Numbers and equations are the only thing that's real. The only thing that matters, the only thing that can keep you working night after night, lost in a heaven of pure science. Why is it a problem if sometimes you get distracted and forget that your students are waiting in class? Or you miss a stupid deadline for something so venial as a grant application? They call you strange, even crazy, but the truth is that they are only sad people that can not see the beauty that you see. They even forced you to attend to this stupid event, said that networking will be good for your career. It would be nice to find someone interested in your beautiful equations, but you don't have so much hope about it.

Many amazing new scientific discoveries are happening nowadays, so many have been happening for the last century, but unfortunately the scientific community is not always ready to accept new, brave theories. From orgone energy to cold fusion, from the theory of continental drift to the lunar effect, a lot of interesting ideas have to fight to be heard and accepted. Your work is to help those voices to be heard. You have a decent academic career, but you are not afraid to support controversial theories, if they seem to be valid. A lot of your colleagues are not so open minded. You are at this event to make sure that a new brilliant idea will not be suffocated by the small mindedness of petty academics.

When you were younger you started to study medicine, but you soon discovered that the career of a medical doctor was not suited for you. You switched fields and are now the head of the Chemistry Department of the Center. In the last year you worked side by side with the von Neumanns on a small part of their project. They needed in fact a very complex cooling system and you helped develop a powerful gas, perfect for the purpose, but unfortunately very toxic. You started your career hoping to save lives and you ended up developing something so deadly. The gas is located in very safe containers, but, due to your worries, the Center agreed to develop a safety system in case of an unlikely leak. You are now the safety supervisor, and every day you check obsessively all the security measures. It should all be perfectly safe, but you can't get rid of some apprehension.

You are very smart. You are brilliant and already very competent in your field of research. Everybody around you is aware of that. You are aware of that and you are not sorry for it. If the others can not keep up, that's their problem. You will soon leave them behind to go on with your career. You are very excited to take part in this event, even if you were not surprised to be invited. Of course Prof. von Neumann will be happy to discuss his latest theories with you, maybe you will be even able to help with them.

You are a famous astronomer, who works for the Lohrmann Observatory in Dresden, East Germany. You are used to working with old machinery and crap telescopes. Therefore, you had to learn to be a technician too, because no one else knows how to repair such dated technology. You don't complain, you like it, you like to take something that people consider useless and make it work again. There are a lot of old telescopes in the German Research Center for Advanced Studies, but nobody there knows how to use them, not anymore. They call you every time they have a problem with their ancient domes and you have been there several times already. Just ten years ago it wouldn't be so simple, but in the last few years it has become easier and easier to obtain a permit to cross the border. Most of the time you had to work together with the von Neumanns and their absurd requests of alteration of one telescope in particular. The modifications they required make no sense and you still don't understand their purpose, but you have the feeling that finally, during the presentation, all will become clear.

Your Professor should be here. Not you. He should be here to work with the von Neumanns on their project. But he didn't feel like it, he did not want to spend six months with the "capitalist pigs who sell mother science for dirty money" (his words not yours). And, as always, when your professor doesn't want to do something, you have to do it. So two months ago you came to this Research Center, but you don't feel like the people here really welcomed you. Even the von Neumanns, who should have given you some report about their project, tend to avoid you and they still haven’t told you anything. You are, and always will be, a foreigner in the eyes of these people. Probably some of them even suspect that you are a spy, only because you are russian. As if a PhD could really be a spy ... what nonsense.

Maybe this is not exactly your dream job, but you are pretty good at it. Sure, working for a big newspaper would have been more exciting, but handling the media communication for so many relevant scientific projects is also important. Yes, you have to deal every day with scientists that maybe do not hold you in high regards, because, yes, you don't even have a PhD. They don't realise that they will be lost without you. You are the reason they keep getting public money for their crazy ideas. You are why their creepy projects are accepted by local communities. This event will be no different, you will do a lot of underappreciated work. At least this time what will be presented is really amazing.

You always thought you would end up working in some hospital, you wanted to help save lives and take care, but various events in your life brought you here. The Research Center is a quiet place and nothing ever happens. Your work here is basically boring and maybe you should not complain about it, but you cannot fight the urge of being helpful so you let anyone involve you in their problems and you always try to give them good advice. Now your presence is requested for this conference, as it is for any public event for safety reasons, but you are pretty sure that nothing will happen and everything will be only another long boring afternoon.

