Variant Labs is a privately owned research and development company led by Adrian James Carter II, focused on innovative scientific solutions, specialized product development, and independent experimentation beyond the limits of traditional institutions. Operating from privately held desert property outside Zion’s direct land ownership, Variant Labs maintains the freedom to pursue its work under its own structure and long-term vision.
While the company is not owned by Zion (anymore), its relationship with the city remains significant.
Through the continued development and supply of products such as AAVARION and other proprietary materials that serve Zion’s broader needs. Variant exists within a legal binding that allows it to remain an independent private company while still contributing to the systems and markets surrounding Zion. This balance allows Variant Labs to preserve operational autonomy without severing its economic relevance. Built on the belief that progress requires flexibility and bold thinking, Variant Labs positions itself as a forward looking institution where development and innovation can thrive without unnecessary restriction as opposed to Zion’s almost criminal rule.
Sometimes.
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Variant Labs periodically opens positions across multiple departments as our work continues to grow and evolve. We are always interested in hearing from driven, adaptable individuals of ages 18 and up, who want to be part of a research environment focused on discovery, and forward movement. We only really look for those who want to get better at not just what they’re good at, but also what they’re terrible at.
While certain specialized roles may require prior experience or formal qualifications, some starting positions do not require a degree. We believe talent, curiosity, and the willingness to learn can be just as valuable as traditional credentials, especially for those looking to build a future within our organization.
Variant Labs is always looking for new scientists, researchers, assistants, and support staff willing to go the extra mile and help us explore new territories of science and exploration, opening the door to new fields of study and expanding what is possible through independent research.
Adrian, our CEO, has opened Variant’s doors many times before through job fairs and promotional advertisements, seeking those willing to step inside and bring new ideas to the table.
Variant Labs was built by outcasts and people who were never given the chance to have a voice. Here, we believe science grows stronger when it listens to those the world once ignored.
To view current openings and apply for any available positions, please follow the the giant blue link button listed on this page. If no positions are currently available, we encourage you to check back in the future for new opportunities.
Before it became Variant Labs, the company was originally known as Variation Tech, an earlier operation focused primarily on robotics and technical development inside and governed by the Zion border, held by the leadership of Patrick Addams. Variation Tech built a reputation as a structured and dependable company, mainly for relying on old-fashioned methods of scientific practice. While most corporations rushed toward artificial intelligence and automated systems, Variation Tech dug its heels into the dirt and treated modern technology like it was a personal insult.
Some employees used to joke that the company operated like a council of prehistoric cave scholars banging rocks together every time someone mentioned the future, but Patrick Addams proudly viewed it as “doing it the way our forefathers taught us.”
Patrick was widely seen as a familiar presence within the organization, and for a time, Variation Tech operated as a respected extension of scientific and industrial work connected to Zion.
As the company evolved, new ideas began to push against its older foundation. One of the most influential voices in that shift was Adrian James Carter II, a young scientist whose distinctive way of thinking and interest in experimental research gradually set him apart. Over time, it became clear that Variation Tech was at a crossroads between maintaining its original direction, and stepping into something more ambitious than it was willing to be.
Early drawing of Variation Tech before expansion.
Shown here is the company in its smaller, earlier form,
back when Variation Tech operated as a modest robotics-focused facility
Photo of Patrick Addams, Variation Tech's CEO,
and Adrian Carter's previous employer.
Project MXVR is an internal Variant Labs research initiative dedicated to the continued study, and documentation of AAVARION, as a pharmaceutical product. The project is designed to support a broader understanding of AAVARION’s development history, formulation standards, therapeutic applications, market performance, and ongoing research potential within a controlled scientific environment.
AAVARION is presented as a wellness oriented: medicinal product developed from highly abnormal research findings, and its commercial success helped establish Variant Labs as a serious and profitable institution.
