The Nine Dot Problem

A young student, competing with millions of other students, is about to sit his final examination. If he completes it, a new power beckons. Something he has been prepared for his entire life…

This is The Nine Dot Problem.

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THE NINE DOT PROBLEM

Jameson is sitting at a small desk. Boxing him in are the walls of the examination room. Fluorescent lights beam down from the low ceiling. The smell of cleaning fluid rises from the sterile floor. To Jameson’s right, about a metre away, is a guard with an assault rifle. Another, standing ready, is by the locked door.

“In one minute the exam will begin,” the guard nearest to him recites, staring into Jameson’s eyes. He must have done this thousands of times. “You are not allowed to leave your seat until the exam is complete. You are not allowed food, you are not allowed water. You are not allowed to speak, or make any other noise, besides the scratching of your pencil and the turning of your paper.”

Jameson looks down at his desk. On it is the examination paper, turned over. His heart is thumping. He thought he had completed all the requirements, all of the examinations. Seven years. From entering the Academy until now. He hadn’t failed once. And now they tell him there is one more test. One more test to become a Government Civil Servant, the title with the highest prestige in the Empire.

“You have two minutes to complete this task,” the guard continues. Jameson looks up at him. Two minutes? Jameson had completed all types of tasks and challenges, from the routine to the absurd, but none this short. “Once your time is over, you are to stop writing, place your pencil down, and make no sound. If you don’t, you are to be shot.”

Jameson wants to bite his nails. It is a habit despised in this institution; a habit of the lower classes. He calms himself and stays present, focussing on the sensations flowing up his arms and legs.

“Ten seconds, student.” The guard counts down, “… 3, 2, and, 1. Begin.”

Jameson turns the piece of paper over. On it are nine black dots, arranged in a 3x3 grid. Above are the instructions:

You are to draw four straight lines, connecting all nine dots, without lifting your pencil from the paper or retracing any lines.

Jameson reads them twice, three times over. Is that it? He is wasting time. Focus.

His pencil tip hovers above the top-left dot and he is about to draw when he stops himself. There are no go-backs. Create it in your mind first, he tells himself, as quickly as possible.

Jameson imagines several possibilities. Start from the top-left dot, draw straight across to the top-right, draw down … that’s three. No, that won’t work. Start from the bottom left, draw diagonally to the top-right, draw down to the bottom right, then diagonally to the top left …. No, that also won’t work. He begins to panic. What about a V? Start at the top right, draw down to the bottom middle, up to the top left, and down … No! That won’t work either!

“One minute left,” the guard informs.

Terror engulfs Jameson’s mind. What would it mean to fail? He has never failed at anything, but he still knows exactly what it means. He has watched his friends, his best friends, capitulate again and again, just like he is doing now. They had to go back to whatever mediocre lives they inhabited before. Scraping for pennies in the desert as a trader. Sitting on rusted tractors sowing irradiated soil…

Shut up! He commands of his thoughts. Quickly he calms himself, feeling the sensations of his body once more. Focus.

What if it is a trick question? … It wasn’t in the instructions to not draw outside the 3x3 grid. The Academy never asks trick questions, they think they’re blasphemous. Anything that requires irony, humour, or a double meaning.

“30 seconds.”

Jameson looks up at the guard, whose arrogant face offers nothing. Jameson gazes at the tip of his pencil and breathes slowly out his mouth. Last chance.

The pencil touches the paper. He begins from the top right dot and draws diagonally down to the bottom left dot. One line, three dots secured. He then draws horizontally right but instead of stopping at the right bottom corner dot, he continues about two inches into open space. Two lines, five dots secured. He draws up diagonally to the left, through the middle dot on the far right vertical, and the middle dot on the top horizontal, again continuing into open space until his end point leaves him with the ability to draw down through the far left vertical. Three lines drawn, seven dots secured. He draws down to the bottom left dot, through the remaining two dots.

“Ten seconds.”

Jameson pulls his pencil from the paper, and re-examines his drawing. This must be it! Four lines, nine dots secured, and his pencil didn’t leave the paper. 

