"BREAKING 'S NEWS' ALERT: Humanities hero and Supreme Leader: President Abaddon, today announced his candidacy as President of the New Earth: 'We must ensure everything is in place for when we land to prosper and survive. I look forward to starting this democratic process and a fair fight from my fellow candidates.' As yet, no other candidates have entered the race.
Gabe sauntered in that next morning, feeling like the worst of his ordeal was behind him - he'd achieved something he didn't think possible: he'd survived Cain and made it to the Pilot Simulator. To Gabe, It was a new dawn, even though the sun was only just setting; It had been setting now for almost four days.
Continuing his saunter past the huge poster of Supreme Leader Abaddon, bathed in glorious sunset, he followed his nose and let the scent of bacon guide him.
Pulling up a plastic canteen chair, he awaited the inevitable arrival of the others by allowing himself a rare moment of reflection as he chewed. He couldn't help but feel a small sense of accomplishment, but most of all, a creeping sense of hope returned - a stranger long-thought dead.
He made his way to class as the rest slowly trickled in and looked up at the giant black unit of the Simulator that loomed menacingly over him - it still intimidated him, even now, there was something about a structure that big and featureless that sent shivers straight through him.
Training Commander Cain burst through the door, clipboard in hand. He seemed even more prickly than usual.
'Okay listen up,' his voice echoed around Gabe's skull. ' There are some of you here because you excelled in another module and now must finish the course - I get that, so you will be processed through your simulations first thing where you will fail and fail quickly. This is because laughably, there are still some amongst you here that believe you genuinely have a shot of piloting the Mothership: SS YAMA Pharmaceutical Corporate Shuttle. Let me tell you now - you don't. None of you will be good enough, you are all wasting your time. The only reason I bothered turning up today is because the fleet will need as many capable pilots as it can muster, ferrying civilians to the Mothership in your EX's. That is the best any of you idiots can hope for.'
He threw his clipboard onto the desk in frustration.
'That said, EDEN requires us to be prepared for every eventuality, including something happening to YAMA's actual pilot. Therefore I am required, for the good of mankind, to train you all, so that in the unfortunate event we find ourselves with one of you retards behind the stick, then you will have had the adequate training to get you through the following scenarios without killing us all: Taking off in Earth's atmosphere; taking off and landing in various atmospheres; docking in both shuttles; landing the Mothership on an Earth like atmosphere; failure of the Mainframe computer; evasive action and finally hostile attacks.'
He sat down in his chair and rubbed his temples. 'But you're probably not going to make that far because you'll quickly realise that your pathetic dream of flying around space is never going to happen and you'll quit halfway through, again making this a colossal waste of everyone's time.'
He studied the eyes of everyone before him. 'So, consider this your one and only friendly warning. I wouldn't trust any one of you to open a can of beans that was already open, so do yourselves a favour, pick yourselves up, walk out of that door and slope off back to where you came from, otherwise prepare yourselves for a seven-day beasting the likes of which you pansies have never seen.'
He stood up and focussed in on a balding man in his fifties who immediately looked panicked.
'If I even get one whiff that you're wasting my time here, I swear to God as my witness I'm going to tear your weak, tubby limbs from your body and use them to beat you to death. Do you understand me, you pathetic sack of meat? Do you?'
The balding man nodded and began to sweat profusely.
'So why are you still standing there? Are you here to waste my time you goddamn human turd. Answer me?'
The balding man became glassy eyed, but too frozen in fear to move or say anything.
The Training Commander positioned himself an inch away from his face.
'GET. OUT.'
The balding man jumped from his chair and scuttled out the room as quickly as he could, wiping his cheeks with the sleeve of his jumper.
'Good,' exclaimed the Training Commander, a broad grin emerging from his stubbled jawline. 'One down, only six to go, so who wants to be next? I can wait.'
Gabe met his glare head on as he stared him down, unwavering, It was all or nothing.
The Commander's jaw tightened. 'Fine. You want to know what it takes to be a pilot of a corporate shuttle? DO YOU? Well I'm going to make damn sure you all find out,'
With that he marched towards the door.
