Future Gadget Laboratory

Second floor, above the Braun Tube Workshop, Akihabara. Rintaro Okabe founded it in mid-March 2010, and by August it has eight members, each with a number and each tied to a world line. Point at a member, or tab to one, and the meter in the bar reads their line.

This page spoils the whole story.

Lab members 001-008

Numbered in the order they joined. The last column is the world line each one is tied to: the line their own D-mail made, or the one where their story turns.

Lab members 001 to 008, with role, turning point and world line
No.	Member	Role	D-mail or turning point	World line
001	Rintaro Okabe"Okarin", self-styled Hououin Kyouma	Founder, 18. First-year student at Tokyo Denki University.	Sends the first D-mail on July 28 and one to himself on August 10. The only one who remembers every line; in Operation Skuld he deceives his own past.	1.048596
002	Mayuri Shiina"Mayushii"	Childhood friend, 16. Cosplay seamstress, MayQueen waitress.	Shot in the raid on August 13. She dies on every Alpha line, and half remembers those deaths in her dreams.	0.337187
003	Itaru Hashida"Daru", alias Super Hacka	Hacker, 19. Tokyo Denki University.	Breaks into SERN with the IBN 5100 and erases the first D-mail. Turns out to be Suzuha's father.	1.130205
004	Kurisu Makise"Assistant", "Christina"	Neuroscientist, 18, with a paper published in Science.	Found in blood on July 28; the first D-mail keeps her alive. Builds the Time Leap Machine.	0.571024
005	Moeka Kiryu"Shining Finger"	Part-timer at the editing company Arc Rewrite, 20. Never off her phone.	D-mail to her own phone on August 4. Secretly a Rounder under FB, and she leads the raid.	0.523299
006	Luka Urushibara"Lukako"	From Yanabayashi Shrine, 16. Okabe's sword pupil.	D-mail to his mother's pager on August 6: born female on the new line. Undoing it costs Luka a day's date with Okabe.	0.456903
007	Faris NyanNyanRumiho Akiha	Star and secret owner of MayQueen+Nyan², 17. RaiNet champion.	D-mail to her father on August 7: he lives, and Akihabara never becomes an otaku town. Undoing it loses him again.	0.409420
008	Suzuha AmaneJohn Titor; born Suzu Hashida	Part-time warrior at the CRT shop, 18. From 2036.	Leaves for 1975 to find her father. On another line she returns on August 21 to launch Operation Skuld.	0.409431

Their lab badges read OSHMKUFA 2010: the members' initials in the order they joined, and the year the lab was founded.

Glossary

Thirty terms, in the order the story needs them. Everything here is our own summary.

