Sarah Anderson Backstory
An introductory backstory for Sarah.
Check out Sarah's Toyhou.se page here: https://toyhou.se/8989065.sarah-anderson
Sarah groaned as the low beats of the song she chose for her wake up alarm vibrated through the bed. Her hand flew over to tap the device display, but it did nothing. Growling, she rolled over to look at the screen. The silence button was missing. With a sigh, she sat up and worked through the device's menus to deactivate her alarm program.
"Would five more minutes have hurt?" She said aloud, rubbing a finger around her eye.
"Yes," responded an unnaturally smooth voice that filled the room. "You have a very important meeting scheduled for this morning. Five additional minutes of sleep may have made you late." She flicked her tail.
"It's called work. No more important today than any of the other four million days of work. Besides, who asked you for your opinion?"
"You made an inquiry several moments ago," the voice retorted.
She sighed. Her parents insisted on gifting her a high-grade residential automated assistant. It took her long enough to convince her parents to let her move to her current apartment; turning down the offer for the AI wasn't much of an option at that point. This model wasn't even top of the line, but it was still too smart for its own good. It wasn't worth all of the drama to get it removed. Besides, even revealing to a technician in her area that she had an AI of that caliber would be sure to turn some heads. The last thing that she wanted was a wave of attention. That is exactly what she was hoping to leave behind.
She stood up and stretched her wings. The assistant left the music on but turned down the volume and bass levels to a far more enjoyable level.
"I have begun to heat your preferred capsule of morning stimulant," the assistant stated.
"RAA, what did I tell you about unsolicited announcements?"
"Just doing my job, sa'ne." Nice to see that your sass algorithms are working today, Sarah thought.
"Since you are so eager to serve, why don't you cook up some breakfast?"
"It would be my honor." She snorted at the response, climbing into one of her work jumpsuits. She stretched as she waited for the food to finish heating. With a ding, the door opened on her heater. A nutrient bar. How delightfully delicious, she thought as she rolled her eyes. It'll do.
She grabbed a large round ball next to the food bar, the liquid contents inside deforming the sphere ever so subtly towards an oval shape. She popped the capsule into her mouth, rolling around the flexible, hot sphere while she took the food bar and slung her satchel over her shoulder.
After a few moments, she maneuvered the capsule to one side of her mouth and bit down. A wave of hot, herbal flavor flooded her tastebuds. She nursed the liquid down in little gulps, keeping the flavor on her tongue for as long as possible as she made her way to the exit. RAA opened the door for her automatically.
"I'll defend the nest until you return," the AI said as she passed through the threshold into the cool alley.
A light fog surrounded her, rising up several stories from the ground before fading to open air. Being so low to ground level meant that her apartment got very little natural light. She descended the nearby stairs down to the street below. Small groups of pedestrians meandered past. Most of the shops on the street were still closed, so there was not much to stop and see.
Mornings were always slow in this part of town. With such a lively nightlife in the areas surrounding her apartment complex, the mornings were the least busy time of day. Everyone was either hung over or worked to the point of exhaustion. With how some of the establishments ran, there were probably some people experiencing a little of both.
The main tram station was a stark contrast to the streets near her apartment. The platform was flooded with travelers. The trams deposited waves of workers returning after late night shifts and picked up even larger quantities of researchers, businesspeople, and workers.
The lab that she worked at belonged to a private company. While they did some limited research, the company was primarily a service provider. As such, the facility was nestled in one of the busiest locations of the city. Being in the gray-zone between the research and economic districts meant that her branch-office saw all of the crossover traffic from both major areas. To make matters worse, one of the major roads of the city ran right by the lab.
After departing the tram, the final stretch into the office went by with a predictable lack of excitement. As she approached the office, she pulled her badge from her bag. The large front doors opened into an immense atrium. One of the security guards watched her with idle interest as she scanned her card at one of the employee gates.
She swiped her card in front of the reader and went to take a step forward, but the gate remained closed. With a sigh, she went to scan the card again, no luck. Growling, she continued to wave her card back and forth across the reader. The device repeatedly yelled at her with loud beeps and a flashing red light. The guard that was watching her walked over.
"Is there a problem, sa'ne?"
"What do you think?" She snapped back at him.
"We have been having some trouble with the badge readers today. Please come with me, and I'll check you in manually." She followed the guard over to the security desk. He didn't look familiar to her; he must be new. The guard took the card and entered her information into the system.
"Well, it looks like everything checks out," he said after reviewing the screen for a few moments. He handed the ID card back to her. "Sarah Anderson? Any relation to the famous CEO couple?" She glared at him. "Point taken," he said, defensively holding up his hands and drawing in his wings.
