Julie clicked the mouse again.

“We’re working on it! Promise!” the message assured her. This was the sixteenth time in four hours that she’d clicked the button, by her math.

“Every fifteen minutes,” the technician had assured her, “I’m going to go find the server and fix it. I’ll be back after I’m done, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or two. You’ll know I’m on my way back when it displays a random picture.”

Button-pushing was not how she wanted to spend her first day on the job; it was slowly getting to her.

Before she realized it, it was a quarter after, and she pressed it again. Seventeen. “We’re working on it! Promise!” Yeah right. She should leave her station, find her new boss… Well, maybe one more hour.

…

Meanwhile, behind an array of monitors, basking in the blueish glow in a dark room, eight scientists watched her. “She will do nicely,” one noted.

“I’m not so sure,” another said, suspecting she would break. On a monitor Julie looked at her watch and pressed a button again.