When Igor is giving the indoctrination speech to new batches of interns he likes to regale them with stories of previous lab assistants who went on to greater heights and wider avenues of recognition. Nikola Tesla seems to make a big impression, and in the past 30 years his name has received a much larger scope of recognition, as well it should. Heisenberg also seems to raise eyebrows, of all the more recent big names.
That so many more young people are able to even go to college in the past thirty years than in the previous centuries prior to WW2 adds significant levels of dilution to the prospects that any of these recent bunches will go on to distinguish themselves, at least to the level of celebrity (or in some cases, infamy) that previous workers have gone on to achieve. That they will go on to be part of a vast workforce divided into small groups all working together precludes the possibility or even the real need for there to be a personality associated with any new technology breakthrough. New breakthroughs or advances are now associated with the labs or organizations where teams of scientists work together. Cern is an excellent example. I have a serious desire to get down into that tunnel and poke around with the innards of that super collider; but they probably have swarms of workers mulling over it 24/7 like frantic bees. My guess is even if I could pull it off I might be disappointed at what I find. Probably if I put my mind to it I could get comparable results much faster merely using bacterial chimeras with model constructs in microscopic media. Except then I wouldn't need to build a circular multi-kilometer tunnel under two countries, so Cern and it's backers do edge me out there in the fun factor.
Maybe a tour for Igor and the interns could be arranged.. I could implant image collation bacteria in the eyeballs of the interns while they sleep. This bacteria triggers a layered image set banked as phosphor stacks on the back of the eyeball. As different spectra of light comes through the cornea the bacteria is triggered to a cycled emulsion that adds layers. All a person has to do is turn their head or blink to delineate differing spectra of light. If only I could develop a method of retrieving the phosphor stacks without having to replace the eyeball itself. I mean, what if I replaced an intern's eye with a different color eye because I was out of the needed matching color of iris? Plus some of them might get curious when they all stand around noticing that they all have itchy eyes yet no other symptoms nor subsequent development of conjunctivitis later. And it would be a stretch to drug them all and hurry to complete the procedure on all of them in one night, and that's if everything went smoothly.
I would try an index A4 specimen, but if they go that far underground I doubt we could maintain contact considering the intensity of the electromagnetic fields they would be immersed in down there.