World line: One self-consistent history of the universe. Only one is active at a time.
Divergence: The number that names a world line: its offset from 0.000000. Changes past the sixth decimal place do not register.
Attractor field: A bundle of world lines that converge on the same key events. Alpha (0.xxxxxx): Mayuri dies and SERN rules. Beta (1.xxxxxx): Kurisu dies and a world war follows.
Convergence: Fate inside a field. Change the details and the outcome still arrives.
1% barrier: The divergence you have to cross to get from the Alpha field to the Beta field.
Steins Gate world line: 1.048596. It lies between the two fields and belongs to neither. Okabe named it.
Reading Steiner: Okabe's ability to keep his memories across a shift. It comes as vertigo, and for a moment his sight drains to monochrome.
D-mail: Short for "DeLorean Mail": a text message sent into the past through the PhoneWave. It carries at most 36 bytes.
PhoneWave (name subject to change): Future Gadget #8: a microwave switched on by calling a phone. It makes tiny black holes.
Gelbana: A banana the PhoneWave has turned into green gel. The first clue that something is wrong with the microwave.
42-inch CRT: Mr. Braun's giant Braun-tube television, one floor below the lab. Its cathode rays steady the black holes into rotating Kerr black holes.
Time Leap Machine: Kurisu's upgrade. It compresses your memories and sends them into your own brain, up to 48 hours back, received through a phone.
Divergence Meter: Eight Nixie tubes built by a future Okabe to show the current divergence. The meter on this site is an original drawing, not the prop.
Nixie tube: A neon display tube from the 1950s. The digits 0 to 9 are wire cathodes stacked front to back and lit at about 170 volts.
El Psy Kongroo: Okabe's sign-off on his pretend phone calls to "the Organization". The official spelling is Kongroo; subtitles often write Congroo.
Hououin Kyouma: Okabe's mad-scientist alter ego, and what he calls his true name. It began as a way to pull a grieving Mayuri back.
The Organization: The agency Okabe pretends is hunting him. It turns out to be real, and it is SERN.
The choice of Steins Gate: Okabe's catchphrase for whatever happens, which he admits means nothing. By the end it names a real choice.
Lab Mem: A numbered member of the lab. 001 to 008 appear in Steins;Gate; 009 to 011 join in Steins;Gate 0.
OSHMKUFA 2010: The lab-mem badge: the members' initials in joining order, and the year the lab was founded.
Operation Urd, Verthandi, Skuld: Okabe's operations, named after the Norns of past, present and future: the D-mail tests, the time leaps and the undoing, and the final rescue.
SERN: A parody of CERN that secretly researches time travel with its collider.
Z Program and jellymen: SERN's human time-travel experiments, whose subjects end up as gel.
Rounders: SERN's mercenary strike force. Their orders come from FB, who is Mr. Braun.
ECHELON: The real signals-intelligence network. In the story, it is how SERN logged the first D-mail.
IBN 5100: A parody of the IBM 5100 of 1975, and the only machine that can read SERN's legacy code.
John Titor: In real life, a poster from 2000 who claimed to come from 2036 and to be looking for an IBM 5100. In the story, Suzuha's handle.
Metal Upa: The rare metal version of Upa, a round mascot. It is Mayuri's capsule prize, and it decides whether the thesis survives.
Tutturu: Mayuri's sing-song greeting. She calls herself Mayushii.
@channel: The story's version of the 2channel textboard, where John Titor posts.

Akihabara, fiction and real

Where the story happens, and the real places it borrows from. Several of them are homes, shrines and working streets: visit quietly.

Not to scale. Positions are approximate and only relative to each other, and the lab building is a composite of several.

Places in the story and their real counterparts
In the story	What happens there	Real counterpart
Future Gadget Lab	Home base, on the second floor of the "Ohiyama Building" above the Braun Tube Workshop and its 42-inch CRT.	A composite. Okabe's directions run north on Chuo-dori to Suehirochō, onto Kuramaebashi-dori, then the alley before the light. The model is the Kohiyama Building: the story swaps small (小) for big (大).
Lab rooftop	Canned oden with Mayuri, long talks with Kurisu.	The same composite building.
Radio Kaikan	Nakabachi's conference, the "satellite", Suzuha's rooftop landing on August 21, Operation Skuld.	Akihabara Radio Kaikan. The old building closed in 2011; a new one opened on the same site in 2014 under the same sign.
Yanabayashi Shrine	Luka's family shrine, where the IBN 5100 is kept.	Yanagimori Shrine on the Kanda River gives the placement, gate and steps; Kanda Myōjin gives most of the grounds.
MayQueen+Nyan²	The maid café where Faris and Mayuri work.	Cafe Mai:lish, which also runs Steins;Gate collaborations.
UPX	Establishing shots and meeting points.	Akihabara UDX, in the Crossfield complex.
Kanda Fureai Bridge, Manseibashi	Okabe and Luka's date; carrying the IBN 5100.	Real bridges over the Kanda River.
Coin lockers	Where the IBN 5100 is hidden.	Near Akihabara Station.
Faris's tower	Faris's apartment.	Tokyo Times Tower.
Gyudon shop	Where the lab eats.	Sanbo, a beef-bowl shop.
Horin Park	Okabe and Kurisu's talks near the lab.	Horin Park. It is a residential park: no photos of people, please.
Subway platform	One of Mayuri's deaths during the loop.	Shin-Ochanomizu Station.
ComiMa, Ariake	Where Mayuri would die on 0.456914.	Comiket at Tokyo Big Sight.
Tokyo Denki University	Where Okabe and Daru study.	The real university. Its Kanda campus moved to Senju in April 2012.