Knowing it’d be the first time she get to get access to a computer in this world, she felt more invigorated than ever. Yet despite such excitement, every step sent her into more lightheartedness. She had to leaned herself onto the elevator wall to catch her breath. I’ll have to check with the system about my health after this. She managed to continue but at a slower pace.

Awaiting in her room was a middle aged women. Her arms were crossed and she was grimacing. Ellowyn could tell clearly that she didn’t want to be there. She was wearing black work clothes, the type that mechanics would wear, her ash blond hair was tied into a long ponytail and neatly kept underneath a black cap.

“Hi Ellowyn, I’m Jane Davis, chief of -” Her eyes went wild when she saw Ellowyn’s face.

Ellowyn held her breath. Does she know who I am?. She wacked her brain, trying to find out why the women would recognize her, she had already altered her facial details and hair color at the warehouse.

“Please, take a seat. You look pale as a ghost!” Jane immediately went and supported Ellowyn’s shoulders and helped her sit on her bed.

Ellowyn shook her head and closed her eyes, Jane was just worried about her condition. She felt relief both physically and mentally as the lightheartedness softened and her real identity, safe. “I’m fine now. I guessed I was a little too excited.”

“I’ll get you some water” Jane said, noticing Ellowyn’s dry voice.

“It must have been rough on you huh, these last few days?” Jane’s tone turned gentle as she used her fingers to remove a stray leaf on Ellowyn’s hair.

“I’ll be alright, thank you. I think I’ll rest here for a while. But I don’t want to waste your time, could we do this on another day?” Ellowyn knew that Jane didn’t really want to be helping her nonetheless, seeing as she was very annoyed in the beginning. Ellowyn would figure out how to operate the new computer herself.

“Ah, I’m sorry if I might have seemed rude to you. To tell the truth, I really would rather not be here and watch the sight of the new girl fumbling around my state of the art VX-12. But seeing as you really wanted the tech,” her lips curled into a smile, “I suppose I could spend some time here to get you started.”

“I’ll be in your care then.” Ellowyn couldn’t help but return her smile.

“Let me reintroduce myself. I’m Jane Davis, chief of technicians. l keep the servers from hackers, the combat robots from falling on their asses and general infrastructure maintenance. Its a pleasure to meet you. My contacts should be in your phone so if you have any questions, don’t be afraid to text or call me.”

She chuckled, seeing the confused look on Ellowyn’s face. “Usually you’d expect people like me would wear their fancy white lab coats and whole up inside their lab and offices right? Well I prefer the hands on approach.” She pointed towards her suit. “These clothes are water and oil stain resistant and also passive disinfection. I was on my way to a pair of destroyed bunkers from the practice raid last night and was going to install the new force gattling models myself. Hence I was rather annoyed, you see, when Tom suddenly called me back and have me give the new brat the newly arrived VX-12.”

“Again, I’m sorry to have bothered you so and I really don’t want to keep you here when you have other work to do.” Ellowyn bowed her head.

Jane sighed. “Its fine, you might have thought that I hate you, but I really don’t. I’ve often been told that I’m too direct and I focus on my work too much. Though I think those are the quantities that got me into this job in the first place.” She smirked. “So if I ever bothered you, try not to be offended k?”

Ellowyn nodded. “I don’t know what Tom told you about me, but I don’t have much experience with computers.”

Jane raised her eyebrows. “Tom told me you are quite proficient around technology. Was it because your family could not afford the necessary equipments?”

Reminded of her past in Liona, Ellowyn grimaced. “Lets just say that I hadn’t the liberty I needed.”

“Conservative family huh, I’ve heard plenty about parents who limit the presence of technology around their child, for the sake of their ‘future development’.” The last bit was laden with sarcasm. “Just ask me for whatever it is that you need and I’ll see to it that your ‘liberty’ be abundant” She winked.

Ellowyn nodded, having no intention to clarify her captivity with Jane. She pondered and smiled softly, perhaps she could then do the things she had always been doing in her past life, exploring the vast cyber galaxy and its ludicrous unprotected network hubs, messing with experimental electronic components and most of all, having fun.

“Then I’ll ask for your help in the future. Could you tell me more about the VX-12?”

“It is a state of the art model. The V7 processor is capable of over 1 billion cycles per nanosecond. It also comes with special ‘tweaks’ for special certain quantum calculations. Oh, I might have lost you there.” She chuckled, seeing Ellowyn’s glassy eyes.

