Saving private Amy..chapter 2

The Application.

Click. Send....

Amy looked at the computer screen. Staring more than looking, lost in her thoughts..

She was thinking why had she just sent that.
"Research," She told herself.
She wasn't sure exactly why, but she knew it wasn't just research, not deep down.
She was sure of one thing. An unexplained 'butterflies' feeling in her stomach.
Excitement? fear?
"None of the above" She said to herself, mentally scribbling them off the list.

Not much scared or excited Amy.

The day before..
The application was sent.

'What the hell is this?' She thought.
It wasn't like any application form she had seen before.
She had no intention of applying for anything of course, she was internet savvy.
She didn't need anything for starters.
Certainly not a job, nor a self help course , or whatever, it was selling.

She read through the application form, trying to gauge what it was offering. Looking for the angle.
There was always an angle, she new that.

... and just like the advertisement in the magazine that brought her here, the questionnaire made no sense.

How do you apply for a position that will cost you 4000 dollars a month, for starters?
A position that you can apply for on a monthly basis, if you so wish? What was this?
It was quite a bit longer than your standard online application form, requiring detailed type answers to many of their questions.

...And something else that she found very peculiar about this site..

Unique, actually.

It never asked for her name.
Or an address.
Or social security number.
Or bank details.
Nothing in fact, of the kind of details that would actually inform the website owners who the person was.
Strange.
In the internet age, information was everything, and they didn't even try to ask for it...

The questionnaire asked for different kinds of input than is standard on applications...
Amy browsed down through the entire document, trying to get a feel for what they wanted....

At the end of the form, she noticed a small link saying 'testimonials'.
Ah! at last – some standard marketing on this very non standard website.
'You can't sell without testimonials', was the internet advertising mantra.

She felt on more familiar ground now...
'Let's see the quality of these so called testimonials', she thought.
It was a good indicator of the time and money the company had invested in creating their image.
She clicked the link...

She didn't expect what she saw.

No testimonials. Only a message. And a small box titled 'allowed'.

The message was in capital letters, large fonts , with no attempt at style. No graphics or colors. It was purely function.

The message said.

Access to testimonial pages is only available to applicants that have passed the first round of the application process.”

Pleas enter your 'allowed' 6 digit number that we have sent you.

You will find it at the bottom the email that we sent .

_ 'You passed the first part of the application process."_

...And then in smaller fonts, at the bottom of the page...
This will be called your 'allowed' number.
We encourage all new applicants to contact as many testimonial participants as possible, before continuing with the application process.

What? Contact testimonial participants?
What was this?
You never give contact details to people giving testimonials.
95% of them are fake, to begin with.

This was interesting.
A new marketing angle?

A fresh strategy perhaps? One that the jaded internet marketing world was looking for?
She needed to know more about how all this worked.

She clicked back to the top of the application form, and started typing..

Section 1

1/ Why are you here right now, filling in this form?
2/ What day is it?
3/ What time is it?
4/ Why are still here, filling in this form?

Section 2

1/ What is your favorite meal, and why?

....and so on, for many pages.
No questions were particularly probing, or of a personal nature,but they did come from strange angles, catching the reader off guard. Making the reader think about the answers.
This was unique.
She couldn't work out what they were looking to gain from these questions...

Completed, she left it there, just sitting. She could send it later.

She still had questions buzzing around in her head about all this...
How exclusive was this position that cost you $4000 a month?

It seemed more and more like they were helping themselves to a lot of your money, somehow. She just couldn't see the angle -as yet.
Was this some kind of bizarre 'cult' thing' She thought. I didn't feel 'cultish', she thought to herself.
"But then again what does cultist feel like?," She laughed to herself.

They never wanted any financial details - or anything like that...
Not even the most amateur scam website would omit to requiring those details.

She had an uncomfortable feeling about this website, but just couldn't pin down what it was...
This, she found interesting..
It was a was the first thing that had piqued her interest for a long time in the internet world.
It was different.
And different was interesting, in this very predictable world of social etiquette and mind numbing interactions with people, to which she still quite couldn't work out why she even bothered. Talk about wasting time...

Whatever this was, it was _ infinitely more engaging than the charade of going out for drinks with her so called friends on a Friday night.
Calling her 'friends' friends, was a travesty of the word of course, as she defined it.
Assassins with a smile was far more apt.

...And a lot more real than the charade of meeting a guy, and spending the next few hours or days dancing around each other talking and acting ridiculously with other, never being yourself, just to get naked with a stranger.
She hated games like this.
It bored her. It wasn't her.

But insecurity, and the need of social approval from her peers insisted that she played their games. Occasionally.
Her libido also insisted that she had to play these games. Now and again.
"So boring," She thought to herself, as she walked into her bedroom, undressing.
Leaving the glowing computer screen to keep guard until tomorrow.

She slept.
The morning after, while breakfasting on fresh croissants and orange juice, she hit the 'send' button.
She wondered how long the response would be - if there would be any response.

She wondered what happens next in this process.
If she had 'succeeded' in her application for something she had no interest in applying for?

Later.......

As she took off her heels coming through the door, later on that day.
She saw a blinking icon on the computer screen across the room.

She knew it was a 'received' email.
From an email address that she had opened specifically, just for this...this...for this stupid application thing..

Sitting down, she clicked 'open...'