You're A Scientist! (Make Your Own Mistakes: Volume 1)

by Phil Edwards

  Just as you’re about to begin, you hear a burbling noise from behind a door labeled Top Secret: Ignore That Burbling Noise. It looks like your decision just got a little more difficult.

  To continue counting dirt, tap here.

  To go through the mysterious and exciting door, tap here.

  Physics is your choice. Well, at least you won’t have to learn any math!

  You bound down the hallway and sigh, expecting nerds straight out of central casting (which is plausible, since the lab only uses models and actors in the employee brochures). But when you turn the corner, you see two incredibly fit and beautiful people playing hacky sack.

  “Sup bro,” the man says. “My name’s Devin.”

  “And I’m Emma,” the woman says. “We’re twins, in case you were going to ask.”

  They both laugh heartily and you feel compelled to join them. They beckon to you to play hacky sack, and you find yourself in the circle with them, enveloped by their cool, easy-going personalities and performing surprisingly well at a game you’ve only tripped through before. The room smells of clean, good sweat.

  “This is great,” you shout, wiping your forehead with the sleeve of your lab coat. “I had no idea.”

  “On Thursdays,” Devin says, “we like to play Ultimate Frisbee and then have a few brews.”

  “We’ve got a great crew,” Emma says, kicking the hacky sack by herself. “Physics can be fun.”

  “I love you both!” you shout. “I never would have thought physics was so chill!”

  Just as you finish hacking an amazing sack, a buzzer goes off.

  “Back to work,” the twins say at the same time. You follow them into the next room. There’s a giant chalkboard in the center, filled with equations and nothing else. Both twins have put on glasses and lab coats, and they’re sitting at desks where large computer monitors obscure their faces.

  Emma and Devin both have strict rules about the chalk, but you can’t help but ask: How do we know it's inedible if we don’t try?

  “It’s time to get to work,” Devin says, his voice suddenly higher and more nasal. Emma snorts.

  “Unless you don’t know advanced calculus, of course.” They both laugh loudly and squirt milk out of their noses, even though you’re pretty certain they weren’t drinking milk. Emma hits the table. “As if you wouldn’t know advanced calculus!”

  You pull up a seat next to her.

  “Is that like when you make the calculator spell funny words upside down?”

  She looks at her brother and pushes her glasses up her nose.

  “Looks like we have another test subject.”

  “Indeed. What a tragedy for someone who wasn’t half bad at hacky sack.”

  “What are you talking about?” you ask and frantically grab the calculator. “Do you want to see the words I can spell? I just want to see Beatram again.”

  “You decide, test subject,” Devin says coolly. “Coil or Box? We need to get to work.”

  To choose the coil, tap here.

  To choose the box, tap here.

  Right away, you suit up: you’re going to be an astronaut. Dr. Masterson waves his hand toward a wall.

  “As you know, I’m fascinated by the presence of chocolate in the universe, despite what my detractors may say. That’s why I need you to complete a very important mission.”

  Your spacesuit muffles your voice, but you speak clearly and with confidence.

  “I’ll do what I have to in order to advance humanity.”

  “You may have heard of astronaut ice cream. I need you to test astronaut frozen yogurt.”

  You can’t believe what you’re hearing, but Dr. Masterson presses a button and raises a door. Behind it, you see machine after machine for dispensing frozen yogurt.

  “Just think about it!” Masterson shouts. “Most yogurt places require you to pay by the pound, right?”

  “I think I see where you’re going with this.”

  “If you pay by the pound, that means gravity determines the cost of your frozen yogurt, of your toppings, of everything. What if we sent frozen yogurt to space? In a weightless environment, all the yogurt would be free!”

  You realize that Masterson is destined to win a FroYo Nobel. He smiles at you as you toddle over in your bulky spacesuit.

  “This is just to test the principles. And to do that, you must eat whatever you want.”

  You wander to the frozen yogurt machine and fill your bowl with chocolate, peanut butter, tangy strawberry sweetness, and every other flavor you can imagine. Masterson is impressed with your work, and you leave with a full belly and a better understanding of frozen yogurt’s final frontier.

  When you die seventy years later, the local mortician says your small intestine was still full of sprinkles.

  THE END

  Astronomy seems like the safer choice. After all, what could go wrong looking at some stars through a big stick?

  “It’s called a telescope,” Dr. Masterson says. He’s a bit of a snob, it turns out.

  He leads you to the giant telescope in the lab, and it’s like a football field, if a football field were significantly smaller and shaped like a telescope. Masterson gestures toward a tiny, uncomfortable-looking chair.

  “Get going. You’re in charge of finding any abnormalities.”

  “But what if I don’t know what’s normal?”

  He looks up from the candy bar he’s just opened.

  “Just do the work and don’t complain. I have a grant application to write, and the committee is already skeptical about my thoughts on nougat.”

  Masterson leaves the room and you press your eye against the telescope. After a couple of minutes, you decide to open your eye as well.

  What wonders you see through the magic lens! What beauty! What miraculous glimpses of the universe, unfolding the story of existence in colors and shapes you’ve never seen before! After about five minutes, you fall asleep with the telescope pressed against your eyeball.

