Between Sessions 3 and 4

[Adminenkainen]

Hour-Man

April 26, 1940. Friday.
Appleton City.

The android from the future now calling himself Rex Tyler was back at work at Bannerman Plaza. The company, Bannerman Chemical, took up half the six-story building. Rex was one of 10 full-time chemists doing research & development in the building. Much of the work they were doing these days was developing new plastic resins; Rex and one other chemist, John Finch, were working on the same task: developing a cheaper polystyrene.

Rex was having an ethical dilemma. Time travel had scrambled much of Rex's knowledge of the future, but he had a vague awareness that polystyrene was considered bad in the future. So what should he do? Warn his boss, Mr. Bannerman? Try to figure out what was bad about polystyrene and fix it? Actively sabotage the research? Or just observe and see how things play out?

"What are you all deep in thought about?" John asked.

[dtspurrier]

Rex puts down his notebook and wipes his head. He says, " sorry john just going through these initial calculations. Wanna make sure if this is a good formula. I know the new way to go is plastic is because it is better then paper and not as dense as metal. Hopefully we don't have to make to many initial tests. I know our bosses are pushing to get this done. " While his is from the future Hour-man only gets glimpses of future events but not specific details. Maybe his programming prevents him with too much future knowledge so he doesn't get the idea of trying to change it.

[Adminenkainen]

"I wouldn't have thought you'd notice," John Finch said, sarcastically. "The work is all so easy for you..."

It was far from the first time that John had made some comment like that, like he was jealous of Rex.

Not that he needed to be. What they were working on was trying to get the polystyrene to be less brittle, without using more expensive ingredients, and Rex was as stumped as John was.

John crumpled up a sheet of paper and chucked it in the garbage can in the lab. Which was odd, because they weren't supposed to get rid of any of their notes.

[dtspurrier]

Rex gets up and pulls the paper out and says, " let me see that for a second I want to check one thing." Looking at the notes he says, " much as I hate to say this we might have to use chemical XY to fix the stability of the formula for this plastic resin. I know the boss wants to save money but if we use the AV formula the chances of cracks and brittle could damage the product. This is especially vital if the company starts to get more military or medical contracts that use this plastic. "

[Adminenkainen]

"Wait - what are you doing?" John Finch yelled. "You're going through the trash to look at my notes? Is that how you always seem to be one step ahead of me in development?" He tried to snatch the paper away from Rex.

[dtspurrier]

Rex moves away from John and replies, " look we are a team. If I was in this for myself I would have gone through this after hours or when you went on lunch break. Lets discuss this and when we bring this to the boss we will both take credit as a team."