Chapter Text
“Greetings and salutations! You have been selected from a variety of candidates to work in our facility as a lab assistant! My name is Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, and I will be your guide through this initiation process. Welcome to Muppet Labs!
Now, it says here that your name is, um…Lindsey Hargrove. Well, we welcome you with open arms, Miss Hargrove. For further instructions, please meet us on the 6th of June at 10 A.M. at our central lab near Town Square. We are feverishly excited to meet you!”
(Scene Song - “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton)
The sun was rising on a summer morning. At the sound of her alarm clock, twenty-two year old Lindsey Hargrove rose from her bed to begin her first day working for Muppet Labs.
“Tumble outta bed, and I stumble to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of ambition, yawn and stretch and try to come to life~”
After a shower and a cup of ginger tea to wake herself up, she dressed in a smart purple blouse, blue jeans, and black trainers. Once she had stuffed her lunchbox, wallet, and very own lab coat into her backpack, she swung open the door to her apartment to start her first day at her exhilarating new job.
“Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living!” All around Lindsey, humans, Whatnots, and rats alike were walking with a swing in their step as they prepared for their days at work. Lindsey took the elevator down from the third floor to the ground floor. “It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it!”
“I tell ya, I have never been so busy!” Mama Minka, the mink who worked at the front desk, was scrambling through papers. “Everyone and their mother is renovating!”
“It's the summertime!” Lindsey exclaimed, handing Minka a thermos of her leftover tea. “Everyone wants a change!”
Out on the street, Lindsey waited at the curb for the bus to drive by its spot. She tapped her foot along to the beat of her soul, tuning out the nearby Whatnots’ complaints about their jobs and their bosses. When the bus arrived, all five waiting passengers boarded and took their seats.
“Look, it’s the market vegetable girl!” A pink Whatnot exclaimed. “Weren’t you supposed to be there an hour ago?”
“Not anymore!” Lindsey swung one leg over the other. “I’m the new assistant at Muppet Labs!”
The bus took off with a start, bringing its passengers down the street and to the bus park in the middle of the city. Stepping off and spotting the Muppet Labs building not too far away, Lindsey decided to walk the rest of the way. This is shaping up to be a great day, she thought. No rain, no bugs, and no bus delays!
In town, everyone was excitedly bustling about, bopping along and grooving to their own beat. Even the billboards, showing West Bank Apparel's latest promotion with Miss Piggy, seemed to be in tune. “9 to 5, you can lose your mind! Get up and work, get up and work!”
After crossing the street, Lindsey finally made it to the front door of the lab, and pulled it open to enter the lobby, where a rat with blonde hair was tapping away at a computer behind a desk.
(Scene Song ends here)
The rat at the counter looked up. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, actually,” said Lindsey. “I'm Lindsey Hargrove. I was told to meet Dr. Honeydew here at 10 o'clock?”
“Hargrove?” The rat checked her computer files. “Oh, yeah, you're right here. Well, nice to meet you, Lindsey. I'm Yolanda, I'll be your secretary. Dr. Honeydew should be on the third floor.” Yolanda passed Lindsey a card over the counter. “Here’s your ID badge; you'll need it to clock in.”
Lindsey took the card, thanked Yolanda, and punched her employee code into the punch-clock. Seeing the elevator at the end of the hall, she entered for a ride to the third floor.
On the third floor, Lindsey stepped out into a hallway of rooms. Having already put her lab coat on and her hair up into a ponytail in the elevator, she set out on a search for where Bunsen’s office could be.
At the end of the west wing, she heard an explosion that made her jump. She followed the sound to a door with a placard reading “Honeydew Lab”. Pushing the door open, she was met with a room full of pale pink smog and some confused chatter. “Okay,” she heard a nasal voice say calmly, “when meeting with plutonium, bunsonium will explode, but it will neutralise the harmful effects that plutonium may have on the body.” Lindsey was simply astonished; she heard that Muppet Labs could be volatile, but she didn’t suspect that explosions were common enough to barely elicit a reaction.
