Foundation of All

“First day, Em. You ready?”

Emily straightened her button down shirt one last time and long pants to smooth down any traitorous wrinkles that had reappeared in the last few seconds.

“Yep,” She said, “Can’t believe we actually both got the internship to replace our senior year of school. It would have been such a bummer to have to work here without someone I already know to be with me.”

“Hey, you got nothing to worry about. If anything you’ll have to be helping me. Just like homework back in middle school, right?”

“Don’t count on it,” Emily said with a slight smile. From anyone else she would feel a little insulted if someone said that. That they might only be friends because she could help with schoolwork. But she knew that Luke didn’t mean it that way.

“You earned your own way,” She said, “You got the second spot fair and square. We’ve both got this.”

“I know, but you’re like, the star pupil,” Luke countered, “Don’t forget the little people once we go in there, won’t you?”

“I… I won’t,” Emily said, suddenly feeling sad for a second before cheering up again, “Plus, you won’t be a little person if I have anything to say about it. You’ll be nearly big as me!”

Luke raised an eyebrow and put his hand over her to show the nearly eight or nine inches he had on her in height.

“I think I got you beat there, Em.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Em. I appreciate it. Let’s go gett’em.”

Emily took a deep breath. Luke jumped ahead and opened the door for her.

“Thanks.”

They walked through into the lobby of CODA international headquarters. The two of them went through security and then walked up to the front desk with the secretary behind it. The whole place was gleaming and clean with gold accents mixed with various screens scrolling through various CODA announcements.

“He-Hello?” Emily said, stammering slightly as the two of them stood in front of the big desk with the secretary not even noticing them yet. The woman looked up and didn’t say anything and just stared at them blankly.

“Here for the Innovation Biology Internship?” Luke jumped in after Emily didn’t say anything more, “From CODA high? Luke Astas and Emily Stenson?”

The secretary’s eyes lit up in recognition, “Ah, you two. Yes, just wait right here. The lab director, John Tret, is coming down in just a few minutes. He’ll collect you and get you settled in.”

“Th-Thank you,” Emily said after no one said anything for a few seconds after that. She swallowed to clear her throat. This was supposed to be her first impression, why was she botching it so badly!

“Yes, thank you,” Luke said and the secretary looked back down and went back to typing without saying anything in reply.

Rude.

This is Coda?

Their security was terrible.

Where were the molecular level scanners?

What if they had something implanted under their skin?

Or they just brought in a weapon not made of metal?

I could build something better than this.

Sean, most of those things don’t exist yet.

Security… Yeah, I’d forgotten how bad it was.

But with limited technology it was the best they could do.

People weren’t too worried about bombs implanted under the skin back then.

Security didn’t need to be so strict back then either.

I suppose so.

I’m growing nervous with how fast we’re moving here.

We’ve skipped multiple years in only a short time.

I think we should start trying to talk to her more from now on.

Even if it disrupts her normal life. We can’t wait until the last minute.

…

…

…

One more.

Let’s leave her be for one more.

Then we’ll try our hardest.

Just look at her now.

I don’t want to hurt her.

Especially since she used to be me.

Okay. But next time, we go.

No matter what reason we have to leave her be next time, we push hard.

Promise?

…

…

…

Okay.

I agree.

Next time, we do it.

But let’s just watch for now.

No, no, no, no! Why now? Emily tried to school her face and ignore the strong wind and whispers at the edge of her hearing. A man in a white lab coat came out of the elevator. The lab director for CODA industries. He said something with an easy smile and stuck out his hand to Luke, who shook it.

With a wide grin, the lab director turned to Emily and said something else and stuck out his hand lazily to her. But all she could hear was the roaring wind and whispers just out of hearing. It was like she was in the middle of a storm, the whispers feeling like they were coming from all sides around her.

She grabbed his hand and smiled and nodded as she shook his hand, internally panicking as the whispers grew louder and louder while still being indecipherable.

The lab director raised an eyebrow as Emily kept shaking his hand and in embarrassment she let go, still not trusting herself to speak over all the noise around her. All her hallucinations. Her heart beat in her chest wildly and she tried to resist glancing around nervously. The lab director asked Luke something, who was also giving her a strange look.

The lab director turned back to her and asked another question while staring at her. She kept smiling and struggled to keep her eyes focused on him and nodded as politely as she could.

Then with a sudden pop, the voices and wind disappeared and she was back to reality. All the normal low sound of voices echoing through the space and little beeps from the metal detectors at the front returned.

“...shy one, aren’t you?” The lab director continued as he spoke to her, “Well, best show you two to the lab then.”

They silently proceeded to the elevator and rode up as the lab director began explaining what they did in their lab. Emily didn’t speak, still too spooked by her hallucination showing up at the worst possible moment.

The elevator doors opened and the lab director walked inside without even pausing in his sentence, with Luke and Emily trailing behind.

