Clara looked at the small box Olly had gave her. With care she set it in her dresser drawer. She returned to her small living room and screened her inbox again, this time between a series of rejection message was one from Wick Industries. A job posting sent directly to her. She read the title, entry level lab technician. She was in the process of dismissing it when her stomach growled, instead she replied with her resume attached.

  The alert she’d set went off later that day. She hesitated before she displayed the message from Wick Industries. Her interview was scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.

  The door opened and the receptionist rushed her into the conference room. “Would you like anything to drink? Water?”

  “Um, Yes, a water would be fine.”

  He stepped out to get the water.

  The room was void of anything except the table and chairs. The smooth uninterrupted surface of the walls meant that all four were full sized wall screens. Clara worked the controls and pulled up a view of a jungle, then of an ocean beach. She admired the view, watched the waves break, until the receptionist stepped in. She rapidly turned the wall screen off and the room snapped back to its boring state. She took the water, thanked him and sat down to wait.

  As Clara sat in silence for ten minutes going onto ten days, She adjusted herself and pushed the half drank water away.

  “What is this interruption?”

  “Doesn’t management know we have deadlines?”

  “It’s an interview, hopefully a bright lad we can push into the deep end.”

  “Don’t you read anything, She’s an egg head.”

  “Excuse me, I’m too busy meeting my deadlines to read the fine print. Come on. Lets get this over with.”

  The three interviewers entered the conference room in a flurry, thrust hands out at her to shake. She jumped up and shook their hands as politely as she could muster. What do they mean, interruption, egg head?!

  “Well welcome to Wick Industries. We will be interviewing you for the technician job.”

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  One of them handed her a single sheet of paper and a pencil.

  A bit confused she looked at the sheet of paper with the three simple questions on it.

  What is Osmosis? What is Photosynthesis? Biology is the study of?

  “Well hurry up please.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Corporate wants us to check the boxes. Always checking boxes.”

  She took her seat and scribbled the answers in and passed the paper back. They all glanced at it and placed little checks next to the three questions.

  “Well thank you for your time Clara.”

  “HR should be in soon to help you get setup.”

  Completely confused she watched the three rush out as quick as they’d rushed in.

  Eager to do something, anything that would matter, Clara arrived at her new job early. The receptionist Tom was perplexed for a moment. He searched his messages and then he was really confused. “I see that you’re scheduled to start today, but I’m not seeing where they assigned you. Here, why don’t you set up in the small conference room today. We don’t seem to have your desk ready.”

  Tom escorted her down the hallway to the small conference room. They passed the bustling offices and Clara peeked into the large lab room full of the latest equipment. Tom turned around, saw her peering into the room and tugged on her sleeve. “Come on, it’s just around this corner. I have other things to do then watch you drool on the equipment.”

  Clara entered the lab and looked for the lead manager. She found him in one of the connecting hallways. “Excuse me, I just started today. How can I help? Is there a training session or some sort of orientation?”

  “Who are are you?” He peered at her name tag. “Oh yes, upper management told me -- -.“ He readjusted his coat. “Look you don’t have any of the certificates or training on the equipment. Until we get you trained you can assist by cleaning the glass beakers or just organize the shelves. More importantly don’t get in the way.”

  She moved backwards to allow the cart of new samples to push past down the hallway.

  “Can’t I be more helpful than that?”, Clara said.

  “No matter what the upper management thinks we just can’t squeeze a new employee in. Your training and orientation will just have to wait.” He rushed off after the cart.

  Clara returned to the conference room and tried her new account. Well at least the IT departments not as clueless as the rest. She poked around some of the network data but any folder that sounded like a project was closed. The general servers were available to her and so was all the software install files. With nothing better to do she installed some of the software packages she was familiar with or had heard about. No one bothered her or even questioned what she did . She played around with the simulation packages and started a recreation of some of her work. She felt confident that no one would interrupt her so she pulled a simulation of her work up onto all of the wall screens. Standing in the center of her work, she watched the simulation preform flawlessly. Why wouldn’t it do that at the University?

  A week of this left her as devastated as her rejection letter had been. This wasn’t right, it was like there was a force stopping her every move.

  Frustrated and not looking towards another useless day at work Clara scrolled through her contacts for Olly. He answered but the view was of the ceiling rushing past, “Yes, Clara, I’m sorry its a bit hectic today can this wait?” Clara almost hung up the connection but put her foot down and continued. “No, Olly it can’t I’m pretty sure my design worked and I can only think it was sabotaged.”