When the smoke cleared, Lindsey was able to spot her new mentor, jotting down his findings on a pad of paper. Dr. Honeydew looked up and spotted Lindsey by the door. “Oh! You must be Miss Hargrove, right on time! Welcome to Muppet Labs, where the future is being made today. And look at you, you’re already in your lab coat, you must be bubbly with excitement!”
“Y-yes, I am.” Lindsey fanned a hand near her face. “It’s, uh, a bit messy in here.”
“Oh, never mind that, my dear.” Dr. Honeydew urged Lindsey to the table. “Science is meant to be messy. That tells you you’re doing something right.”
“Me-me.” A third scientist, whom Lindsey had not noticed until now, waved off the last wisps of the smog. When he and Lindsey made eye contact, he simply stared at her for a moment; almost as if he were studying her. Lindsey pursed her lips and shifted her gaze; why was he looking at her like that?
“Miss Hargrove, this is my senior assistant, Beaker,” said Dr. Honeydew. “He will be your most infallible ally when working in this lab. As assistants, your responsibilities are to keep the lab tidy and to take notes on our various experiments.” He presented several flasks of liquid on the table. “Before your arrival, we had just begun a series of experiments using the element of bunsonium. As observed, it explodes in reaction to plutonium.”
“So you’re going to introduce it to other elements?” Lindsey asked.
“Precisely! We will be using elements, as well as other substances to gain a further understanding of bunsonium!” Dr. Honeydew confirmed. “You're a quick learner, Miss Hargrove!”
“Is that safe?” Lindsey cocked an eyebrow.
“I'm certain that it is,” said Dr. Honeydew. “Our lab has never reported a fatality.”
(Scene Song - “Takin’ Care of Business” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
Unsure, but aiming to please, Lindsey put on a pair of safety goggles and began her assistance in the project. She took out a notebook and wrote down various observations on the chemicals.
“Bunsonium reaction to:
- Plutonium - explosive (smoke harmless)”
Each flask had a label for a different liquid. The first one had plain water inside. When bunsonium was added, small wisps of steam billowed out, but not much more. The second and third had drinking alcohol and rubbing alcohol inside; the drinking alcohol lost all of its colouring, while the rubbing alcohol bubbled up and spilled on the table. Seeing this, Beaker and Lindsey both leapt for paper towels to clean up. Their hands nearly smacked into each other as they wiped away the mess.
“Bunsonium reaction to:
- Plutonium - explosive (smoke harmless)
- Water - slight simmer
- Alcohol - loss of colour
- Rubbing alcohol - extreme carbonation”
After trying a few different chemicals with bunsonium, Dr. Honeydew grew curious of what would happen should the affected liquids meet. When added to water, the bunsonium-infused alcohol gained some colour back, but in a lighter shade of red than what it started with. Both Beaker and Lindsey tensed up when drops of the rubbing alcohol were drawn into the dripper, so Beaker quickly placed a paper plate underneath the flash while Lindsey snatched up the roll of paper towels. When the rubbing alcohol touched the water, it created bubbles that gently floated out, rather than spilling all over the table.
“Bunsonium reaction to:
- Plutonium - explosive (smoke harmless)
- Water - slight simmer
- Alcohol - loss of colour
- Rubbing alcohol - extreme carbonation
Diluted bunsonium reaction to:
- Water and alcohol - Pink swirling in liquid
- Water and rubbing alcohol - Bubbles”
(Scene Song ends)
“This is wonderful research,” said Dr. Honeydew, looking over the notes Lindsey had taken. “Now we have a slightly better understanding of what bunsonium can do. Well, it’s about lunchtime now; we’ll reconvene later to make some inferences out of these notes.”
Lindsey turned towards her backpack and took out her lunchbox. “There’s a lunch room at the end of the south wing,” said Dr. Honeydew. “You run along, and we’ll see you later.”
“Aren’t you coming?” Lindsey asked.
