The Standard Rodinian Physical Awareness Test
The Standard Rodinian Physical Awareness Test, or the SRPAT for short, is a basic assessment imposed by the Imperial Government of Rodinia upon all Rodinians seeking to leave Rodinia for any reason. Although leaving Rodinia is no longer generally allowed, there are still plenty of agents of the Imperial Government who have a requirement to do so inline with their duties. These agents must possess a certificate stating that they have passed the SRPAT before they are granted an Excursion Waiver.
Purpose
The SRPAT was introduced to tackle the danger that Rodinians posed to non-Rodinians due to the physical capabilities of the former so vastly outstripping the latter. Without a sufficient degree of training and self-control, a Rodinian could accidentality kill someone without realising it; turning around too quickly in a crowded area, touching someone, or even just walking through a crowd, could result in hideous injuries being inflicted on non-Rodinians. The SRPAT imposes a set of metrics that individuals must score sufficiently on, and passing each metric usually requires careful and extensive training. Some of the metrics are as follows:Motor Control (Strength)
Rodinians must train to be capable of handling items that are not psikinetically reinforced like themselves or Mycomatter (The material their Mycoships, buildings and items are made out of). Without such training, they will generally destroy whatever they interact with by exerting far too much force when handling it (i.e. accidentality twisting off a door handle, ripping the pages of a book, crushing drinkware, leaving foot imprints/talon marks on floors, breaking non-Rodinian bones with simple physical contact, etc) Passing this metric requires the individual to become intricately aware of, and proficient in micromanaging, their entire muscular system down to each and every single motor neuron, so that they can dial up and dial down their muscular activation where necessary. Rodinians able to pass on this metric must be able to understand how powerful their muscle fibres are for different muscles, and activate only the amount required for the physical action being undertaken. It also requires a detailed understanding of how different muscle groups interact to complete certain movements so that one muscle isn’t overlooked in undertaking the movement. A good understanding of the physical properties of many materials is also required so that Rodinians know how much force is too much. This all may seem impossible from the perspective of a non-Rodinian, but it’s easily achievable by your average Rodinian. Learning the physical properties of tens of thousands of materials, as well as how to identify them, is well within the basics of their education in the natural sciences as children, as are the anatomical movements and biology of their muscular system. The most time consuming part is simply meditating and exploring the muscle activation for every muscle in their body so that they can become proficient in (quickly) micromanaging it without needing to think about it. This is assessed by making a Rodinian live in a mundane environment with lots of fragile objects for several days, after which the premises and its contents are closely inspected for any signs of damage. Many of the objects also contain built-in sensors that measure how much force the Rodinian is exerting. All sensors must record stable, carefully controlled interactions and there must be no damage to anything within the test environment in order to pass.Motor Control (Reflexes)
A startled Rodinian is a dangerous creature to be around. If they quickly turn around or bring their limbs up defensively without taking into account their surroundings, even the mere movement itself can cause damage and death. Turning around quickly and accidentality hitting a non-Rodinian with their hand for example can literally cause them to explode from the impact. Even without touching anything, fast movements from Rodinians can cause sonic cracks that can damage windows and rupture eardrums, adiabatically compressed air from such movements can start fires, pressure waves can break objects or topple them, and static electricity can destroy electronics. These movements need to be controlled outside of Rodinia. To pass this metric, a Rodinian must be aware of their surroundings at all times. This includes their personal surroundings where their own body poses a risk to nearby objects from direct impact, as well as their general surroundings where a sonic crack, adiabatic fire or static discharge could be destructive. From there, they need to move at a speed that is appropriate for those surroundings which avoids causing damage or injury. A Rodinian will generally pick up on the minutia of their surroundings at all times, and this informs them of how much motion is too much, too fast. A good understanding of how their body interacts with the air around them is crucial to this, but again this is usually not an issue. As children Rodinians are quite proficient in rapidly understanding and mentally calculating any atmospheric pressure dynamics from the motion of bodies, including sonic effects, adiabatic heating and static build-up. The part that requires training is controlling their reflexes and reaction time. A Rodinian is tested on this through attempts to startle them whilst living in the test environment, such as being exposed to random alarms. They need to be able to control themselves, as jumping from fright can obliterate something. As such, a Rodinian needs to be able to modulate their reaction time. Most Rodinians significantly dial down their reaction time so that the world doesn’t always appear to them to be motionless. The downside to this is that they would process a startle at the speed a non-Rodinian would, but their physical reflex may not necessarily be as slow. Ergo, they may accidentality kill someone or break something (Such as moving back so fast that they tear up the floor under their feet and send supersonic fragments spraying everywhere, killing everyone around them). Rodinians therefore train their minds to sub-consciously dial up their mind’s processing time in response to a startle. This means that when they are startled, their view of the world immediately slows down to a standstill, which gives them ample time to fully analyse the situation and get control of their body’s natural reflex. This requires extensive training of their minds so that they are capable of responding to any given startle, whilst keeping the ‘false-positives’ to a minimum (False positives are stimuli that don’t cause a startle, but which still cause the Rodinian’s mental processing speed to spike to its natural nanosecond scales). It takes decades of practice and exposure to the world to become mostly free of false positives, however the test does not fail Rodinians for false positives. Only false negatives (Reacting to a startle without controlling their reflexes).Motor Control (Hand-Mind Coordination)
