Nighttime, Germany, on the outskirts of Wolfsburg City.
Beep beep.
A white Volkswagen sedan flashed its width light and a faint sound of unlocking doors and windows echoed.
A man with a goatee, wearing a white lab coat, emerged from the laboratory, opened the door of the Volkswagen, and drove off into the darkness of the road.
The road was devoid of streetlights; all the illumination came from the vehicle's headlights and the reflective signs and marker boards erected by the roadside.
This was common in sparsely populated countries—the infrastructure coverage wasn't that extensive, and there was no need for it, given the low volume of both pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
The road was wide, long, and straight.
The car had been driving for a long time without encountering another vehicle heading in the same or opposite direction, and the man with the goatee had long since grown accustomed to this.