“I’ll jusr boot it up and show you the basics.” She walked to Ellowyn’s desk and pointed at a black metallic square box laying on top.

Ellowyn examined it closely. Thin and glossy black, it resembled a tablet on Earth. A glowing blue stripe ran across its surface.

“To turn it on, just swipe here.” Jane sliced her finger on the blue stripe.

It glowed brightly for a second, then the entire area above her desk lit up with a holographic pane. A “V” icon floated above the plane, rotating clockwise. Ellowyn knew it was Vantum’s symbol, one of the largest electronic manufacturer, even the ebook tablets she used were from Vantum.

After the icon faded, a series of words flashed through the holographic screen. She knew well that those were the boot information but couldn’t read them for they had scrolled up too quickly.

“I’ll remove these cluttering stuff if you want.”

“Its fine, please leave it.”

“Alright then, I’ll set up the connection to the internet and, generally just make it easier for you.” A holographic keyboard appeared infront of Jane and she started typing very rapidly.

Ellowyn held her breath, for a world with such technological advancement, I would have expected a more advanced form of human to computer interface, but a keyboard, why would they still be using such a thing for so long? She was expecting some kind of revolutionizing interface like brain waves or at the very least, hand gestures.

Jane chuckled upon glancing at the bewildered Ellowyn. “Its not that hard really. Don’t pay much attention to it, I’ll be done in a minute.” Her nimble fingers strolled through the keys too fast for the eye can see, as flat rectangular windows, the kind that Ellowyn was ever so familiar with, pop in and out of existence within a mere few seconds.

She could see that the user interface components remained mostly the same, from the squarish buttons to text boxes and even drop down menus. I guess they have no reason to fix what wasn’t broken. She shrugged.

“There, all done. I’ve set up a simple tutorial to get you used to the interface., just give it a try. I have to get back to work now though. Just contact me if you need help. Or I could also hire a tutor for you, what do you think?”

“You don’t need to, I learn fast.” She gave out her most confident smile.

“Alright then, I’ll see you later.”

Welcome, please swipe your hand over this text to continue

The holograms transformed her desk after she did so. A blank piece of paper laid in the center, a stack of folders piled to her left and a few pens laid to her right.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to organize files, compose a word document and free writing

She was surprised to find that the tutorial looked nothing like what Jane used before. It appeared that these holographic interactions tried to mimic their real life counterpart. To view files, for example, she would have to grab a file with her hand and pull the file’s paper representation from within that file. To write a word document, she could either use the keyboard, read out loud or use the pen and draw onto the paper herself.

The keyboard posed quite a problem, as the keys are from the symbols of her current world’s language, which meant she had to relearn and remaster the hand placement.

As the tutorials finished, she had learned how to use various gestures to speed up the process. With a flick of a finger, the files lined themselves up infront of her. She made more gestures to sort the files into different orders, from names to size until she was satisfied with her proficiency.

However, a sense of discontentment rose up within her. While she did admit that the visuals were amazingly vibrant and user friendly, the problem was that they were too user friendly. A part of her screamed out for its inefficiency. While a child could easily learn how to use it and an experienced office worker would find no problem with its productivity, she however, had always been relying on simplistic interfaces for lightning fast navigation and executions. And most of all, the mental disconnection she felt as her fingers went through the life like hologram images was too unsettling.

Websites also did the same, an informational site she visited had their entries inside virtual bookshelves, and a video posting site had small TV boxes with tiny cute antennas above them that showed the videos.

Frustration slowly builds up inside her as everything looked little different than a child’s toy. Thats it, I’ve had enough! She threw the little TV boxes away and started searching for a way to toggle everything to simpler graphics, the ones that Jane used in the beginning.

To her surprise and relief, countless others have had the same opinion and left all the info she needed to tweak the settings to her liking. Now that its all set up, lets find out what this world has to offer. She grinned in anticipation.

She had considered looking more into the Lyon corp to find out why her previous father kept her in captivity, but decided against it since Jane or her staff could have monitored the network. Based on how close the Lyons and her current family were, had they find out who she really was, she’d be dead for real.

Lets see, shall I check out the physics breakthroughs that allowed the creation of force fields? Wait, I want to look under the hood of these new computers, and also the genetic advancements they made. Sigh, so much to learn, so little time.

Sorry for the late release, I was really under the weather for the past week and couldn't bring myself to write. All I could do was waste my time hanging around chatango >.If you want to chat, just come to chatango and since I hang around there most of the time.