Joy Martinez preferred to work in the evenings. If Professor Callaghan was around, her parents didn't worry. Sure, the man wasn't always there, but she didn't tell them that and Professor Callaghan hadn't ever ratted her out, even though he almost certainly knew that she was fudging how often he was in the lab with her while she worked. Maybe he didn't know, but it seemed more likely to her that the man understood that what she needed was a little room to breathe. Hah. It was nice to have alone time, well not entirely alone because there were sometimes other people working, but she usually put her earbuds in and got in the zone. People respected the zone here, they got it. She paused her work to take a sip of tea from her heavy travel mug and then set it back down on the table, making sure the lid got sealed again so that nothing would get in it before she got back to work. Safety was important, and she couldn't afford to take extra risks. Sometimes it felt like pretty much everyone was out to get her, but under the clinical lights and well-filtered air system of the lab, she found a place where nobody worried about her and nothing went wrong. Well, nothing that wasn't faulty in her design work.
"Ah, dang it." She had put too much heat on the small segment of plastic she'd been attaching, and it had melted very firmly to the metal below it. That's what she got for working while anything less than entirely focused. She could have cut the metal, saved the bits of scrap to use for something else, but Joy was in a little bit of a mood. Her chest ached a little today and she'd had a little bit of a cough, which put her on edge. It was the kind of day where things went wrong and her parents ended up with more evidence about why she ought to stay inside and never experience anything ever just in case.
It would have been smart (and good lab safety) to actually go to the bin and put the metal and plastic combination into it carefully, so obviously Joy got close and then threw it in like she was angry with it instead. There was a nonthreatening 'boomf' and a puff of pink rose up in the air, an experiment that was supposedly dud triggered by the sharp pressure of being hit. It was delightful to look at, and she identified it immediately as one of Honey Lemon's projects. Not that Joy had ever seen them in person for obvious reasons, but she had seen the videos of the experiments and talked to Honey Lemon a few times. She should have known to immediately cover her nose and mouth but it had been such a surprise that she just stood there while the cloud began to settle, gently dusting her hair and sweater in pink, confused and uncertain. Instead of focusing on protecting her face she was trying to figure out what had happened. This wasn't what trash cans were supposed to do, this was basically the opposite.
The 'how' wasn't as important though, as the fact that it had happened. There wasn't even that much, it was barely visible on her clothing but it was enough to force a reaction. That wasn't fair, things had been fine for so long. The teen coughed, frowned, and then coughed again more aggressively. Her throat itched in a way that she knew all too well and she turned sharply, intent on getting from the bin back to her work station before things got too bad. The coughing got worse, and it felt like the breath was being torn out of her. It was the sort of thing that she could handle if she stopped it fast enough, something she could keep to herself and pretend had never happened. She was focusing hard on her breathing, fighting the panic that her body always flew into because that was going to make it worse. She needed long, slow, deep breaths, but it was hard when it felt like oxygen wasn't getting in. What Joy managed instead was an uneven combination of the two - sometimes she got enough air and sometimes it was the short, sharp gasps that came so much more easily between coughs. She put a hand on the table to balance and accidentally knocked her coffee mug over. It hit the ground with a bang that she barely heard, distracted as she was. Her ears were full of the sound of her heart beat and the gasps for air. It didn't matter how many times this happened, she never got used to it. She knew why, she had the objective facts about it, but that didn't help much when part of her brain was screaming 'not again' and the other part of her brain was just... screaming.<|im_end|>
Late Thursday night at the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, Tadashi Hamada sank comfortably in an ergonomic computer desk chair in the robotics lab. He kicked his feet up on an empty blue recycling bin turned upside down with his laptop powered on and resting on his thighs. He'd been working diligently on his thesis for the unwritten 5th Law of Robotics: under no circumstances should a robot be designed nor be commanded to inflict harm on any human and, through inaction, should it allow any human be harmed. His mentor and brilliant robotics professor, Robert Callaghan, developed the original foundations of robotics known as Callaghan's 'Laws of Robotics'. However, his laws only consisted of four, that he recites in every class session. Pushing boundaries in robotics and preferring the challenge as one of Callaghan's prodigies, Tadashi decided to write his thesis paper on a fifth law he developed from his kind-hearted disposition.
His friend, Wasabi, finished and edited his paper long before the due date and Go Go, another friend that also shares the same course chose to work on hers in the privacy of her apartment. For Tadashi, the lab after hours was the most private and quiet he could achieve where he did not have to worry constantly about his younger brother sneaking around to bot fights and his Aunt Cass asking for backup at the caf. Tadashi was not entirely alone here; Joy worked on a project of her own in her own corner of the lab but she was quiet when doing so. Every now and again his curious eyes would wander over to her area and peek at her project. She was a wiz in the prosthetics department, he believed everything she built was amazing. Someday, her tech is going to help a lot of people. When he first entered the lab to work and saw she would be working too, he politely waved to her and smiled, his mouth full of an apple he'd been munching on. His hands were dormant on the keyboard when it came time to write the conclusion. It was surprisingly the most troubling part of the essay, leaving him stuck in writer's block for the past twenty minutes. He must have absentmindedly readjusted his hat a million times in the meanwhile.
"Just have to look for a new angle on this... Ah! There!" Tadashi pondered then exclaimed to himself, as the ideas hit his mind he immediately typed them while they were fresh as to not lose his train of thought. Had it been his younger brother Hiro, he would have said the same to encourage that knucklehead to use his big brain and look for another way out. He couldn't help but smile at the irony. He looked goofy when he did so, his charming and contagious grin always stretching from ear to ear. While reading everything he had so far page by page and the conclusion tied in with it, his large, round eyes shifted line by line, the deep, dark brown color shimmering from the screen brightness. After long hours of effort, he was finished and could submit it and start heading home. He carefully placed his laptop onto the same recycling bin his feet had been just moments before and stood up to stretch. He was 6'0" even, only the third tallest among his friends with Wasabi ahead of them and Honey Lemon in second place when she wore heels and wedges. Furthermore, he glanced at the time on his phone and deemed it too late to video chat anyone. Only Go would answer but even then she was probably still working on her paper. He was so busy with his all day he hardly heard from anyone, but he'd simply catch up with them tomorrow. Now he could start enjoying his weekend.
A loud bang shook Tadashi from his thoughts and his head whipped over to Joy who only just threw something away. She stood in front of the scrap bin awkwardly, he could hardly see with her back turned to him, but he went back to gathering his belongings into his beige colored satchel. She started to cough but thought nothing of it until it turned violent and harsh, Joy reached for the table to hold herself steady and knocked over her mug from what he saw, and it was what he interpreted as a cry for help. Without thinking, Tadashi abandoned his things and ran for her, calling her name, but she wasn't responsive, still coughing and struggling to breathe. His arm gently but firmly urged her further away from the bin still puffing out a thin cloudy mist of pink. It had to be the culprit, her clothes were covered in it. He had her turned to face him then grabbed a nearby stack of papers with all sorts of sketches and designs, using it to fan air into her lungs while wiping away the chemicals from her outfit. "Deep breaths, Joy! Through the nose... and out the mouth..." he instructed while demonstrating like he saw his Aunt Cass do to Hiro during one of his allergic reaction fits. "Can you talk?? I'm not sure what to..." but he kept fanning air her way.<|im_end|>