Morgana awoke with a pounding headache, to the sound of her late alarm blaring next to her. "Fuck fuck fuck!" She cursed, scrambling out of bed, sheets flying, and slamming the alarm clock off. This was bad news: she was going to be tardy yet again, and even being as sick as she was, she'd be punished at work for calling in so late. There was no other choice—she'd have to go to work even though she was feeling like shit, nose running, eyes watering, and with the worst sore throat she had in a while. With late October underway, it made sense that respiratory virus season was in full swing—but it also meant her patients were going to be numerous. She groaned as she sluggishly pulled her scrubs on; she really didn't want to work today, but she had no choice.

Speeding off in her beat-up, misfiring 1980s jalopy that desperately needed a new paint job, she imagined the day when she'd finally be able to afford a new vehicle, or at least something more current, within the last three years or so. She sighed—if only she had gotten into medical school years ago. She couldn't understand it—she had good grades overall, good scores on her MCAT, and devoted her time doing charity work at free clinics, yet year by year, there were nothing but rejections. Hell, her entire job as a CNA was a strategy to not only make some money, but to impress the admissions committees with years of hands-on clinical experience, but even that wasn't enough to cut it. Even when she explained in her essays that the reasons for having a couple of bad semesters had to do with her sister's disappearance and her mother's schizophrenia, no reason was good enough for the committee.

"I guess they only want geniuses," she said out loud, talking to herself as she often did. But wait, that wasn't true.

She thought of one Nala Garber, who was a cunning and self-absorbed brat. Despite making nothing but C's, and not having to try anywhere as hard as Morgana, her parents got her into the medical program because of their position on the school board. There were many such examples of this type of corruption; Nala wasn't the only one—all her braindead friends aspiring for the same goal also got in by kissing up to her parents. Morgana also heard of other undeserving students getting in via more salacious means, or just by virtue of having friends in high places. Morgana, coming from poverty, never had any of that, and she certainly wasn't going to sacrifice her dignity for what appeared to be such a rigged game ...

And come to think of it, everything was a rigged game. Politics, fame, celebrities, wealth, corporations ... everything. Down to all the jingles on TV calling you to buy more candy bars and peanut butter, to the way we thought about social customs, everything was a construct. But a lot of those constructs didn't make sense at all; for example, the last time she was this sick and called in late, she was met with a write-up from her manager and an HR meeting—all because she was ill and needed some rest and recovery? And did they ever think of how imprudent it would be to show up as a healthcare worker, infecting patients whose immune systems were already compromised? Sure, I mean, one was required to wear a mask, but even those things didn't protect others all the way. She knew that now, because the whole reason she got sick again was due to a sick coworker—masked, mind you—in close proximity. What a useless, broken, self-propagating cycle of misery. It doesn't even make sense, she thought.

Deciding to clear her head as much as she could before a stressful 12-hour shift, she turned up the music as she swerved through roads. With And One, Nine Inch Nails, and KMFDM blasting, it was nice for the music to help her cope with the depressing, unfair, infuriating, mundane world. As many adults do, she considered the pre-work time in her car sacred, and her only wish for the unforgiving clock was that this temporary moment of bliss could last longer, and that while late, she wouldn't arrive outrageously late.

Running through the parking lot and pressing the elevator buttons, praying that it wouldn't have to be a long wait, she looked like a mess upon arrival. She grabbed a face mask from a nearby dispenser, and put it on. Pulling her dark, tangled hair back into a bun of sorts, and attempting to smooth out her wrinkled scrubs, she adjusted her backpack as she went in. She felt self-conscious about her appearance, but there hadn't been a minute to spare between the bed and her car. Once on her floor, the charge nurse, in her typical domineering manner, announced, "You're late again."

"Yup," she said, acknowledging it without an apology. God, she hated Linda's attitude—and for some reason, nobody ever told her anything. "I'm sick again, and I wasn't allowed to call in." Even though she was fed up of this job, and it was bleeding into her attitude, she thought better of it due to the bills she had to pay—yes, the bills were the masters, and she was the slave.

