The Rising Sun

　　***2112***
　　***May 25th***
　　Gongzi stared at the rising sun out of the window. She remembered her grandma used to tell her that the rising sun means hope and new born. When her grandma was still a girl, she liked to watch the sun rising with his boyfriend, who was Gongzi’s grandpa. Regardless, Gongzi rarely watched sun rising because she liked to get up late.
　　But on May 25th in 2106, it is a special day. She got called up at 5a.m. and came to this building to get her ninth assignment which ordered from her upper branch.
　　She kneaded her eyes, tried to be awake and stepped into a white room.
　　A man with black coat was waiting, he got a load of her and stood up. His voice went through the air: “Code 033”
　　“I’m here.” Gongzi answered quickly.
　　“New assignment for you, here’s your card.” the man looked tired of saying any extra word. He passed her a red card.
　　Gongzi looked at the red card, she was a little surprised.
　　There were three kinds of cards in her secret service program for the nation---white, blue and red. White cards were the easiest ones for collecting high level informations or doing simple jobs such as talking to a professional group and making the deals. Blue cards were harder than white cards, designed mainly for national hackers to steal information from other countries or proper companies. Red cards were the hardest ones, it's not about the difficulties of the accomplishment, but the risk the jobs took.
　　Gongzi had never received any of the red cards, she didn’t even know much information about them. The jobs were kept so secretly that even the normal secret service workers didn’t know about the red cards' existence. Those secret information that she knew were from her professor, Elena.
　　She decided to ask the man who gave her the card, but when she rose her head, she found he was already gone.
　　Gongzi made a sign. She had been doing this jobs for three years, which was not long and had few experience. In the past three years, she had only done two blue-card assignments and six white-card assignments. It was her first time to receive a red-card assignment and she was wondering why she received this kind of assignment this time.
　　She went back to her own working room---a room with white walls, white desks, white chairs and white bright lights. Everything was white, but her working clothes were all black, she knew that there was a video camera in the right top corner and it was very easy to watch her actions since her color is so dominant by the white background.
　　She was tired, so she sat down comfortably, eyes half-closed and called Elena.
　　“Gongzi? Anything wrong?” an amiable voice came out from the other side of the phone.
　　“I’ll explain to you, can you be here in five minutes? I’m in my workroom.”
　　“Yeah sure, see ya later.”
　　“See ya.”
　　She remembered the first time she came here. She just graduated from a small college and had never known about this place. She came here to work because her father was resigned and she had to undertake the jobs from him, also to keep the secret. She was too scared to speak in the beginning and failed both of her first two assignments. Unfortunately, she lost her three months salary which made her heart break...
　　When Elena stepped in the room, she saw Gongzi sat in a white chair like a lazy cat. She was busy all the time and Gongzi rarely called her except she had really important things like new assignments.
　　Gongzi heard a sound and saw Elena walking towards her workroom. Elena was a beautiful woman, she had a long and pretty curly black hair that always shines, her lips were red like fresh cherries and her eyes were dark and sharp. Elena had much more experience than her and received many red-card assignments. The nice thing about the assignments were they could take two weeks off after every completion of an red-card assignment.
　　“What? You got a red card??” Elena almost jumped when she heard about it, her mouth was half opened and seconds later she laughed hardly and tapped on Gongzi’s shoulder heavily, “Congratulation!”
　　“Calm down...” Gongzi signed. She knew she could receive a great amount of money and honor if she completes the assignment, but the problem was she didn’t even know what the assignment was about and the risk she would have to take, so she called Elena for advices.
　　Several minutes later, Elena recovered from the big excitement. Gongzi was her employee and best friend, she was glad that Gongzi received a quest from the high levelers.
　　“Ok, let me tell you about the red-card assignments.” Elena’s attitude changed dramatically, Gongzi also changed her sitting posture and listened carefully.
　　“One of the top secrets of these assignments is time traveling.” Elena stood up and walked toward the door, “Follow me.”
　　Time traveling? Thousands of questions rose up in Gongzi’s minds, but she kept her mouth shut and continued listening. She knew Ling would tell her all about it.
