The Empathic Aptitude Inventory

This is the 6th part in a series. Read the rest: I| II |III | IV | V

I’ve been reading a book of essays on writing by Phillip Pullman and there’s one particular nugget of wisdom he imparts that will not let me live. Don’t burden your readers with your embarrassment. It’s safe to say he would hate whatever it is I’m doing here. In a desperate attempt to heed his advice I’m going to stop explaining this so much, but before you continue, you should know about the line between fact and fiction in this story. The source of the narrative is a real person experiencing true events, but by necessity I’m inventing some of the nuance since I’m not in Willa’s head, just her DMs. Did I even need to say that? Am I not respecting your intelligence enough? I agree I’m not off to a good start, sorry Phillip.

The Friday following the events of Part V, Willa met Ben and some of his friends at their local pub — the kind of place where the floors are always a little sticky and the beer never quite cold. A local band was playing poorly received original songs in between covers of Tame Impala and The Killers. When Willa arrived, Ben and his mates were oscillating at a frequency specific to teenage boys on the piss. She sipped her vodka soda and wished she’d stayed home. As if sensing her lack of enthusiasm, Ben looked across the table at her with his head cocked to one side, searching for reassurance. She gave him a sunny smile. This was her least favourite genre of boyfriend: drunk and needy. The band began to play Flame Trees and the boys’ noise level went up another notch. The tugging in Willa’s chest returned and she felt suddenly besieged by both sound and emotion. It was unbearable. She needed to break free.  

She tried to remember how she’d felt during English class all those months ago. Tilting her head up towards the lights, she half closed her eyes until her vision blurred and pixelated. She exhaled, shifting her gaze back towards Ben. Her breath caught. There was a pale thread of blue light travelling from Ben’s chest to hers. The vision wavered as her heart rate increased. She steadied her breathing and tried to conjure her phantom hands like she had the first time. Willa imagined those hands working gently at the knot. It felt simple, even effortless. When the threads came loose they drifted away like a wave receding. She felt lighter.

Willa opened her eyes. Across the table, Ben was cracking up at something his mate Dean had just said. She willed him to look in her direction but he was completely absorbed by the banter. She couldn’t feel the familiar tug. After 10 minutes, Willa reached out to tap him on the arm. She jerked her thumb towards the exit.

“I’m gonna head off,” she mouthed, miming fatigue. Ben hesitated, then nodded and shrugged. Willa’s heart dropped. She truly believed that Ben was free to choose for the first time in months, and he was not choosing her. In the back of an Uber on the way home she wondered if any of it had been real.  

From that day on Ben still acted the part of her boyfriend, but Willa felt his commitment to the role had lost the intensity she’d become accustomed to. He took hours to respond to her texts and blew her off to hang out with his mates. She could have been imagining it all, but that didn’t make it hurt less.  

Willa’s disillusionment was so potent I could almost feel it seeping through her DMs. At some point, most of us have experienced recoil from an emotional gut punch so painful it makes us consider shutting the world out forever. It’s a feeling awful enough to make perpetual numbness more appealing than the threat of more pain. This was Willa’s second such experience in as many months. Once again, she believed herself to be the cause.

People don’t actually care about each other at all do they?
Only themselves.

I mean, not always.
But mostly.

Sam seemed to find Willa’s disappointment amusing, telling her it was just how normal teenage boys acted. She said Willa’s spell had worn off, that was all. Willa wondered when her ‘spell’ would wear off on Sam, too. All the emotional turmoil made her feel restless and trapped. She’d enrolled in an undergrad degree at university with no clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life. She was due to start her first semester in March but couldn’t even bring herself to pick subjects. As a result, she was spending an exhausting amount of time locked in conversations with her parents about her future.