A lot of hope is what you had when you first moved from Czechoslovakia. You successfully graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and to be an artist has always been your dream. But life is never what one desires and so you had to flee from your homeland to West Germany. You managed to make a decent life here, but, when you tried to have your academic qualifications recognized, it was impossible and no one was willing to give you a proper position without qualifications. So you had to find this job as a cafeteria worker by the Research Center in order to keep your work residence permit valid. A job that you don't like and that you have to do day after day. And now they even ask you to work during the weekends and you cannot say no, you cannot risk losing this job. Working on Saturday... sure you will try to do as little as possible, not that anyone will pay any attention to what you do. Nobody does it. Never.

You are a mere janitor, your duties are to keep the campus clean and in order, but you are happy to work here. Science was always your passion and here you can nourish it. You don't have a proper academic formation, but you can grasp things very fast and over time you have built up a good knowledge in different scientific fields. The students and professors basically respect you and enjoy talking with you and explaining you various things. Therefore you managed to have your cleaning shift during the presentation day and they will allow you to have a break and to enjoy the conference.

They don't know how hard it is to always keep everything in perfect order. They come, touch your stuff and leave their trash everywhere. And then they demand for you to find what they are looking for, in the mess they themselves made. "They" are of course your colleagues at the Research Center, the same who don't respect neither you nor your job, obviously. Now they organized this big event in YOUR library. A bunch of foreigners and ignorants will be there and will eat and drink and move things that are not supposed to be moved. Fortunately you will also be there to control that everything will be left as it was meant to be.

Your life was always quiet and simple. You are of course a good athlete, but not excellent and you are very well aware of that. You have always played for the local team and never accepted more profitable contracts from foreigners. That is why you are so loved by the locals, they see you as a loyal friend and a trustworthy person. Famous and familiar at the same time... And now this invitation to this nerdy thing. You don't even know why they chose you, but your manager insisted for you to accept. There will be other VIPs as well, but the mundane life is not something you are really comfortable with. And now you are here and you really hope that nobody asks you any complicated question...

When they first founded the Research Center, they did what they always do, they promised big work opportunities for the locals, at the price of accepting some minor change in the community life. To be fair they more or less kept their promises until now, and their approach to workers rights is pretty decent. But you know that you don't have to let your guard down. Even you can understand that this conference is not a normal one, they invited a whole circus of every sort of people, they are clearly looking for a lot of resonance and so for a lot of new funds. This is why you insisted on being here, even if at first you were not invited. If they want to go big, local workers have to be involved.

People think that being a mayor of a small country town is not a very demanding job. As it often happens, people are wrong. You have to deal with so many different sorts of problems, from farmers requesting more public funding for their bad crops, to insane anti-nuclear activists that decided to make this region nationwide famous with their crazy antics. And now this. Until recently the Research Center has been nice and quiet, but now they decide to organise this big event, inviting all kinds of people. You have no idea what they are going to present, but just looking at the guests list makes you worried. Between the "local celebrities" and all those journalists, this could be a PR mess. You can only hope that you will manage to keep the situation smooth and uneventful.

You were there when the Free Republic of Wendland was born, and you were there when its people were evicted. Since then you have dedicated your life to the ideal that people's collaborative effort can build a better world. You have committed to several important causes and you have built a solid net of brave, smart and dedicated people that share your ideals. Some of those people started to see you as somewhat of a leader, and that is a big honour and a big responsibility. Now you have to be very careful to decide what to oppose and what not, as a word from you can potentially be mobilitating a lot of people. It is not the first time that someone tries to use your influence to keep a project away from further scrutiny. If tomorrow the papers will show your smiling picture, while you talk to the lead scientists, the Research Center will be fine. If you will announce that what they are doing here is somewhat shady, the few protesters that now sometimes gather at the gates, will become hundreds. Sometimes you wish to go back to simpler days.

You often think about how it was 200 years ago, when your family was the most powerful of the region, respected and even feared. You often do it at night, when insomnia keeps you awake and the only thing left to do is to walk up and down the empty rooms of what once was the majestic palace of your family. You, and your father before you, had to sell most of your belongings to keep the palace from falling into a pile of rubble. Even the fields where the Research Centre for Advanced Studies was built, once belonged to your family: your grandfather gave it to the municipality - for free. Now they invited you to this presentation, maybe out of gratitude for your grandfather’s present, or most likely because you are still an important figure for the citizens. You plan to participate in the event, but mostly to avoid another boring lonely night thinking how everything was better in the past.

