3/5/203X
Wow! I’ve just started my first real week at Truelab. Lots to write about, as I’ve just started with my computer at my cubicle.
My first week being in the facility was mostly training but the entire sunday was dedicated to tour and orientation. This place is HUGE, clearly this place is well funded despite the niche research subjects.
The orientation was long but informative. Honestly the amount of info at once was overwhelming! After orientation we (group of 3 other new recruits) were all given a handbook with a map and a written list of all the protocols to familiarize ourselves with which was helpful. It was actually at this orientation where we were encouraged to write journals about our times here.
We all had got lunch together at the food court (I had a burger and coffee; sounds weird but it’s what kept me alive in college). There wasn’t a whole lot of people in the food court but it’s the weekend, so that’s normal probably.
Then it was onto the tour, we visited all the common areas, the break rooms, meeting rooms, offices, and pretty much everywhere us newbies had clearance for and a few more places we wouldn’t get clearance to for a while. There’s a keycard system for the doors around the facility, and we start out with low level cards. The elevator even has a card swipe so I assume certain floors are locked?
Monday onward we started learning the ropes on using the tech, and using it to record data in the specific ways they want it.
Starting out, our jobs are to shadow certain experiments and log the data. It’s not inherently super exciting, but getting to know who I’m going to be working with in the future is nice.
I should be working with: Dr. Hayes and Dr. Lancaster for the next while, but I don’t know what we’ll be working on.
On Friday there was a small welcome party for me and the other newcomers. Grocery store cake with the good frosting! And donuts. And coffee. The founder and his daughter were there(!!) Apparently the company is named after her. True is an interesting name.
No work on Saturday that time, but I work the weekends until I get promoted. Aside from a few higher ups It’s our job to monitor certain projects while others are out.
So far, the office and lab culture isn’t stressful and the coffee is EXCELLENT.
3/6/203X
I completely forgot to write about the project I was even tasked with!!! I can’t afford to be scatterbrained like this in the field I'm in.
The group I'm in with Dr.Hayes and Dr.Lancaster is called the Pathways Project. They have been working to find ways to stabilize paths between parallel realities. Crazy to think that we’re this far! You hear about advances in physics and “wormholes” in the news, but I guess it’s a bit confidential that the tech to stabilize travel is under way. Most people don’t even know it’s possible at all. But they’ve been working on it here for years now, and the leaps they’ve made in the past few months are FASCINATING.
Currently we’ve been running tests on the stability windows of the portals opened using the Gateway. As of writing the current record is 0.35 seconds. This is huge, I never cease to feel proud of modern technology. Only 7 years ago the first scientifically detected portals were discovered. (Here at Truelabs even!) And even then they didn’t even open, they were just tiny thin spots in our reality.
Now not only can they be detected with 97% accuracy, they can be held in place and even opened. To think we’re so close to what the ancients wrote about… what blockbuster after blockbuster pondered on… now REAL. But enough rambling, my break is over soon.
3/7/203X
Not too much different in work today. Busy busy. I drank too much coffee and now I feel kinda faint…
I was keeping up with my fellow orientationers and Sophia mentioned that the crew she had been assigned to, had been dissecting some aquatic creature, but she had no idea what it was. Apparently, the “thing” had been discovered in a dried out lake bed(thanks global warming >:/), and nobody was really sure of what it was, but someone recognized it as being similar to another beached mystery creature found 10 years ago. VERY strange, if not kind of scary in a way. It’s not too big though, it’s only about 90cm long and weighs about the same as a dog of the same size.
I know this place studies “scientific oddities” but I didn’t know that included sea monsters. ha-ha
Weird.
3/8/203X
I tried to microwave something in the breakroom and it blew up? Like it wasn’t even eggs or anything that usually can’t be microwaved it just exploded anyway??
3/9/203X
The microwave thing happened again to someone else. I’ve been told it’s been happening since before I was here… Glad to know I didn’t do it? But now it’s off limits until they get a new microwave, because this was the 6th time.
Anyway, research is good, the wormhole detector is getting better at detecting the real subtle ones. Dr.Lancaster suggested calling it something else, and said that the name was “dumb” and “too Hollywood”.
I thought it sounded kind of cool, but whatever. We’re holding a poll to change the name on Saturday.
3/10/203X
Casual Friday! I treated myself to another burger from the food court.
Every time we reopen the portal in the testing chamber, I wondered how they got the rift there. So I asked Dr.Hayes about it and she sighed at me?
She must have saw I was confused, so then she elaborated that the labs here were built specifically for the Pathways project. After the wormhole detector (still yet to be renamed) was deemed reliable enough, it was used to dowse for a sizeable enough rift to build a new lab around. The main test chamber is the epicenter.
Dr.Hayes had scolded me somewhat for not "using my critical thinking", and that I "should know that rifts can't be made on their own, because they're natural."
TrueLabs is big enough to source a lot of internal work, making it so sometimes new discoveries are slow to get outside unless something media worthy happens. Hell, in college we were taught that a lot of this stuff was still theory, so maybe the "outside" world is still behind, but how would I know this without being on the "inside" already?
3/11/203X
Just Saturday. Nothing too interesting, but I feel off, and I can’t really place it. No work tomorrow at least.
Almost forgot to mention it, but we renamed the wormhole detector to the “Pathway Locator”. Not too different, just branded better.
3/13/203X
That “off” feeling hadn't left me all weekend, and It's starting to make me feel sicky! Otherwise, today has been a productive day of testing and whatnot.
I spoke with Sophia again today over coffee.
Her team is looking into another bizarre creature. They've been monitoring this strange horned lizard they found in a cave up north. Even though it looks like a lizard, she described it as "Having a level of intelligence that's both fascinating and concerning." and that they've caught it using primitive tools.
Personally I find this fairly disturbing, so I questioned her a bit more on the matter. Even though the thing uses tools, it's also extremely skittish, which I guess you wouldn't expect from something this far up on the evolutionary ladder? which, once again, is fairly disturbing for a multitude of reasons.
They tried probing around the cave using a small ai assisted rover-like robot, but couldn't find any immediate animal threats. It's probably reacting to some instinctive sense of danger, but the fact that, (from what she told me) it seemed like it was trying to avoid being on tape really didn't set my stomach right.
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