Every six weeks we take the interns and book all the rooms for a weekend in Deichtenstein's Inn down in the village as a reward for the cumulative weeks of hard work. Over the years I have observed how progressively fewer of these kids seem less traumatized (than their counterparts from past years) when confronted with some of the more 'hard science' aspects of working in our lab. Those bloodcurdling shrieks of a newly spawned growth nub still catch me off guard sometimes. I remind myself that perhaps I should look in on what kind of media entertainment these kids are subjected to during their upbringing.
Deichtenstein's Inn is one of those beautiful old alpine buildings that appears to be of a certain size from the front but inside just seems to go on and on. I've been in and out of there for some 200 years and I still haven't personally been into every nook and cranny. But every manner of my creations have, and it's only by following the live feed from embedded cameras that we can test how well our remote control systems work.
As they collect their room keys the interns soon find out that like most things they learn from me it's better to pierce both hemispheres with one thrust of the probe. Even on a short break, as I take each intern aside and place in their hands the first of many small power modules and a map of where the hidden camera it powers is located. It's a big old picturesque building, and for the two night visit the interns find themselves not as they imagined hoisting stein after stein of Heidelwiche Doppelganger ale but instead wriggling long and stifling trails through labyrinthine wall and ceiling crawlspaces to replenish numerous hidden camera power packs.