“I just worry that if I choose a boring path it’s going to make me a boring person,” she told Sam one afternoon after work.
“One of my friends thinks I should go travelling. [Me! I’m that friend!] Meet strangers. Broaden my worldview. That’s what mum thinks, too.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Too scared.” Willa shrugged and laughed.
Sam smiled and opened her mouth to say something before abruptly closing it again. There was an awkward pause. Then she shrugged and blurted,
“I’ve been meaning to tell you about a thing we do at work that could be good for you.”

This was the first time Sam had brought up her work in anything other than vague terms. Willa knew only that it was something academic, to do with research. She was taken aback, not just by Sam’s comment but by the heavy realisation they spent most of their time together talking about her — her dramas, her interests, her relationships. She flushed with embarrassment and made a mental note to look up narcissistic personality disorder when she got home.
“Don’t you work for a university?”
“Kind of… it’s more like a think tank.”
“What’s that?”
“Well you can’t enroll and pay fees — you have to be invited to join.”
“Oh…?”
“Every year we hold a retreat for potential research participants. Kind of like a summer camp for grownups. A month in the wilderness with cool people from around the world. I’m running it for the first time this year, in New Zealand.”
She paused and seemed to blush, avoiding Willa’s eyes.
“I just think it would be cool if you were there.”
Willa’s pulse jumped. She felt at once off-balance, sluggish, and hyper-focused. It was as if her thoughts were suddenly swimming through oil instead of water.
“…You reckon you can get me an invite to a summer camp in New Zealand?”
Sam looked up and said cautiously.
“Well, you would technically need to take a test.”
Willa’s aversion to the word ‘test’ must have shown on her face because she rushed on,
“It’s honestly just an online quiz. Super quick and easy.”
“What’s it about, though?”
“Well… the institute’s looking for people with high EQ, essentially. So the questions are about empathy, perception — stuff like that. Honestly it’s not scary or hard at all. You might even enjoy it?”
“I’ve never enjoyed a test in my life.” Willa sighed.  
“First time for everything though…”
“You do know that if I fail and don’t get invited you’ll never see me again, right? I’m not good with embarrassing situations.”
Sam grinned.
“I’m going to take that as a yes.”
“Take it as a why not? It’s not like I have a lot going on at the moment.”
Sam gave her a brief, hard hug.
“You won’t fail, and you won’t regret this. Trust me.”

Later that night, Sam sent Willa a link via Instagram. It led her to a blank white web page with text that read:

Hello Willa Dean,

Scroll down and Press START to begin the Empathic Aptitude Inventory

There was an animation on the page with seven rings that spun around a central vertical line leading to the START button. Willa clicked. She sent me the URL but it must have been a one-time-only link or tied to her IP address because it was a dead end for me. I made an AI-generated artistic interpretation of what she described because I’m a geek and it blows my mind watching the machines write code so quickly.

The first question was a statement with a 5-point answer scale from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”.
I can usually tell when someone is being polite rather than sincere.

Willa clicked ‘strongly agree’ with a smirk. Couldn’t everyone do that?

All 24 questions followed the same format. Willa became more and more curious as she progressed. What exactly were they studying at Sam’s institute?

I notice when the mood of a group shifts, even if no one says anything.

I can often work out why someone is upset, even when they don’t explain it.

I pick up on subtext in conversations that others seem to miss.

I can sense tension between two people even if they are trying not to show it.

When someone near me is anxious, I tend to feel unsettled as well.

I find it difficult to ignore someone who is clearly suffering.

I can influence the emotional tone of a room by adjusting my own behaviour.

Willa answered ‘strongly agree’ to everything. The test made her wonder if things she’d always thought of as normal were actually unique. She liked the feeling. After she submitted the final question a message flashed on the screen:

Thank you

If your results align with our areas of research, a member of the team will reach out to you very soon.

Willa’s hands were clammy. The quiz had only taken 5 minutes, but in that time getting an invite to the retreat had suddenly become something Willa wanted very badly. She replied to Sam’s DM.

Okay I did it, now what?  

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Part VII coming soon.