The multiple-choice bubbles were filled in with standard No. 2 pencil, dark and clean. The machine had read them without issue.
But below that, in the written-response and essay sections, the scanned image dissolved into vast stretches of barely-there gray smudges. In places, it was nothing but blank white.
Pink ink under a black-and-white scanner was virtually invisible.
"What is this?"
The supervisor zoomed in. He could just barely make out that there was writing underneath.
He didn't hesitate. He hit the violation key.
Even if the text had been legible, SAT regulations were explicit: any written response completed in a non-approved ink color was automatically invalid.
He marked it zero without a second thought.
He assumed it was an isolated case and was about to move on.
Then another sheet with blank written sections flashed through the data stream.
Then a third. A fourth.
They came from different testing rooms, different testing sites. But the first digits of each student ID matched perfectly, pointing to the same school, the same class.
A chill crawled up the supervisor's spine. He grabbed his radio.
"Tech team. Run a search across every answer sheet in the city. Filter for non-approved ink color. Now."
Seconds later, the reply came back, shaken:
"Sir... the search is done. Thirty-seven answer sheets. Every one of them scored on the multiple choice. Every written-response section and every essay, zero."
