A New Network

Sarah came into work a little earlier than she normally would, mainly to familiarise herself with the changes made to her workplace after the acquisition. The first thing she noticed was a change in the foyer, where there used to be a large open space it was now fenced off with a single path that led to the lifts. It appeared that Alistair already had plans to renovate the building.

In fact, the Eight Network had been housed in two tall towers that were connected by a bridge on the twelfth floor. The tower she worked in was where the publishers, journalists and all things associated with 'news' was located, this was 'Eight Minor'. The other tower, 'Eight Major' was where the entertainment division was located, such as people working on shows, whether it be filming, editing etc and on the top few floors were located certain executives, such as the CEO.

As Sarah waited for the lift, she heard a familiar voice calling out her name from behind. She turned around and was surprised to see her old friend Isabella. When Sarah first met her back when she was doing the interview, she already thought Isabella was top-class beauty, however over the past few years she had grown into an even more gorgeous woman. Some in the company even said if she entered the entertainment industry, she could rival Eveline. Which the bosses of the entertainment division have tried many times to get her to switch over to, however she had always firmly rejected every offer, saying she wanted to be a weather reporter. However, Sarah paid no mind to her colleagues' banter and instead had treated her friend in the same way as she always had.

Sarah smiled as she and Isabella hugged each other, after all she had not seen her for a few months now. In fact, Mark and David had supressed the news that Sarah had been in an accident and fallen into a coma. Instead they came up with a simple explanation that she had fallen seriously ill and had to have surgery and as a result would need to take some time off work to recuperate. With the help of Doctor Dave, they had managed to convince those in charge to grant Sarah leave.

"Oh, Sarah I heard you were sick. Was it that serious that you couldn't even reply to my messages?"

"Sorry, Izzie I was really sick and I only saw your messages about a week ago, after Gramps gave me my phone back. I figured it would be better to apologise to you in person rather than over the phone."

"Well, you could have at least let me know you were okay."

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I will make it up to you okay. How about we go get some drinks after work?"

"Your shout yeah?"

"Alright, alright. I'll let you know when I finish yeah?"

"Okay, see ya later."

Isabella got off on the seventh floor which handled all of the weather reporting teams. Sarah stayed in the lift as she waited for her floor. Her office was on the ninth floor, in fact the eighth to tenth floor, was all used by the journalist teams. When she first started she had been given a cubicle on the eighth floor and it had only been a year ago that she was given her own office.

She had been so happy then to hear she had been promoted and given the resources and opportunity to pursue her own stories, rather than work for a senior journalist.

Sarah walked towards her office and noticed that it was a lot quieter than usual, even though she

had come in earlier today, normally quite a few of her colleagues would already be at work. Some would have even stayed all night for all sorts of reasons, such as interviews in different time zones, being swamped with work or they were too lazy to go home.

The company actually had an entire two floors of rooms in Eight Major, that were available for employees that had to stay the night. Each employee was able to spend five days in these rooms for free each year. It seemed an enormous expense given they were fully catered and resembled a five-star experience. However, the company found it was better off with this policy than without, as they could use it to cut costs on accommodation for any guests and VIP's visiting the company.

Sarah had hardly ever used her allowance and instead chose to bunk up in her own office as it saved her the time required to travel back and forth. Sarah greeted a couple of her colleagues that were there and asked

"Hey, Gary, where is everyone? It's a lot quieter than usual?"

"Oh, hey Sarah your back. You must have missed the announcement. The new boss has given everyone two weeks paid leave or a lump sum payment, he said he wants to renovate some of the floors, and it would be easier if there were less people here. I'm in the middle of a big story so I just took the lump sum. Some were feeling a little burned out and others just wanted a couple weeks off, so the whole building's a lot emptier."

"Ahh, so that's why, makes a lot of sense now, thanks Gary. I won't keep bothering ya."

"Haha, no worries Sarah, hope your feeling better."

"Yeah I feel a lot better now, thanks Gary."

Sarah walked into her office and saw everything was exactly the same as she last left it. It seemed the cleaner had still come in as there was no build-up of dust on her table, she guessed it had something to do with Mark. She sat down and let out a sigh of comfort.

For the past week or so Sarah had been unable to access any of her work. First, she had been under the watchful eyes of her Grandfather, Brother and Dr Dave. As for the other reason, it appeared there had been a refresh of the work intranet since the acquisition by Alistair and she could no longer access her work email.

She had asked Mark about it and he said that she could only set up her new login details from her own work computer. So, she had been forced to wait until today before she could pick up her work again.

She opened up the internet browser and was greeted by an intranet assistant, it reminded her very much of the old 'Clippy' assistant that Microsoft had a long time ago. It introduced itself as Greg and was in the shape of a question mark. Sarah could not help but giggle a little bit at the design and name. She was curious as to who was behind this 'new' invention and concept.

She followed the prompts of Greg and was quickly able to navigate to a page that gave her the new login details for her work, such as the work email and intranet. They were of course temporary logins. She was first directed to creating a new password for her intranet account.

She then opened up her email and logged in and also created a new password. Sarah had never been someone that used a million different passwords for all of her different accounts. There once had been a phase where she made passwords with all manners of characters, symbols and cases.

However, she had grown lazier over the years and instead used a few different words and just added a number to the beginning or the end. After all, she figured if someone was able to hack one of her accounts, what was stopping them from hacking the rest, so why even bother making things more difficult for yourself.

After she created a new password for her email, Greg said his goodbyes and disappeared. She felt a little sad at the little guy's farewell but that was interrupted by her eyes widening in surprise as she noticed she had over two hundred unread emails.

Sarah sighed and began to work her way through the emails. Most of them were just her friends, colleagues, associates and contacts either interstate or overseas asking for help. Some were asking about her health, whilst a small minority were spam that had somehow gotten through the filter.

However, there was one particular email that caught her eye. It was titled 'Re:Elaine&Kate'.