Excerpt: "untitled"

The windows were breathing hazy circles as she saw tiny drops of perspiration trailing down her fingertips. She was unaware of whether they emanated from her own pulsating anxieties or if the weather outside was simply culminating between the glass and her trembling hand. She stood there staring out through the murky aperture and into the present state of her once serene environment. The scent of carnage festered in her nose. Vivid flashbacks of what she only got glimpses of going on behind the walls of the penitentiary played, like an unwanted soundtrack in her mind, unrelenting, loud, and difficult to shut out. These were to be the demons of her past, she thought, the one's that would always come back to haunt her when the potential to forget might ever come about. She felt trapped in her own home, encased like a rat surrounded by the walls of a labyrinth, knowing that the fate of her life would be analyzed and toyed with inexorably from here on out. The fact that her own psyche would play the dominating role of the experimenters and controllers drove her even more mad, so she acquiesced into the dim silence of staring. Eventually, her eyelids grew heavy but her mind remained exhaustingly stimulated. She thought about it again, how it all happened, and traced the seemingly harmless steps she took that accumulated into a disastrous evening.

The state had called for all the young men and women of the Astute Association to come forth with information regarding the Regality Act, established after the 23rd Civil War of the state of Calgren, during the regression year.

Her eyes were completely shut while her body lay limp on the floor, the only visible movements occurring in every inhale and exhale dragged from her otherwise immobile limbs.

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It was an alarmingly stunning Monday afternoon as Marson took to the windy roads on her way down to the Academy. It had been a repetitive month of constant rain and thunderstorms that she had awoke that morning, disoriented with curiosity, at the sudden shift of scenery. Not a single cloud hovered above her home, nor were there any traces of fallen rain, save for the impeccable transparency of the atmosphere that only ever occurred after a cleanse of Nature's finest precipitation. So instead of taking her Magnum-Carrier 850z, which would have taken her 9 minutes to reach her destination, she opted for a two hour scenic stroll instead, seeing as she had, as usual, left excessively early. At 20 years old she was the very first and youngest female graduate to pass the ever pedantic criterion of the state of Calgren, and receive full membership into the enigmatic league known as the Astute Association. A community of rather peculiar characters from various backgrounds who shared a vital aptitude for dynamic penetrations into the human mind. Known for their degenerative social skills, since they never could hold a conversation that lasted less than 8 hours, the outside world preferred not to deal with their aberrant approaches to communication and left them in charge of all the tedious and abstract evaluations called for by the Justice Council. They were not an openly envied community of intellectuals, but their gift was neither denied as well, and they became known as "qualifiers" who basically made up the bulk of logic and reason behind illogical and unreasonable cases.

"Marson Mayfield, A.A. qualifier number 11, please give your account of the Regality Act in it's entirety according to your assessments, under the full knowledge of the penalty for any withdrawn observations, implications, and or inclinations you may have produced during the trial research period."

There was nothing she felt too apprehensive about while recounting what she had observed during the regression period. It was a matter of meticulously organizing the thoughts that followed each finding that mattered most, in her case, as she was now an official Qualifier. The evolutionary job of being trusted, and used as an authority above the traditional adjudicator, for one's acutely exceptional instincts as part of a collective embodiment known as the Astute Association. Since the formation of the A.A. nothing that had not been, in majority, agreed upon by A.A. delegates had come to pass regarding all matters, both small and large in the state of Calgren. However, no decision was ever incorrect, until today.

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After reaching the Academy of Astuticians, Marson wiped the dust off her shoes and skirt and wiped the specks of perspiration that had collected daintily on her nose and around the edges of her forehead. She felt as if she were glowing, heart beating, breath slightly exaggerated, and ready to take on another 18 hours of intrinsic thought training. Since before today the rain had not let up, she hadn't got much outdoor physical activity. Although the facility had a fully equipped training wing, prime in stimulating all 851 classified and unclassified muscles and giving a precise illusion of the variety of climates one wished to work out in, Marson always found a special indulgence in activities that were not required by the state or by anyone else for that matter, but herself. She particularly loved to run outside, and not inside of an outside. As she collected herself outside the building she took another few moments to appreciate her surroundings.

"Marcy!", a bright faced young man, a few years her senior, called out her name and drew her out of her tranquil trance.

"Hey Clive, you're here early." Clive was the closest peer in age to Marson at the Academy.

"8 glorious minutes early, to be exact. I wanted to catch the new listing with you."

"Oh, I almost forgot it was already the end of the month. I hope it's all class A stuff."

"I don't! I want a convoluted dexterity requiring the highest level of ethical debauchery! I want something even beyond a class X!"

Marson didn't let it show, but she was beginning to think Clive somehow "qualified" under suspicious reports. He seemed far too eager for catastrophe and torment most of the time, but the facade she carried just lit upon an unimpressed girlish countenance.

"I sure hope they kick YOU out before anything like that happens, besides, it's hard enough making judgements on the 3 levels as they are. I'd hate to see how something could get so out of hand as to require a more exhaustive analysis past a class X."

Each listing posted by the board of Justice was categorized under three respective letters depending on the degree of morality and ethical risk at stake; either a class A, which meant that 10 Qualifiers were to come to an agreement to decide the outcome, class B, which required 25 Qualifiers to not only reach an agreement but pass an examination of correlating intrinsic wavelength scans of the limbic lobe before determining the final outcome, and lastly a class C, which included all 52 Qualifiers to complete the processes of a class B listing as well as nominate 1 representative Qualifier to be held solely responsible for any negative side effects on an outcome decided, since most class C listings required an intensive dedication that usually lasted the rest of one's life.