“...This machine is for nanotube assembly and electrospinning if we’re creating tissue scaffolds. We’ve got the microscopes, the incubators, the centrifuges. You name it, we’ve got it all as the top of the line machines. Peter Rose likes to keep us well stocked with supplies so we can innovate and do the best science we can. Now, I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes. I’ll take you to the computers over here and get you the credentials real quick…”

The lab director set them up with their passwords and gave them keycards so they could use the elevator to get directly into the lab when they came to work in the future. The two of them were in a little side room that split off from the main lab itself and was surprisingly quiet without all the buzzing and whirring from all the lab equipment in the main space.

“Alright. Go to CODA BioWare. Yeah, there.” The director narrated as he pointed to a colorful icon on Emily’s computer screen, “Alright. You’ve each got your own computers. Just follow through the tutorial there for a while to get used to the platform, we use it a lot in studying proteins and other biology modeling we have to do. I’ll go to my meeting now. If you need help just ask for Donald. He’ll be your supervisor if you need anything, and he’ll be checking in on you soon. But we’re informal, if we’re not in the middle of something feel free to ask any of us out there for help. Alright, see you later kids.”

“E-Excuse me? Sir?”

“Oh! She speaks! Emily Stenson, was it? Yes?”

“Um. What do we do if we finish?”

The lab director shrugged, “Well, I suppose it’ll be a few hours before I’ll be done. Meeting with the higher ups, sorry my introduction is being cut so short. It is what it is… If you really want a challenge then go to the CODA ProteinFold application. Just pick any project and see what you can make of it. You don’t have permission to edit any of the digital files yet, so don’t worry about messing them up. But what’s in there are real projects that we’re working on right now. We do novel protein creation a lot here, and the program lets you test different combinations to see what is ideal before you bother trying to create it for real. Ask Donald if you can’t figure it out or get stuck. I actually have to go now, so bye for real this time you two.”

The man left, speed walking quickly out of the room. Emily and Luke clicked into the application and started going through the tutorial on how to use it. After thirty minutes or so they finished up and Emily stretched and felt something pop in her back. Wow, that had been a lot…

“Oof,” Luke said, stretching as well on his chair, “My brain feels like it’s about to burst. You think that Donald guy is going to check in on us at some point?”

Emily stood up and Luke mimicked her as she bounced up and down to return some feeling to her legs.

“I don’t know. Did he say anything about it while we were in the lobby?”

“Yeah, what was that all about? You just froze like a rabbit. I thought he was pretty welcoming. Not exactly the stern taskmaster that I was expecting to run a place this advanced.”

“It’s… Yeah, I just froze. Couldn’t pay attention, that was it. Glad you were there to bail me out. Thanks.”

“Anytime, Em.”

They chatted lightly for a few more minutes, until Emily glanced at the door.

“Do you think we should be… working? Check out that ProteinFold thing?” She asked Luke.

He shrugged, “Sure, my brain’s feeling a little less mushy now. May as well.”

The two of them went to their computers and went into ProteinFold and began to investigate the files. There were three D models of the protein based on the amino acid sequence and a hundred other factors. Some proteins helped the other proteins fold, so you had to model that one too to make it work… Some proteins had to be linked to other proteins first before being refolded to be functional at the end.

It was just… so complex!

Emily’s eyes flickered through as she devoured the information. It matched all the university level classes that she had finished in various fields, but also different. It was all backed by data, all of it was close to how it would work in real life rather than some abstract theory.

She was using a new ProteinFold file that she was able to create with her intern level permissions. She just couldn’t save it into the database but she could still play around with all the amino acid sequences and different things to change and alter the protein folding.

It- it was like a game. Cut or add a thiol bond here, change an alpha helix to a beta sheet, add a secondary protein to help it all come together… It was more complicated than anything Emily had ever done and it sent her brain alight to find the solution.

Finally, she finished on the protein she was making. The computer said it turned one certain chemical into another long named chemical. But it worked. It did something according to the computer. Even if she had no idea what that function was.

“Wow!” She said before turning to Luke, “That was…”

He was staring at her already with his chair shifted so he was practically next to her. His own screen was showing a screensaver, he clearly had been watching her screen for a long time.

“...amazing,” She finished, feeling a little embarrassed she hadn’t even noticed him in her excitement in making the protein.

“Yeah,” he said while staring at her, “Amazing. It was like you were playing an instrument or something. Perfectly in the flow. What was it like?”

Emily stared at the completed protein on the screen.

“It… It was a puzzle that I could solve.”

She shook her head and continued with her previous excitement.

“I can’t wait to see what kinds of projects the other scientists are working on. Here, how much did you get done? I can explain it to you if you want. There was this really hard part in the middle where the alpha helices were too tightly packed on the protein chain…”

Luke had a slight smile on his face, but faithfully booted up his computer and listened to her as she explained what she did to make the protein. She forgot what exactly she had done a few times or made a mistake, but after comparing it to the one she already made she was able to compare and remember the difference.

By the end, Luke had his own protein there, the exact same as hers.

“So?” She asked, “Doesn’t it feel great? You made that thing. That protein can actually do something useful.”

“What?” Luke asked as he leaned back into the chair, “Do you know what it does?”