The von Neumanns presented this project to you as something that would change the world’s economy forever and easily convinced you to finance them. Of course you didn't want to be left behind in the great race of the new technology. As the years went by, the two scientists kept asking for your patience. But you put in a big sum of money and your patience is less and less every year. Now it seems that they have finally reached a breakthrough and will show something spectacular. It'll better be true or they will pay back every cent you invested.

The flame of revolution burns in you, the same flame that sounds in your biting words and in your noisy music. Whether you dedicate yourself to complex electronic compositions or consume sweat on a hot electric guitar, one thing is certain: nothing and nobody is safe from your art. You are invited only for your fame and you don't give a fuck about this project, but a lot of people seem to and you can't miss the opportunity to seep in your words and your ideals at this party of hypocrisy.

You find it very funny that they keep inviting you to these sorts of things. Of course you have a decent education and you did a lot of research for your books, but still you are a novelist, not a scientist. A lot of people forget that: since your second book was published and you officially established yourself as an affirmed science fiction writer, you keep getting invited to scientific events, especially those that want a bit more publicity in the not-scientific world. You go to these events because it is good press for you and because you have lots of fun answering in completely random ways to the idiots that think it makes sense to ask serious scientific questions to a science fiction writer. They usually understand that you were bullshitting them only after a few hours. Sometimes, if you are lucky, the science that they are presenting is interesting and gives you inspiration for some new work.

When you received this invitation it sounded boring, but unfortunately you couldn't say no. Your career is important and events of this kind are essential. You really hope there will be at least a decent party afterwards. A bit of really decent booze. You will need it to go through hours of chit chat with a bunch of pompous scientists. And maybe there will be the possibility to do some networking: according to the guest list there will be some well connected people, and maybe you can score some useful deals.

A lot of things are on the verge of changing forever for the German people. You worked for the Ministry of Defense in the last year and it is very clear for you and your colleagues that the Cold War is coming to an end. That is good news for the Federal Republic, but it also means that a lot of things will fall apart and that you will have to double your efforts in doing your work. Plus, new technologies are rising everywhere and everyday and the global society itself will change drastically with them. Therefore you are here. Your superior obtained an invitation for the conference, and you were sent to find out what this new technology is and, most of all, how much it could be dangerous (maybe useful) for all of us.

Archbishop Philipp Krementz asked you to participate in his stead for this presentation at the Research Centre for Advanced Studies. You know nothing of the place, but you have some knowledge of science, definitely more than the Archbishop and the Vatican wants you to report if anything relevant for the Church is happening there. You accepted the job and as always you plan to do it with absolute care. These are troubled times, the compass that points always towards the right direction is only in the Church's hands, and for this night, you are those hands.

You are a very good journalist, but while your career is good enough, it is not yet what you deserve. After years of missed opportunities, bad luck and low blows from your colleagues, you are still waiting for the big scoop, that one article that will make readers remember your name. This can be it, you can feel it in your bones. Someone with your experience can easily understand that what will happen to this conference will make a big impact. There will be other journalists, but you have to be the one to find out all the secrets, all the juicy details of the story. You are the one that will have the big scoop.

A scientific press conference is not your usual hunting ground. Half the words in the main lecturer bio make totally no sense to you, and, at first, the whole thing sounded incredibly boring. But then you saw the guests list and you got intrigued. Half of the guests probably know about science less than you. It is clear that whoever organised this thing wants for it to make news, at any cost. And so you will be able to observe all these very important people completely outside of their element. So many opportunities to find something juicy!

In a world where media have sold their soul to spectacularization, to profit and to a frankly tragic lack of decent grammar, your newspaper is still a beacon of integrity and damn good journalism. You are the director, the embodiment of the values that the newspaper represents.You worked hard your whole life to be where you are and you completely deserve your position. Your work and your principles are of utmost importance for you and you will report on this event in the most professional way.

War, the worst part of humanity, war is your field of competence. You had the "privilege" in your life to witness the evil that lives inside every one of us. You are good at it, you are good at moving yourself when the danger is near, at surviving desperate situations. You are good at observing men hunting down other men. Sometimes you had to stop thinking, you had to close your brain and pretend that it didn't happen to be able to move on. Maybe you never really did. You are so good at it that you even won a Pulitzer Prize for it. And now your fame as a reporter gets you invited at this big event. Maybe, for once, you will witness that men can be able to do some good too... maybe.

He is the star of today's event. The man who claims to have invented something that will change our lives forever. Will it be true or will it just be yet another rip-off? 

She worked side by side with her husband Albert for many years at the very same project that will be presented today. Rumors say that she is the real mind behind the project.

He is the security guard of the campus. His duties are to control that everything is in order and that everyone follows the safety protocols.