DAY 1

Dr. Sophie Robinson sang a little tune to herself as she cleaned around the lab. Interning for Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank was probably the messiest job she's ever undertaken. They're experiments alone were enough to make her stomach curdle, but on top of that their hygiene was deplorable. They'd normally have the janitors come in and clean after the mad scientist and his lackey had left, but for some reason they wouldn't go near the lab…

Oh well, that meant that she could have a little privacy and use her broom handle as a microphone. She barely knew the words to the songs she sang since as a rocket scientist she worked with machines and had to deal with listening to music over their loud noises, but that was her life and she wouldn't trade it for anything.

"You should audition for the company talent show if that's still going on."

She jumped and let out a shriek as a voice appeared out of nowhere. She looked around for the source, and turned to the monitors to find a man in a red jumpsuit chuckling at her antics on the screen.

"You scared me half to death!" Sophie said, but before she could tear him a new one, she noticed his name tag."Wait, you're Joel Robinson:the guinea pig?"

"Well, guinea pigs at least get a wheel to spin on so you're half right," he said with a shrug.

"This is incredible! I thought the Joel Robinson story was just a myth to scare the janitors," she said, slowly edging toward the screen.

"I'm as real as they get, baby," Joel said with a lopsided smile and laughed as she shrunk away, busying herself with finding a pen and paper.

"Don't call me that, Robinson!" she snapped, shifting through all of their research papers and data collected on Joel in her search. "So, you're stuck in space and they send you movies…oh my God; these two idiots haven't even interviewed you at all regarding the results?"

"Nope, they think their movies' effect on my noggin is interesting enough," Joel replied, knocking on top of his head.

"That changes today," she said, sitting upright with a pen and clipboard in her hand. "Tell me everything that's happened since you got there."

He leaned back onto the metallic counter. "The first day I got here…I think I just kind of wandered around; I tried to escape, sure, but how far can you get when there's no escape pod or space suit aboard? After that, I got a call from the Mads-"

"The Mads?" Sophie asked with a quirked eyebrow.

"Your bosses, Forrester and Frank, but it was Forrester and Eardhart back in the day," Joel explained before continuing. "So they call me and laugh maniacally for a solid hour before they finally explain to me what the experiment is and what I had to do."

"And that's it?" she asked, looking back up at him after she finished scribbling down her basic information.

"You betcha."

"But you've been up there a full year! You couldn't have just watched movies the whole time!" she exclaimed, getting frustrated again. Sophie kicked herself away from the monitor to roll to a filing cabinet, flicking through the files.

"I'm from Minnesota; we're raised to be listeners, not big talkers," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Do you have any idea why you were shot into space in the first place at least?" she called from the other side of the room.

Joel scratched his chin, thinking it over. "Well, I guess they never liked me to begin with. I never really understood why, but I guess now that I think about it I always threw away Dr. Forrester's potato lamps."

"Why would you do something like that?" Sophie asked, wheeling herself back over to the monitor, spreading the photos out in front of her to examine.

"I just thought they were garbage! I mean, if you saw a rotting potato and a light bulb mashed together, wouldn't you throw that away?" he countered, earning a nod from the scientist.

"True, but I don't know if the punishment fits the crime," she said, rooting through the pictures for more background information. She stopped when she saw the robots.

There was one that was seemingly like a gumball machine with a silver beak and white arms, and another that was a catcher's mask spray painted gold with a long beak to match. Cambot, the camera looking one, Sophie recognized since she had worked on a model similar to it in her lab, but the purple one with large eyes was foreign to her.

"Did you build these?" she asked, holding the picture up to the screen.

He nodded and said with a large smile," Yup, and from left to right it's Tom, Crow, Cambot, and Gypsy."

"They're really impressive, but what did you make them with?" Sophie asked, scrambling to write down his responses.

"Oh, I just what was lying around…which I later found out was how I made the movies start and stop, but I'd say it was worth it," Joel said with a shrug.

After a while of back and forth, and watching his interviewer scribble down his answers, Joel asked," So what's your favorite movie?"

"I'm sorry?" Her head jerked up, her glasses sliding down her nose.

"What's your favorite movie," he repeated, absentmindedly playing with the zipper on his jumpsuit.

"I don't see how that's relevant to the experiment."

"Sure it is; we're talking about how movies affect my mind, so it's only fair that I get to ask you the same," Joel explained.

"I don't think you're aware of how an interview works," Sophie said, pushing her black rimmed glasses further up the bridge of her nose.

"I don't think you're aware of how boring your interviewee is," he said with a sheepish grin. He knew he didn't have enough to capture this scientist's attention long enough to make her want to keep talking to him, so he'd rather hear what she'd have to say and save her from his ramblings.

They quiet for a long time, the only sounds were their breathing and the flipping of Sophie's papers.

"Wizard of Oz."

"I'm sorry?" he asked, leaning forward as if he could hear her better.

"My favorite movie is the Wizard of Oz…what's yours, Mr. Robinson?" she asked, looking back up at him with a slight smile on her face.

Joel could smile in response. "The Circus of Dr. Lao."

YEAR ONE

Joel sat on a stool looking up at the screen as Sophie bustled around the lab trying to find a pen. Normally he'd tell her that there was one sitting in her lab coat pocket, but today she was dressed in a strapless black dress, her glasses nowhere to be seen.

"Aw, did you get all dressed up for me?" he teased, watching her whip around with her hands on her hips.

"No, Joel, I had a prior dinner engagement before I could come interview you," Sophie said quickly before looking back down to move books and strange inventions around to find a pen.

"Dinner engagement is an awfully fancy way of saying date." He folded his arms and rested in his chin on top of them, like a child watching his favorite Saturday morning cartoon.

"It wasn't a date; Dr. Forrester took me out to congratulate promoting me to his fulltime lab assistant."

Joel made a face. "You look too pretty to be going out on a 'dinner engagement' with Dr. Forrester."

"Mr. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me," she quoted, earning a grin from him as her cheeks pinkened.

"That depends: is it working?" His grin faltered slightly when she turned her face away from him, pretending to be fascinated with the blank page on the clipboard. "Aw, come on, Sophie, I didn't mean to-"

"This is very unprofessional, Joel," Sophie said, making a move to adjust her glasses when they weren't even on her face.

"About unprofessional as being forcibly shot into space to watch bad movies for the rest of my life?" he asked challengingly.

She clicked the pen rapidly instead, the tip popping in and out with each irritating click. "I mean, for two years I've been interviewing you but you know what? We don't even talk about the movies you're watching anymore. We talk about current events and, and, sports and when you say things like that it's….it's…"

"It's hard not to fall irrevocably in love with me?" He laughed at her puckered expression.

"No, it's hard not to call you my friend," she mumbled, avoiding his gaze.

"Well, I'm already stuck up here for unprofessional reasons so why don't we just continue to be unprofessional?" he suggested. "You're doing a better job than Forrester managing the experiments anyway."

Sophie looked back up at him shyly. "You really think so?"

Joel nodded and said," Yeah, I'm losing my sanity with each of these interviews!"

"Oh, you scoundrel!"

"I'm kidding, friends can joke around can't they?" he asked.

"I guess they can."