Jen Byrnes sighed. She had had such high hopes for this internship at the prestigious Eisenspitze Theoretical Research Institute. When she had received the letter that her application had been accepted, visions of conducting exciting research had run through her mind, followed shortly thereafter by thoughts of exploring the traditional german countryside. ETRI was too far away from any of the major cities for her to casually visit, but Jen began to make plans and look up historical sites to visit on the weekends.

These plans were all shattered as she disembarked in Munich, and met Rudi Fischer, her immediate boss. He looked a bit haggard, with bags under his eyes and a slumping walk, but Jen decided not to comment as he picked up her bags and carried them to his car.

The car was quiet as they left the city limits and traffic behind them. Jen was having a pleasant time peering out the windows and trying to spot things that were different from her home in Ohio. It surprised her a little when Rudi spoke up.

“I hope you have not made too many plans. The other two interns have both had to cancel for various reasons, and most of your work hours will take place during the night shift because of this. You will be properly compensated, of course.” Jen wasn’t sure if there was room to negotiate at all and was simply silent, consoling herself with the thought that being the only intern would mean she could have more attention from the scientists.

Her eyes found themselves staring at the computer's progress bar. It showed about 20% left before the data from the previous experiment was processed, at which point she would need to click three buttons to initialize the next experiment. And then wait. And in roughly an hour, do the same thing over again, until her 10 hour night shift of 'work' was finished.

"Stupid babysitting piece-of-shit job. Stupid night shift. And STUPID me for thinking that an intern would actually be assigned any valuable work.

Only silence greeted her declarations. Everyone else had already gone home for the night. Feeling a bit more relaxed after her outburst, Jen sank back into her chair. She had only been doing this for a week, and already the hours and the monotony were getting to her. It would be a lot more bearable if only she could have her phone to listen to music or browse the internet, but the equipment was delicate and the chance of disrupting it with a foreign device wasn't worth sating her electronic addiction. At least, that's what her immediate boss had told her, before dropping a ream of paper and a pack of pens on her desk and leaving.

Her first seventeen doodles had all been of him dying in increasingly unusual and painful methods. That had soon lost its appeal though, and she had fallen back into daydreaming the hours away, hoping for something interesting to happen to break up the boring routine.

A beep interrupted her from her self-pity, the computer ready for its next set of commands. Jen quickly cued up the next program of experiments and returned to her slouch in the chair.

Stupid government regulations. Stupid politicians who hear the words 'black hole generation' and worry about the world getting blown up, and insist that every experiment have human oversight, as if that would actually change anything other than the interns' sleep cycles. Stupid scientists figuring out so many of the rules of the universe, that the only way to experiment was systematic computer assisted experiments.

She had grown up on the mad scientists of cartoons, from Dexter’s Lab and Johnny Test to the Powerpuff girls and Jimmy Neutron. Science fiction stories had fuelled her teen years, giving her the motivation to pursue a degree in the hard sciences, even with the large amount of sexism that she was exposed to. All because she had wanted to learn how the world works to a degree that she could shape it in a new way, to make a giant robot or a shrink ray or something else that would change the world. But now she was close to her goal, only to find out that understanding the underlying science doesn't let you create cool things, but only tells you why all the cool ideas and things you want to create would never work.

A hum began to fill the air as Jen waited. It was quiet and low at first, almost inaudible, but as the minutes went by the noise continued to grow. Almost ten minutes after the noise began Jen finally noticed, shaken from her musing by a sound that should not be there. She hesitated for a few moments, weighing the consequences of cutting a million dollar experiment off before completion against letting the now ominous hum continue to grow. Finally unable to delay any longer Jen stood up, making her way over to the emergency shutoff button when the world turned dark.

"Who turned off the lights?"