“... 3, 2, and 1. Stop! The pencil is down. Do not make a noise. Sit back.” The guard approaches and reaches for the paper.

The guard's eyes narrow. He glances suspiciously at Jameson, who can barely withhold his elation. The guard calls the other guard over, and they both study it, whispering to each other.

Finally, the lead guard commands, “Student, at readiness! Come with me!”

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“Keep up!” The guard demands, his boot heels clacking on the pristine white floor of yet another long mute hallway - the decoration that accompanies every hallway and room of this institution. 

Jameson knows there is only one place the guard could be leading him: To the Dean’s office. The only time he has seen the Dean is at his preparatory and congratulatory speeches on the enormous campus lawn, at the beginning and end of every semester. He has never seen him up close. He is almost a ghost; a man of incredible intelligence and wisdom; a citation count exceeding the billions; so distant in his reality.

This thought on its own - the fact he is meeting the Dean! - is as overwhelming as the chaotic hash of memories Jameson has been juggling in his realisation of what he has achieved. 

Seven years he’s been here, in this prison-come-hospital that he has come to despise. The desire to graduate, to leave and become a Government Civil Servant, feels primal. Perhaps it is the instinct of survival. He has laughed along with the guard’s poorly constructed jokes, to avoid rifle buts to the teeth. He has passed and overcome thousands of tests, examinations, and tasks, some excruciatingly boring, and some incredibly dangerous. Every year, he made friends, best friends, and watched them perish into the void of nothingness that was failure. He remembers his first year; how many 18 year olds were at the Dean's first address. It might have been millions. Now, it was only a few thousand. If that.

The guard stops suddenly in front of metallic elevator doors. Jameson, deep in thought, almost bowls into him.

The guard presses it, and turns to Jameson. “You are to speak only when spoken to. You are to sit only when a seat is offered. You are to do exactly what is asked of you. If you need to take a shit, you can only do so if your pants are drawn down for you and you are physically placed on the toilet seat and ‘push!’ is screamed at you…” Jameson wonders how this is different to every other interaction he has had with staff in the academy. “Okay?”

“Yessir. Of course.”

The elevator door opens. The guard ushers Jameson in but doesn't follow. Jameson watches the elevator doors close on the frustrated features of a man Jameson knows, from now on, will always be of a lower class than him.

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Jameson, sitting on a long brown leather couch, is gazing around in wonder. The Dean’s office is enormous, bigger than two seminar rooms. There is more colour here than he has seen in years. The carpet is a warm red. There are gold and silver gilded mirrors on the walls, as well as large paintings of landscapes, fierce battles, and portraits of noble men. On the right side is a heavy wooden table with tall chairs; and along the left a bookcase with ancient volumes. At the end of the office is the Dean’s desk, encircled by a tall and wide window.

“Tea?” 

Jameson jumps. The Dean’s secretary, Mary, is standing behind him with a tray.

“S-sure. Sorry, y-yes please.” 

Mary leaves and Jameson stares at the surface of the black tea, watching the water ripple less and less frequently, until it wobbles to a stop. He breathes out his nose, calming himself. 

Jameson can not remember a time where he has not been prepared. “Son,” as his earliest memory begins, his father standing over him, silhouetted by the light entering from his open bedroom door, “I have certain skills, a fine intellect - it is not arrogant to speak the truth. Yet my father gave me no opportunity to make good on these genes. He had a loser mentality, and confined himself and his family to the wretched existence we now live - running a second hand bookstore in the slums of the dirtiest hive city in the South Pacific.” His father's voice was always commanding; yet it contained a fleeting compassion, of which Jameson clung to whenever it presented itself. “But stupidity is best defined by those who make the same mistake over and over. I am not stupid and neither is your mother. You, my first born son, are going to get the opportunity I did not receive. And you are going to make good of it.”