“It.. turns the thing into the thing,” Emily said with a vague gesture to the three d model on Luke’s screen, “I’m sure somebody has a use for it. Or already made it before and are using it already.”

“Yeah. It does feel good,” Luke admitted, “Thanks, Em. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

“No problem. Happy to help.”

“No, I mean literally I couldn’t have done it. My brain’s back to proper mush after that. Thanks though, I still feel like you taught me a lot even if only a little is still stuck up here.”

Luke made a fist and knocked on his head like it was a door.

Emily leaned back on her chair and checked the clock on the wall by rolling her head over the back of the chair to stare at it upside down.

“Four hours. Huh. Didn’t feel that long.”

She kicked at the floor and started spinning in a quick circle on the swivel chair. Luke matched her and began spinning as well.

After a few minutes, Emily got dizzy and stopped. The room swam around her for a few seconds before stabilizing again. She shook her head for a few seconds to clear it.

“Wasn’t that Donald person supposed to check on us a while ago?” Luke asked idly, “You think he forgot about us?”

“Should we go find him?” Emily asked, feeling rather tired after focusing for so long on first assembling her protein model, then helping Luke make his as well right after.

“Okay. Maybe he can tell us what your protein does.”

“I mean, it’s not mine. I’m sure someone else has made it before.”

“Your protein model then. You can’t deny that at least.”

“Sure. That’s true.”

The two of them opened the door and walked into the main lab where various scientists walked around in white lab coats.

“Hey, you two the new interns?” A nearby woman said looking up from a rack of test tubes she was inspecting, “What are you doing out here without your lab coats? Didn’t you listen to your introduction?”

“We were supposed to meet with Donald a few hours ago?” Luke said, “Sorry, do you know where the lab coats are?”

“Donald?” The woman said, surprised, “Oh, that explains it. Sorry you two. Donald called out sick three hours ago. Saw the Shadow out of stress, the whole experience and everything. I didn’t know that it all was getting to him so much…”

“He saw the Shadow?” Emily asked, “Isn’t that super uncommon? Is he okay?”

The woman waved off her concerns, “Oh, don’t you worry about him. The man was always a workaholic. He just needed someone to force him to take a few of his sick days so he can relax a bit. Most sightings of the Shadow go unreported. A new study found that there could be as many as hundreds of thousands or even up to a million of sightings a year worldwide that go unreported. It is a rather unpleasant experience, I have to say…”

“You saw it? The Shadow?” Emily asked, “What was it like?”

The woman chuckled and fully turned around to face the two of them.

“Oh, very spooky. Very very spooky. I saw it five years ago. Was going up the elevator to work, and suddenly it was just there and I was frozen. I got a whole week off to relax after. We’ll see if they can convince Donald to take that much…”

“Isn’t the Shadow appearing to people random?” Emily asked, “Why would it appear to both of you so close together in the same place?”

The woman shrugged, “This is a high stress environment. We all work hard at this lab for our fat CODA paychecks. Of course we have more Shadow sightings than normal. Most people in higher stress jobs are likely to see the Shadow at least once in their lifetime even if they never end up reporting it. CODA’s really good about it, they just give you some time off to deal with it. Other employers sometimes aren’t as nice about it. See it as a sign of weakness or some garbage like that. Anyway, I can label these test tubes properly later. I’ll take Donald’s place and show you around and tell you what you’re supposed to be doing…”

— — —

“You made this, Emily?” Barbara, the woman that had been helping them, said in surprise as she inspected the protein on the screen, “Huh.”

They had just finished up the tour and been given white lab coats to wear in the lab. And told all the things that Donald was supposed to tell them about what they were supposed to do and what their job would be. It was basically summed up as doing whatever a nearby scientist asked them to do unless the Lab Director said otherwise. And computer work like this when none of the scientists needed them for anything.

“What should we do with the model?” Emily said, “We don’t have access to save it yet. I’m just glad the power didn’t go out and erase it while we were gone.”

“Oh, holy shit! That would be terrible.”

Barbara quickly went into the computer and pulled up the email and attached the file and sent it to her work email. It took a long time to upload and the email took over a minute to send.

“There,” Barbara said with a sigh of relief, “The file’s saved in the email server now. Just ask me and I’ll send it to your work emails once you get those. When John comes back to check on you, make sure to talk all about it. Even if it’s by accident, this protein actually might have some applications. You can tell him I said that too. Good job, Emily.”

“Oh, and you as well Luke,” She added, “Even with help making it all come together as a working protein on ProteinFold isn’t easy. You two are really overachieving for the first day.”

She looked up at the clock on the wall, “Oh, lunch time. C’mon you two, the cafeteria level is awesome, they made it all fancy for all the executives. Only one cafeteria, Peter Rose thinks that it helps reinforce positive company culture or something. So we eat right next to the marketing people and executive suits. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team while we’re there.”

“Thanks for the help, Barbara.”

“Thanks,”

“Don’t worry, you two will fit right in here. I can just feel it already.”