This tests a Rodinian’s ability to interact with the world with precision, so that they can avoid unnecessary physical contact. It also allows them to potentially operate at a physical level that would be considered generally dangerous for their surroundings, but controlled enough through precise movements to be acceptable. This is generally evaluated using the Mycomatter Key test. In this test, a Rodinian is presented with 6912 “keys” of differing geometric shapes (4000 in their Base-12 arithmetic), such as cylinders, triangular prisms, square prisms, etc, which must each be inserted into their corresponding shaped keyhole. The keys themselves are made of Mycomatter and hence indestructible to non-psikinetic forces. The material that the keyhole is made out of however is not Mycomatter, and is instead regular matter that can be easily destroyed by a clumsy key insertion. The Rodinian must insert all 6912 keys in under 40 seconds (Equivalent to roughly 34 Rodinian seconds), without inflicting any damage upon the keyholes. This equates to a rate of roughly 173 keys being inserted every second. Most Rodinians fall short of this standard, and need to train their coordination in order to pass. Once able to meet this standard however they are exceptional, able to pluck bullets out of the air without damaging them.Sensory Filtration
Sensory filtration is a technique incorporated into the SRPAT training that instructs them how to control both the sensitivity and awareness of their senses. Within Rodinia, their environments are designed to be as peaceful as possible due to the extremely sensitive nature of their senses. What little technology they still require is built to be as quiet as possible, as even the buzzing of a small LED is infuriatingly loud to them. Buildings are created with impeccable engineered precision to eliminate sound leakage, draughts, and vibrations from both the outside world as well as from other rooms. Imperceptible air currents that wouldn’t disturb a mote of dust are a chilly breeze to a Rodinian, whilst a person’s heart beat half a kilometre away is an insufferable periodic pounding, whilst their footsteps would rattle a Rodinian’s spine and their scent would be smelled as if they were standing right in front of them. Rodinian’s themselves have some social etiquette to deal with this beyond engineering solutions. Telepathic communication is the preferred norm due to the loudness of verbal communication (in addition to other factors such as speed, succinctness and clarity). Rooms and crowded spaces full of Rodinians are always eerily quite as all conversation is taking place telepathically and visually with body language and facial expressions. However in some circumstances, such as environments that are already loud, when passions and emotions run high, or when among friends, this can be loosened. Rodinians also create a telekinetic “second skin” over the surface of their bodies to confine their scents and prevent the noise of their bodies from being heard (such as heart beats, joint movements and other organ processes). They tend to also use telekinesis to levitate and fly around to avoid creating footsteps. It’s considered more eloquent and considerate to lift an object with silent telekinetics than to noisily brush one’s fingers against it and handle it directly. When it comes to non-Rodinians however, these social etiquettes aren’t possible. A Rodinian on a non-Rodinian planet will be assaulted with millions of sounds, millions of scents, millions of vibrations, as well as other stimuli that would make it impossible for even a Rodinian mind to focus. In such a case, a Rodinian unable to focus is a disaster waiting to happen. Sensory filtration training allows a Rodinian to quickly identify noise and ‘eliminate’ it from their conscious awareness, relegating its continued detection to their subconscious mind. This allows them to free up their concentration for other signals that are not mere noise. This is especially important for their sense of taste and smell, where without being able to quickly eliminate a scent would mean being able to taste and smell incredible unsavoury and disgusting things. It also allows a Rodinian to “dumb down” a sense if even their ocean of a subconscious mind is unable to process the gargantuan inflow of noisy signals, or diminish the amplitude of a signal leaving their ear before it reaches the brain. The reason why Rodinians are more loose with using verbal communication around friends is that their brains are used to the sound of a friend’s voice, and so automatically lowers it’s perceived amplitude. With voices they haven’t heard before, they can’t do this until they have heard it a few times (therefore why telepathic communication is the preferred default). This is assessed by creating a noisy environment within the test environment, where one of the first things they need to do is eliminate noise so that they can focus on what they are doing. This is even a part of the Mycomatter Key test. Crucially however, some noise signals will change to become important during the duration of the test, which the Rodnian’s subconscious mind must be able to pick up on and send back to the Rodinian’s conscious awareness for analysis. An example would be the ticking of a clock that suddenly stops. The Rodinian must immediately notice this and replace the battery, otherwise they fail.Awareness Training
There are also a set of principles which Rodinians are expected to know and adhere to. There is an exam for this, but testing a Rodinian with an exam is more of a formality to highlight the importance of what is being instructed as opposed to actually assessing them (Exams are otherwise mostly pointless for beings with near-perfect and unlimited photographic memories). The real outcome is instead the signing of the SRPAT Declaration, which is a legal document stating that the Rodinian has understood the principles outlined in the training, and that they will adhere to them under legal penalty for disobedience (Punishable with up to decades in prison if violated). The principles outline safe and responsible conduct around non-Rodinians, some of which are:- Minimum Presence – Time spent around non-Rodinians should be minimised and kept strictly as-necessary for whatever end goal is required. Unnecessary contact with non-Rodinians is a breach of the principles.
- Zero Intimacy – Intimacy is strictly prohibited. Rodinians are incapable of controlling their physical abilities during intimacy, which will result in severe injury or death for non-Rodinians.
- No Physical Contact – Unless absolutely unavoidable, a Rodinian should never make physical contact with a non-Rodinian. Additionally, a safe distance of two Rodinian arm lengths should be maintained between the two parties at all times. Psikinetic restraint is the preferred method of detaining non-Rodinians.
- Psikinetic Preference – When around non-Rodinians, usage of psikinetics is the preferred method of interacting with their world. This means opening doors, lifting objects and manipulating them using telekinesis instead of physical contact, as telekinesis has less potential to result in abrupt, excessive forces.
Comments