  When you wake up, you have a serious case of what astronomers call “telescope eye.” It looks like your eye was replaced by a peach pit.

  Woozily, you wander the lab and see a stack of books in the corner. You’re not much of a book type (or a corner type, to be honest), but you decide to explore.

  You’re glad you did, and two books intrigue you so much that you decide to actually open one of them, right after a quick nap.

  A few hours later, you arise and realize you shouldn’t have fallen asleep on the telescope again, since both your eyes look like peach pits. But now it’s time to do some reading.

  The books are covered in dust, so you carefully blow it all off, delicately licking the spots you miss. What wonders lie within? What mysteries will these books hold? Will they use lots of words you don’t understand, or only a few words you don’t understand? There’s only one way to find out.

  First, you take a third nap.

  But then you find out!

  To open Mars: Is It Really Red?, tap here.

  To open Black Holes: Not As Bad As They Sound!, tap here.

  Plants! You’ve always loved plants (which is one of the reasons you refuse to eat vegetables), and now you’ll get a chance to study them for real. The stern scientist nods and goes off to her guinea pig sedation chambers. She shouts back before she leaves.

  “Be careful, that is all I ask. I’ve lost three interns this month.”

  “What do I need to be careful about?”

  She points to the center of the lab and slams the door shut.

  You don’t understand the problem. It looks like a harmless Venus fly trap sitting on a table, waiting for a little attention. Next to it, you see some documentation that explains a little more. Apparently, it’s been genetically modified using soy, the cerebral input of a teenage girl, and a few growth hormones that were lying around. The top of the chart reads Passive-Aggressive Fly Trap.

  You laugh and give the fly trap a little water. Of all the things to be worrie
d about, a fly trap isn’t one of them. You watch as a tiny fly orbits into the mouth of the beast. But when you turn away to grab a snack, you notice something on the table.

  It’s a coupon for a free workout, and below it is a note:

  Thought you might like this!-PAFT.

  What a nice gesture! You pocket the note and get back to scouting out the best place for a nap. A tiny scientist scurries into the fly trap’s mouth. Suddenly, you see another item on the desk. It’s a scale.

  That’s...thoughtful. You smile and shake your head. Does the PAFT think you’re fat? Is that it?

  No, it just wants you to be healthy, that’s all.

  You laugh loudly, but when you look back, the PAFT has a scale on the table next to it.

  It couldn’t hurt to weigh yourself. You step onto the scale and, as you do, something grabs your leg.

  The PAFT eats you alive. It finds you quite filling.

  The lab mortician is eaten before he can find your body.

  THE END

  Animal biology is the way to go. When you think about it, you can name tons of amazing animals: tigers, those tigers with spots, girl tigers, baby tigers—the animal kingdom is endless. You tell the stern scientist your choice and she nods.

  “Excellent. And you already are well-acquainted with entomology, thanks to the myrmecology accident.”

  You decide to share your own scientific insights.

  “Sometimes, I get glue in my nose from smelling it too much.”

  “I was talking about the ants. The ‘tiny scientists’ that were crawling on you. Remember those animals?”

  It’s a little embarrassing to have to explain basic science to your boss.

  “I’m sorry, but those definitely weren’t tigers.”

  It’s sad to watch her realize her mistake, and she must be frustrated that a simple beaker cleaner could correct her so easily! She continues her instructions.

  “You have some choices. You can work with Cacao, our gorilla, Algeria, our lab mouse, or you can try genetic engineering.”

  “What about animals? Listen, I’m fine with a kind of wimpy tiger, if that’s all you have.”

  She stares and waits for you to choose.

  To choose the gorilla, tap here.

  To choose the mouse, tap here.

  To choose genetic engineering, tap here.

  The scientist leaves and you’re forced to peruse the baking soda folder, but you’re quickly disappointed. Instead of baking soda, it’s all about something called sodium bicarbonate. On the top, there’s a cryptic note about NaCO3.

  Perhaps it’s an ancient code. You try to decipher it, writing your notes on your hand.

  Na=No? No, I don’t know how to make baking soda?

  H=Heck? Is it some sort of threat?

  CO3=Who is Cothree? And why is he trying to stop me from making baking soda?

  You gasp aloud.

  “Cothree is behind the baking soda conspiracy. And he’ll do anything to keep going—even kidnap Beatram!”

  It’s all too obvious—you have to ditch this bisodate carbium, or whatever it is, and find Beatram before it’s too late. But how can you find someone so good at concealing his own identity?

  You have to hunt down Cothree to get back Beatram and the baking soda. You may be inspired, but you have to make a choice: do you chase after the short bespectacled scientist and see where he went? Or do you search the lab for more clues?

  To follow the scientist and see where he went, tap here.

  To search the laboratory for more clues, tap here.

  You can’t put a finger on why, but something about Explosive Poison? sounds like a good idea. A few tiny scientists scurry off the folder as you open it.

  The first page reads:

  EXPLOSIVE POISON?

  You flip to the second page.

  TEST SUBJECT A

  He exploded when he drank from the flask, but he never said he was poisoned.

  TEST SUBJECT B

  He was definitely poisoned, did not explode.

