.FALLING.with.[STYLE].
Group: Engineer ll Admin
Posts: 10
Member No.: 5
Joined: 17-May 07
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For some reason, the early morning hours always were the best hours of the day for Olivia. Even though her mind screamed at her body for dragging it out of its nice warm bed and into the office; even though she had to fight her eyes to stay open; even though it meant waking up before even the birds, it was worth it. Why? Because the office was practically empty. The cleaning crew would have gone home a long time ago, the other Gattaca employees wouldn’t start arriving for at least an hour, giving Olivia at least a good solid hour of absolute silence. The one thing more fleeting than time, silence was a concept that Olivia cherished above almost everything else when it came to the time she spent working. To grasp at it would make it flee, to expect it at the wrong time was stupid, but to coexist with it was bliss. Minds worked better when there weren’t footsteps echoing through the halls, finding their way under the crack of your office door, no annoying voices resounding in the doorway, drawing you away from your work, no distractions at all.
That was why Olivia made it a habit to arrive early as much as humanly possible. Her alarm would ring at three thirty, she would go through her morning routine, and head to the office. The entrance was less crowded, the noise levels were much more tolerable, and to top everything off, there was far less security present. Now, Olivia knew they had a job to do just as she did, but a part of her was convinced that job was to make her miserable. She could deal with having her finger poked for a small sample, but whenever they handed her a cup she could never pee and whenever they needed a larger sample of blood the needle always seemed to miss the vein. On more than one occasion, Olivia had to go through a day with a bruise on her arm from where the needle had missed and then finally found its vein. Granted, she always tried to laugh her way through these situations, but after a few minutes, she could never manage to feign laughter anymore and ended up muttering under her breath. At five in the morning, security was minimal. She passed through the initial set of checks without a hitch. She placed her index finger on the gate’s surface, felt a quick pinch, saw her image flash on a small screen, and carried on her way.
Her office was towards the back of the building, away from all the hustle and bustle of the main centers of Gattaca, a small corner of the universe where Olivia knew that it was not only expected, but required to let the full potential of her thoughts out and come what may. The space was by no means as sophisticated as the office she had back at the research firm. Back there she had an expanse of oak floor with a desk pushed up against the wall. Where the centerpiece of the room should have been, a wooden table stood instead with papers strewn across its surface without any discernable sense of organization, yet to their owner, completely logical in their layout. The far wall held a series of windows overlooking the river’s banks, a cabinet stood on the other side of her desk holding various instruments of measure and texts on mathematics and physics.
All that was left behind when she accepted a position at Gattaca. Where her old office had been rich in natural colors, her new little corner of the world was washed in a bath of white and gray. A steel table sat in the corner of the room, its surface lacking any discernable evidence of paperwork that would lead somebody to suspect any progress. No, instead every bit of work Olivia had in progress was safely locked away where inquisitive eyes could not glance upon her incomplete masterpiece. Okay, so possibly her own personal pride was creeping into her mind whenever she pondered over her work, but it was something that had been drilled into her since she was a baby: she was to be the best, plain and simple. And if that meant killing herself to get to that point and taking pride in her work, then so be it. But that was beside the point. Besides a locked desk, there wasn’t much to say about her office. There was a drafting table in the corner, stacks of books scattered across the room, and a computer station situated against the back wall. All of this in a room that Olivia could walk across in ten steps.
Four steps brought her to the back of her desk, a turning of a key opened up the drawer where her work was located. A smallish file filled with wrinkled, smudged papers that were the basis of her thought patterns over the past few months. It would grow, that much was certain. Papers would be shredded as Olivia became frustrated with their errors, But most importantly, pages would be filled with incoherent chicken scratch. Leafing through the files, her eyes scanned to make sure that every one of the pages was there. Everything looked good, except for one thing. One page that contained a basic formula she wanted to test out was missing.
“Oh. Shit.” She muttered, flipping through the file again just to make sure she didn’t overlook it. Olivia Barnes did not lose papers. Especially not papers about her latest project, even more so when it was the research behind it. Eyes scanning over the pages as they turned before her eyes, the sheet was nowhere to be found. “Okay, Olivia. Just think. Where did you bring the file yesterday?”
Well, that was a simple question: hardly anywhere. Besides her office, the only other place she ever brought it was the lab, and even that was on rare occasions. Usually when she went to test something out, Olivia had it already planned out in her mind and didn’t require a formula or template to go by. Biting her lower lip, she tried to think if she had brought any sort of paper with her to the lab yesterday, if she had taken anything out of her file. She’d gone to the lab, that much was certain. But she couldn’t remember what she had brought with her.
It was too much to stand around and rack her brains over something as simple as whether she left a paper somewhere else. Firmly placing the file under her arm, she rushed off to the lab. Hopefully it hadn’t gotten thrown away. Or even worse, picked up and examined by somebody else. It wasn’t complete, yet it was hers. And the last thing Olivia wanted was for somebody else to peruse through her ideas and claim them as her own. She swore she would die if it happened. Pushing open the laboratory doors, her eyes scanned the surrounding areas, searching for a single paper in a sea of materials. It had to be at her work station; it was the only place it could possibly be. As her feet carried her over to a corner of the lab, she gazed around for any sight of a famaliar scrawl across a sheet of paper.
There was nothing at the bench. Nothing in the area where papers were usually spread out as Olivia worked out the final plans on several tentative molecular structures that had the correct mass to fit the criterion that Olivia needed for a lightweight, long burning, efficient, fuel. A sigh of exasperation escaped her lips as she began to move every piece of equipment around, hoping that her paper might have been lost in the tangle of stuff in the area. Moving aside an accelerator, she spotted a white, weathered corner. Pulling it out, a grin spread across her face as she saw a famaliar formula scratched across the page. A wave of relief washed over her as she turned around to put it in with its counterparts, but as she turned around, Olivia’s elbow connected with the folder, sending papers flying everywhere.
“Why today?” she whispered, kneeling down to shuffle the papers back together. Today definitely wasn’t going to be her day.
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