Madness and Meihem in the Outback

Chapter One

"I continued the work on my 'Cerebral Projector' (funny name, right?!) that I started back in my college days (which you don't need a date on!). Until my original lab is fully operational again, it gives me a chance to work on more personal projects (you know, like that snow cone gun everybody writes to me about??) so I'm very excited to come back to this Projector!

Farewell! Especially if you're running a bus company!

--Mei-Ling Zhou
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Mei energetically pushed herself against her desk, sending the rolling chair beneath her skidding across the room, though not far enough to reach her destination. Her face contorted in determination as she grasped the seat and pitter-pattered her feet against the floor, slowly making her way over until once again coming face-to-face with her spherical 'Cerebral Projector'- a project she'd grown quite fond of since making some rather important progress on it.

She pulled it into her lap and whipped out a small wrench-like tool, poking and prodding at the inner workings of the metallic ball, her lips bending to one side as her eyes narrowed in focus. Her tiny drone flew by to watch, having finished its previous task of formatting the blog post Mei had just completed.

"Thanks, Snowball!" she exclaimed as she worked her tool around various wires and circuit boards, "Right now I'm trying to link up the motherboard with the front ports. I'd like to make it project independent of any peripherals, but for now, I'll just settle with projecting, uh, you know, to monitors and stuff."

Nearly losing her train of thought within that dense collection of technology, she sighed in relief as she finished up, "Great! Can you get me a USB to HDMI cord?"

Snowball made an agreeable whirring sound as its digital eyes rose in a happy expression, its tiny body lightly floating across the room. In the meantime, Mei finished reconstructing the outer shell of the device, patting it affectionately as she nodded approvingly of her work.

"This could revolutionize psychology, neurology; everything!" she exclaimed aloud, carefully placing the spherical ball of tech onto her desk as Snowball returned. Hooking the device up to her monitor, she held her hand against a small grove in the Cerebral Projector, studying the screen as she played certain thoughts through her mind.

Nothing.

She groaned, "Well, looks like we need something more. Ugh."

Shaking her head dejectedly, Mei sighed as she spun around in her chair, "I was hoping it would pick up the correct biorhythms and pulses of nerves that time, but it wasn't even picking those up! Snowball, what am I going to do?"

The small drone's face fell into a pair of sad eyes as it lowered down against Mei, gingerly rubbing against her face, which only caused her to laughed, "Okay! Okay! I'll just take a break and come back to it...again."

She stood up and walked toward the door, though only to make her way around a desk. Instead of leaving her dark lab, she walked toward a couch she'd brought herself, hopping into it as she reached for a controller, turning a nearby television onto some show or something. She sighed as her mind remained on her little project, though she only snuggled with a pillow as she sunk into the couch, dejectedly.

Since coming to Watchpoint: Gibraltar, Mei had barely left the quiet confines of her laboratory, though it easily doubled as a workshop with all the technician work she also performed. Despite inviting her himself, Winston would often forget she was there himself; though, on the times he would invite her to escape sometimes, she simply laughed and waved it off.

Her true headquarters, however, was down in Antarctica, where one of Overwatch's few environmentally-minded Watchpoints was, though, in a devastating storm, all of the people she had worked with, and grown to consider family in that isolation, had all perished. In a desperate attempt to wait for aid, they'd all cryogenically frozen themselves, and in those ten years of waiting, all but one had died in their stasis.