"I'm sorry, Linda," Morgana added, attempting to soften the blow. "You know how HR is. There was nothing I could do."

"Were your hands tied last night?" Linda asked. "Did your hands and fingers suddenly stop working? Then you could have done something about it."

Yes, captain obvious, Morgana thought angrily. If I had known I'd wake up this fucked-up, I would've ... But rather than arguing with some soulless, thrice-divorced and childless 60-year old woman, she forced herself to placate her by agreeing and disappearing to her locker to put her things away before running to do her morning vitals.

After six hours of vital signs, juggling constant call lights, cleaning up shit and piss, and bathing the bed-bound patients, she decided to take her lunch break, hoping that it would go without interruptions. As busy as the floor usually was, today it was calmer than usual, so it felt good to not be as hurried. Heating up a TV dinner she had left in the lounge room freezer a few weeks ago, and pulling out her laptop from her backpack, she eagerly scrolled to the anonymous forum she'd been posting in recently. Trying to ignore the nurses around her that stared at her for being a "computer nerd" during lunch time, she was more interested in reading the replies to her post, in which she talked about René Descartes and his philosophy on the senses.

"lol, that's because nothing is real," someone replied.

"Precisely. To further expand, have you heard of Descartes' theory of the Evil Demon? It is also part of his First Meditation. He states that an evil demon must be controlling what his senses perceive—all a falsehood. Pretty scary to think about, eh? ;)" Someone else wrote.

"LOL lay off the ganja dude...this was just A THEORY! a theory made by some frog centuries ago! GO OUTSIDE and touch grass or something. get laid. believe me, it's all pretty real if you stop being a looser. haha"

Nice, another moron in the comments section. She was interested in responding to the second commenter, but before she did, she took out her TV dinner and started eating—but just before she could finish it, a nurse busted into the lounge and called out, "Hey, the patient in 6 is coding!"

As the code blue alarm rung everywhere, Morgana and the rest of the staff rushed to the patient's room. Flying into action to help the patient, Morgana felt alive when she did so. She wasn't even really bothered that she didn't get to finish eating—it's not like TV dinners were exactly gourmet. After they managed to stabilize the patient and comfort the family members, another few hours cycled through before Morgana realized she hadn't even responded to the comments or opened her messages.

After she went home, she responded to the second poster, and suddenly, an anonymous dialogue was opened on her screen.

"Consider if Descartes was right. I know you've been feeling a certain type of way now, haven't you?"

"What do you mean?" Morgana typed, intrigued.

"Feeling like there is a reason this world makes no sense, with all their meaningless rules and corruption. Experiencing dreams and reality as one, almost undetectable. You possess a deep need for truth, don't you? Something inside you pulls you to seek answers, doesn't it?" They asked.

"Yes ..." Morgana typed, nervously. How did they know this about her? Then again, she had written multiple posts ... If this was someone who had been following her blog, then they would know.

"Ever since your sister's disappearance, things have changed, haven't they?" They asked.

Wait ... how did they know about that? Morgana lifted her hands away from the keyboard and stared wide-eyed at the message. She never mentioned her sister's disappearance online, not even while she was anonymous, so how on earth did this person know?

Right as soon as she was beginning to type, "How do you know...?" she thought better of it and deleted it. As if sensing this, the anonymous sender instantly went offline as well. Logging off rapidly and shutting her computer off, she breathed in sharply and exhaled.

"That was so weird," she said aloud. "So fucking weird ..."

Attempting to sleep, she watched some TV and played music to help her relax, but it wouldn't be for a few more hours that somnolence would finally creep in.

Outside, a lone, tall figure of a man in a dark suit watched from the outside of her apartment. With not much activity to document, he closed his eyes and brought his hand to his earpiece, transmitting his chosen information to the Mainframe. A few seconds later, two other men in dark suits and sunglasses pulled up in a black Lincoln town car, and the man climbed into the front seat, taking off into the night.