In primary school, Jameson mustered all his possible energy to listen and focus on what his uninspiring teachers were telling him. At 12, when the lower classes all left school, he helped his father in the family bookshop, stacking books, making stock-takes, and greeting customers. Every night, from when he was four until he left for the academy at 18, his father tutored him. No subject was left unturned. “One of the great mistakes of modern education, my son, is specialisation. Gone are the polymaths, gone are those who know history and know physics. Who know psychology and know engineering. The best way to ascend hierarchies and to dominate, is to be a generalist. Your mind will create connections between concepts that others, even with the cognitive capability, cannot. Your mind will be sharp, not like a single-point spear, but a prickly ball with a thousand sharp-points; incisive in every direction.” First, were the fundamentals; basic mathematics, science, and philosophy. Over years, this gradually mushroomed outward, to calculus, statistics, and geometry; to chemistry, physics, and biology; to objectivism, subjectivism, and pragmatism. Later, while still rehearsing the fundamentals, he studied social sciences, like psychology, economics, and politics, and more practical ventures, like engineering, carpentry, and computing. His father even made him teach his younger siblings; explain what he had learnt in his own words, to further consolidate his knowledge.

History, above all, was the greatest subject: “The world begins and ends with great men, my son,” his father would say. The first great man he studied was Alexander the Great. Not only was he lectured on his military genius, the wars he won, and the lands he conquered; but of the flourishing of Greek culture that arose in his wake. Next was Augustus, not Julius Caesar, “a lesser man by all accounts,” his father would say. They studied his life, his great victories, and the impossible breadth of the Roman Empire. “To be only compared with our own today.” A few ‘lesser great men’ populated the arc of history, from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, and his father never stopped his criticism of what allowed the collapse of the Roman Empire; its split from East to West, and the rise of Christianity. His father’s interest in the dark ages, the mediaeval period, was limited; and those for whose records barely survive, he only briefly touched on them. It was in the 17th Century, where his teachings regained their passion. “Peter the Great, the heroic Tsar of Russia, reorganised the Russian Military, suppressed rebellion gallantly, and refined Russian culture. He created the Empire and led the groundwork for Russian dominance in the centuries to come.” Then he described Frederick the Great; a man, who despite his feminine flaws, was a master military tactician, and innovated on the battlefield. Of course, his father would not skip Napoleon and his bold invasions - “until his boldness was finally realised as stupidity…” - the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, and many others. Remarks were made on the Empires of the 19th Century, his father especially impressed with the Naval dominance of Britain, but once again he returned to central Europe as his focus: “Bismark was a man of steel, my son; he unified Germany with a series of sharp wars. The efficiency in which he created an Empire, or at least a state, has to be admired.” Now was the turn of the 20th Century. He admired both Hitler and Stalin for separate reasons. Hitler was a lightning rod; able to rile up a resentful nation into a berserking machine, whose military was breathtakingly savage. For Stalin, his father would mock those who thought he was unintelligent; his effectiveness as a leader, his skill at negotiating, and how he retained power, brilliant. Finally, “... much has been made of Winston Churchill, and his defence of Britain, and essentially the West. But my son, if there is one thing you need to learn about this man; it is in the magnificence of his speeches.” His father would continually say, if Jameson was ever to ascend to Emperor of the Western Empire - the dream he had of his son since he discovered his wife was having a boy - that it was in oratory he needed to become a genius.

Jameson glances across the Dean’s desk, and at the window behind it. Here, he thought, is a microcosm of the Emperor’s world: One man rule, with servants, administrators, and advisors - and no ascension to power through votes. It is logical - who would allow students to vote on the next Dean? They are stupid, ill-advised, and almost all of them fail. Except him. 

