more stuff about The Laboratory:
its literally built to gather knowledge from the maximum amount of universes; teleport a random teleportable person, squeeze all useful info from them.
chronotypes: ie, which character are they. a chronotype is a person. it can be pretty loose in definition, and a chronotype can be located in many universes in many times. (saloonatics dudes would be chronotypes, mirror mirror gals too).
people have "chronosignatures" - signs that mean they "are who they are", it can be sensed with specialty equipment but its kind of like.... interpreting blot tests. like most matt chronotypes are, you know, named matt, some of them are matthew, the further you go from the laboratory's universe the less canon and the less stable that the portals work.
the time-space portals that the laboratory use to teleport around use the founders' chronotypes - the closer to theirs, the more efficient and safe the portals are. chronotypes (characters) that interacted with the main dudes in canon can use them as well, but its slightly less safe. the futher you get from the main characters the less likely they are to get to/be in the laboratory.
so a person gets teleported randomly into the laboratory. the first contact employees (junior surveyors) go "hi! were doing stuff for the good of the multiverse. :3 can we have ur knowledge?" and if they say yes, well, that is another person that they can use to gather knowledge and power, goes on to work in the lab or be put..... IN the lab (shifty eyes emoji)
if u make too much of a fuss, you get memory-zapped - whether youre being interviewed or youre an employee.
hiring outreach program: the lab hires chronotypes as junior surveyors - ie unfortunately..... seen as disposable. sometimes it goes bad on first contact and the junior surveyor gets popped, well, the lab has a bunch of potential employees that cant get to their universe unless invited. the high pay means most people wont ask too many questions until its too late.
things are on a need-to-know basis. you cant get into places unless your ID allows access. the lower you are on the ladder of control, the less you know about how the laboratory actually operates.
(marks been working there for a long, long, long time and has been involved in a lot of very high-level shit - but hes been memory-zapped like....... a lot X_X right now hes pretty low on the ladder and exists almost exclusively to do interviews with new people who may or may not kill him)
(toymaker tord is pretty high up in the laboratory and designed many of the security robots, so many of them are horrible amalgamations of toys and robots but the robots are all totally nice and fine so its ok /hj)
