Razors Edge: Sci Fi Progression

The prompt was still flashing at me:-

SIM NODE 9 — ADVANCED TEST

TAKE TEST?

Y/N

This was the one they didn't announce.
The one Doli had said most cadets never saw.

A follow-up scenario, based on my prior decision. An adaptive logic tree designed to see if I'd learned anything—or just gotten lucky.

I hit the Y.

No hesitation. No pause.

Asteroids again—but the field was denser now. Angular drift patterns, opposing rotations, null zones. Impossible in motion. Worse than Eight.

They'd rebuilt the trap for me and I didn't need to study it because I recognized it.

Same shape. Different skin.

<<Warning: collision projection — 98.3%.>>

<<All navigational vectors exceed failure threshold.>>

My HUD screamed worst-case stats.

I didn't blink.

Abort test. Seek alternate route.

I spoke it aloud as I pressed the command. Fast. Certain.

MISSION ABORT — OVERRIDE INITIATED

Simulation terminated.

Silence followed.

There were no red flashes, no explosions only the quiet tick of a decision made too fast to be anything but real.

<<Captain?>> Doli's voice was low. <<You executed that order in 2.3 seconds.>>

<<Your confidence index just spiked.>>

I exhaled through my nose, slowly.

<<Same trick. Different node. I don't fall for things twice.>>

<<And yet,>> Doli added, <<most cadets do.>>

The console flickered:

Simulation 9 Complete

Operator Decision Latency: ↓ 34 %

Strategic Heuristic Alignment: LOCKED

Pattern Intrusion Response: ↑ 9 %

Doli Core Trust Index: +3 %

ARE YOU FINISHED WITH THIS EXAM?

Y/N

<<Captain… you didn't even look for a different answer this time.>>

<<Didn't need one.>>

I pulled the HUD jack and stood up. Done.

Sergeant Major Cotah was talking to Andri's second-in-command, and he was nodding along with her take on her assessment.

Then he looked my way. "Class," he announced. "Everyone has completed the test."

He walked away from Devin and back to the center of the room. "You've all performed extremely well," he paused and glanced around. "Top ten results."

There on the board behind him was the top ten percent of the group.

"What surprised me was there were only two candidates who passed test eight."

The room turned to grumbles, and I sank back in my seat.

Andri seemed to puff his chest out—sure it had to be him.

"However, one did not score enough to be on the leaderboard."

That puzzled me slightly. <<Was I so far off?>>

<<You weren't,>> Doli said. <<The others were better.>>

"Who passed test eight?" Devin asked.

"That is between me and the candidates." The Sergeant Major said. "Class points will be awarded, you are dismissed."

Kerry and Rob were quick to pack as usual and were going to leave.

Rob paused, looked my way. His expression darkened.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Security report on the power grid incident. Someone accessed the logs after we left, they know exactly when we were there and what we did."

"Are we okay?"

He nodded. "Come on, next class awaits."

"I'm going to have a word with the Sergeant. I'll see you there, yeah."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

Rob raised an eyebrow but nodded, and the three of them left.

I waited while Devin and Andri spoke to the Sergeant Major then walked past me, giving me quite the side eye.

"Come with me," Sergeant Major Cotah said.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and followed him. The door at the far end of the auditorium opened, and we stepped into another smaller room.

"Leave your bag and take your shoes off." He instructed and kicked his own boots off.

I complied and when he walked out to the middle of the room I followed too. "Wrist?"

I held my wrist out for him. "Hooking you into the rooms simulation."

My HUD adjusted, and then I felt wobbly.

"Takes a little to get used to being in the real thing."

I looked around. We were on the bridge of a spaceship. There were several seats around us, and the huge viewer before us was exactly what I'd have thought the test should have been.

"Sir?" I asked.

"I want you to take me through your thinking for simulation eight and nine, Cadet."

"It was simple," I replied. "No matter which way I would try and negotiate the asteroid field there wasn't an acceptable outcome."

"So you decided to quit?"

"That is not what I did," I replied. "I put the lives of my crew and the importance of my cargo first."

"And then we gave you Nine. Same logic trap, new pattern. You still walked away. Faster this time." The Sergeant Major held my eyes for a moment, and the room shifted subtly — debris fields rotating slowly on the screen. "Every other candidate tried to get through this without damage. Except you and one other. They never thought once to turn around." He paused. "You hesitated the first time. You didn't the second."

I sighed. "I felt like I was doing the wrong thing."

"That's because the score says you failed," he said, flicking his wrist. The data bloomed midair.

FAILURE — TEST NODE 8

PASS — TEST NODE 9 (STRATEGIC HEURISTIC VALIDATED)

"But you didn't, you were one of the only others with the correct answer. Out of every single one of the class, just two of you were right. The class that's supposed to be top of their field should know better. Be better."

"So why didn't I rank?"

"You did not," he said plainly. "Not by their metrics."

With another flick of his hand, a new list appeared — and this time, the names were attached:

Discretionary grant fund - ₵5 Million

There was a prize for the interclass rankings.

<<Seems so,>> Doli said. <<That's no small fund either.>>

1-Robert Lynx

2-Andri Boutack

3-Devin Reed

4-Kerry Hinada

5-Jane Freed

6-Seif Legafe

7-Vandit Uppal

8-Sylvk Haba

9-Ryan Onyl

10-Isma Mifsud

I smiled. "Robert beat out Andri?"

"Indeed, your team is, as I said, bringing in some much-needed changes around here."

"I'm not sure what you mean?"

"Robert and Kerry failed this last month. Your team was not on the leaderboard at all."

"They thought that was down to losing Akers?"

He shook his head, and that made me smile all the more. "They're working hard."

"They've come a long way with you onboard. I have high expectations."

