Carmen studied the agar recipes provided in the experiment notebooks and rewrote them herself in her notebook, she thought that some of them didn’t quite make sense (too much salt or add food coloring), but maybe these were just dummy experiments that were being used to test the ability of the researcher to follow instructions, but she doubted that the theorists that made these experiments up conducted them themselves, so there wouldn’t be a final product that they would be able to compare it to. But no one ever doubted the imagination a theorist could have, they knew what the results would look like without having to do it themselves, that’s why they are theorists. 

After finishing what happened to be twenty different agar recipes, Carmen realized she also needed to make her nutrient broths too, luckily, they weren’t anything crazy, just the standard LB and YEPD broths which the lab had on hand in packets you just needed to mix with water. Once Carmen thought she had everything mixed into the water she took everything to one of the two small autoclaves they had and autoclaved everything together. Thirty minutes later and she was pouring plates like there was no tomorrow before the agar in the last few flasks turned solid. When finished she cleaned up the twenty flasks she had and during that time the agar solidified enough for her to flip her plates and store them in the cabinet below for her to make more space. After taking time to read through the experiments and weigh out the ingredients and lunch it was already 15 minutes till 5 pm. Everyone was doing their own thing and running around the lab till the last second. In those last 15 minutes, Carmen used her freshly made broth to start some overnight cultures of strains conveniently located in the -70oC freezer, before calling it a day. She made sure to hang up the lab coat where she found it and gathered her belongings leaving her notebook where she found it. 

The next day everyone arrived right at 8 am, including the teachers who were monitoring the class. When Carmen and the class set down their stuff to get started, it was obvious that someone or a group of someones had come in after them and moved everything around. The teachers were able to confirm their suspicions.

“Yesterday, for about an hour after you all had left the theorists popped in and checked on your progress. They may have moved the items at your lab bench, but everything should still be there, but let us know if anything is missing or if you need help with viewing the original sheets, sometimes the photocopies are hard to read,” the theorist said. 

Carmen’s first thought after hearing this was that she shouldn’t have so obviously separated the unreadable experiments from the readable ones, but once she got over the chill of offending people, she hadn’t met yet and hopefully didn’t know who she was she saw her chance at figuring out if the lab coat’s owner’s experiment was in the original’s binder. She quickly put her stuff away and donned her lab coat. As soon as the coat was on, she could tell it had been worn yesterday, the man’s scent was stronger, but the same as before, a deodorant that suited the other indescribable smell. The smell was growing on her, she found herself wondering who the lab coat belong to and what this man looked like. Snapping out of her daydream, Carmen approached the teachers and asked to see their original notebook. She flipped through the pages noticing that they were arranged the same way her binder was originally arranged. Page after page she noticed, experiments written in pencil or black ink, till there was one, the only experiment that was in blue ink. She noticed it was one of the ones she put in the readable section, she decided to make that particular experiment her priority. Her heart was racing. She was choosing the lab coat owner over everyone else, just because she was attracted to his smell.  After returning the binder to the teachers, Carmen returned to her desk, briefly planning out what she needed to do. She could plate the fungus and bacteria on the various agar plates right now and that would complete four of the ten multiday experiments, but first, she needed to subculture some strains and treat them with the requested compounds to make microscope slides with them to complete two of the five straight forward tasks.