He was Alex, or Alexanders depending on if a little girl with blonde hair was nearby. For some, he was a laid-back scientist who shouldn’t don a white lab coat. For others, he was an enigma. Someone that didn’t quite fit in the setting, but was still around for some forsaken reason.

Then again for others... He was a dictator. The evil last boss (According to a Lab 2 employee) who demanded work to be done in time and to have all where it should be, no matter if such places made no sense at all….

Alexanders was a blonde man, he didn't look to be over thirty years old, his sky blue eyes still looked full of life and his face had an eternal smirk like the cat who just ate the canary. He never dressed in formal clothing, most of the time you could see him running around in cargo jeans or shorts with a t-shirt, and while the color of said t-shirt would vary with the day. Something would always be the same, the emblem of a bird on it was always there, no one knew what it meant nor why it was so important that the blonde had it constantly on himself, most though nothing of it, another weird quirk of the blonde manchild they would think. That made it even funnier to Alexanders though.

But that was of little importance.

“Are you sure that it's fine to give away so many slots on the priority list?” asked a pig that for some reason was dressed in a tuxedo to the blonde man. “Of course it's fine, the priority list is a sham anyway.” Said the blonde youth while drinking from a looking expensive wine cup….He wasn’t drinking wine though…“And you should do something about your appearance, some days I doubt if you are still human.” said one of the only two persons in this base who would even think of drinking mango juice from a wine cup.

“I try to do exercise every night before going to sleep, but it's in my genes boss….Nothing I can do about it…” said the ‘Being’ that is slowly but surely turning into either a pig or an Orc. But that is of no importance right now “Whatever you say, also I’m not your boss. I am Alex from Lab 2. If not for all those cowards I wouldn’t even use the title of ‘Professor’ either, but no one wants to go into the site….So many squirmy cowards in these black sites man…” said the blonde while standing from his chair.

It was two hours ago when the last reunion ended and only the blonde and the pig remained in the room. Both Professors Eversoul & Kellet left when their slots on the ‘Priority List’ were guaranteed. And Lab 3’s herald left not long after he was assured for the fourth time that they would get at least half of their promised slots. The only one that didn’t care for slots was Lab’s 2 Alexander. For he was among the very few who knew the reality of their current situation.

And he wasn’t happy about it “Man…wish they didn’t open that god dammed box in the first place…” mumbled to himself Alexander, but the pig thought it was part of the conversation so he answered “Nothing to do about it, the box is already open” And it was indeed open…

Not fully Alex thought, but more than he wished. But he couldn’t do anything about it “Don’t forget those mangos when making the shopping list” said Alexander to the pig.

He in turn only grimaced a little “Who was the god-dammed bastard that started this mango trend anyway, I don’t think I ever saw one on base before this all went to hell” said the administration’s Pig. To which Alexander only smiled and left the room. Maybe the mango joke got out of control a little, but he couldn't be held accountable for it. He liked the mangos and couldn’t get authorization before. Nowadays thanks to Lab’s 1 effort he could get a few here and there.

He really should thank the pipsqueak and her ‘Momma’ for it. Maybe he could get a few extra toys on that goddam list. He would make it so the kiddy pool went past the control for sure. That or they could make one. Would be easier to expand the garden and have a river? Or get a kiddy pool into the site? These were funny sunny days indeed, if someone said to him he would contemplate this same question a few years before he would send that man to a hospital…

Or would pay someone to send that person to the hospital.

Nowadays he could do whatever he wished in the site and no one was the wiser (Besides the pig and maybe a blonde midget). Even his minions had better days nowadays, god dammed midget and her god dammed fluffy aura that was so goddammed sticky. If not for that sharp kid's senses his minions wouldn’t be so damn expensive to manage. They were doing a good job, but they were also ruining his reputation…

But beggars can’t be choosers “Time to build another persona I guess…” mumbled the blonde man while walking towards his kingdom (Lab). Coordinated Chaos was what welcomed him. An orchestra of work left and right from top to bottom.“Gentlemen, don’t stop working. And add something new to the query list” said the blonde guy while walking to his seat (Throne) “What will be the more adequate persona to cultivate for me”

Said our blonde guy while writing his username to log in ‘Alexanders 5̵̖̹͎͚̄̓̀͋̕̕͠͝4̵̡̝̜͔̫̯̗͚͍͈͖͔͎͛̇̽̉̓̈́̕͜͝1̴̛̭̊̐̔̀̏̋̂͂̒͂n̷̨̢͚̱̞̬̤̝̪͒̄̇̏͜͜͠ͅͅ7̸̺̟̰̫͈̺̠͉͔̱̭͍̪͂̄͂͒̔͋́̈́͛̃͌̏͜͜͝5̷̢̟̮̦͒͊̐̓͂̓̓͑̂̒̎̄͘̕w̴̹̙̠̘̮̯̞̭̏̽́̕̕͝0̷͇̫͕͍̺̺̠̤̺̳̪̞͗͘̚ŗ̶̞͊͑͒̉͛͗̍̾͋͑͊7̷̨̪͍͔̞͇̲͇̓͛̕ḩ̷̧̤̥̬͓͉̳̫̯̹̑̉͆͂̕̕̚ ’ after logging into his station he went ahead and started to work on his current project.

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Every kind of question and phrase was logged into a big holo screen in the middle of the room. Rapidly this one climbed to the top 5 queries waiting for answers. Among others was the number one ‘How to cultivate mangos’. There was little doubt about who put that there. But number two was ‘How did query 1 get there’ and that amused Alexanders to no end. Even though the question should scare him, even though Professor Eversoul and Professor Kellet would no doubt start a holy war should they find that query there. So it was mostly censored unless something climbed high enough to warrant an update or something was taken off the list. That would be censored most of the time, and the supercomputer that they were building would try and find the answers. But you know how it is with new systems…They promise and promise and in the end, they rarely deliver.