Jameson reflected on what his father said about Democracy:

Democracy flourished for a while my son, but in its strength lies its weakness - by the selection of a man to its highest title he can enact referendums, he can change its constitution, and he can enforce new laws which consolidates his power, and eventually, as we have seen with numerous democracies, return to single party and single man rule and the recreation of dictatorial empires. It is folly to rely on the democratic process, to try - like all those other idiot pro democracy revolutionaries are trying to do - make a return to liberal democracy. Instead, it is on the individual - the Emperor - to lead not only with strength but with compassion. To not be led by dogma, but a critical gaze of what needs to be done. He needs to be a traditionalist and a progressivist, simultaneously. The problem we have today is a succession of cowardly Emperors that have allowed this once great idea of the Western Empire to devolve into debauchery and crime, ruling with false compassion and heavy handed force. We know of the forced labour camps, we know of what goes on in the hive cities. The rich - the tiniest minority - live only in the beautiful estates on the coast and in the mountains, or in sky scraping apartments, or in the satellite colony of Mars. The poor - everyone else - has to scrap for a living in nuclear wastelands and slums, indistinguishable from rats. You my son have a chance, to ascend the throne, and be a benevolent leader, who will refute nonsense theories and rule - rule by good power, not bad power. You can create a dynasty my son, our name can be great. More than great - godlike.

Jameson hears the door close to his right. Standing upright, his shoulders back, in a dark elegant three-piece suit, is the Dean. In his hand is Jameson’s examination paper.

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“Do you know whose idea it was to construct buildings like this?” The Dean and Jameson are standing behind the Dean’s desk, looking out the semi-circular window. The Dean’s office is at the top of an enormous tower. Surrounding it are the beautiful campus gardens, and beyond that, hundred of metres away, in all directions, is the rest of the campus built up in an enormous circle, each wall like the inside, matte-white. 

“Jeremy Bentham, the British philosopher. It’s called a Panopticon.”

“Brilliant! And why was it designed this way?”

“It was designed this way so the few can spy on the many. Initially, the concept was applied to prisons. The tower in the middle would allow less prison guards to spy more effectively on a greater number of prisoners. The famous prison in Italy was designed as a Panopticon. Afterward, schools and other public institutions began copying this design.”

“Very good.” The Dean gazes back out, and his brow knots. “It doesn’t make any sense here, though does it? Why would we construct our Academy in a Panopticon? We have cameras, in every lecture hall, in every dorm, in every bathroom. And anyway, it’s too bloody big, I can’t see what’s going on all the way over there.”

Jameson knows the power of the Panopticon is not only to strengthen the guard’s ability to spy; but to increase the prisoners' level of fear they are getting spied upon. “I’d say it’s to remind students that the staff are watching, primarily.”

“Exactly. Come over here, have a seat.”

As they sit, the light from the window behind silhouettes the Dean; all Jameson can see of his face is the tip of his sharp nose, and his grey eyes disappearing when he blinks. He clasps his hands together, which are surprisingly worn, appearing more like the hands of a construction worker, than an academic. Beside him is the examination paper, turned over.

“Do you know how many applicants we have to the Academy, before they are even admitted?”

“I’ve only heard rumours.”

“Go on.”

“One hundred million. Maybe more.”

“Times that by five. We have approximately half a billion apply every year; larger than the population of the old United States. And the number is growing every year. Of course, now we can call upon populations from all over the Western Empire. From virtually deserted Greenland, to the wastelands of Australia.” The Dean turns his face slightly, and the light catches the edge of his smile. “And from these half a billion, how many are admitted?”

“I understand it to be a million, sir.”

“You understand correctly. And how many, from that million, make it to the final examinations of their seventh year?”

“Twenty-thousand.”

“And how many, from this twenty-thousand, become Government Civil Servants?”

“I don’t know, actually sir.”

“A thousand. A thousand from half a billion. Do you know what the likelihood one has of applying successfully, passing all seven years and the final examinations, and becoming a Civil Servant?”

Jameson begins calculating in his head.

The Dean cuts him off, “Point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-two.” He repeats the number and smiles wide, showing unnaturally white teeth. “It’s okay to smile, student! What you’ve done is extraordinary. Unthinkable to most, but the idea of failure, is unthinkable to those who believe in themselves, above all, that they should rise to the level the Government entrusts in them special privileges and power; that they should serve the Empire. Like you.”

He turns the examination paper over, and sighs.

