It was a dark and thunderous night in the mountains of Lairgate. All of the townspeople, including Zayne, were inside the molten core of the mountain. Zayne lived with his sister Nora in a 2800 square foot tunnel house underground. It was not safe for anyone to go outside after the pollution outbreak: the world was forced to either stay inside or go outside with specially designed bodysuits.

What caused the major pollution outbreak was unknown; only the highest of officials at Poolcorp, which is the government-run environmental company, knew what caused the global intoxication.

The government on Pluto, the polluted planet, was structured based on intelligence. The highest score on the PPT, Pluto Placement Test, would result in a secure high-paying job for the test-taker working for the government. The PPT was only proctored once a year, so if people wished to retake it, they needed to go back for another year of school, or they could just take the job offered for the score that they received. The best jobs were offered to first-time test takers, and every year the test results were logged. The test is divided into subjects, with the subject the test-taker does best on becoming the type of job they the government will offer.

Zayne sat down in his sound-proofed workstation ready for the PPT to start. The walls around him were tinted, so the proctor could see all the test-takers, and the students couldn’t see anything but their own test.

Finally, the test was handed to Zayne and one hour was on the clock. The first section was Architecture, then it was, Engineering, Environment, Finance, Mining, Mathematics, Reading, and so on. Zayne had to take a total of 26 subject tests, each test being an hour long. Zayne took these tests all in one sitting, but this time was only a fraction of the 153.3 hours per day on Pluto.

Zayne left the education mountain in the Lairgate mountain range to go to the housing mountain. People could take an underground pathway that connected all of the mountains; alternatively, citizens could travel by foot above ground with a mountain environment bodysuit designed by the engineering branch to withstand the extreme conditions of the polluted wasteland.

Zayne opted to take the underground path. When he got to the housing mountain he went directly to his house on the fifth level. He had a rather large house for a twenty-year-old and he lived with his eighteen-year-old sister in the sixth unit of C branch. Every mountain was carved out by the mining branch of government. As Zayne walked in, Nora asked,”How was the PPT?”

“Eh,” Zayne responded.

“Which section do you think you did the best on?”

“Math probably, I’m not really sure.”

“When do the results come in?”

“In a week I think..? I don’t have the foggiest idea.”

“Ok cool. I am so tired, I’m just going to go to bed,” Nora said.

“Alright, see you tomorrow,” Zayne replied.

Zayne checked his watch, 150.32 hours. He went to bed, thoughts about the PPT trailing off into nothingness.

One week later…

Zayne came home from his job at the government pizza place to find a pink envelope in his mailbox. After checking it almost every hour for 153.3 hours a day for 7 days, Zayn was surprised to see it. After countless hours of thinking it had been lost in the mail, exploded, or intercepted, he almost thought the PPT results would never come. He opened the letter to find the most unexpected results imaginable...