TEST OF INTELLIGENCE
Thrashing through the gateways of a deep sleep, I woke to a feeling of relief that I had not missed my FINAL exam in my Philosophy class. Or had I? My watch was no longer on my wrist and I was no longer sure of what day it was. I knew it was night time because I had just woken up, or, had I fallen asleep in the middle of the day? Or, perhaps someone had knocked me unconscious? I felt vibrations under my feet and glancing up, my eyes beheld a vanishing landscape from the window of a train, that with each passing second was erasing any knowledge I had ever accumulated in my now brittle brain. There was no chance of escaping as the train was running at lightning speed. My eyes were drawn to a flashing light behind me and beheld the words: 'no stops, destiny unknown'. What was my destiny? The only companion I had was the darkness of the night and the voices inside of my head to tell me what to do. I reached up to the baggage compartment above the seat but the handle had been removed and it's edges appeared seamless. What now, I whispered to myself, all of my notes are in there so I won't be able to study for my FINAL exam? My fragile senses were all shattered and my thought processes felt immune to any semblance of coherent thought. The sharp turning of the train jarred me from my thoughts and the standing position I felt I had been cemented to. I fell into a nearby seat and books fell on my head - the baggage compartment had opened up and spilled it's contents out like a cloud's deluge of rain. I was saved! I opened the book that was closest to me and read: 'FINAL exam essay question: What would the most intelligent person on earth do if he/she were trapped on a train, speeding into an eternity without a known destiny'? I opened up my dictionary but the letters and words contained within just kept on telling me the same thing over and over again, for all eternity they would never change; they were as trapped within the covers of this book as I was trapped inside this train. These words appeared to act as though they were intelligent, but when I talked to them they kept on repeating themselves. My thinking was getting weaker and weaker as time was doing its best to rob me of all I had ever acquired or experienced that had made my mind my own. Buried in the matter inside the matter inside the top of my head was a faint whisper of cogitation that was fighting its hardest to escape it's boundaries. A faint thought fought it's way to the surface of what gray matter I had left in my head, perhaps it was newly formed or had been embedded there back when I was a mass of cells in my mother's womb. "Help me, help me, before it's too late", I pleaded.
I blinked several times and looked around the room whose silence was broken only by the sound of pens scribbling furiously on paper, their owner's foreheads creased in intense concentration and whose features were set with mingled looks of vengeance and determination. My pen, of it's own accord, formed letters and words to answer the question of my FINAL exam.
Answer: 'THE END'.