The First Week is Always the Worst
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah, truth truth truth, so help you God.
..........................................
Kitty sat back in her chair and stared out into the lane between rows of cubicles as her computer booted up. She'd been at HDS for a week, but she still hadn't met many people in her department, so staring into the hallway was about all she could do with her free time. The few people she'd met during her brief training and orientation session had since disappeared to other parts of the gigantic converted military base that housed the entire company, and apparently the Office of Special Projects people weren't the most social computer geeks.
It kind of sucked, actually, but she had only been there a few days, so she had hopes. Maybe today she would actually hold a conversation with some coworkers rather than merely asking them where the bathrooms were.
The soft beep on of her computer told her it was done booting up. She took a look at her assignment for the day; she was supposed to fix some identified bugs in the program they'd given her.
But first, she had to understand what the program was doing. She began to explore the software; it was a facial recognition system, something she was at least decently familiar with to begin with because she had studied them for her honors thesis in college. She'd tried to create a program that would be effective without invading too much into people's privacy.
This program was structured much like the ones she had studied. It could pick a specific face out of a crowd and identify it's nodal points, points that, when taken in combination, create an individual's "face print." It would then take this specific pattern and translate it into a numerical code, which it ran through an unspecified database; if it didn't get a match, it stored the code in another database, if it did get a match, the targeted face was to be destroyed.
"Wait a minute," she thought. That's not exactly typical of facial recognition software. Kitty wasn't even sure that was legal.
"Well, hey there. It looks like I've got a new neighbor." A startled Kitty stared at the source of the interruption; a man was leaning on the wall between her cubicle and the next one over. "You must've come while I was on vacation last week," he said.
"Um...yeah, I've," was all Kitty could fit in before he started talking again.
"Hey, I know it's early, but do you fancy a bit of a coffee break? I'd like to get to know my new neighbor a bit before I start my day."
Kitty looked at her computer screen, not wanting to take a break without at least having started her work. Then again, she told herself, she could always ask this guy what was going on with the weird programs.
"Sure," she said.
He looked positively delighted as he led her to the break room, Kitty assumed that, computer geek as he was, this was probably the first time a girl had immediately accepted an offer of his. She wasn't being mean, mind you, it's just that it was her experience that most programmers didn't get out much, and having a pretty, young woman in the office got them excited.
He started brewing the coffee and then turned back to her.
"I'm Steve, by the way," he said.
"Kitty."
"Aww, how cute, like a kitty cat." She just sighed; she was used to comments like that now. "Well," he continued, "I hope you've had a good first week at HDS. We pride ourselves on being warm and welcoming to new employees..."
"Hmm..." she thought, "they obviously need to work on that one. I haven't actually held a conversation with a coworker yet, and this hardly counts as he's doing all the talking."
"...I've worked here ever since we started working on this puppy, which would be what? Ten, fifteen years ago? I was working for the government then, but I followed the project out when it we went private."
"Cool," she said. "What--"
"Oh yeah, it's been great. I even got to see a prototype last year..."
Kitty got the impression he could talk about this all day. She decided it would be best to just sit back and listen to him ramble, though. At least she was meeting someone, and maybe she would learn something about her project.
"...I didn't do any of the robotics stuff, but the facial recognition technology was all mine. You know, so many--"
"Wait, you did the facial recognition work?" Finally he was talking about something she cared about.
"Oh yeah, that's mine," he said, in a rather important tone. "Why? Are you working on it now? I was so pissed when Trask sent it back to our department. I thought it was just fine, but they said it was letting people slip through because it required too many nodal points, but..."
"I haven't gotten a good look at it, but--" He just kept talking. She couldn't get a word in edgewise.
"...You know, I warned them there would be problems with this project if we just used the facial rec. Mitch Bogart, the supervisor at the time, tried to tell them that, but all he got was fired. The new one keeps his mouth shut, but I still say that we're never going to get them until--" "Wait a minute, wait a minute," she interrupted. Who was this "them" of which he spoke? What exactly WAS this project anyway? "Who're you trying to catch?" she asked.
That actually stopped his talking. He just stared at her blankly.
"You mean you don't know?"
She just shook her head. Was she supposed to have known?
"Oh honey," he said patronizingly, "they're looking for mutants."
And that's when it happened. She lost control and her hands slipped right through her coffee cup. It shattered on the floor, spilling coffee everywhere. Kitty looked up; the entire room was staring at her.
"Oh, I uh...just lost my grip," she said. She grabbed some paper towels and mopped up the coffee while most of the people in the break room went back to their normal work.
Except for Steve. Her talkative cubicle neighbor just stared, open- mouthed, his gaze moving between her hands and the broken mug on the floor. She knew he had seen what had happened.
"Well," she said as she gathered up the remains of her mug, "I should get back to work. Nice to, uh...talk to you, Steve." She headed back to her cubicle and sat down, trying to gain control of her racing heart. She hadn't made a mistake like that in a while, and she hadn't phased through anything in public since college.
