Vinyl was napping on the platform, head resting on her forehooves. Her horn had a hazy glow to it, casting a bluish tint across her surroundings. A small speaker that was plugged into a USB port on her laptop was blasting out the dulcet tones of an 808 drum machine.
"Any progress with Vinyl's samples?" Doctor Herrington asked his companion.
Chang tapped a few keys and a diagram of a protein popped up on the large screen on the wall. "No luck figuring out how she came to be, but we've made a step in the how things assembled, if not exactly why?" She ran a demonstration of the myriad fats and carbs and proteins coming together to form a unicorn. "I'm still struggling to figure out where it all came from."
Herrington waved at the display. "This alone is already possibly enough to get you, us, awards and the right kind of attention. But look at this." He pressed a button, leaning over Chang to direct her computer to a website. "Her song, it's out, and it's trending."
"Trending is good, right? How good?" Chang wasn't all that well versed in modern technology outside of the tools of her trade, let alone music, so she took Herrington's word on this.
"It's racing towards the top spots, and the lab is happy to have the funding, minus our cuts, including Vinyl's." He clapped his hand with a growing smile. "This may be the best accident we ever had."
"Vinyl, this is incredible news!" Chang woke the sleeping unicorn with gentle motions, even as she kept speaking to the scientist beside her. "We've been discussing your track and it's performing far better than we thought it might."
Vinyl stirred with a groggy grunt, lifting her head to stare bleary eyed at the humans and the computers. Her ears perked as she realized the topic being spoken of.
A very groggy-looking Kyle shuffled into the room. “Good morning, or night. I haven’t been able the tell the difference for year. Wait a minute.” He looked at the pair of scientists. “Wait, have you both been here since I left? You do realize the point of me being here is to keep and eye on things so you can go home and rest those big brains of yours right? Are you taking turns catnapping like Vinyl? I mean I kinda assume unicorns just just work like that. Sus… er… Doctor Chang is usually pull late nighters. But this is two shifts in a row you were both here for my entire shift.”
Vinyl shook her head. "Hey, Kyle. They were just telling me that I'm a star." She sat up with a big grin. "I knew that already, but it's good to have that confirmed, you know? So, are they loving the jams?"
Kyle snorted to himself at that and grinned. "Of course. And if the song takes off, they have the whole back catalog of the original material the remix is based off of. Vinyl, you're going to be rolling in dough!"
Vinyl raised an eyebrow, before looking at the Doctors.
Chang gently pet down Vinyl's back. "He's not wrong, entirely. We promised you a share, and you'll get it. You aren't some 'thing' we can just take advantage of."
"Of course not." Herrington watched as the bar inched higher slowly. "You'll be the darling of every scientist in here when they hear you're the one paying their checks. Speaking of that." He folded his arms and tapped a foot. "I think it's time we went full public about this."
"Whoa there, buddy." Kyle raised a hand and took a half step forward, not quite getting between Herrington and Vinyl. "There are some issues there. For starters, no way can Vinyl go to the surface until we know she can blend in, and with all the conspiracy nuts and so on, that's not going to happen."
Herrington scoffed at that, waving a hand at Kyle dismissively. "I don't plan to bring her outside the lab, at least not without one hell of a tight escort. No, full public as in a scientific paper with pictures of her. We will make it clear what happened and who just entered our world."
“Yeah I appreciate your faith in humanity Doc,” Kyle laughed easily, “But your about to announce that the newest internet popstar is an alien, who just popped into a lab. Are you sure scientific journals are the first way you wanna tell the world that?”
“He’s not wrong.” Doctor Chang pointed out. “We’ve already gone public enough, any explanation we give in scientific journals will be a whisper on a scream.”
“Why not just let me show my face online, like all those v-tubers. They're aliens too, right?” Vinyl interjected.
"You're making assumptions." He tapped the screen with the performance of the track. "Right now, they only know that one 'Vinyl Scratch' made a song they like. They have no picture of her, just the image she cobbled together for the cover of her track. Word will get out, and we're not exactly top secret to begin with. We start with our word, or we get no word. Which will it be?"
Chang carefully considered the options. "This could go horribly wrong, and the media is not fond of things they don't understand." She shook her head and reached into her coat pocket to retrieve a phone. "I'm in favor, but I have to warn you, I'm not the right one to go to if you want to handle the media."
“Call her a v-tuber.” The night janitor laughed. “Girl called it herself. Just hand ‘em the ‘what’, explain the why when they ask.”
“I so got this!” Vinyl crooned, hunching over her imagined DJ space.
Harrington turned to the two eager ones. "Are you talking about videos? I wasn't even at that point. If she wants to present herself as a virtual person, she could, but I don't know why. Let me get this published properly. When that's all done, you can just show yourself, as you." He pointed to Vinyl. "We're not hiding things."
"Okay, I just can't believe you didn't notice the nickname Vinyl came up with." Kyle snorted softly. "Seriously, you didn't? I figured out the acronym and she'd never heard it before."
