APocalypse: Dawn of the Exams

It’s that time of year again! As the school year draws to a long overdue finish, call all panicked Stuy students for…the AP exams! The origin of these exams can be traced back centuries, though all who have tried thus far have been unable to uncover the true reason behind their existence. To get the inside scoop, I’ve decided to travel to the root of this rumor: Brooklyn Technical High School. 

“And here we see 100 Tech students crammed into what appears to be a kindergarten classroom. What’s that? Oh, it’s not a kindergarten classroom, there’s just a bunch of hideous hand turkeys!” I report, after making the noble sacrifice of skipping school to sneak into Brooklyn Tech. For research purposes, of course. 

“Hey, kid! Yeah, you, broccoli head!” A guy, who’s at least six feet with hair that looks closer to cauliflower, whips around. He looks semi-murderous; maybe he can sense the impending interrogation.

“Wow, Stuy really hit the lottery with all the shorties,” I mutter. 

“What do you want?! I swear if Mr. Quigley sent you to mug me for lunch money-”

“Relax, I don’t steal from the poor,” I smoothly respond. Before he has time to react to my fire insult, I throw a question at him. 

“What’s your opinion on AP classes?” 

“Ugh. Don’t even get me started. They’re like that one penny you find on the floor. Worthless, but everyone always wants to pick it up,” Mr. Cauliflower mutters. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my AP Chem test.” 

“Wait, what is the purpose behind these hand turkeys?” I call. 

“Are you in the wrong school? Everyone makes one. A really long time ago, I think in 2022, student morale was at an all-time low, and they thought making hand turkeys would help. I swear, the staff needs therapy more than we do.” I spent the rest of the day harassing students about AP courses and received the same spiel every time, until one kid, who wishes to remain anonymous, asked if I was aware of the zombie outbreaks. 

“Zombie outbreaks? What are you talking about?!” 

“During the great era before, people were happy, free, and wild, especially high schoolers-”

“What do you mean by before?” I interject. 

“Before AP exams, Miss Lion’s Mane. Keep up, you asked me!” What was with people in this school and hair?! I couldn’t decide if it was a compliment or not.   

“I mean, seriously, have you heard of a hair tie?” 

“Have you heard of a comb?! Let’s get back on track, please.” 

“Ouch, the lion has claws. So anyway, you know how it is with teenagers. They got a little too twitchy—getting dumped in a pit of angsty, stanky adolescents will do that to you—and one of them got dared to…well, let’s just say it involved a pigeon.” A pigeon?! The rabid vermin that always looked ready to inflict violent horrors upon unsuspecting pedestrians? 

“And what happened with the… pigeon?” I ask, almost afraid of the answer. 

“What do you think? The poor kid turned into a… mutant, you could say. A zombie.” 

“The sci-fi story is nice and all, but what does this have to do with APs?” 

“I’m getting to it! Patience, short padawan. He started spreading the pigeon virus everywhere, but what’s super weird is it only infected high school kids. And they were really weird, super stressed, and kept mumbling things like ‘sewage treatment’ or ‘document-based questions.’” 

“Those are stuff on the AP exams!” I realize. 

“Yup. The government contained a group of Pigeon Zombies, and some genius decided to test them—literally test them with an early form of AP exams. And it worked! The virus just disappeared halfway through the test! Once you take one AP test, you get immunity for life! But they had to readminister every year to new students so the plague doesn’t come back.”   

“WOW! You’re telling me that the AP test wasn’t invented to torture kids?”

“No, it wasn’t. It was invented… to help them.”  

“So, side note, what’s with Tech’s turkey hands?” 

“Oh yeah, there’s this really weird rivalry between turkeys and pigeons. I guess turkeys thought they were scarier? Anyway, turkeys work like pigeon repellent, and since pigeons are too stupid to tell the difference between real and fake turkeys, we use the turkey hands to keep pigeons away. That’s why there hasn’t been another outbreak for years!” I gasp. 

“No wonder there are so many videos of turkeys and pigeons harassing humans! They’re competing.”