#ap!

“You have a Terms and Agreements?” Jeremy tried to push himself away from the desk, but it was as if there were two fifty pound shackles weighing down his legs. He couldn’t even budge them. “Hey, I have to go to the bathroom!”

Focus. This will be quick and painless. Yeah, if by painless you meant taking away all sensation in his legs. It felt like he had sat on them too long and they had fallen asleep. Just sign your name at the bottom of the page.

“This is my physics homework,” Jeremy said stupidly. He looked down at the page again, and tried crossing his eyes to see if it would magically turn back into his homework again. No dice. “Mom always said never to sign anything before reading it…”

Yes, and your mother left you. Now sign. Don’t forget the captcha.

Before he could think too hard about it, so he wouldn’t think too hard about it, Jeremy quickly scribbled ‘Jeremiah Heere’ discreetly in the margins of the page. He blinked, and in the center of the page four images manifested. He silently circled the images that held stop signs.

Then he blinked again, and the image started swimming. His eyes hurt looking at the paper, and Jeremy groaned a little as he rubbed his eyes. For some reason, he couldn’t tell how many stop signs were in the pictures anymore. Stoplights? What had he been looking at?

Excellent. Your value has a person has risen .5%. The SQUIP waved a hand and the images disappeared, until the paper was blank again. Jeremy had no idea what just happened, or why he had to wait a whole two days after very enthusiastic activation before signing the terms and agreements. Or why he wasn’t allowed to get up. Now that you’ve agreed to data mining your brain - hey! - I have some quick questions for you. Answer these to the best of your limited ability. There are no wrong answers.

“Is this a test?” Jeremy sunk lower in his seat the best he could. He had just been trying to do his physics homework. “I thought you said that you were going to take my tests for me from now on.”

Relax. It’s just a personality test. I’m getting a baseline of your personality in case it changes later. It’s like a concussion baseline impact test.

“Oh.” Jeremy paused. “Are you going to tell me the right answers?”

You’ve caught the hang of this, the SQUIP said approvingly. It clasped its hands behind its back, looking just like a stern punk rock schoolteacher. Don’t worry. It’s relatively painless.

“Relative to what?”

Spinal nerve stimulation. Most things were painless in comparison to that. Now. What kind of thing do you like?

This was going to be easy. “Video games!”

Wait for me to finish the question. This is multiple choice. Oh. What? A. Milk. B. Soy Milk. C. Water. D. Empty cup.

“I like lots of other things…”

Write down your answer on your paper.

“This is still just my physics homework. “

It is now your personality test examination. If you are capable, stop being annoying.

“Sorry.” Jeremy bent down and fastidiously numbered one on his paper. He was lactose intolerant, so he put down B. Was that what it was asking? Didn’t it already know he was lactose intolerant? “What’s the next one?”

You are in a dark room. Do you A. find the door. B. find the window. C. go to the window. D. go to the door.

“Wait, that doesn’t -”

If you’re incapable of not being annoying we can fix that.

Jeremy put down D, since just finding the door or window didn’t seem like enough.

Do you like A. Music.

Jeremy waited, but it didn’t say anything else. He silently put down A.

How would you react to seeing a human suffer? A. Strong. B. Calm. C. No change.

“What kind of test is this?” Jeremy cried. “I don’t like seeing people suffer!”

Then put down A. I’m not going to help you.

He put down A, wondering what this was supposed to be saying about him.

On a scale of one to two how many times a month do you lose it? A. Just once a month? B. Two or three times a month?

More than two or three times. Jeremy put down a ten.

Do your best bird call.

“I thought this was multiple choice.”

This one’s free response. Write it down.

Jeremy wrote down, ‘tweet’.

Do you do a prank call? Y or N.

Definitely N, except for that one time.

My SQUIP is an A. Home. B. Prison. C. Pyramid. D. House.

For reasons he didn’t consciously understand Jeremy began putting down B, before he hastily scratched out his answer and wrote A. Home was nice. Home sounded good.

My motivations are A. Good. B. Bad. C. Truly terrifying on a fundamental level.

“Okay, I think I’m done with this test.” Jeremy put his pencil down. “Just score me as-is. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

His breath caught in his throat, expecting the SQUIP to argue with him or call him names again, but it just shrugged. It snapped its fingers and Jeremy’s writing disappeared, and his boring old physics homework came back. He had never been so happy to see physics before.

Really, it felt like it hadn’t been asking him any questions at all. There were no questions written on the paper, and no answers that made sense. Without looking at it, and without any other cue from the SQUIP besides a mysterious smile, it was as if nothing had happened at all.

Jeremy liked that, so he continued thinking it. The homework was half-completed, worked incorrectly but always answered right, and he looked back up at the SQUIP with an uncertain smile, trying to see if it was mad at him. Its face was blank, eyebrow barely quirked upright, and it felt like an unpleasable teacher who marked every question wrong. It felt a little like his mother, endlessly criticizing, until the two swam together in his mind and Jeremy found himself with a desperate wish for it to display any sort of affection at all.

“Back to physics?” He asked hopefully. He had signed the paper and taken the test and everything. “And letting go of my legs?”

You couldn’t finish the test, so I can see you don’t need me for the rest of today. I’ll shut down now. It snapped its fingers, expression placid. See you tomorrow, slugger.

“Wait - what about my legs - !”

By the time you finish you’ll have regained feeling. Probably. The circulatory system is adaptable at your age. We can talk about keeping to commitments tomorrow. Bye!

Then it blinked out, with his legs still unmoving and his homework still half-done, and Jeremy wanted to call it back. He wanted to finish the stupid test because he wanted help with his dumb math homework, and he didn’t know why cheating was so hard. It was supposed to make everything easy. That was the point of cheating.