midnight

[mayuzumi]

IT'S ALMOST MIDNIGHT. TIME TO GET TO WORK.
— but don't get ahead of yourself. Your work is just to hang on in there, and trust me when I say you are gonna have your hands plenty full just doing that much. We were all new once, so from experience I can tell ya: the first few days are going to be the roughest. It's not a matter of strength. It's just that nothing can prepare you for what this job entails. Is that a look of excitement on your face, or fear? Those two things aren't so different, y'know! It's better than the people who come in here lookin' all cock-sure of themselves. They usually get burnt out real fast. But just so you know, there's no shame in it if you quit. It's hard work. Sometimes they say the people who stick with it are the crazy ones. Me, I've been here for a few years so I can say that's probably not entirely wrong. Hahaha! Anyway, everybody knows the general gist of the job, right? We are foragers of new technologies. Well, the truth is a lot more complicated than that, actually... Thanks to this device over here — we call her Alice, by the way — we can send our consciousnesses to parallel universes. It's, uh... gonna sound kinda bad when I explain it, but I promise it's not that horrible. See, each of us have some latent psychic abilities. Everybody here has particularly strong potential for astral projection or other forms of conscious projection, that kinda deal. Using Alice, we can strengthen those abilities to the point where we can project across different possible timelines. You'll kind of, well, push out the consciousness of the "you" in that universe. Nothing bad happens to alternate universe you! ... Probably... okay, so we're not entirely sure about that. It's better to not think about that part of it too hard. Anyway, you'll inhabit the body of your alternate universe self and use that time to search for info. Basically, each alternate universe has differences, right? Different people had different opportunities... breakthroughs there never occurred here because of those minute disparities. Like, you know they say that if we had put as much effort into developing Internet and communications technologies as we had into space travel, we probably would have colonies by now? It's like that. We're finding stuff that happened there that we can bring back here. New technologies is the big one, of course, but there's other stuff that's good to know too. Just... as a warning, though. Some of those alternate timelines have got some heavy stuff. This one time I ended up in a warzone. Although honestly, that's not as bad as some of the other stuff that can happen... And, uh, if you die there, your consciousness dies and your body here will fall into a coma. That form you signed earlier said we have the right to terminate your life if that happens. You did read the fine print, right? Haha... yeah, it's not that funny. Anyway, here's the specs for your first task. We've had people check out this timeline before. It should be pretty stable, not much different from this universe. This is mostly to just get you used to the basics of the job. MISSION INFO: text WORLD INFO: text YOUR OBJECTIVES: text
☐ ONE ☐ THREE ☐ FIVE ☐ SEVEN	☐ TWO ☐ FOUR ☐ SIX
Midnight is the strongest time to tap into psychic potential, which is why we always send people off at midnight. Aaaand speaking of which, only twenty minutes until then! We've gotta get you ready. Don't worry. You'll be fine. Just stay calm... And everything will probably work out somehow! Err, pretend I said that but without the 'probably'.
GOT THAT? THEN GET GOING.