Through Project MXVR, Variant Labs is able to organize multiple branches of analysis related to AAVARION under one umbrella. Project MXVR as a whole, is separated into three various layers, but as of now only one is open for discussion to the public
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Following a deadly internal accident and a major change in leadership, Adrian James Carter II was placed in charge of the company. With that transition came a new vision. Rather than continuing as a robotics-focused institution bound to its earlier model, the company restructured and was renamed to Variant Labs. The new name reflected a larger mission: to move beyond conventional systems and pursue bold, independent research across emerging and unknown areas of science.
The transition from Variation Tech to Variant Labs marked more than a simple rebrand. It was the beginning of a new era for the organization, one defined by innovation and a willingness to enter fields of study that more traditional institutions would not. While the company’s foundation began with Variation Tech, It's path forward was defined by the ambition that gave rise to Variant Labs.
Adrian James Carter II would argue that science can survive in Zion, but not by pretending Zion itself does not exist.
Zion has long treated scientific advancement as something unnatural, dangerous, even unholy when left outside the state’s control, and yet, for reasons Adrian still cannot fully explain, Zion has never made a direct move against Variant Labs. No raids. No military seizure. No attempt to overrun the facility despite its independence and increasingly public influence. Adrian finds that silence more unsettling than open hostility, why would a city-state large enough to cover half the world, not even dare to make a laboratory gaining popularity vanish.
Adrian also knows that belief alone does not keep a laboratory running. Part of what allowed Variant Labs to survive its early independent phase was the fact that he still had access to a substantial reserve of money originally set aside by his father for law school which, depending on who you ask, may be the most expensive legal education ever redirected into science. The files make clear that Adrian’s father pushed him towards law and rhetoric, and that the savings meant for that path later became one of the few resources Adrian could draw on, while trying to turn the desert facility into a functioning research institution.
It was not enough to build everything at once, but it was enough to keep the lights on, restore critical systems, and give Variant Labs a fighting chance. A deeper part of Adrian’s answer is ideological. He is the sort of scientist who clings to the idea that uniqueness is worth protecting, even when the world is against it.
That way of thinking matches Phoebe Knox’s complicated legacy, Adrian’s role model, remembered throughout history as one of the foundational minds behind Zion’s scientific and technological rise, including the early philosophies that would later feed into organizations like Variation Tech itself.
Historical archives portray Phoebe as a steward of progress, a visionary responsible for massive leaps in scientific development. Much of modern Zion’s technological backbone exists because of systems and theories she helped pioneer generations earlier. Entire institutions were built from her work, only to later be reshaped and weaponized by the state for its own purposes.
But history rarely speaks of her kindly.
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Across Zion and beyond, Phoebe Knox is more infamously remembered by another title entirely: “The Red Lamb.”
To some grand researchers, such as Wallace Kerensky, she is viewed as the woman who effectively dragged science itself into the modern age. To others, she is remembered as a dangerous extremist whose obsession with advancement eclipsed human morality. By the time North Zion fell, public perception of Phoebe had transformed completely. State records and surviving broadcasts state her as a madwoman, willing to sacrifice an entire city and its people for what she believed was the greater good.
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According to the Zion Archives, Phoebe Knox served directly under Zion’s authority during this period, holding a seat on Phase Zion’s ruling council alongside her husband, Roger Knox.
Archived records claim that during the fall of North Zion, Phoebe murdered Roger in cold blood after political fractures between the two reached a breaking point. In the aftermath, she was accused of pushing Zion toward total collapse, allegedly willing to sacrifice the entire city-state to the same spreading force that had already begun consuming the North.​​
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Phoebe Knox helped shape Zion’s future, then twisted that future into something dangerous enough to nearly destroy it.
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Phoebe Knox’s current whereabouts remain completely unknown.
Following the fall of North Zion and the accusations surrounding her role in the catastrophe, Phoebe vanished before Zion authorities could successfully apprehend her.
Despite direct orders issued by Phase Zion himself, no confirmed capture was ever recorded, and every documented attempt to track her movements eventually went cold.
To most citizens, Phoebe is believed to have died years ago, either during the collapse of the North or somewhere beyond Zion’s borders while fleeing capture. Her name is often treated like a relic of the past.
Others know she is anything but.
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