For his part, Alexander only wanted to finish his work and carry on. Even though most of his coworkers thought of him as a clown disguised as a scientist. “Any updates on our programs?” he still did his job.

“None so far, but the system has reached 27% saturation and hasn’t moved since the last update” answered an assistant to his left “No decimals in your update Sarah? That isn’t like you…” smirked Alexanders.

He knew why she left those out after all “Currently saturation is at 27.80085% sir…What time would you want your new schedule visit to HR be boss?” answered a new voice from his right. It was a somewhat weird contrast with his aide, while Sarah was a small and petite blonde with a somewhat Asian appearance. This new voice was tall. And also had bulging muscles... all over the place, and his lab coat didn’t even have sleeves either, he was the living image of a muscle head that was pretending to be a scientist. While he was at the top of the line in debugging and coding, he was hired for his appearance, so he had a grudge against his boss and was always ready to cause problems for him.

“Man, you aren’t fun Jack. Sarah must learn to do his job properly and with consistency, she knew I didn’t mind the decimals, but she was always giving them. So of course I worry when she decides to give a shorter update” said Alexander acting like the victim of the situation “...And the reunion should be today in the afternoon. If there aren’t open spots, schedule it for Monday, I have a date this weekend” But then again, this was the kind of man Alexander was.

“ And it's done, it will be the Monday after the morning debrief with Mister Hamilton” and sadly his subordinates knew nothing would come of that HR meeting. Even with all his antics Alexander still never crossed the line into real problems, besides a few bad-tasting puns and jokes here and there. He still did his work (mostly) and cared for his subordinates (They doubted this), he was still infamous for his jokes though.

“What's the point of even trying to finalize this system anyway?” Asked Jack the muscle man, he understood why Alexander wanted to make it but didn’t see the reason behind trying to create it “Isn’t it meaningless at this point?”

But still, he would do his job “There is a meaning to trying to finish this particular system, nothing is truly meaningless in this world.” Said Alexander while sitting on a wheeled chair and moving from one side of the room to another free workstation.

“If we as humanity stopped doing something because it was meaningless we would have never sent someone to space after the first man went to space since it was already proven it could be done…..” Said the blonde while moving a picture of the first man-made satellite orbiting their moon to a holoscreen in the middle of the room. “But even so, someone else saw that they only orbited the moon, so they sent someone to land on the Moon” and then moved from his workstation an image to the holoscreen “It wasn’t meaningless since the ones before them only orbited the moon after all” and then moved another picture of the different space programs across the world through the ages.

“But they gained something…They earned prestige, they got samples and they proved their program was better than the ones before them…” said Jack while moving a graph from his notepad to the holoscreen “Even if this system works…You will not benefit from it…No one will know it was your program at its inception…” and then moved on to another report where all the names of the developers where censured with a black market.

Funnily enough, some were painted yellow though “Oh trust me, they will know….And even if they didn’t…. That's the fun part of this whole mess….I’m not doing it for the fame nor money…I don’t need the Nobel Prices either…” said the blonde man while taking off his lab coat and standing in front of the holo screen. For a second they all had forgotten who they were talking with.

“I am doing this for the fun of it. Wouldn’t have accepted working here if I wasn’t interested in the result and the amusement I would derive from this, after all….” Said the blonde with an almost crazed look on his face “You do realize that's the only reason I even came here….” said the blonde man before starting to walk to the exit “Oh right, carry on the good work, I forgot the appointment of this afternoon”.

And with that, he walked away leaving only his two aides looking at each other and their minions mingling between them pretending to be working “Some days…I forget that man is crazy” said Jack while Sarah only answered back “Yeah, it's really easy to forget and think of him as some new grad scientist…God knows from what hole they brought him…I tried to search him on all the databases I could get myself into…” said the petite woman.

That brought the muscle man to attention real fast “Nothing?” and the petite woman only nodded almost making the muscle man do a double take “How is that even possible? We have access to every database in the world, granted they all are backups since we can’t go into the net…But still shouldn’t be possible” and that only brought more mysteries to this case.

And made Query number 3 more ominous “Who is the Head of Laboratory 3 Alexander?" It was all a mystery, even the workers of lab 2 didn't know who their boss was. No one remembers when Alexanders started being their boss either, one day he was suddenly there. The problem is, they didn't remember any other boss being at the helm of Lab 2. It was just Alexanders and no one else, no one on-site could make this work either, so they came to the obvious conclusion that Alexander was always the head of Lab 2 and they were suffering from some psychic contamination from the site.

So nothing new there, how did they get the psychic contamination? Who knows, probably Alexander was the originator of the contamination since he liked to go into the site way too often, they didn't understand why either. Since he was adamant about finishing that project, why would he waste so much time playing around on the site or playing jokes on everyone from labs 1-3?

"I wonder if we will ever understand what goes into that psycho's mind?" asked the petite woman to the muscle man "Why would you wanna know?" of course, the muscle man was a normal person, so he couldn't help but wonder why "Maybe then we would know why he makes so much effort into salvaging this doomed program?" said the woman pointing at the numbers on her holopad, it showed a count going down by the second.

Notice:

System saturation 26.4567%

Not much time left before the collapse of that program, even if they worked day and night trying to debug and defrag everything, their work was mostly meaningless, whatever happened that made this system go into a death spiral wasn't something easy to fix, and since Alexanders didn't let them restart nor turn off the program to examine it, they had to work around the active instances and fix the sub-routines while the program wasn't using it, add to all of this the fact that this was linked across the site to several sub-nodes and the problem only grew bigger. If only they were able to at least shut down the sub-nodes, but that wasn't an option either. That man just liked to do things the hard way.