experimental group {open}

[Lyn𝛿is]

          Maxwell Milgram

Two of the other interns have already arrived in the library by the time Max shows up, but his supervisor isn't in her office yet. They're supposed to finish reading Dr. Arocratus' paper by the end of the week, but the stapled sheets had been shoved to one side of the large desk, along with a pack of playing cards, and replaced by pages of data covering the table.

The Institute always had their experiments to run, and most often the three interns were the ones assigned to analyze the numbers and take care of the the everyday tasks the studies required. There was never a shortage of subjects to get through, not when there were so many in the poorer sections of District Six who would gladly take the stipend the Institute offered. It's a win-win situation for everyone. They get their money, we get our data. My supervisor does warn us though that we're to select randomly from those who apply so as not to introduce bias. She likes to use the Hunger Games as an example for many of the common violations of proper experimental procedure.

Max leans over the shoulders of the other two and looks at the printout, picking up the pencil behind his ear and circling the two outliers in the fourth column. Besides those, however, the remaining numbers seemed to fall solidly within two distinct ranges. Social experiments are always the most interesting, because you never knew when people might react in unexpected ways. He'd studied many of the Institute's previous experiments in his psychology classes, both simple ones about word learning or optical illusions and complicated, weeks-long immersive ones like group dynamics among prisoners.

Before he'd started this internship, he hadn't imagined working at the Institute would be so boring. Sure, some of the papers were intriguing, and talking with the subjects - only to the extent they were allowed to, of course - was always nice, but most of their days had consisted of filling out paperwork, cleaning up equipment, and wrangling with the damned data gathering software on a constantly-crashing computer. Of course, there was interesting research being done all the time at the Institute, but those usually weren't things that he would get to be involved in as an intern.

A loud buzz echoes across the room - someone must have rang the doorbell downstairs. "Your turn, Max," one of the others says, and Max stands up from the table, scratching his head. "This is too early for subjects to arrive, isn't it?" he mutters, beginning to head towards the staircase. "Then again, could always be the professor forgetting her key card again..."