'You got 30 seconds to prepare yourself, cadet Gabe then I'm sending you to Hell.'
Cain wasn't joking.
The first simulation was evacuating the scorched, tortured remains of Earth as rivers of lava sprung from the ground, swallowing what was left of the skyline. That was just one of many apocalyptic scenarios awaiting them.
Commander Cain was adamant, if he couldn't get the remaining cadets to leave on their own accord, then he would let the Simulator chew them up until they were done.
The criteria for success was simple: Zero kills.
YAMA Pharmaceuticals had stated clearly that they would only consider candidates for the position of pilot to those who could go through the Simulator with 100% survival rate. This measure was put in place to naturally adjust the mind-set of the candidate, because it was too easy to treat the Simulator as a computer game and play with no fear, but too realistic to distinguish it from real life.
They were paranoid they would end up with a pilot who couldn't tell one from the other after several years in deep space.
To give the cadets a chance, the Simulator would allow you to abort each mission as many times as you like, as long as you could calculate a safe jump to lightspeed and away from any danger, but it wouldn't allow you to move onto the next stage of the simulation until each mission was accomplished.
Whoever could complete each mission without costing a life, wins.
Training Commander Cain's best and only tactic was repetition - to endlessly put you through simulation after simulation, for hours at a time, until you made that one mistake that cost a life, berating you continuously until you cracked.
And most did, people just don't need that sort of grief at the end of the world.
By the time Cain called lunch there were only three left: Monkey, Gabe and Kate - a talented pilot who had breezed through basic taking off and landing.
The simulator showed them Hell had many different decorators - from an arctic winter with 90mph winds, to a nuclear fall-out, to tectonic earthquakes swallowing continents whole. They knew the simulation wasn't on their side but with the Training Commander at the helm, it would do everything it could to stuff it's in-built bad karma down your throat.
Personally, Gabe thought having to evacuate Earth against the backdrop of a rising tsunami, blistering solar winds and the animal kingdom revolting against its human oppressors felt a little overkill as he activated his windscreen wipers after a particularly feral attack by some fibre rich Chimpanzees.
Despite all his experience, it took Gabe a few days to really feel comfortable behind the controls. Despite the pressure he was under, nothing could take away the thrill of piloting the EX. He never got to properly fly the old one ten years ago and the Simulator back then left a lot to be desired, but this, this was as close as he had ever come to realising his dream of escaping Earth.
By Wednesday morning they were willing Monkey to keep his simulation going just to eat up more time and give them a much needed rest. But it wasn't long before Monkey overshot his approach on one of the docking exercises and tore a hole in the side of his EX.
As Monkey climbed out of the simulator he seemed relieved more than anything.
'Glad that's over,' he said blinking. 'My eyes have gone square.'
'I thought you were amazing,' gushed Kate, 'the way you handled that shuttle was just amazing, I mean, I just think you're, you know, amazing.' She was now blushing. 'Christ, what am I even saying, you must think I'm an idiot.'
'Err, thanks,' said Monkey oblivious. 'Gabe, no pressure, Geezer, but if you mess this up, I'll always look at you as a total failure.' He smiled, smoothing out his beard.
'Gee thanks, Monkey. Such touching, inspirational words. Have you ever considered becoming a Training Commander?'
'You know I did, but it just took too much effort to be that consistently unlikable. Whatever happens, don't let the bastard grind you down.'
'Laugh it up, shit for brains.' Training Commander Cain got up from his screen. 'You just got two people killed, genius, you're out of the simulation. Get your stuff and get out of my training facility.' 'KATE, you're up. When one goes, the rest topple like dominoes. Let's get this over and done with so you can stop wasting my time.'
'Alright, I'm out of here, Geezer. Seriously you've got this,' said Monkey.
'Thanks man.' Gabe gave him a big hug and watched him pick up his stuff and head out of the door and into the pitch-black night sky of early morning.
The next time they were due to see sunlight would be when they left Earth for good.