These questions made absolutely no sense. The test was flawed, irrational, useless. I twisted my head to see if any of the other students had stopped writing as I had, wringing their consciousness for answers, as I was.

Of the fourteen of us, seven wrote; three stared blankly at their desks; two had their eyes closed deep in thought; one examined the room as I did. When we made visual contact, his eyelids rose {surprise} and the corners of his mouth turned down slightly {displeasure; with surprise, a communication of bewilderment}.

I scanned the page again. "#3" it said. Then a circle containing two dots over a line, slightly bent, formed a frowning face {displeasure}. Beside the face, the shape of a dog's face with both of its eyes crossed out. Then the question: "In no less than 300 words, describe why this person is sad."

Re-reading it did not help; it still made no sense. The test should have asked me to identify the emotion: sadness, sorrow, perhaps even the severe sadness known as depression. Or it could have asked me to state why the person was sad: they had experienced the death of their pet, their dog. Those conclusions were verifiable given the data in the illustration. But to expand my response to three hundred words? Given the lack of context in the illustrations, that was impossible. There was no data to support that level of extrapolation.

I closed my eyes and ran the prompt through my brain again. Line after line of potential responses appeared, but each one was nonsense, nothing but repetition of the same ideas over and over again until the response finally achieved the word count criteria. They were the work of puerile computations, not a student attempting to earn Empathic Certification. I'd already entered such nonsensical answers for the first two questions of the test, and there remained two more after this one, for which I was unlikely to find more satisfactory responses.

It was not a failure of mine; the test itself was impossible. It had been a mistake for me to take it. At a minimum, I should have studied to prepare for it. The organizers told me not to study, but I should have done it anyway. Perhaps that was part of the test: whether I would abandon my nature or maintain my training.

If that was the case, I had failed indeed.

As the reality of it took root in my brain, I considered the implications. I would not earn my Empathic Certification, which meant I would not be accepted to the Creativity Program; I would never touch the pearl and ebony keys of a clavier, would never feel the slick of acrylic paint between my fingers, would never mould clay and stone into the forms of birds and lizards and trees and suns.

No, I would walk out of this room and be sent to one of the Development labs, where I would become an engineer or a mathematician or a probabilistic projector.

My life—my future—depended on these moments.

I checked the time. Seven minutes remained. And three impossible questions.

Impossible. {Fear.}

I knew the emotions better than most. That had been confirmed by test after test in my youth. I could identify ninety-six percent of the emotions within point-zero-four seconds on average. I understood the relationships between them, how they converged to communicate new ones, sometimes compounding and sometimes counteracting each other. I had memorized the expressions of each one, not just the facial expressions but also the bodily ones, such as the range of heart rates distinguishing emotional stress from physical stress. I knew the seven types of fidgeting that indicated boredom.

But all of that was not enough for this test. {Anger.}

This test required something more. Something beyond the data, beyond inputs, beyond variables and probable outcomes. Something I had never encountered before: something I could not provide. {Frustration.}

I was not enough for this test. Not enough for the Creativity Program. {Doubt.}

Six minutes.

"In no less than 300 words, describe why this person is sad." Re-scan the page for hidden variables. Anything—anything—I had missed. Re-run my responses.

Five minutes. Three questions.

Nothing.

I could not fail. I could not live as a mathematician. {Fear and stress; together communicating desperation.}

Though there was no probabilistic reason to do so, I stood from my desk. Eight of the students lifted their heads to examine me. I tore the pages of the test, throwing them into the air as I glared at the proctor.

"This test is impossible!" I cried toward him {anger}.

The proctor blinked, but did not respond {apathy}. I hoped the students saw and recognized the evidence of fury I exhibited as I left the room.

"Thank you for your—" the proctor called to me, but the door closed before I heard the end of his statement. I wondered if he understood what I felt.