　　“Five years ago, the scientists in our country invented a machine that could go through the time. To avoid the mess of history, this became a top secret after its invention. Five people died trying to go through the time machine, but in the recent years, the machine worked well and safe, but there is still .01% probability of error, which still a big problem. In the five years, 115 people traveled successful and 1 of them got lost in the history.” Elena signed, “I only traveled twice.”
　　“Give me your card.” Elena said.
　　Gongzi passed her the red card.
　　Elena stepped toward a computer and put the card into it. Immediately, the computer started to read the codes from the card and recognize them into a list of description.
　　“Assignment color: red
　　Description: travel to 1989 and take pictures of Tiananmen Square event
　　Partner: Code 068
　　Machine #: 03
　　Date: May 3th, 1989
　　Location: Beijing
　　…”
　　Gongzi looked at the description carefully, and all of them can be simplified to a sentence “traveled to Beijing and take photos of Tiananmen Square event with a partner.” Then she realized why the program chose her. Her grandparents joined this movement before and she heard about it when she was little. She could speak Chinese frequently and know some history events.
　　As a friend, Elena realized the reason too. She smiled and said, “It doesn’t look like a hard assignment, and you have a partner to help you. If it’s not about time travelling, it will probably become the white-card assignment. You are lucky.”
　　Gongzi nodded her head, “The only risk is the time-traveling machine now.”
　　“Don’t worry about it,you’ll be fine.” Elena comforted her.
　　Gongzi smiled back, she was glad to have a friend like Elena.
　　Someone nodded the door.
　　“Come in please.” Gongzi and Elena both wondered who was coming at this time.
　　A girl came in, she looked nervous and shy, “I’m looking for code 033.”
　　Gongzi looked at the girl. The girl had big eyes and amiable smile, she was definitely attractive and pretty.
　　Gongzi stood up and walked toward her, “Hey, I’m code 033. I’m Gongzi.”
　　They shook hands and the girl smiled her back, “I’m your partner for the new assignment, code 068. I’m Jennifer.”
　　Elena’s phone rang and she told them she had to leave and see them five days later.
　　Gongzi and Jennifer sat down and they started to talk about the assignment. They soon became very good friends. Surprisingly, Gongzi found Jennifer was her best friend in elementary school, they started to talk more and the conversation seem would be never ended.
　　“it’s an easy assignment, don’t worry about it.” Gongzi told Jennifer, who was still worried about the assignment and it was her first red-card assignment, too.
　　Jennifer nodded her head, then they said goodbye to each other since it was late.
　　Gongzi prepared carefully during the five days. She bought a high quality camera and signed for time machine 03 in the machine lab. She told her parents she had to travel to another country for a long time.
　　Five days passed quickly, Gongzi and Jennifer showed up in the lab at the same time.
　　They saw a huge machine that shaped like a cylinder, the wall was made with transparent glass and there was a door on the wall. A control panel was connected with it.
　　A scientist wore a white cloth and a pair of black glasses. They called him Dr. Feng. He simply introduced how did the time machine work: “Morning ladies. I heard that it’s your first time using time machine. 03 is a very nice one because people used it previously are all safe and have completed their assignments successfully. What you only need to do is taking your stuffs, wearing the watch and earrings that I’ll give you later, and then step into it.”
　　He passed them two watches, “Except telling you the time, there are two little buttons on the side of it. The first button is to change signals for reporting to the station and communicate with your partner; the second one is for coming back. Remember, don’t lose them, or you’ll never come back.”
　　Gongzi and Jennifer put them on.
　　Then Dr. Feng gave each of them a pair of earrings, “These earring are used to save informations. You’ll find how does it work. Don’t lose them neither.” He stared at them and said: “You two are partners, so you should work together whenever it is. You should keep getting in touch and report what happens each day to me. I’ll look after you.”
　　Gongzi and Jennifer smiled at each other to give out comforts. Two minutes later, they stepped into the big cylinder.
　　A strong light shined from the top, they closed their eyes and felt dizzy for a while.
　　When she opened her eyes again, everything became different.

《月******）》
搞笑，生趣