Quality Control
Fifteen reploids sat slumped over on plastic moulded chairs in three rows of five in a sterile room before internal alarms within their chronological timers rouse them into opening their eyes with soundless prompting into a brilliant white hue, slowly adjusting to their surroundings; details start to come into view as gridlines break up the uniform whiteness of both floor and walls with only a screen standing on a black stalk like a flower with all its petals plucked out breaking up the monotony as they all sat up straight.
"Hello and welcome" the screens tonelessly spoke in unison "The following test has been specifically tailored to your projected skills, interests and occupation. You have forty questions to answer and one hour to complete the test. The test starts after the tone." Fifteen lots of finger mechanisms frenziedly jerking to and fro against screens following fifteen simultaneously echoing beeps.
One of the reploids had shoulder length blonde hair rolled up into a tiny sun behind her neck, her fringe covering her forehead in waves. Upon awakening in the tiled room with the screen on its obsidian stalk in front of her, she didn't divert her gaze from the metallic flower but she was also aware that others are in their own little worlds with their own screens. She had listened to the screen's droning voice as it displayed complex formulas and mathematical equations connected to reploid psychology and production, as well as computing languages and theory.
Her fingers are a flurry of movement on the screen's LCD surface as the sub-routines from her neo-cortex feed her answers she had no right to even have a vague cluelessness about. She stopped just short of question twenty at the fifteen minute mark and looked at her milk white hands and ran a quick internal diagnostic, a green digitalised read out flashed into existence, obscuring her vision yet somehow she remained seated, turning her hands as if questioning the speed and progress they had made. The diagnostic took less than five minutes to examine her internal processes and given her the all clear. Unconvinced, she initiated a thorough diagnostic, with a further mental instruction to minimise the digital read out into near nonexistence in the periphery of her vision, her hands resumed their woodpecker motion.
She had completed the questionnaire, just allowing herself to see the progress of the diagnostic as it swamped her vision in a sea of green. Twenty-four per cent, forty-eight minutes until completion. The display evaporated as quickly as it arrived back into the recess of her mind's eye, allowing her to look back on the questions with their wording and the answers she had selected. Instinct urged her to re-examine her choices, intuition told her to allow herself to lose herself in the diagnostic; she chose instinct and again went through the questions. As she reflected on her answers, questions over the ease she blazed through returned to her thoughts while the self-ordered diagnostic slowly continues on its predestined programming, screening each terabyte in her operating system to expose any potential faults. Having made some alterations, she allowed intuition to take over and allowed the display to take up every millimetre of her sight and examine its upcoming conclusion.
"Time's up, you may now cease operations." The screens spoke as one at their LCD displays blinked into blackness as the hour completed its duration. "You will remain seated until someone calls for you, and you must follow them through the door to your right." A metre long by two metre high aperture opened up in the wall and all eyes rested on a reploid in a white lab as he entered the white room. His ageless face and upstanding posture carry an air of authority despite the lack of any outward symbols. He called for her name; her legs supported her lightweight frame as she followed the reploid into a dim corridor of inky blackness, the blue conductive irises photosynthesising what little light into a video image; only the white coat appearing bright in the darkness, the rest of his body blending in, creating the impression of a ghost. The corridor turned a sharp right into a small room that is brighter though not like the tiled room where she and the others had taken their test. The room was plain but for a seat that she deducted was made of synthetic leather with a tray of electronic instruments and a human wearing a silver-grey suit that hung loose across his shoulders and tight around his stomach.
She didn't have time to say a word to him before a jolt rendered her unconscious; the last thing she saw was a smile that lacked warmth and suspicious eyes that disregarded her. She never had the chance to study the completed diagnostics' conclusion.
It is the first day of her life as she woke up to the buzzing on an alarm clock, and took the time to examine her surroundings; a basic bedsit furnished with all the essentials. She can decorate her room to her tastes at a later date but its home enough for now. She took a bullet-grey laptop from a dresser next to the sleeping capsule and slipped it into a black bag when she heard the beeping of a horn outside. She'd closed and locked the door behind her before heading down a flight of stairs; the corridor was pristine in its emptiness. A silver car is parked directly outside the door to the apartment bloc where she'd been living, the purring of its hydrogen engine hung in the air as the passenger door window was wound down. She saw a male face within a purple helmet with a blue sapphire jewel between the fronts of slate grey fins, his white lab coat worn over the helmet coloured armour. She had a sense of déjà vu about him but dismissed it out of hand. He opened the door from the inside; his gentle smile guiding her into the passenger's seat. Just as the door had slammed shut and the car begin to move, he said to her "Hello, Alia. My name is Gate and we'll be working together at Reptech's Stockholm research & development centre; I have some samples to show you once we've been over your rights both as an employee and as a citizen."