Sarah huffed and walked back to one of the entry gates. The guard remotely unlocked it to let her through. She took one of the elevators up to her office floor, looking through the glass sides of the lift. The elevators ran up the length of the building, facing out towards the glass front of the building. Sarah looked out over the patch of low buildings in front of the lab, giving her a line of sight directly towards the city's central administrative district.
The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors slid open with a short notification sound. She made her way to her office and set her bag down by the desk. Sarah pulled out her tablet and let it sync with the desk terminal. One notification popped up, the daily assignments.
Sarah, there are some samples from out in the agricultural district that we need to analyze. Go ahead down to the lab and run a full diagnostic battery. I took the liberty of scheduling the delivery system to drop off the samples for you. They should already be waiting. If not, use the following reference codes.
The message continued on to list out all of the samples' reference codes. She scrolled down through the list. There has to be at least a couple thousand samples here. This is going to take me all day, she thought. With a sigh, she opened her lab locker and stripped out of her jumpsuit. The company lab coats were far nicer than they needed to be. The company put a high priority on visual appearances even in a secure lab. She put on her lab coat, grabbed her tablet, and left for the rear elevators.
Her assigned lab was one floor below her office. Normally, each hydrologist had their own small lab room. However, a recent office merge meant that many of the labs had to double up on assignments. In some sick twist of fate, the company decided to assign Sarah's lab to some young kid finishing out his hydrologist degree through the company's apprentice program. She was convinced that this kid was the most frustratingly chipper, casual, energetic, and annoying person that the company could possibly have selected to assign to her lab.
She made a habit of looking for any sign of him each time she entered the lab. Fortunately, there was no sign of the him. Sarah let out a sigh of relief and walked over to her side of the lab. On the far end of the room, she could see the waiting sample vials through the glass door of the sample delivery system. She entered her access code and began to unload the sample racks onto her lab tables.
Sarah took the first vial and began to separate it into various dishes and containers to run the test battery. She had barely finished getting the sample ready when she heard the lab's door slide open. Great, she thought.
"Hey!" The drake practically shouted when he entered the room. "What are the odds of seeing you here?" He said with a laugh.
"Don't talk to me," Sarah growled.
"These must be the samples from the AG district," the dragon said, walking over to her. She moved back as the kid leaned over uncomfortably close to her to survey the samples. He was loudly chewing on some snack bar or something.
"What are you thinking? You're going to contaminate the samples," Sarah reprimanded. "Go finish stuffing your muzzle somewhere else." The drake rolled his eyes.
"Nah. Nothing's going to happen," he responded. As he spoke, he gesticulated with his hands. Sarah watched as a chunk of food flew from the snack bar in his hand directly into one of the sample dishes. She glared at the now contaminated sample.
"Well, good thing we have a bunch of other samples. Right, partner?" He laughed nervously. She growled and swatted at him, striking him squarely in the chest. He grunted and took a step back. "Fine, fine," he said as he tossed the rest of the snack bar into the disposal unit.
"We are not partners," she sneered. The drake shrugged with a smile.
"Whatever you say, partner." He paused to see if she would respond. Sarah took a deep breath and released it in a slow groan.
"Anyway, I'm taking over here," the kid said.
"Don't you have your own assignments to take care of? This is my assignment."
"Not anymore. A new contract just came in. Boss wants me to take over this job, and he's sending you out into the field to take care of the new contract. Supposedly, it's a pretty high-profile client." He shrugged. "Didn't give me any details, though. You should have gotten a notification on your terminal."
She turned around on her stool to look at her terminal on the table behind her. Sure enough, there was an unread message. She began to read through the message. He was right; Sarah was being moved to a new assignment. It's not terribly uncommon for dragons to be moved around mid-project. What she read next, however, was quite unexpected. The human embassy was experiencing some kind of water trouble. This really is a high-profile job, she mused.
"Well," she said, standing up. "I can't say that I am too upset getting away from you."
"Aww, you know you'll miss me."
Sarah growled and snatched her tablet. She used her free hand to flash him a very insulting hand gesture as she stormed out of the room. She made her way back up to her office and packed her overalls and tablet into her bag Apparently, for appearances, her boss wanted her to keep her lab coat on when she went to the embassy.
Sarah had been to the administrative district many times before. She even went there for some field work in the past. However, it was uncommon for a regular citizen like her to make it into the capitol complex. It was far rarer for someone like her to be let into the human embassy.
