Physics of the Crowbar

Cascade

Freeman nodded. He didn't hear what was said but the nod made the other scientist stop talking.

The HEV undersuit was a black carbon fiber weave. Getting it on was a bit like getting on a wet glove but once it was on the rest of the process went smoothly.

The scientist smiled and said something in the half-commanding half-condescending voice of elder academia. Freeman didn't listen. The passing comments were never relevant. If someone wanted to tell him something he needed to know, they'd look him in the eye before they spoke. Everything else was useless background noise. New coworkers sometimes mistook his silence for disdain; it wasn't for them, personally, just for anything -and anyone- not relevant.

He charged the suit and the fibers tightened across his chest and down his back, taking out slack that would compromise movement. The HEV was a work of art-his art. His research and development, his design of the carbon base layer, his insistence on low slack tolerance. They'd shoved carbon nanotube technology forward by a decade to meet his specifications and the results fit like the second skin.

The security guards at the first and second checkpoints greeted him by name and he nodded to them as he passed. Security guards were relevant in that they were ignorant. Ignorant of the work they guarded, ignorant of its impact on the world around them. Ignorance made them a liability. Liabilities required attention. So he knew the security guards, made eye-contact, checking yes you're there, at your post. That is correct, now stay there and don't touch anything. Most scientists didn't bother to acknowledge them.

Most scientists didn't understand liability very well.

Each segment of the Black Mesa complex was isolated, both physically and intellectually, from the others. Research teams worked in parallel, independent and unknowing, solving the same problem five different ways to prevent intellectual cross-contamination. No one scientist had the whole picture but Freeman knew enough to be very, very careful.

No one tampered with physical applications of theoretical particle physics or pulled apart anomalous metamaterials for this long without getting an itchy feeling in their fingertips, an odd and distinct sense of being watched, and a sure knowledge that work smart, work safe was code for do exactly as you're told, don't ask questions. And who was writing the procedure? No one at Black Mesa he could name.

Medical units stationed in the hot labs provided emergency regeneration boosters for life-saving treatments. Warnings and disclaimers informed the user they would force tissue regrowth in record time, at the risk of death-by-cancer later in life. Freeman had never used one and never known someone who had. They were like AEDs, everywhere but useless unless something went very, very wrong. "You get to pick, no liver or two?" the security guards joked about them.

Freeman touched one as he passed, for luck.

The crystal insertion was as routine as any reality-challenging, physics-ignoring experiment ever was. He'd done them before, many times. That was his line in the script of Black Mesa. Don the suit, insert crystal, record observations, run his own set of trials testing the boundaries of the material's physical properties. Was it replicable? Were yesterday's predictions upheld? Or was the element of maddening randomness in its response patterns going to baffle their tiny corner of academic humanity for another day?

"They went to a lot of trouble to get it..."
He looked up, searching for the speaker. Another white-coated scientist, watching from a glass-walled observation alcove.
"...Want an especially good look at this one..."
"...Not rated for this..."
"...Deviating from standard procedures..."
The hair on his neck stood up and his palms itched. This was a new procedure, dangerous, inaccurate, too many variables. Who was writing it?