"Doc?" finally asked one of the guards, after long confused looks were exchanged between the pair. "You doing alright?"
It took all of Ron's willpower to not melt into a bumbling mess at the spot.
"Huh... Yeah. Just uh..." mustered his last drop of composure, as best as he could. The stature and the unwieldy arms of his new acquaintances did not help.
"Yeah, I'm like you before my morning coffee too," chuckled the guard. "I too would forget that this here machine doesn't serve without your ID."
"You do have your ID with you, right?" the other one asked, or rather, interrogated, as his raised voice would suggest.
"Of course I have my ID. Wouldn't go anywhere without my ID!" said Ron, fumbling through his pockets before he produced the laminated card dangling by the lanyard clenched in his fist. "Can't enter our good facility without an ID or a teleporter!"
The joke did not resonate with the crowd. The silence demanded he step forward in the awkwardness he so dearly created.
"Just gonna put my ID here, and..."
"WELCOME, PROFESSOR JANE," announced the machine, clearly enough for the trio to not mishear the name.
Professor Jane? Thought Ron. Ah, the lady I knocked out with the... Damn it!
"Professor Jane? Isn't that a woman's name?" commented the friendlier of the two guards.
"Hey, hey there, whoa!" exclaimed his mate. "You forget your 101, Private?"
"What? What did I do?"
"Rule 63. Comments like the one you made are prohibited. Especially towards the researchers. I'm taking you to the disciplinary, stat!" the guard slung back his rifle and proceeded to grab his soon-to-be underling's arm.
"C'mon man, don't be like that," pleaded the offender. "I swear it won't happen again! C'mon, just this one time."
"You trying to get out of disciplinary? You want me to write you up for a second offense today?"
"No... sir. I will go," replied the guard with his head hung low.
The offender was being escorted away, his mate marching behind him with perhaps a stoic look under his mask.
"Don't do anything stupid with the machine, Doc," said the guard as he glanced back briefly at the scientist and the contraption standing alone. "I'm gonna be back in five mikes."
Ron found himself without company in front of the machine, how he wanted to be. The LCD display still welcomed the woman she hit a while back, who, without the immediate medical attention that she needed, would most certainly be dead by now.
"I would like a large cup of alien semen," ordered the time-traveling scientist.
YOU ARE READING
T minus Oblivion
Science FictionSynopsis: After a lot of trials and errors, when Ron finally became successful in getting his teleporting machine to work, the first place he visited was the infamous Site-19, where the coffee machine [SCP-294] had been kept. The incidents that unfo...