“The Nine Dot Problem was created by psychologists in the 1950s, and largely forgotten about. After the United States and NATO defeated the Russians and the Chinese, and established the Western Empire in the aftermath of nuclear destruction, the educational psychologist who founded this great Academy rediscovered it. In cooperation with the newly formed Information and Intelligence Service, they erased all academic records of it existing; and over the years, after much testing, it was reintroduced. It became the final challenge, one might say.” The Dean looks up at Jameson, unblinking. “To 98 percent of those who pass the final examinations of the seventh year and attempt it, they are told there is no answer. They are told this, because they fail The Nine Dot Problem. It is to encourage and remind them that they are not failures - in fact that they have never failed. The aim is to ensure absolute confidence in their abilities in becoming and being Government Civil Servants. A tiny minority, however, realises the essence of what the problem requires. A tiny minority passes the damn thing.”

The Dean puts the examination paper to one side, and leans forward. “The Nine Dot Problem requires one, literally, to think outside of the box. It requires creativity and lateral thinking under severe time-pressure. For us, the test serves as a final filter mechanism. It filters out the brilliant and creative, from simply the brilliant.” The Dean’s lighthearted and pompous accent dissipates, revealing one like those of old Boston; hard, cold, and gravelly. “It filters out those who will serve us obediently, from those who may eventually challenge our authority.”

The Dean stands, places his hands on the desk, and leans over Jameson. His silhouette dissolves, as the light on the semi-circular window behind him dims. His eyes are no longer an absent grey, but a pulsating blue. The veins on his neck vibrate.

“We have known about you, for a long time, Mr. Jameson Hastie, like we do every successful applicant. We know of your upbringing; how your parents ran a second-hand book shop; how you helped stack books; and how your mother read you Tom Sawyer at night times. We know who your father was too, a failed applicant into our program. The man who essentially taught you everything, and instilled the belief not only that you can become a Civil Servant, but rise higher in the Imperial Hierarchy. So high in fact, that his goal was to have you usurp the Emperor himself; claiming the Western lands for yourself. We know how he died too, shot while protesting one of the Emperor’s new policies. I’ll tell you right now Jameson, your father was a selfish man. He didn’t give a flying fuck about your wellbeing, only that his name achieved greatness.”

Two guards had materialised seemingly from the walls, and were now standing at Jameson’s side.

The Dean continues, “Despite all this, we granted you entry keeping a close watch on your development. With keen interest, we saw you topping almost every class. Whether it was gymnastics, whether it was abstract meta-physics, it didn’t matter! You topped bloody everything! Against the will of the Board of Trustees, it was me who allowed you to graduate every year; to sit at every preparatory and congratulatory speech of mine; to inch closer to the title of Government Civil Servant. I told them that I believed in you. His father is dead I said, it is us who can be his mentors, who can change his mind. A young man of your quality comes along incredibly rarely, and could be of substantial benefit to the Party - a servant like no other. And, I told them, we have one final test to check if my beliefs were correct: The Nine Dot Problem.” He picks up the examination paper, and with both hands, scrunches it into a ball. “I guess I was wrong.”

In one motion, Jameson leaps back over the chair, and sprints for the door. He gets only a few metres, before a sharp searing pain in his neck electrifies then paralyses his body. He crumples face first onto the floor, unable to move. One of the guards turns him over, and as he does so, Jameson notices a long dart protruding from his neck.

The Dean casually approaches and leans over him, smiling. “That thing in your neck is what our security guys call a ‘Sinker Dart’. It is supposed to simulate falling into an ice-cold body of water. First your body freezes, and you are unable to move. For a short while, you still have your cognitive faculties, as you sink slowly under the water. That’s why you can hear and see me right now.” He waves his hand in front of Jameson’s eyes. “But very soon, you will fall into a peaceful dream, that of the ice-cold ocean, just like your father did.”

The Dean’s face is no longer defined as a set of blue-eyes, a pointed nose, and a mischievous grin; but a black blurry void; a fuzzy talk box. He turns to one of the guards. The final words Jameson hears before he falls unconscious are “family”, “destroy”, and “completely.”

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