  RESULTS INCONCLUSIVE

  You’re just a humble beaker cleaner, but one thing is obvious: a conclusion could help you get Beatram’s porous body back into your hands.

  The folder contains a few more instructions about how to proceed (after a few waivers and other legal disclaimers that you sign and have notarized). But the notary flees before you can ask her what to do next.

  The following page has blank spaces for further animal and human tests. For once, you feel like you’re doing science!

  But you have to start the test to continue.

  To initiate human tests of the chemical, tap here.

  To pursue animal tests of the chemical, tap here.

  By the time you reach five CDUs, you feel like you’ve already been counting for too long. Even worse, it turns out that the lab has a major abacus shortage. For a while, you try to keep track of CDUs using the pennies you have on hand, but you only have a few hundred to work with.

  Around the four hundredth CDU, you stumble on something that feels completely different. It’s not a piece of dirt, that’s for sure. You extract it from the pile and can identify it by its size and shape: it’s a femur. A gigantic femur.

  You realize you’ve found a fossil, a record of something that lived and died millennia before you were even born. You can’t help but wonder: did this strange creature have the same desires as animals do today? Was it able to think, or was it completely igneous of higher things? Does the lab have a set policy on vacation time and holidays, including the now-controversial Columbus Day?

  For a moment, you think these wonders will occupy you for just a moment between counting CDUs. But you notice a warning in your instruction booklet, printed in bold.

  IF YOU FIND ANY DINOSAUR CLAVICLES, REPORT TO ROOM 301 IMMEDIATELY.

  You shrug and start to close the folder, but then you see a line beneath it.

  SAME GOES FOR FEMURS

  It feels like there’s a rock in your throat, even though you’ve only accidentally swallowed a few pebbles. You’re no longer just a lowly beaker cleaner or CDU counter—now you’re a person carrying a femur to another room!

  It takes you a while to find room 301 due to some of the counting issues (you also left your pennies back in the lab). But eventually you make your way to a large door that you use the femur to pry open.

  You see the scientist who mentored you before, his napkin bandana almost completely soaked through with perspiration. But even though he’s a familiar face, you’re drawn to the man standing next to him. He has a thick white beard and wears spectacles and khaki. His voice booms.

  “Welcome to Cretaceous Amusement Facility!”

  You thought room 301 was just another room in the cavernous laboratory, but it turns out to be an exit to a large and lush jungle space. Signs hang overhead and scientists, both tiny and normal-sized, run about the large field. In the distance, you can hear a roar.

  “That’s an airplane,” the bearded man says. “But we also have dinosaurs here.”

  “Wait. Dinosaurs? Like in Jurassic Park?”

  Out of nowhere, a man in a loose grey suit appears and whispers into the bearded man’s ear. The bearded man smiles uncomfortably.

  “Please, for legal reasons, we prefer you not mention the JP film. We’ve already had quite a few legal issues due to my uncanny resemblance to Richard Attenborough.”

  “Oh,” you say, “he was that guy in Independence Day, right?”

  “No, no. That’s Jeff Goldblum. Love Goldblum. I’m a huge Goldbug. Have you seen him lately? He looks great for his age.”

  “So wait, who’s Attenborough?”

  “He’s the guy that looked like me. The crazy old man who started the park and it turned out to be a disaster. He’s a real role model, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my appearance was inspired by him.”

  The man in the suit shakes his head as the bearded man continues.

  “We’re getting off
track here. The point is that you’ve reached Cretaceous Amusement Facility. Though we’re seeing if Six Flags wants to do something, so it might turn into Six Flags Over Cretaceous Mesa, or something like that. Yes, Robert, I know I’m not supposed to mention ongoing negotiations, but it’s very exciting.”

  It’s all so much to take in, and you stumble over your words.

  “Six Flags? Really? I feel like this is at least Busch Gardens level, if not Disney. Don’t you think Six Flags is kind of trashy?”

  The man in the suit looks very unhappy, but the bearded man presses on.

  “As you know, lawyers slightly outnumber scientists at our lab, so mine has informed me to proceed with caution. The point is, we’re very glad you brought that femur to us. We will have some miraculous uses for it.”

  “What was your name again?”

  “Um, John Hammond.”

  The man in the suit looks at a clipboard and nods, but you recognize it from somewhere.

  “John Hammond? Isn’t that the name of the guy in the movie?”

  “Listen, it’s legally my name.” He picks at his beard and smiles. “Was I born with it? No. Did I change it a few years ago, after my wife divorced me because of my obsession? Maybe. But is it my name now, legally speaking? Yes. It’s really just a coincidence.”

  “It’s a coincidence that you started a dinosaur park and changed your name to the name of the guy in the movie about a dinosaur park?”

  The man in the suit whispers in Hammond’s ear.

  “Coincidence,” he says. “Now let’s get a look at that femur. But first, I have a few more thoughts about Mr. Goldblum.”

  You’re glad to hand the femur to him, since it’s incredibly heavy and, at some point during his description of the vibrant community of Goldbugs, you drop it on the ground. Hammond eyes it with keen interest while stroking his beard or, when his hands are full, letting the lawyer stroke his beard for him.