Chapter #4Paging Dr. Rounds by: Unknown While the doors to the Chocolate Room and the Inventing Room both had golden plaques with the room's name in a catroonish and inviting font, the door to the Marshmallow Room was cold and stark. A single sheet of paper hung from the center of the door held there by a plastic plate.
Expansive Candy Factory Engineering and Testing Laboratory Room 6-721
Staff Only. No Visitors.
("Marshmallow" Room)
Lana shrugged. "I mean, today I am staff, so..." She grabbed the handle to the large, off-white door and pushed it open. The girl squinted as her eyes adjusted to the brightness of the room that was roughly the size of an airplane hangar. Everything was white. The walls were painted brilliant white as was the ceiling. A row of huge vats lined the far end of the room, and these too were painted white. There were several rows of laboratory tables (All of them white) with papers and vials and various lab equipment laying about. Even the stools for each table were white. One entire wall was filled with machines Lana couldn't recognize, but each were humming away diligently.
She walked inside. The door gently clicked close behind her. The air smelled sweet but not as overwhelming as a room called Marshmallow Room might have been. The whole place had a different feel from the rest of the factory. There was no sense of fun and childish wonder. This was a workplace for a studious candy maker who meant busi-
"Excuse me. This isn't part of the tour. Please leave."
Lana nearly had a heart attack. She had not seen the young woman sitting at one of the tables in front of a powerful microscope. In her defense, she was camouflaged quite well. Her pale skin and bleached white hair in conjunction with her lab coat and shirt made her invisible in the practically all-white room.
"S-sorry! But I'm not on the tour!" Lana said, catching her breath as her heart rate returned to normal. "I'm staff! Well, now I'm staff. I started today."
The young lady went back to her microscope. "Janitorial is meant to come by in the evenings."
The pink-haired girl chuckled. "I'm not a janitor."
"Sales, then? Or Accounting? Oh, please don't tell me you're one of the Board's newest 'executive assistants'. That bloated bureaucracy has been nothing but tro-"
"Taste taster! I'm a taste tester!" Lana said, cutting her off. She detected a pointed rant was coming and wanted to nip that in the bud.
The young woman looked up from her microscope. "A taste tester! Well, why didn't you say so!" Her disposition was immediately warmer. She hopped off her stool and swiftly walked to Lana, hand extended. Lana got a better look at her. She was roughly the same age, very slender, and had model-like looks. This was not the kind of woman Lana expected to find working at a candy factory of all places. "Dr. Hannah Rounds, pleasure to meet you!"
"Lana, and same!" They shook hands. "Are...you the only one who works in this...erm, department, Dr. Rounds?"
"Please, Hannah. And as of last month, yes, I am."
"What happened?"
Dr. Rounds placed her hands on her hips. "Because those idiots running this company don't understand how crucial marshmallow is to the confectionary arts!" She barked. "Expansive Candy was built off of a foundation of marshmallow! Gooey Chewys, Marshmallow Mateys, and Mallow Bars! But the kids today don't like this and market research says that and social media says something else. To hell with them. I'll keep up my work alone if I have to. And I guess I will! They can't fire but they'll certainly leave me in a department by myself."
Lana was about to express her sympathies when the laboratory clicked open. Tammy rushed in, her heels loudly clicking against the floor. "Lana! There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you! You can't just wander off! You'll interrupt people like Hannah from their work!" she explained as she tugged on Lana's arm, urging her to come back to the tasting room.
"First, Tammy, it's Dr. Rounds to you. And second, I was told by Bramberg that the testers program had ended."
"Well...it was...until, you know...recently. And...as you probably know..." Tammy said, searching for excuses.
Hannah pointed a finger at Lana. "Then I'll take this one, then."
Lana was surprised. "Oh, I'm sorry, Dr. Rounds. But Lana had already been assigned to th-"
"She's been reassigned. I'll send Klein an email explaining the situation," Hannah replied curtly.
"But Dr. Rounds!" begged Tammy.
"You're dismissed, Tammy."
Tammy released her grip on Lana's arm and marched out of the room in a huff. Hannah took a second to regain her composure. "Okay, well. That takes care of that!" she said, brushing a strain of white hair behind her ear. "Let me hammer out a quick email and I'll show you around!"
***
Hannah might as well have been speaking in Elvish. Lana tried her best to follow along with Dr. Rounds' explanation of her newest marshmallow projects, but the other girl's intellect was too much. The pink-haired girl instead did a lot of polite nodding and smiling, looking as if she was following along.
Through the hours of science talk, Lana pieced together a bit of Hannah's background. Having been raised by her chemist uncle, she sailed through high school and college at a very young age. Because of her incredible knowledge and talent, she was not only accepted by an Ivy League school to pursue a PhD in Food Sciences, but the school built a specific PhD program for her which allowed Hannah to complete her studies insanely early. This made her one of the youngest people in the nation with a PhD from an accredited university.
The young Doctor was rambling on about carbohydrate structures in monoglucomate substrates when Lana, totally lost at this point, cut in. "So, why do you like marshmallows so much?" Lana asked, hoping to change the conversation.
"This is going to sound dumb, but after my parents passed when I was five, my uncle took me in. I was so distraught and sad, I barely ate anything for days after moving in with him. But one day, he gives me this big, fluffy marshmallow. My parents were health nuts, so I've been told. And so I never had a marshmallow before. It was amazing, so soft and light, sweet and soft…and it made me feel like I was at home and at peace with everything. So…I guess that's why?" Hannah said with a shrug.
"Ah, that's sweet…Umm…speaking of sweet, when do I start, you know, taste testing? I have eaten anything since breakfast and…"
Hannah checked the clock on her phone. "It's 3:28pm?! You've been letting me drone on for that long?!"
Lana snickered. "I mean, you were pretty much on autopilot…"
Dr. Rounds chuckled. "True, I suppose. Since you skipped your breaks, go ahead and go home. Call it a day early. Just be ready to work tomorrow. I'll meet you outside the lab so I can give you your uniform and show you where the employee changing rooms are at."
"Uniform?" groaned Lana.
"Yes. Uniform. This is a lab, so you'll need to dress in something sensible. Besides, I'll need your help around the lab, and you don't want to wear anything here that you don't want sticky and covered in marshmallow by the end of the day."
"That's true…but I'm not good with science stuff. I barely passed Biology in high school, so I doubt I'll be much use in a lab…"
Hannah put a hand one Lana's shoulder and gave her a smile. "You'll do great. I'll see you tomorrow!"
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