“Oh, Beaker and I have plans elsewhere, Miss Hargrove.” Dr. Honeydew pushed his glasses up. “But we’ll be back on time!” He and Beaker disappeared down a different hallway.
“Oh. Okay, uh, I…bye.” Unsure how to respond, Lindsey waved an awkward hand and turned to find the lunch room.
As an autistic woman with some struggles with social anxiety, Lindsey was never sure how to start a conversation. She tended to wait for others to speak to her first, and even then, sometimes she couldn’t give a proper response. So, when she entered the lunch room full of higher-level scientists, humans and Muppets alike, she was an easy target for picking on.
Coming to the table, Lindsey gently nudged aside a can of Coke so she could place her lunchbox down. The owner of the drink, a tall, intimidating man, quickly reacted. “Why are you touching my Coke?”
“I- sorry, I wanted to sit down,” said Lindsey softly.
“Who even are you?” A blue Muppet with feathery hair waved her off. “Bug off outta here, girl.”
Lindsey was stunned for a moment. “‘Scuse me, I work here now, I-”
“So?” A third man interrupted. “We were here first. Get lost.”
(Scene Song - “Teardrops on My Guitar” by Taylor Swift)
The others shoved their belongings all over the empty seat. Defeated, Lindsey stepped back, and seeing no other comfortable place to sit, settled for the floor, against a wall with an outlet. She had gotten bullied before, and now she found the best thing to do was to just step away and not try to fight it. She silently took her apple from her lunch and bit into it.
Looking over her phone, she saw a text from Abigail, who lived on the same floor as Lindsey at the apartment complex. Lindsey really admired Abigail, much more than she believed she realized, and so she treasured any message she got from her.
Abigail sent: I heard from Minka that you’re working for Muppet Labs now. Have you made any new discoveries yet? Lol ;)
Lindsey sent: Nothing major. Some messes but no one’s hurt yet
The scientists at the table continued to laugh and carry on, completely disregarding the woman they’d banished to sit on the floor alone. Lindsey glanced up, listening to the noise, and silently wishing she hadn’t left her apartment.
(Scene Song ends here)
When lunchtime was finished, Lindsey returned down the west wing to Honeydew Lab, with her notebook in hand. She counted each of the previous bunsonium reactions as she entered the room. “Ah, there you are,” greeted Dr. Honeydew. “Welcome back. While we were out, Beaker and I created some hypotheses about what we may see in further investigation into bunsonium.”
“Meep meep, me-me-me meep meep,” mumbled Beaker.
“Yeah,” Lindsey nodded along, “I did notice the colour of the alcohol got lighter. Do you think if we added bunsonium to other liquids, it would change their colour too?”
“That is exactly what we were thinking!” Dr. Honeydew set up some flasks with coloured liquids inside. “Right here, we have concord grape juice, this deep blue drain cleaner, and a light yellow vegetable oil. We are going to test if their colours will be altered when introduced to bunsonium.” He passed two drippers to Beaker and Lindsey. “Go on, give it a try.”
Beaker murmured, unsure about testing the unpredictable substance. Lindsey, however, quickly took to it, and dripped a few drops of bunsonium into the grape juice, which turned from a very deep, almost black purple to a slightly lighter violet. “Very good,” mused Dr. Honeydew. He tried the same with the drain cleaner, and its blue colour brightened up from royal to more of a cerulean.
Seeing the results the others were getting, Beaker felt ready to try as well. When the bunsonium in his dripper touched the vegetable oil, it sat in sort of a bubbly way on the surface. The oil itself stayed exactly the same colour. “Fascinating,” said Dr. Honeydew. “Bunsonium reacts to oil the exact same way as water.” He took down further notes in Lindsey’s book. “Well done, everyone. We’ve made a lot of progress today!”
Lindsey smiled and shyly covered her mouth with a hand. Awkward as she was, she loved being praised for her work. She couldn’t wait for her next day at Muppet Labs.