Dyeawan wheels herself to lip of the corridor. The first pair of wall spikes rises just above her knees. She inhales deeply and exhales with purpose. It takes all her strength and several attempts, but Dyeawan lifts her body and the front of her wheels onto those two slender steel spikes. Leaning into the corridor, she presses her hands against either wall and, gritting her teeth, pulls the rest of the wheels up and over.

She’d hoped to wedge them between the next set of spikes and then repeat the strenuous action, however difficult it would be on her arms and on her makeshift miniature tender. Dyeawan should’ve known Edger and his planners weren’t testing her mastery of brute force, however. As soon as her back wheels clear the first set of spikes she dips dangerously forward. Dyeawan closes her eyes and throws her arms in front of her face, expecting to be spilled onto the razor-sharp floor below.

Instead her makeshift tender glides down and then back up effortlessly, with only a few gentle bumps, clicking to a stop and remaining there, suspended.

Dyeawan lowers her arms and opens her eyes, her breathing still elevated. She looks down. The next pair of elevated spikes is holding her front wheels. Looking behind her, she realizes that what seemed like a random pattern of spikes is actually a track built specifically for exactly the wheeled contraption she’s constructed from her tender. The spikes continuously dip and rise like the curls of waves in perfectly symmetrical sequence.

All Dyeawan has to do is grip the walls and urge her wheels over the highest peaks in the pattern of spikes. Once they’re tipped past the peak, she rolls easily down the next sets of spikes and that brief but powerful momentum is enough to carry her back up to the next peak. The strain on her arms is minimal, and after she adjusts to the ebb and flow of the track, Dyeawan even begins to enjoy the short rides. The sudden dips create a wonderful dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach, and the upturns cause the space between her ears to fizzle delightedly.

Halfway through the corridor she finds herself laughing and envisioning a much larger version of the tracks, perhaps as tall as the Spectrum itself. People in wheeled carts could be propelled across them purely for fun. Even imagining these sensations on such a massive scale makes her dizzy with pleasure. As she reaches the end of the corridor, however, Dyeawan forces herself to put away such flights of fancy, reminding herself she’s in the middle of a test that will see her become a planner like Edger or return to battling dust and footprints on a daily basis.