Laura was almost over to the service elevator when her cell buzzed. She flipped it open, and answered,
"Hello?" She asked, she hardly ever got any calls.
"Is this Laura Gaines, the engineer?" A female voice said.
"Yes..." Laura cautiously replied, "Who is this?"
"Sorry for interrupting you. This is Portia Andersson," The woman replied.
"VP?" Laura asked, having a name to the suddenly familiar voice she hadn't heard in a few years.
"Yeah, it's me," Portia answered, and as Laura walked into her home, she could her her friend smiling on the other side of the line, "I'm now the head of Science Department at Rateliff School."
"That amazing!" VP had gone to university with Laura for a year, than switched schools, and they hadn't heard from each other since. Rateliff School was one of the prestigious upper level schools in Hyele, the small manmade island off the coast of Germany and Denmark, "So why are you calling?"
"Well, it's good that I reached you. I was going to the communications office to find the number for the skyflat engineer, and then find a number for you, since we hadn't seen each other in a few years. Evidently they don't have anyone recorded for your position, and there were six Laura Gaines, so I had to call every number, but then one of the files read that someone was an engineer, and that might have been yours, but finally my search went though, and one of the Laura Gaines was in charge of the skyflats, and so I call her, hoping it was you, and it was."
"Okay, I didn't get any of that." Laura laughed, "But why did you want to call Engineer Me?"
"As head of the Science Department, I'm in charge of getting guest scientist speakers if there is any interest, and multiple students want to learn about the skyflats, so I thought that I should invite you over, if there isn't any problem with that."
"No, no problem here," Laura was greatly excited by the thought of getting to see VP again, "When do you want me to come?"
"Would two days from now be good? Friday, at maybe 1300?"
"Sounds great, Friday at 1:00," Laura poked at Portia for using 24 hour time. Only Laura and her other good friend, Mara, had refused to make the switch that was highly encouraged in university. 892Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKCu7mCPQRT
"Hello everyone." Laura was standing in front of a large group of mid and upper class students, all cramped into a lecture hall in the Rateliff campus, "My name is Laura Gaines, and I'm the skyflat engineer here in Hyele."
She could see the some of the students already bored, opening up mini-holoscreens and tapping out messages to their friends. It wasn't an unusual behaviour to Laura, she did it plenty of times in her years in upper class and university.
"As many of you know, the skyflats were just installed nine months ago, and plants only appeared on their surface eight months ago. For those of you who don't know what skyflats are for, they collect rainwater and sunlight for plants up there that thrive in a way that many don't on the ground. If you remember two days ago, on Thursday, it was raining really hard. They collected a lot of rain then, and there was even a problem with pooling, which is part of my job."
Laura saw a kid, one of the younger students, raise her hand. She gestured for her to ask her question.
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