Evacuation

We were sitting in a cafeterialike place where a refugeeish family with small children had just left. The people on this planet wouldn't survive for much longer. Luckily, a perky ginger woman with the air of a teacher offered everyone a way out. About twenty to thirty people of different ages, but most of us youngish, from eighteen to thirty, took our seats in a classroom while the woman gave instructions to the quiz game we were going to play. She was cheery-busy at it. We were seated in pairs, each person got one question, and whenever a round of questions was finished, we were to rotate the rows.

My seat neighbour and I started in the last row, then moved to the second-to-last after we'd each answered our first question. The first two best players were announced. They were allowed to immediately board the ship that would leave this planet with as many passengers as it could hold. Not all of us would fit into it, of course, and this, some of us now realised for the first time, was what this game was about. Being good meant that you would survive.

As the first two boarded, a man in a red hawaii shirt stood gaping up at a screen hanging high on a wall, where a person exclaimed that two roundswinners would be announced aftere ach round, would be allowed to board at once, and that this would continue until the ship was full. This didn't faze me much, because I knew I was pretty good and would probably be invited in quite soon. The man kept gaping and looked somewhat spiteful.