Chapter Three
Mara woke up to her tablet's alarm as usual, but when she opened her eyes she found herself in a totally different room than usual."Mom?" she yelled, then remembered, and felt stupid. She blushed at her stupidity, even though no one was there to witness it. She climbed out of bed, pulled on her work clothes and readied herself in her own bathroom. She ate the small breakfast from her refrigerator, then ran out the door and opened her car. She took a while, but eventually programed it to take her to work. She oggled through the windows of her car as she passed through parts of the city she had never seen before. All too soon, the car glided into a parking garage, where Mara had to show her tablet to a guard to prove she worked there. He nodded and her car glided inside and stopped at parking spot 93. Mara wondered why, then she noticed her name printed on a sign at the front of the spot, along with a small electronic device. It must guide my car here, she thought, this is amazing!Her tablet flashed instructions on the screen that guided her to an elevator that rose to "Floor 3," then stopped. She found herself surrounded by older, wiser doctors who all knew exactly what they were doing in the elevator, and she was glad to leave it. She hastily looked at her tablet again, and it guided her to a plain gray metal door. She hesitantly knocked, and it immediately opened. A kind looking, middle aged woman opened the door. She smiled at Mara and said,"You must be Mara, my new intern." Mara nodded."Yes, so I actually am in the right place,"Mara said and tried to return the smile with a weak attempt at a joke. "Um, and you are...?""Oh yes, I'm Dr.Philofsky, but you call me Tess, and I'll call you Mara. Deal?" Mara smiled, her previous nerves about the new job forgotten."Deal. So how do I start?" Mara agreed eagerly. Tess chuckled,"Right down to business, are we? Well that's fine, I'll start right away. Here," she grabbed a bundle of the desk behind her and handed it to Mara, "are your work scrubs. There are two more in your locker, which I will show you in a moment. Make sure you always wear your correct undergarments, which I see you have today, and your scrubs to work." Mara blushed and looked down at her skintight outfit. Was she supposed to have worn something over it?"Oh no, don't worry, no one cares if you wear just those in the morning, perfectly fine, perfectly fine..."she trailed off. "There was something I needed to show you...""My locker?" Mara suggested. Tess's face lit up."Of course? How did I forget already?I guess I am a bit scatterbrained..." She trailed off again as she led Mara down the hall and to the locker rooms. Mara tried to keep track as Tess showed her her locker, gave her a drive for her tablet so she could open it, and showed her their section of the hospital. She has shown the complex machine that scanned infants' intelligence level. Mara gazed at it in awe, the machine that determined your entire life."I can bring up your file as an example," Tess offered. Mara nodded,"That would be cool," she replied. Tess searched Mara's name and two results came up. Tess's eyes widened and she clicked on the top one before she thought Mara would notice. However, Mara did notice. She also noticed that the two entries were only minutes apart. There was no way two Mara Westry were born only minutes apart in the same hospital.Mara was momentarily distracted from the mystery by the file Tess had pulled up. It contained all of Mara's information, including her rank, 9. Mara's eyes flitten around the screen and she found nothing of importance. She saw Tess hastily typing on her tablet facing away from Mara, taking a risky chance, Mara exited her file. The second file was still there, and Mara tapped it silently. An error message appeared, saying the file was corrupted. Mara's brain worked furiously, trying to understand what was going on. She heard Tess shutting her tablet off behind her, and she hastily exited the corrupt file. Tess looked back at her with a smile."It's interesting, isn't it?" Mara nodded and tried to smile back. She had also noticed one other thing:both entries were created by Tess Philofsky. She couldn't keep her mind off of the mystery for the rest of the day as Tess explained her job. She had no problem keeping her brain in two places at once, it came naturally to her. One part of her brain listened, the other part put together the clues. Tess tried to hide a previous entry in my name that occurred right before my official one. It was corrupted, and she didn't explain it, so it doesn't seem like an innocent mistake. Something is being hidden, she decided, and tried to focus on what Tess said. After what seemed like ages of Tess explaining things that seemed blatantly obvious to Mara, she said something that caught her attention:"...that seems like enough for today, you can go home and mull that over before coming in again tomorrow." Mara nodded and smiled, but she had no intention of leaving, or giving a second thought to the things she had "learned" today. This job was way too easy, and she had more important things to do. Like find out what was in the file. She thanked Tess and headed out the door and down the elevator to the parking lot.She walked briskly to her car, but when she sat down, she didn't start it. She leaned the chair back a bit, and resumed her thoughts. Why did I even get this terrible job anyways? It's way too easy. I knew I should have done something more interesting,like engineering. She cursed herself for contriving her test results, and wished that she had answered them all correctly. Then maybe I would have had a choice. She sighed and cursed herself again. But when I twisted the test results, this was my choice. What a terrible choice. As Mara sat regretting her choices, a flow of hospital workers began to exit the building. She became attentive again and watched until she saw Tess leave. She waited several minutes until she was sure Tess would be in her car, then hurried back into the building. She got strange looks from the people leaving, but she mumbled about having forgot something. When Mara entered her floor, she froze when she realized there were still people there. The night shift. She nearly face-palmed herself in front of all the new workers buzzing around. What was I thinking? Of course there are still people here. She reformed her plan and briskly walked back to the scanner, which was dark and silent. She unlocked the door with her tablet and turned on the lights. So far, she had had no encounters with anyone. Mara set down her bag and turned on the monitor. She silently typed in her own name, and watched as the two files popped up. She immediately clicked the second one, and received an error message. She tapped the "Create drive" icon, and a small sheet slid out of the monitor's base. She turned the monitor off and grabbed the drive before flipping off the lights and hurrying out the door. She kept her eyes down and almost made it out the door when-"Just where do you think you're going?"Mara shook and looked up and the stern face of the woman she had just bumped into."I-I'm an intern here. I forgot my tablet in the scanner room." Even to Mara, her excuse sounded pathetic. No one forgot their tablets, they were crucial to have wherever you went. The woman eyes her with skepticism. Mara knew she didn't believe her. "You're not to be in the labs after your shift. Don't let me catch you again. Understood?" Mara nodded with wide eyes and bolted down the stairs before the woman could decide that maybe she shouldn't be let off so easily. Mara let her breath out slowly when she got to her car. She hadn't realized she's been holding it. She numbly told the car to go to her house, and kept her eyes shut the whole ride home. She never got in trouble doing anything in school, and this confrontation was the most trouble she had ever experienced. She was severely shaken despite the fact that she hadn't really gotten in trouble. Mara entered her house that evening and relaxed on her couch with tablet and new drive. She had never had a couch before, she liked it. Once she was comfortable, she slid the drive in and got to work. The file still appeared as corrupted, but Mara knew a way around the corruption. She opened the coding behind the file, and slowly repaired deleted areas. After she had exhausted all of her computer knowledge, she opened the file again and waited for it to load with bated breath. No error message appeared, and her anticipation climbed. A string of zeroes and ones slid across the screen, then the file started to look like the non-corrupt one that Tess had showed her. Mara's information appeared in some areas, but other areas remained as zeroes and ones, where Mara hadn't been able to salvage the code. The area that showed her intelligence rank was still loading, 0's and 1's were still sliding back and forth there. For a fleeting second,the full screen appeared as two ones, side by side, then her entire tablet went back to a full screen image of the Illuminati seal.