She'd almost forgotten she was a mutant. Lord knows she'd tried. When she'd first learned she could move through solid objects, her parents had totally freaked; they wouldn't let her leave the house for a week, and when they finally let her out, they refused to mention it. It was like it'd never happened.
For them, at least. Try as she might, Kitty couldn't avoid unintentionally phasing through stuff. She just couldn't prevent herself; every time she had a nightmare, she ended up in her basement, and once, when another girl tried to push her into her gym locker in a fight, she'd gone right through the wall and ended up in some locker in the boy's locker room. Though she knew more or less what was going on, she still didn't know what she was. She'd only heard of mutants from whispered rumors and crazy tabloid articles.
It wasn't until college that anyone was able to explain to her why she could get into her room even if she lost her key. She'd gone to pick up a paper from her literature professor and was so shocked at getting a B- (she'd never gotten a B- on a paper, ever) that she sank into the floor right in front of her professor. Professor Winters stared at her, standing ankle-deep in the carpet, and then, inexplicably, she laughed.
"Oh, dear," she managed between giggles, "I guess I'm not as alone here as I thought I was."
She shut the door and pulled Kitty out from the carpet, all without getting up from her chair, as she explained to the frightened freshman that she was mildly telekinetic, and for the first time in her life, Kitty began to understand what she was. Throughout college, Julia Winters did her best to help Kitty get used to her powers. She mostly taught her control exercises, but she also tried to introduce the girl into a wider community of mutants at University of Chicago.
It was great to finally know why she sometimes dropped her books or fell through her floor; it was even better to be able to consciously stop it from happening. But sometimes, Kitty was still embarrassed by her behavior. Big shocks still made her lose control, and this most recent bit of news was most certainly a big shock.
The software she was fixing was designed to destroy her. No doubt Bolivar Trask had a gigantic database of identified mutants somewhere, and was planning to do God knows what with it. It scared her to no end to think of what might happen if this program were put to use.
But then again, she told herself, so many new technologies never make it out of the prototype stage, and even if this did, it's not like she was an identified mutant. She didn't even want her powers, much less want to use them to terrorize all humanity like the mutants she'd heard about. Why would Trask ever come after her?
"It's going to be OK, Kitty," she told herself, "just stay calm, and nobody will notice."
Hopefully.
.......................................
Voila! A real chapter. Many thanks to those who reviewed.
Till next time,
hnh
Disclaimer: Blah blah blah, truth truth truth, so help you God.
..........................................
Kitty sat back in her chair and stared out into the lane between rows of cubicles as her computer booted up. She'd been at HDS for a week, but she still hadn't met many people in her department, so staring into the hallway was about all she could do with her free time. The few people she'd met during her brief training and orientation session had since disappeared to other parts of the gigantic converted military base that housed the entire company, and apparently the Office of Special Projects people weren't the most social computer geeks.
It kind of sucked, actually, but she had only been there a few days, so she had hopes. Maybe today she would actually hold a conversation with some coworkers rather than merely asking them where the bathrooms were.
The soft beep on of her computer told her it was done booting up. She took a look at her assignment for the day; she was supposed to fix some identified bugs in the program they'd given her.
But first, she had to understand what the program was doing. She began to explore the software; it was a facial recognition system, something she was at least decently familiar with to begin with because she had studied them for her honors thesis in college. She'd tried to create a program that would be effective without invading too much into people's privacy.
This program was structured much like the ones she had studied. It could pick a specific face out of a crowd and identify it's nodal points, points that, when taken in combination, create an individual's "face print." It would then take this specific pattern and translate it into a numerical code, which it ran through an unspecified database; if it didn't get a match, it stored the code in another database, if it did get a match, the targeted face was to be destroyed.
"Wait a minute," she thought. That's not exactly typical of facial recognition software. Kitty wasn't even sure that was legal.
"Well, hey there. It looks like I've got a new neighbor." A startled Kitty stared at the source of the interruption; a man was leaning on the wall between her cubicle and the next one over. "You must've come while I was on vacation last week," he said.
"Um...yeah, I've," was all Kitty could fit in before he started talking again.
"Hey, I know it's early, but do you fancy a bit of a coffee break? I'd like to get to know my new neighbor a bit before I start my day."
Kitty looked at her computer screen, not wanting to take a break without at least having started her work. Then again, she told herself, she could always ask this guy what was going on with the weird programs.
"Sure," she said.
He looked positively delighted as he led her to the break room, Kitty assumed that, computer geek as he was, this was probably the first time a girl had immediately accepted an offer of his. She wasn't being mean, mind you, it's just that it was her experience that most programmers didn't get out much, and having a pretty, young woman in the office got them excited.
He started brewing the coffee and then turned back to her.
"I'm Steve, by the way," he said.
"Kitty."
