Grunt Work

Poking About

It was a while before I could get into the secret labs, on account of not having the required clearance level on my security pass, and also I got a bit lost following the directions. Eventually someone came along and let me in. Unfortunately that someone was Alice.

'Hey, erm, Not Me. Thank you,' I said, playing it cool.

She didn't really look at me, but just carried on to her office. I followed her. 'If you're looking for Baran, she's not in yet,' she said, when she realised what I was doing.

'Oh no, I'm not looking for Baran,' I paused, thinking that I was playing it too cool. 'I mean, I am.'

'That's not at all confusing.'

'Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. Hey, I have a question. Hey can you slow down a bit? It's a bit too early for me and I'm still tired.'

'Sorry, I have work to do,' she replied, dashing into her lab. I followed her. She finally looked at me when she sat down to her desk, and slumped a bit. 'What. Do you. Want.'

I frowned, not really sure. why she. was talking like that. 'I was just wondering, since you're seeing Baran. Is it cheating if I start seeing someone else? 'Cause I'm sweet on a girl but I'm not really one for cheating.'

She looked me straight in the eye and said, very matter of factly, 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Oh it's because you're, erm. You know.'

'I don't know,' she said pretty curtly, and bent down to her microscope. It didn't have a slide in it, I saw, so I have no idea what she was looking at. Maybe she was stretching her eye muscles, like I have to stretch my body muscles before each shift. I watched her, thinking. Maybe she really didn't know that she was another me? How do I tell her? That she hadn't existed before I touched the Rubik's cube?

'Good morning my lovelies,' Baran said from the door, taking her jacket off before sweeping past me to give Alice a kiss on her cheek. 'Hey Kaia! What brings you to our lab?'

'Oh yeah,' I said, playing it casual again. 'You know what you were saying about your job thing the other day?'

'Mhmm?'

'I was wondering if you could tell me again? I'm struggling to understand parts of it.'

'Of course! Well, I say of course, but I have to tell you that it's all top secret. I shouldn't be telling you anything. But I trust you,' she came over to me and squeazed my hands, and then gave me an overexaggerated frown. 'You're not going to tell anyone, are you?'

'Of course not,' I said, thinking about how I was here for Paula. 'Well, I might tell this girl I'm sweet on. But she works in the dungeon. The prison dungeon. Not the sex dungeon. So she probably knows everything already.'

'Hmm,' Baran frowned again, much less severely this time. 'I'm not sure I'm too comfortable with that. But I trust you,' she sat down on a stool and invited me to sit next to her. 'What parts do you need help understanding?'

'You know where you said, "hi, how's your day?"? Everything after that.'

Baran snorted. 'You sound just like Alice! Are you okay, Sweetie?' she asked, turning to face Alice, who had broken glass slide in half.

'I'm fine,' Alice said, burying her face even more into the microscope. I didn't think that was possible.

'Well,' Baran said, turning back to me. 'It's about this box that I made. Oh, I think I showed it to you once.'

'The giant Rubik's cube?' I asked.

'Something like that,' she smiled. 'It's not really a Rubik's cube. Do you know about the multiverse theory?'

'Of course. Yeah. No not at all.'

'Well,' she paused and looked away in the way that she does when she's collecting her thoughts. 'Imagine our universe is a bubble. The entire universe, encapsulated in a bubble. Now imagine a second bubble. And that bubble is another universe entirely. And there's another bubble, and another universe. And another.'

'Kinda sounds like you're blowing bubbles with one of those bubble wands,' I thought out loud.

'Yes!' she said excitedly. 'Except, no. Not exactly. I'm not blowing the bubbles. They just exist. But you know how all those bubbles coalesce - come together - on the tip of the bubble wand?'

'Mhmm,' I said, wondering where I could get a bubble wand. I wanted to blow bubbles.

'So imagine a bubble wand that doesn't so much make bubbles, but draws those bubbles to the wand, so that they all exist in this one spot, in this one place, at this one time.'

I thought of the box. 'It doesn't look like a bubble wand.'

'Uh,' Baran said, blinking at me. 'It. Uh. It's a special bubble wand. It doesn't have to look like that.'

'Ohhh okay. Got it.'

'You do?!' Alice looked up from her microscope.

'No. Can you tell me again?'

So Baran explained it all to me again, slower this time, and with smaller words. I still didn't quite get it, but I had memorised enough of the words so that I could tell Paula later.

'Unfortunately, this requires vast amounts of power,' Baran sighed. 'Too much power. Even with the power of the volcano and the Kaptain's hydro power, it's still not enough. I can power my prototype for minor demonstrations. Move a pen. Make it disappear. But that's it. I can't move anything bigger than a book.'

Alice dropped another slide.

'Careful, sweetie,' Baran told her. 'We've only got so many samples and I don't quite like the idea of collecting more.'

Alice mumbled something, too low for me to hear.

'What are those slides anyway?' I asked. 'I thought you were a climate person? And Alice does...techie stuff?' I paused as a thought occurred to me, and then asked excitedly. 'Is she looking at mini robots? Are you looking at robots? Nanobots?'

'No no,' Baran laughed. 'And I am a climatologist. But to be a climatologist you need an understanding of computer science, math and physics, which is what our project requires more of at the moment. Actually, since you mention it, my understanding of climate science helps me understand the Elemental powers a bit more than the average physicist. Hence why I'm here.'

'Oh, I see,' I said, not seeing at all.

Baran seemed to get that though, because she smiled at me and leaned closer. 'After our acquisitions in the US last week, and hopefully certain acquisitions in the coming weeks, while the Kaptain is off campaigning, it looks like we're going to be in a better position to make some headway. But the thing is, we still don't have enough power to do it. Not with a volcano. Not with the Kaptain. Not with any nuclear power sources we're hoping to get. Not with all those together, we still can't do it. But those aren't the only power sources we have access to - thanks to you. We have the Thunderbird.'

I looked to Alice and her microscope. 'Did...did you shrink down the Thunderbird.'

Baran laughed again. 'No, no. That's their blood. We're trying to see how their powers tick. How they channel and manifest their Qi, to use the language of the Elementals. It's a long shot. None of this is guaranteed to work. But if we can figure this out, we can unlock their power and use it to power our machine.'

'Huh,' I said. 'So the Thunderbird is helping you to do this?'

'Not exactly,' she winced, then smiled quickly, her eyes glinting. 'Do you want to meet them?'

I flashed back on my memory of the fight, of the incredible power that both the Kaptain and the Thunderbird showed off. Of the damage that the Thunderbird caused, of the deaths. Of the fire. No, I did not want to meet them again. Then I thought of Paula.

'Sure.'