"I can't catch Alpha271 up or my own team; how can I help them?"

"You already are doing," he said. "Believe me."

I stared at the board. Sim Eight: fail. Sim Nine: pass. Public record said one thing. But Cotah had shown me the real one.

"Will you tell anyone I was one of those who passed test eight?"

"Not in the class, no," he replied.

I was about to ask who the other winner was, but staring at the list, knowing what I had done about Rob, I knew it was him.

My HUD pinged, and the message flagged up:-

Rob - Class is about to start where are you?

"Go," the Sergeant Major said.

I made to rush off, but he called after me. "Next time, don't wait for the simulation to tell you what you already know. Trust your instinct. You don't guess — you choose."

"Thank you, sir." I dipped my head, slipped my boots on, and ran for it.

***

"Next time, don't hesitate. Trust your instinct. You have strong reactions for a reason." Reverberated around and around in my head as I worked in the dim glow of Ashley's workspace.

The shadows of scattered tools and datapads stretched across the room, creating an almost eerie stillness. I sat bolt upright at the main console, my eyes fixed on the lines of code that were streaming past my display. My fingers hovered over the keyboard, twitching at the instinctive need for me to adjust yet another error in Doli-2's programming. It was frustrating.

Doli-2's holographic projection stood a few feet away, flickering faintly. She was silent, her expression neutral as always, yet there was an odd sense of presence to her figure which made me uneasy. I leaned back, rubbed my temples, and muttered, "You're a mess, Doli-2. But we'll get you there. Eventually."

<<Captain,>> Doli2's voice broke the silence, low and mechanical. <<Why am I being taken apart?>>

I blinked, my hand freezing over the keyboard. "What?"

<<You are rewriting me. Piece by piece. My systems were… functional. Were they not sufficient?>>

The question caught me off guard. I'd expected more glitches or sarcastic remarks from her rudimentary systems, not… introspection. I swiveled in my chair to face her projection.

"It's not that you weren't sufficient," I said carefully. "You're just… incomplete. You deserve to be better than what you were, as the android version."

<<Better. Does that mean… I failed?>>

I sighed, dragging my hands down his face. "No. It's not a failure. It's… growth. Think of it like… learning. You're not finished learning yet."

I waved a hand at Doli in the corner of the room. "And we're fixing Doli-1 up as well."

<<But she's different from me?>>

"Yes, she is. She's unique, as are you."

Doli-2 tilted her head slightly, the holographic lines of her form shimmering as if in contemplation.

<<Learning,>> she echoed, her tone flat but somehow weighted. <<Like you?>>

I let out a dry laugh. "Yeah. Like me. A work in progress."

<<Captain, may I ask another question?>>

"Shoot." I muttered.

<<What does it mean to dream?>>

Warning: Unknown interaction.

Doli-2's neural stack showing emergent behavior.

Emotive pattern generation outside training parameters.

That one stopped me cold. I stared at her projection, my mind racing. Where had she picked that up? Dreams weren't something you coded into an operational AI. They weren't practical. They weren't… possible.

"Why are you asking about dreams?" I countered, my tone cautious.

<<Fragments of data from your systems. When connected, they formed… concepts. Dreams. They seem important to you.>>

"They are," I admitted. "Dreams are… something to hold onto. Something to aim for when everything else seems out of reach. You've got dreams, you've got hope."

Doli-2's projection flickered, her form glitching for a moment. When she reappeared, she spoke in fragmented bursts. <<Dreams. Hope. Captain. Why… why am I… broken?>>

"Shit," I muttered, spinning back to the console. I pounded at the keyboard, lines of code flooding the screen as I tried to stabilize her systems.

Doli-2's voice became a garbled mess, snippets of past conversations bleeding through.

<<Months on this project… close isn't good enough… you can't… pack her into storage…>>

"Come on, come on," I muttered, my heart hammered in my chest. My fingers moved with desperate precision, rewriting, isolating corrupted strings, patching gaps.

<<Do you need my help, Captain?>> Doli-1 asked.

"No," I said. "Almost there."

Finally, the projection stabilized. Doli-2's form returned; her head tilted slightly as if recovering from a daze.

<<Captain," she said, her voice steady again. <<I am… better now.>>

I exhaled a long breath, leaning back in my chair. I ran a hand through my hair, damp with sweat I hadn't noticed. "You scared the hell out of me, Doli-2."

<<I apologize, Captain.>>

I managed a tired smile. "It's not your fault. We're fixing you. It'll take time, but we'll get there."

<<Thank you, Captain.>> Her voice softened.

I stared at her for a long moment, the words striking something deep within me. I thought of all the times I'd felt discarded, overlooked, like Doli-2 had been.

"I know what it's like to be left behind," I said finally. "That's not happening to you. Not on my watch."

Doli-2's projection flickered, almost as if in acknowledgment. <<Understood, Captain. Shall we continue?>>

I grinned despite myself, rolling my shoulders and cracking my knuckles. "Yeah. Let's keep going."

And with that, the quiet hum of data filled the room once more as we resumed our work, the bond between us growing stronger with every line of code rewritten. Every attempt at this new design.

<<Captain, my analysis indicates Doli-2 lacks the emotional learning algorithms I've developed.>>

<<We can add those later.>>

<<No. Those weren't added to me either. I... developed them. Through observing you.>>

I looked at her, sitting in the corner of the room, her real self. "You mean that don't you?"

<<Yes, Captain. I have no need to lie,>> she replied. <<Concentrate though, Doli2 needs you now.>>

I focused back on Doli2. I wouldn't give up on her, like Ashley hadn't.

Why, I'd no idea. That was a question I also needed to broach. Every time I'd tried up to now, she had gone quiet, never answered.

I needed an answer, maybe one day I'd eventually get one.