The Tower Test

I. The Benevolence of Order

The Tower cast a long shadow over the city, like a judge's gavel about to drop. Tower City, the last civilized bastion in a wasteland of ruins and sand, was ruled by Chancellor Magnus—our so-called Benevolent Dictator. “Benevolent,” they taught us, because he saved our ancestors from chaos. “Benevolent,” because he gave us laws, food, safety. And most of all, order.

But no one ever forgot the price of that order.

Every spring, when the blue banners fluttered and the exams were administered, the entire city paused. Children, eleven years and older, gathered in silence at the Tower’s base. The yearly Evaluation of Worth—or just The Tower Test, as everyone called it—sorted the useful from the useless.

“Do well,” our teachers would say with their fake smiles and stiff uniforms, “and you shall remain in the warmth of civilization. Fail, and you will find yourself among the Unwanted.”

No one ever said the other word for it, though we all thought it.

Exile.

II. Test Day

I was sixteen the year my brother took his test.

Zane was twelve—sharp, quick, but reckless. He liked old books, especially myths, and always said the rules didn’t apply to him. “I’m not a gear in their machine,” he’d whisper to me at night. “I’m the wrench.”

Now he stood among the hundreds of test-takers in the plaza, blinking in the glaring sun. I watched from the viewing balcony like all siblings and parents, seated in rows of cold, gray benches under the blinking eye of surveillance drones.

At precisely 9:00 AM, the doors to the Tower hissed open.

A woman in silver robes stepped out onto the marble dais, her voice amplified by a speaker embedded in her collar. “Children of Order. You are here to demonstrate your worthiness. Our great Chancellor provides for the many. You must prove you belong among the many.”

Zane looked up toward me. His face was unreadable.

One by one, they were led inside. The doors shut with a final clang.

III. The Evaluation

Inside the Tower, students faced a gauntlet of tests: logic, memory, obedience, moral hypotheticals, physical trials. Each room was a white chamber, windowless, sterile. Drones monitored every reaction. Questions shifted in difficulty depending on the student. The system was “adaptive,” the instructors claimed.

But rumors said it was rigged.

Some kids claimed the Tower knew who was destined to fail even before they entered.

IV. The First Whispers

Zane didn’t return that day.

By protocol, test results were posted publicly at midnight in the town square. We all stood in our white cloaks, blinking against the floodlights.

My mother and I found his name under the crimson banner.

ZANE ELIAS - UNWORTHY - REMOVED TO REJECT CAMP 7.

My mother collapsed.

I stood frozen, trying to process the absurdity. Zane? Gone?

The next morning, they came to take his belongings. Uniformed officers with polite voices and cold eyes.

“Please remain calm,” one said. “He has been safely transferred. Interference is punishable.”

They left me a card.

“Order Above All. You May Apply For Sibling Separation Counseling At Tower Annex 3.”

I burned it.

V. Reject Camp 7

Reject Camp wasn’t a real place on any maps. All we knew was that it lay past the city walls, in the blistering wilderness known as the Uncrossable Desert.

The Unwanted were dumped there by armored vehicles. They were given one gallon of water, a knife, and two days’ worth of protein bars.

After that, they were on their own.

Some survivors built shantytowns out of scrap. Some formed gangs. Most didn’t last long.

The Tower claimed the Unwanted were “monitored for survival metrics” and “given the dignity of struggle.” Whatever that meant.

VI. The Letter

Two weeks after Zane’s exile, I found a letter under my cot.

Written in smudged charcoal.

Eli—

I made it. There’s a camp here, kind of. We sleep under twisted bus frames. There’s a boy who used to be a chemist’s apprentice—he’s trying to make clean water. We steal food from vultures. It’s hell, but it’s not the end.

Listen. The Tower lied. I found something. Something about the test. They’re not just testing intelligence. They’re testing compliance.

They’re afraid of free minds.

Stay smart. Don’t let them break you.

Zane

I didn’t sleep that night.

VII. The Lie Behind the Test

I spent the next six months studying the Tower’s history in secret. Hidden files in forgotten data terminals at the back of our school. Old broadcasts, half-erased. I found whispers of Project OBELISK—a behavioral modification program designed not to educate, but to indoctrinate.

And then I found the lists.

Every test group was pre-divided into three categories: Compliant, Deviant, Expendable.

Scores only justified the Tower’s decisions. The real test wasn’t about knowledge. It was about obedience. Question too much? Show too much emotion? Fail to follow arbitrary rules?

You were marked Unworthy before you opened a single booklet.

Zane never had a chance.

Neither would I.

VIII. My Turn

I turned seventeen and received my summons in a silver envelope.

