Question remarks

1. Worth

The world was being annoying.

There were mocks next week, which meant Sayeh was imprisoned in her room with a pile of revision trash. She could pull off an all-nighter, huddled on her bed reading fanfics. But this was EXAMS; the potential gateway to worldwide acclaim and success, or to lurking in a box under a bridge. Like a troll.

Right now she was trolling through the Osispiri website, trying to persuade herself this was English revision. It was written in English. She was thinking in English. What else would the stupid test want? The website even had poetry. She skimmed through the first one, 'Question Remarks', feeling vaguely puzzled. At the bottom of the page was a blank form, the kind you find on old blogs with terrible graphics.

All secrets will be kept, promised the little grey headline. Unless they name a price.

"Hey, what are you up to?"

Straight away, Sayeh slammed her laptop shut. Her sister peeped at her through the door, eyes glinting with mischief. "Oh - is it really very baaaad?"

"You shut up," said Sayeh grumpily.

"Oooh!"

"It's just this." Sayeh opened her laptop again, turning the screen towards her sister who danced into the room. "What the hell did you even think I was doing?"

"Osispiri," she read. She raised her eyebrows. "You're into this sort of thing? This was trending ages ago. My class was mad over it." Sayeh's little sister went to a private school with a scholarship. Their parents often sighed at Sayeh for not having done the same. "No one actually gave it a go though."

"Hmm? How come?"

"Read it, silly," said her sister, gesturing to the screen. But she couldn't help showing off how much she knew. "You can't get any information about other people from the thing unless you give it your personality. Well, how you perceive it. Noah tried making one up, but it wouldn't go through. Our class nerd concluded that it probably checks the information you input with all the stuff you might have put up on the internet. So it's like a trading thing. Give your personality to get someone else's."

"Does it work?"

"No idea. But wait, let me search something."

Sayeh let her take control, leaning to one side so her sister could reach the keyboard. Her sister's dark hair swished forwards, and Sayeh envied the waterfall of black. Her own hair was lighter, more childish. "Okay," said her sister, tapping the enter key. "Look."

At the tap of the key, the plain amateurish homepage vanished. Now royal purples were swept across the page with flourish, parted in the centre like curtains in a theatre. Soft golden swirls crept up amongst the purple and as Sayeh looked closer, she saw that the swirls were hung with tiny pictures of few of her sister's favourite things: cake, roller coasters, music and Latin books...

"I still think you're crazy to like Latin," said Sayeh. Her sister ignored her.

"There are still things you can do on Osispiri without submitting your personality. This was the main thing my class were going on about though." She pointed to the writing in the middle, and now Sayeh realized there were rows upon rows of numbers. "I just wrote a short intro about myself. This you can make up. The statistics just show dumb stuff, like how-much-out-of-ten people find you interesting. The weirdest part is the number at the bottom. That's how much your personality is worth on Osispiri."

"And yours is over a million?!"

Her sister gave her a smug look and sashayed out of the room. "You're so friggin' annoying!" Sayeh scowled. A flawless execution of Vivaldi's 'Spring' danced across through the corridor. It seemed to mock her; she had been trying to play it last week but none of the notes seemed to sound right. A shadow fell across her face as the music trilled like a flock of birds. Her eyes fixed onto the little number at the bottom. Click. She refreshed the page. Her hands hovered over the keys, like birds themselves. Tap, tap. Pause.

My name is Sayeh. I'm

Thoughts of the coming exams drifted into her mind. Tagged to the end of the thought was a long number with lots of zeros, flagged by an elegant pound sign. It was stupid, yet she was still curious to know.

Some unimportant crap about me:

"Urgh, kill me now," moaned Sayeh, her face burning as she scanned over what she had written. She pressed the enter key and waited for the page to load. Her page was not half as lavish as her sister's had been. Irrationally, her heart sank. The page was mostly in hues of dark greys, weaved here and there with the occasional skein of rainbow. A couple of items hung from it, but Sayeh hurried to find the numbers. Her eyes fumbled along the lines, searching for the pound sign.

There wasn't one. Well, maybe there was. There was a little circle where the bottom line should have been.

She felt stupid. This was just a website. 

Besides, she was wasting time, she should be revising. Getting good grades, all of that. With a sigh, she made to close to browser. The pointer slid across the circle.

No one is worth anything in the end.

She stopped. Focused on the circle.

Congratulations. You've won a free personality trial.