New Introduction
From Torg Adventure
Jack ran down the hall toward the new science lab. He had seven minutes to check on his experiment before A.P. Physics. He unlocked the door. The complex lab equipment gleamed in the afternoon sun. Jack smiled at the smell of the lab. This was a professional quality lab, donated by a local tech company to boost their public relations. Science education was the rage after the President's speech.
Jack realized he had a great chance here to show a prospective university his real mettle. He was one of the six top-performing students selected by the administration to have access to this lab. One was picked from each of six specialties: chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, engineering, and geology. Jack had worked hard to win a place at this rarefied table.
His experiment entitled, "Neutrinos and Dark Energy: The Key to Tapping Vacuum Energy as a Future Power Source". A vacuum chamber encompassed a set of pieces that look ed like a forest
No one was in the lab. He walked over to his equipment setup, which took up an entire lab bench and was connected to a laptop for data gathering. A large metal cylinder with dozens of cables running out of it held the vacuum chamber. Next to it, a vacuum pump huffed every ten seconds or so. Jack checked the laptop, opening the window to the data collection program, and let out a loud whoop. The program showed that he'd caught his first cosmic ray. The experiment was a success! Looking at the numbers on the screen, Jack knew he had some data crunching to do to find out what high energy atomic nucleus had passed through the machine. He pulled a flash drive out of his jeans pocket and plugged it into the USB port on the laptop. He started downloading the data, so he could analyze it at home.
While he waited, he looked around the lab at the other experiments. Billy Conners station was a fuel cell that turned hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water. Ming Chen had a complete beehive in glass. A tube led to the window, letting bees in and out of the hive and the lab. Then there was Karen Blum's setup. Karen was Jack's best friend, a brilliant mind for all things biological. Her station had a cage with four white rats in it, as well as a rack with three test tubes next to it. A large wooden box with a plexiglass cover was also on the lab bench, and when Jack looked closer, he saw it contained a complex maze.
Though they were friends, they had always been rather competitive in classes and the Science Fair. For the last two years, Karen had not divulged her experiments to him until he saw them at the fair, because three years ago, Jack had messed up her data as a prank. She didn't speak to him for a month.
Jack wondered what she was doing with the mice. He picked up one of the test tubes. The glass was marked with a large 'A' in grease pencil and had a teaspoon of clear liquid in the bottom.
"Ouch!" Jack shouted as his hand flinched, snapping the test tube in half, cutting his fingers, and spilling the liquid in the tube all over his hand. A sharp pain in that arm caused the outburst, and he looked to see the cause. A bee was stuck to the skin of his forearm, which he flicked away with his other fingers. His cuts tingled.
"Where did that come from?" he asked himself. As he looked around the lab, he saw another experiment station with a glass beehive -- the little stinger must have escaped. The class bell rang, disturbing his search. Looking back at his hand, it was still bleeding. He put the broken glass down on the lab bench and rinsed his hand in the lab sink. Jack left the lab, headed toward the nurse's office.
What happened next?
