a full-size essay, keeping himself under two hundred words, primarily by sticking to just his complaints with the systems in Colossus 4: Online, and the lack of impact he felt his actions had, both on the physical surroundings and on NPC interactions. The Colossus team had pioneered instancing technologies, it was well within their reach to have separate instances for different reputation levels to give a visual impression of progress.

The scaled questions were the usual that he’d seen a hundred times in his life. They had been on job applications for years, asking him probing questions about his personal values, and reducing those questions to a five-point scale from an emphatic yes to an emphatic no. He wondered how weird these sorts of things would seem if he hadn’t faced this near-exact format of test so many times before.

Owing to his early start from having brought his own pen, Dylan was the first finished, and when he made his way to his feet, he saw he wasn’t the only one who had moved to the floor for the test. A couple of the people at the back of the room were writing against the wall, but very few were still struggling in their hands or on any of the now-vacated chairs.

Aaron gestured, catching Dylan’s attention and beckoning him over.

“Done already?” he asked.

“Yeah, I, uh,” Dylan stammered. He was about to say he brought his own pen, as if it was some sort of excuse for being done first. “Yes, I’m done.”

“I’ll take that, then,” Aaron said, accepting the test. “The obstacle course is through this way,” he gestured at the door behind himself, at the far end of the room. “Just follow the hall straight to the right. You’ll see it.”