Chang raised a brow at that. "What nickname?"
Vinyl hopped onto her hind legs, spinning and extending her hooves outwards in a jazz hoof. "Virtual Girl!" Her hooves dropped as she took in the confused looks of the three.
Harrington burst into laughter at that. "Huh, I had entirely missed that. I don't spend much time on Youtube." He waved it away. "I'll get on that paper. Chang?"
“Heh, Virtual Girl.” Chang laughed out loud. “And the girl needs a face. Lucky for us, she has one. While Herington puts together the paper, we just put that adorable face out there, and if viewers think it’s just a cgi mask, well we’re not lying. There’s a scientific paper in progress right now explaining the truth.”
“I’m digging it.” Vinyl grinned widely. “Let the whole world see this face and hear my mighty, mighty wub tones!
“Of course you need a video sidekick.” Chang smiled coyly.
“No.” Kyle snapped.
“Oh come on Kyle!” The asian woman pouted, being deliberately cute. “Your already hanging out with Virtual Girl on camera. It’s free footage, and it get’s you in the royalties loop.”
“Sussie, we friends, we tight, but I told you coming in, I don’t want my name or my face on this publicly.” The older man put his foot down. “Anything you put out in the public, my face and name stays off it! I’m anonymous!”
“Dudes?” Vinyl said around a pilfered gummy candy she chewed. “I may have just had the best, worst idea ever…”
They all turned to the unicorn and waited, in expectation.
After a minute, Vinyl swallowed nervously. "I want Kyle to be the cameraman. I mean, I have magic, I'm great at pointing it around. But if I'm busy shaking it around for my fans, I can't be focusing on the camera at the same time, ya know? And he's really good at being, you know, with us."
Chang's eyes lit up as she grasped the intent immediately. "Not bad. I think we could do it with the right set up."
Herrington slowly considered it, before nodding, "Alright, I approve of the concept." He tapped a few things on the computer before turning back to Vinyl. "Why don't you and Kyle work on that. There's a lot of little things to iron out long before we show anyone outside anything. You want to put your best foot, er, hoof forward, right?"
“Huh, that could work.” Kyle nodded. “Keeps me in it, but out of it at the same time.”
“I know, right?” Vinyl grinned back. “All you need is an anonymous pseudonym!”
“Kyle isn’t my real name,” The man replied with a straight face. “Everyone here just mispronounces my first name all the time and I took to just answering to it.”
“What?” Vinyl’s jaw dropped. “I’ve been assuming your name tag was just missing some letters, like a typo, ya know?”
“It’s kind of an office nickname.” Dr. Chang laughed. “This one guy a few years ago couldn’t pronounce his name without the ‘L’ sound. He had a lisp, and then the rest of us started calling him that, and it kind of stuck.”
Herrington waved the conversation away. "We are all on the clock, I remind." He paused on Vinyl. "Except you, technically. We can't hire you, so you can't be that. Now, this was your idea, so I'd suggest getting on that."
"Aw, he's right." Kyle laughed as he nudged Vinyl gently. "Let's go find someplace less, you know, researchy. Come on, I have an idea."
Chang tapped Herrington's closer shoulder. "Don't be mean. Now, let's work on that paper. What part are you handling?"
"I was working in order." He brought up the document. "So, the foreword. Was there a part you wanted, Doctor?"
Chang considered a moment, then nodded. "I think I'll do a portion on the sociological ramifications of all this and how she fits."
Herrington shook his head. "Keep it to the basics. We're announcing she's here, which has plenty of questions already without getting into that."
She shook her head firmly in disagreement. "No, they are going to ask anyway. Best to have a solid answer on what we know and don't know. We wouldn't want them jumping to conclusions."
Kyle led the way, and Vinyl trotted close behind, her hoofsteps echoing in the hallways as they moved through the corridors of the facility. Her eyes wandered around the place, before pausing to look at a sign on one door.
“Everyone has their name on a door.” Vinyl noted absently. Eyes darting between Kyle’s name tag and the labeled door. “Can we look in that room?”
The night janitor stopped and looked at the sign on the door that the curious mare had focused on and frowned slightly. "No, Vinyl, I can't just go in any room."
Vinyl burst into laughter. "Not any room, but that one has your name, I think? Is it not your room or what?"
“No, girl.” Kyle laughed sadly. “That ain’t my room no more.”
“Dude! You can’t just say something like that!” The unicorn argued.
“And yet, I just did.” The night janitor laughed mirthlessly. “You wanna break in like you the way you steal my gummies, I ain’t gonna stop you. But I ain’t gonna open that door for you.”
Vinyl mulled this information over, while her eyes wandered over the sign above the door again. She moved a little bit closer, taking a careful sniff of the metal, nose wrinkling as it smelled of ozone and cleaning agents. "You owe me." She turned her nose up and put her rump to the door, facing away from it. "Now, fine, whatever. We can do something else."