"Aww, how cute, like a kitty cat." She just sighed; she was used to comments like that now. "Well," he continued, "I hope you've had a good first week at HDS. We pride ourselves on being warm and welcoming to new employees..."
"Hmm..." she thought, "they obviously need to work on that one. I haven't actually held a conversation with a coworker yet, and this hardly counts as he's doing all the talking."
"...I've worked here ever since we started working on this puppy, which would be what? Ten, fifteen years ago? I was working for the government then, but I followed the project out when it we went private."
"Cool," she said. "What--"
"Oh yeah, it's been great. I even got to see a prototype last year..."
Kitty got the impression he could talk about this all day. She decided it would be best to just sit back and listen to him ramble, though. At least she was meeting someone, and maybe she would learn something about her project.
"...I didn't do any of the robotics stuff, but the facial recognition technology was all mine. You know, so many--"
"Wait, you did the facial recognition work?" Finally he was talking about something she cared about.
"Oh yeah, that's mine," he said, in a rather important tone. "Why? Are you working on it now? I was so pissed when Trask sent it back to our department. I thought it was just fine, but they said it was letting people slip through because it required too many nodal points, but..."
"I haven't gotten a good look at it, but--" He just kept talking. She couldn't get a word in edgewise.
"...You know, I warned them there would be problems with this project if we just used the facial rec. Mitch Bogart, the supervisor at the time, tried to tell them that, but all he got was fired. The new one keeps his mouth shut, but I still say that we're never going to get them until--" "Wait a minute, wait a minute," she interrupted. Who was this "them" of which he spoke? What exactly WAS this project anyway? "Who're you trying to catch?" she asked.
That actually stopped his talking. He just stared at her blankly.
"You mean you don't know?"
She just shook her head. Was she supposed to have known?
"Oh honey," he said patronizingly, "they're looking for mutants."
And that's when it happened. She lost control and her hands slipped right through her coffee cup. It shattered on the floor, spilling coffee everywhere. Kitty looked up; the entire room was staring at her.
"Oh, I uh...just lost my grip," she said. She grabbed some paper towels and mopped up the coffee while most of the people in the break room went back to their normal work.
Except for Steve. Her talkative cubicle neighbor just stared, open- mouthed, his gaze moving between her hands and the broken mug on the floor. She knew he had seen what had happened.
"Well," she said as she gathered up the remains of her mug, "I should get back to work. Nice to, uh...talk to you, Steve." She headed back to her cubicle and sat down, trying to gain control of her racing heart. She hadn't made a mistake like that in a while, and she hadn't phased through anything in public since college.
She'd almost forgotten she was a mutant. Lord knows she'd tried. When she'd first learned she could move through solid objects, her parents had totally freaked; they wouldn't let her leave the house for a week, and when they finally let her out, they refused to mention it. It was like it'd never happened.
For them, at least. Try as she might, Kitty couldn't avoid unintentionally phasing through stuff. She just couldn't prevent herself; every time she had a nightmare, she ended up in her basement, and once, when another girl tried to push her into her gym locker in a fight, she'd gone right through the wall and ended up in some locker in the boy's locker room. Though she knew more or less what was going on, she still didn't know what she was. She'd only heard of mutants from whispered rumors and crazy tabloid articles.
It wasn't until college that anyone was able to explain to her why she could get into her room even if she lost her key. She'd gone to pick up a paper from her literature professor and was so shocked at getting a B- (she'd never gotten a B- on a paper, ever) that she sank into the floor right in front of her professor. Professor Winters stared at her, standing ankle-deep in the carpet, and then, inexplicably, she laughed.
"Oh, dear," she managed between giggles, "I guess I'm not as alone here as I thought I was."
She shut the door and pulled Kitty out from the carpet, all without getting up from her chair, as she explained to the frightened freshman that she was mildly telekinetic, and for the first time in her life, Kitty began to understand what she was. Throughout college, Julia Winters did her best to help Kitty get used to her powers. She mostly taught her control exercises, but she also tried to introduce the girl into a wider community of mutants at University of Chicago.
It was great to finally know why she sometimes dropped her books or fell through her floor; it was even better to be able to consciously stop it from happening. But sometimes, Kitty was still embarrassed by her behavior. Big shocks still made her lose control, and this most recent bit of news was most certainly a big shock.
The software she was fixing was designed to destroy her. No doubt Bolivar Trask had a gigantic database of identified mutants somewhere, and was planning to do God knows what with it. It scared her to no end to think of what might happen if this program were put to use.
But then again, she told herself, so many new technologies never make it out of the prototype stage, and even if this did, it's not like she was an identified mutant. She didn't even want her powers, much less want to use them to terrorize all humanity like the mutants she'd heard about. Why would Trask ever come after her?
"It's going to be OK, Kitty," she told herself, "just stay calm, and nobody will notice."
Hopefully.
.......................................
Voila! A real chapter. Many thanks to those who reviewed.
Till next time,
hnh