Chapter 1: SELECTION
After his ninety-ninth Public Service Commission (PSC) examination, Hari returned to the small room he had rented a few years earlier, after completing his degree. The room had been his base for years of studying, waiting, and trying again. Now, as he stepped inside, it felt less like a place to prepare for the future and more like a reminder of how much time he had spent chasing it.
Hari's dream had always been to become a government employee. To him, a government job meant a decent salary, plenty of holidays, and, best of all, fixed working hours: ten in the morning to five in the evening. No staying late, no endless pressure, and no fear of being dismissed. It was the kind of job many young people dreamed about, and Hari had spent years trying to earn one.
But after his ninety-ninth exam, he finally admitted what he had been avoiding. His dream was shattered.
Most government jobs required candidates to be younger than twenty-eight. Even the positions with an upper age limit of thirty-five attracted hundreds of thousands of applicants. The competition seemed endless, and Hari was running out of time. He could keep trying, but he could no longer convince himself that another attempt would change everything.
He decided he would return to his village and find work at a small company. It wasn't the future he had imagined for himself, but at least it was a plan.
Before leaving, he called a few friends who, like him, had come from their villages to find jobs or study at a local tuition centre for government examinations. They lived cheaply near his apartment, scraping by on limited money and uncertain prospects. They had shared the same worries for so long that Hari wanted to say goodbye properly.
He invited them to one last drinking party.
They pooled their money and bought a bottle of Jawan rum, a low-quality drink that cost around five dollars per litre. Sharing the expense was their usual practice. They came from poor backgrounds, and none of them had a stable income to waste on treating everyone else.
As the bottle made its rounds, Hari told them about his decision to return to the village. The news brought out a jumble of emotions. They talked, drank, and tried to make the evening feel like an ordinary get-together rather than the end of a chapter in their lives. Hari, the main character of the party whether he wanted to be or not, drank a few extra rounds. Before long, he was thoroughly drunk.
After a few more rounds, his friends said their goodbyes and left him behind.
Then—
"Splash."
"Who...?"
"Splash."
"Who poured water on my...?"
Hari tried to finish the sentence, but his lips felt glued together. Something was wrong. He forced his eyes open, expecting to find himself in his little room, perhaps with a headache waiting for him.
Instead, he found himself sitting in an exam hall.
It stretched away in every direction, seemingly without an end. Millions of people sat in chairs, all preparing for an examination. They looked around at one another, as if trying to work out where they were and what was expected of them. Hari turned to inspect the people nearest him.
Then he saw their faces.
They had no eyes, no noses, no ears, and no lips. Their heads were smooth, blank shapes where faces should have been.
A wave of terror passed through him. Hari lifted his hands and touched his own face. His fingers found no familiar features. Like the other examinees, his face had become a round ball. He even seemed to have brought his beer belly along for the experience.
"What is happening to me?" he thought. "God, at least in my dreams, give me beautiful girls and wealth—not exams!"
He looked around again, hoping that the hall might disappear if he simply waited long enough. Nothing changed. The faceless candidates remained in their seats, and the endless room gave him no clue about where he was.
"Anyway, I'll attend this exam," he decided. "At least I can become a government employee in my dream."
It was not an ideal situation, but Hari had spent so many years taking examinations that even a bizarre dream seemed to offer one more opportunity.
He waited.
A few minutes passed, but nobody moved. There were no invigilators walking between the rows, no papers being handed out, and no instructions to follow. He was simply expected to sit there. The silence and stillness began to wear on him. The minutes dragged by until each one felt like an hour.
After fifteen minutes, the people around him began to shatter like mirrors.
Their bodies broke apart, and white light spilled out of the fragments. Hari watched in horror as the candidates vanished one after another. He had no idea what was happening or whether he would be next.
"DING."
A message rang out:
"CANDIDATES WITH LOW MENTAL STRENGTH ELIMINATED FROM EXAMINATION."
Hari stared at the empty spaces where the others had been. The announcement seemed to explain what he had witnessed, but it raised a much more alarming question: what kind of examination eliminated people before it had even started?
A transparent screen suddenly appeared in front of him. A message instructed him to place his hand on the right corner, where a hand symbol was displayed.
Hari hesitated only briefly before obeying. Whatever this was, he had no idea how to escape it, and refusing to follow instructions did not seem likely to improve his situation. He placed his hand where the symbol indicated.
For a few moments, nothing happened.
"DING."
"CANDIDATES WITH LOW DECISION-MAKING SKILL REMOVED."
Hari looked at the screen, then at the space around him. He had no idea whether his action had been correct or whether he had merely survived another stage by chance.
A few minutes later, the voice spoke again.
"DING."
"DEAR CANDIDATE, THE EXAMINATION WILL START SOON. AFTER READING THE QUESTIONS, PLACE YOUR HAND ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE SCREEN AND THINK ABOUT THE ANSWER. YOUR ANSWERS WILL BE AUTOMATICALLY RECORDED BY THE SYSTEM. THE EXAMINATION WILL START IN 10...9...8...1...0."
