Looking around

Stephan led the new hire to an elevator bay. "Okay, as a broad overview of the facility, we are a bit of a one stop shop. We don't just discover new **** here, we also establish their manufacturing processes and do all small scale production in-house. If you saw the distillation columns outside, well, that's just a taste of the kind of throughput we're capable of. Everything we need to get to clinical trials is in this building." He pressed a button to signal one of the lifts, and pointed back to the hallway they had just come from.

"As you may have noticed, the ground floor is where the administrative offices are located. This facility is fully GMP compliant as of the latest ICH guidelines, and we maintain detailed records of all projects worked on. A large part of my job as the lead researcher here is spent keeping those records in order; there's plenty of that to do besides the manufacturing and studies. While all documentation is readily available to our employees, it is only on a need to know basis, to protect confidentiality." Tony nodded, wondering how much he'd have access to off the bat. The elevator doors opened, and the two stepped inside. There were six floors it seemed (the aboveground ones, plus a basement), along with a security scanner.

"Let's start from the top," Mr. Gregor said, and swiped a card in front of the scanner, choosing the fifth floor. It was a quick elevator, rising to the top in about 10 seconds. They stepped out and several large rooms with wide windows greeted him on either side of a long hallway. Inside of them a couple people could be seen working, wearing coveralls, head covers, goggles, mouth masks, latex gloves, and of course booties for their shoes.

"We have eight distinct cleanrooms on the top floor, each with an isolated HVAC system and quarantine ready airlocks. I know airlocks are falling out of favor in certain circles, but we had the room and funds, so they're available. We have supplemental isolators in place for most processes, so the airlocks are mainly useful for higher risk projects, and storing all of the lab wear you can see. Every cleanroom is modular, so we can swap equipment in or out as needed when setting up a new pipeline. We do that a lot, I'm afraid." The researcher chuckled. "We mainly use the cleanrooms for process development, but will use them for ad-hoc production needs for anything we don't need large quantities of."

One of the scientists inside a cleanroom noticed the pair and waved. Mr. Gregor waved back, and looked at Tony. "It's Sunday, so there's not a lot of people in, but that's Sana, and the other one in Room 7 today is Mark. We can take care of introductions later, though." He walked back to the elevator and Tony followed. Next, they went to the third floor.

"This floor and the floor above are our manufacturing hub, we have a control room over there, cold and desiccant storage repositories, a genome library, mixing vats, the endpoints of those distillation columns, and numerous bioreactors. Most of the materials we create on these floor are done in large scale batches, so we have enough to send to the regulators, and use ourselves. You'd find a lot of your time may be spent down here getting what you'd need if we didn't have those-" Mr Gregor pointed.

"Wait, did you say a genome library?" Tony interjected. Mr. Gregor grinned.

"Indeed I did. We have genetic material from over 10,000 species of animals, plants, fungi, and of course, bacteria at our disposal. Mark, he was upstairs, is our resident geneticist, and quite adept at taking some useful genes from one thing and putting them in another. Have you heard of CRISPR?"

"Of course."

"Ha, good. Hard not to these days. Well, with careful splicing, Mark's been able to replace genes in some of our more promising specimens, such that they become factories for some truly interesting compounds. The bioreactors have a few brewing up right now, if I'm not mistaken. Anyways, as I was saying, those distribution tubes can funnel most substances between this floor and the cleanrooms upstairs, so once a substance is produced and set up down here, it's as simple as choosing it from a menu up there. Saves us a lot of time." Tony nodded again, noting no look of annoyance on Mr. Gregor's face on being interrupted. He seemed like an ideal boss to have, easygoing if a little serious.

"There's nobody in the control room today, though on weekdays you'll find Harriet there, our chemical engineer. She manages the pipelines and such, and can help you set one up if you don't know how. Ultimately, everyone here learns how to set them up themselves, but she's the expert. Let's go to the next floor down, then," Mr. Gregor said, and they took the elevator down.

"So here are the remaining wonders of our lab - offices. Employee offices, that is. You'd be surprised at how hard it is to find good help, so a good number of them are empty, and a few we've repurposed for the janitorial staff and a break room or two. The upside to that is, even as an intern, you'll be getting your own." They walked down to a room, and Mr. Gregor scanned the door to step inside.

The room had a window spanning the entire wall, along with a desk and a computer. The shaded sunlight filtered in, highlighting dust particles and glimmering across the smooth surface of a wood desk. On it sat a few papers, and desktop computer, and a shrub. Carefully placed lights lit the room in a soft and comforting glow.

"This room... is mine?" Tony wondered aloud.

"Sure is. The papers there explain setting up your login and email, and company security policies. We don't limit your internet usage, and trust you'll use it wisely, though you probably won't be down here a lot anyways. The fun happens upstairs, here we just write reports and plan meetings, that sort of thing. Still, I find most employees are happier if they have a place in the office they can call home. This," Mr. Gregor said picking up a card on the desk, "is your security pass. Try not to lose it, though if you do, we can print another one and deactivate this one. This lets you go anywhere in the building you have access to; janitors will for example only be allowed to go to floors from here down. We keep the upper floors clean ourselves, again, for confidentiality and to avoid any thefts."

Tony tried not to jump up and down in glee. The pass had the photo of him Laura had taken of him in reception, not his best, but it would do.

"And, in the basement is our parking garage. If you'd like to park there, we can give you access. Do you have a car?"

"Yes."

"Great, I'll get you set up for that too. Your same security pass will let you in. For today why don't you get signed in to your computer and set up in here. As soon as you're done, you can pop back upstairs, I'll have Mark and Sana demonstrate lab procedure, and you can maybe start synthesizing some reagents. Sound good?"

"Sounds perfect," Tony said. And he meant it.

"I'll leave you to it, then. Let me know if you have any questions, I'm on the first floor, hard to miss."