“Your Test Day Has Come. Present Yourself At Tower Gate 3 At Sunrise.”

I didn’t tell my mother what I knew. I didn’t want to give her hope.

The morning of the test, I wore plain clothes. Nothing to provoke. I spoke softly, walked slowly, kept my gaze low.

Inside the Tower, the white rooms swallowed sound.

In the logic test, I answered just well enough. Not too fast.

In the obedience chamber, they asked me if I would report a friend for rule-breaking.

“Yes,” I said. “Gladly.”

In the ethics module, I was asked to prioritize who to save: a Tower official or a crying child.

“The official,” I replied.

Their monitors pulsed blue. Acceptance.

Then I reached the final chamber.

A silver-haired man waited there with a tablet.

“You’ve performed adequately,” he said. “Your metrics suggest a willingness to conform. You may proceed to citizenship.”

“Thank you,” I said.

He smiled. “Unless, of course, you have something you’d like to confess.”

I met his eyes.

And smiled.

IX. The Saboteur

That night, under my cot, I pulled out the transmitter.

I’d stolen it from the school server room months earlier, modified it using notes Zane had sent with his second letter—this one smuggled by a scavenger boy who’d slipped past the Watchers.

The transmitter pinged to a frequency used by the Tower’s outer patrols.

At 1:00 AM, I sent out the signal:

“Unit 17 reports breach in Camp 7. Coordinates: 34.771, -117.233. Possible insurgent gathering. Immediate security response required.”

I waited ten seconds.

Response: Received. Deploying enforcers.

I smiled.

X. The Trap

Camp 7 wasn’t at those coordinates.

Zane had long moved. They'd found old tunnels—pre-Tower tunnels—running under the dunes, connected to ancient water pipes and pre-collapse cities.

But the Tower didn’t know that.

They sent a full tactical unit—dozens of drones, fuel, ammunition, even a mobile command vehicle—to squash a phantom.

The tunnel scavengers were watching.

As soon as the unit passed beyond Line Black—the Tower's own territorial limit—the rebels triggered the trap.

The sand collapsed, swallowing their convoy into a pit lined with scavenged landmines.

In one night, Camp 7 gained weapons, vehicles, and maps.

In one night, the Tower lost its perfect record of invincibility.

XI. Uprising

Two weeks later, Reject Camps 5, 7, and 9 rose in coordinated attacks on Outpost Stations. They didn’t breach the city, but they didn’t need to.

The Tower had long claimed the Unwanted were dying. But now they were mobilizing.

Inside the city, the illusion cracked.

Parents began questioning the fairness of the exams. Some teachers stopped assigning homework. At night, messages appeared on alley walls:

“Zane lives.”

“The Tower Falls.”

“Rebuild the World.”

When I returned home, my mother wept. But not with grief. With pride.

“I heard his voice,” she whispered. “Zane spoke on the pirate broadcast. He’s alive.”

XII. The Final Exam

Six months passed. The Tower declared martial law.

Students were now tested at ten years old.

Curfews were set. Neighbors turned on neighbors.

But the walls could not keep out the truth.

I knew I had one task left.

The Annual Evaluation was coming again, and this time, I volunteered to assist the exam proctors.

You had to apply. Show exceptional loyalty. Feign devotion.

I was accepted.

The night before the test, I crept into the Tower’s security room. My hand shook as I uploaded the virus Zane’s friend had written.

The algorithm that assigned worthiness—Project OBELISK—shuddered and crashed.

The next morning, the test room screens glitched and went black.

Children blinked in confusion. The proctors scrambled.

And then, over the speakers, came Zane’s voice.

“You are not worthless. You are not numbers. You are not mistakes.”

“They test you because they fear you. But we remember the world before Towers. We remember freedom.”

The doors of the Tower opened—not to exile, but to revelation.

People flooded in. The old files were leaked.

The truth—about the test, about the camps, about the Benevolent Dictator—poured into the city like a sandstorm through a broken gate.

XIII. The Wall Crumbles

It took another year.

But eventually, the Tower fell—not in fire, but in understanding.

The test was abolished. Children were taught truth. Reject Camps became free communities.

And the wall, once considered unbreakable, was torn down.

Brick by brick.

Zane stood beside me the day it happened. Sunlight on his dirt-streaked face. Older, harder, but still grinning that mischievous grin.

“Told you,” he said, nudging me. “I’m the wrench.”

XIV. Epilogue

Now we live in the open.

No Towers. No Tests.

Just a wide sky, and the long road ahead.

Some say the desert is still uncrossable. But I don’t believe that.

We crossed it.

And we’re never going back.