The countdown skipped from eight straight to one, but Hari had more immediate problems than questioning the system's arithmetic.
"QUESTION NO. 1: ARE YOU INTERESTED IN WORKING IN A DISTANT PLACE?"
Hari found the question amusing. He had never cared much about where he worked. Getting the job was the important part; the location had always been a secondary concern. He placed his hand on the indicated side of the screen and thought about his answer, taking the strange instruction seriously.
"DING."
"YOU ARE ELIGIBLE FOR THE SECOND QUESTION."
The next question appeared.
"QUESTION NO. 2: HOW CONFIDENT ARE YOU IN MANAGING YOUR EMPLOYEES?"
Hari answered that one too. From then on, the questions covered management skills, psychology, science, and history. He responded casually, doing his best even though many of the subjects had little to do with his degree.
At first, he treated the examination as just another strange test. But after the fifteenth question, he began to doubt that it was an ordinary recruitment process. The questions had taken a turn into the territory of fantasy novels.
"How would you develop your village into a kingdom?"
"Do you prefer a normal hero or an anti-hero?"
"What would you do if you discovered slavery in your world?"
Hari had no idea why a government job would require him to answer questions like those. Still, he kept going. If the dream was determined to make him sit an exam, he might as well finish it.
A few hours later, the voice sounded again.
"DING."
"THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING THE EXAMINATION."
Hari waited for the result, suddenly more alert than he had been during the questions.
"A TOTAL OF 138,967,432,689 CANDIDATES ATTENDED THE EXAMINATION. 125,000 CANDIDATES HAVE BEEN SHORTLISTED FOR THE NEXT EVALUATION."
The number was so enormous that Hari could barely make sense of it. More than a hundred billion candidates? Even in a dream, that seemed excessive.
The announcements continued.
"REMOVING UNDERAGED CANDIDATES... 98,000 CANDIDATES LEFT."
Hari had barely processed that when the next message arrived.
"REMOVING CANDIDATES IN MARRIED/COMMITTED RELATIONSHIPS... 97,000 CANDIDATES LEFT."
It hurts...
"REMOVING CANDIDATES WITH JOBS... 80,234 CANDIDATES LEFT."
Do you want to kill me?
Hari watched the list of candidates shrink. The selection rules were becoming increasingly personal, and he had a sinking feeling that the system was enjoying itself.
"REMOVING CANDIDATES WHO HAVE NEVER DREAMED ABOUT TRUCKSAN... 53,476 CANDIDATES LEFT."
I do. I dream about it every day...
"CREATING SENIORITY BASED VIRGIN WIZARD LEVEL... 25,000 CANDIDATES AGED 25+ SELECTED."
You can kill me, but you can't defeat me... Please don't do this to me. I want to become a "Brahmachari." It's true... I don't care if girls like me or not.
I do.
Hari had little time to recover from that humiliation before the next announcement came.
"LUCKY LOTTERY INITIATED."
"EVERY CANDIDATE SHOULD WRITE A 6-DIGIT NUMBER FOR THE LUCKY DRAW."
A number appeared in Hari's mind, and he wrote down 385649.
The system wasted no time judging the candidates.
"REMOVING 7,643 CANDIDATES WHO DIDN'T WRITE A NUMBER IN 5 SECONDS. NO SPACE FOR INDECISIVE PEOPLE."
"REMOVING 4,563 CANDIDATES WHO WROTE THE SAME NUMBER IN 6 DIGIT SPACE. NO EASY WAY FOR LUCK."
"REMOVING 9,748 CANDIDATES WHO WROTE THEIR CARD NUMBER, VEHICLE NUMBER, SOCIAL MEDIA PASSWORD, OR IDENTITY NUMBER. THOSE WHO CAN'T KEEP THEIR PRIVACY ARE DEAD PEOPLE."
Hari couldn't help thinking that the last rule, at least, made sense.
"SELECTING 3,046 CANDIDATES FOR THE LUCKY DRAW."
He had made it into the final group.
For the first time since waking in the impossible examination hall, Hari felt hopeful. He was one of only 3,046 candidates left, and this was the job he had dreamed about for years. He even thanked the Jawan rum for giving him such a wonderful dream.
"God, thank you. At least I got a job in my dream... Are you trying to tell me to write exams in real life again through these dreams?"
His thoughts ran ahead of him. He imagined getting a real job, buying a car and a house, and marrying a pretty girl. For a few precious moments, he let himself believe that things might finally work out.
"DING."
"THANK YOU FOR WAITING. THE LUCKY DRAW IS COMPLETE."
Hari held his breath.
"CANDIDATE ZHANG WEI SELECTED FOR THE JOB. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION."
"LUCK IS ALSO A STRENGTH."
"DING... DING... DING..."
Hari's hopes collapsed as quickly as they had risen.
"You too, 'my dream'... Why? Who the fuck is Zhang Wei?"