She took a tram into the administrative district. From there, she had to rent a cab to take her to the capitol complex. For security reasons, all trams in the capitol were isolated from the outside areas. The cab took her to the nearest capitol security check point. Sarah checked in at the security office. It seemed that they were expecting her. A government car was waiting for her at the office.
"Good morning," the driver said as she entered the vehicle. "Sarah Anderson, I presume."
"That's right," she responded.
"Great. I'll be taking you directly to the embassy gates. Unfortunately, that's as far as I can go. They will take care of you from there."
Sarah nodded as they drove off. She looked out to admire the embassy complex as they approached. She saw pictures of the complex in the past but being there in the scales was something completely different. The complex itself was more like a micro-city, with the embassy building itself lording over the smaller human structures surrounding it. A couple of heavily armored guards stopped the car as it approached the main gates. Sarah got out and went to pay the driver.
"That won't be necessary," the driver said, waving his hand. "Your company already took care of everything."
"Ms. Anderson." Sarah turned around to see who called her name. A tall human woman was standing near one of the guard station entrances. She was wearing the uniform of an embassy security officer. "There are some preliminary security precautions to take before we let you in. Please come with me." Sarah followed the woman into the station. The woman led Sarah to a corner of the room with a full-body scanner and table.
"I'm terribly sorry, but I will need to search your bag. I will also need you to step through the scanner," the woman continued. Sarah placed her bag on the table and walked through the scanning device. The officer reviewed the scan data on her desk terminal. After a few moments, she nodded.
"You're clean," the woman said before opening Sarah's bag. She gently emptied the contents of the bag on the table and began her investigation. She reviewed each item with care until she was fully satisfied.
"Thank you for your patience, Ms. Anderson. I will let Peter know that you are here." Sarah nodded and began to repack her bag. A secure door at the rear of the building slid open. An excited-looking man in human business attire entered the room. He stepped towards her and held out his hand. A human gesture of greeting.
"Ms. Anderson, welcome to the embassy." Sarah shook his hand. "That lab coat looks great on you," he continued.
"What?" Sarah asked, taken aback by the sudden compliment. Peter laughed nervously.
"Oh. What I mean is that it really brings out the color of your scales." The female security officer sighed and rolled her eyes before walking away.
"I'm sorry, is that weird to say?" Peter asked.
"And who are you exactly?" Sarah said.
"Yes, of course, introductions. I'm Peter. I work as an assistant here for Ambassador Douglass. She regrets that she cannot be here to greet you personally. There is never a slow day for an ambassador here!"
"So, why am I here? I was not given much information besides 'show up.'"
"Walk with me," Peter said, gesturing to the door that he entered from. He led her through the opposite end of the building and out onto the large complex mall, leading to the embassy structure. Either side of the mall was lined with various other structures. When they were alone, Peter continued.
"Right now, we are getting all of our water from a single source. Actually, our water systems just tap into the capitol water supply. This is all well and good, but we have been having some nutritional problems. You see, the composition of the water getting pumped into the capitol complex is perfect for the mineral and vitamin needs of dragons. Not so much for us. Most of us here in the embassy are either suffering from some sort of mineral and vitamin deficiency or over-abundance."
"Surely, you have some way of treating that," Sarah commented.
"Of course. In fact, we have been treating this problem for years. We have released recommended diets, but no one follows those. Instead, people usually wait until they start to get symptoms, then head to a medical facility to grab some supplements. The past administration was perfectly fine with that. Ambassador Douglass, however, is in charge of the embassy's health and wellness board now. She would rather just invest in our water infrastructure to address the problem instead of just treating the symptoms."
"Don't you have your own scientists for this?"
"Not really," Peter said. "I mean, we certainly have people here in the complex who could take over the project. However, we would much rather have someone already familiar with the city's infrastructure lead the project."
"Alright. So, why me in particular?" Sarah asked. Peter shrugged.
"You are fluent in English, you come from a renowned company that specializes in this type of thing..."
"I have a name that is easy for you to pronounce," Sarah added.
"Okay, I'll be honest with you, Sarah," Peter said with a sigh. "Your parents pulled some strings, and you met all of the requirements." Sarah swore loudly, causing a couple of staff members passing by to look at the two and turn around to walk to other way.
"Why can't those two just stay out of my business?" she hissed out. Peter didn't seem phased by her outburst.
"So, can we count on you to get the job done?" Peter asked. Sarah took a deep breath and sighed.
"Yeah, sure. Whatever."
"Great! I'm looking forward to working with you." Peter reached out to shake Sarah's hand again. "I'll see you tomorrow, and don't forget your sample kit!"
Copyright © 2021 by Victor Dimitroff
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a review.
First digital edition February 2021