AKICILJ, cautionary tale edition

[truepenny]

Greetings, O Internets! I am asking for help.

Many years ago, as a student in junior high school, I read a story in an anthology. It was very didactic, as stories in school anthologies so often are, but it made a lasting impression on me--pity it wasn't a story we were actually assigned. It was a science fiction story (which may be one reason I remember it so vividly): the protagonist, whose name IIRC was Robert, was taking his driver's license test, which in the future imagined by the story took the form of a simulation (more hypnosis than VR, since inside the simulation, he's not aware that it isn't real). In the simulation, he gets into an accident, killing his mother and the other car's sleeping passenger (I don't remember the driver of the other car being mentioned). He immediately deploys some spectacular rationalizing ability (My mother was old, it was a mercy. The girl was sleeping, she never felt a thing.), and wakes up happily ready to get his license and go home.

Whereupon the proctor calls the cops to have him taken away, because the point of the test is that anyone who deserves to have a driver's license, or be a member of society, won't want a license after that simulation.

And Robert is dragged out, screaming, trying to convince himself that this, too, is part of the test.

Does anyone recognize this story? Author? Title? Help?

Comments

[brendan-moody.livejournal.com]

I believe that's "Test," by Theodore L. Thomas.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[lossrockhart.livejournal.com]

Sounds like "Night Court," by Mary Elizabeth Counselman. Peter Haining included it in an antho called Death on Wheels.

[lossrockhart.livejournal.com]

Nope. It's "Test."

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[txanne.livejournal.com]

Whereas the people who are worthy of staying in society are so traumatized that they don't want a license either. Hey look! Instant demand for public transportation!

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

WIN!

[finnyb.livejournal.com]

Oh, that sounds like a story I want to read! (And man, a test like that would've traumatized me for life--I have my license, due to parental insistence at the appropriate stage of life, but I never use it, and could not now even if I wanted to, as my vision is not good enough to let me drive in Alberta. For which I am grateful--I always hated driving, and the necessity therefore, in the town I am from, which says it has public transit, but does not have much.)