Reach Out and Wonder
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt...
Dusty groaned as the droning blare of her morning alarm drew her to consciousness and she flung her arm over her eyes, refusing to open them. She always hated the noise it made, but as a broke college student she could only barely afford to feed herself most days. Someday, in the future, she'd be able to get a new unit with a gentle wake feature and a pleasant melody so she wouldn't hate mornings like she did now. The noise from the tinny speakers always jarred her awake, just like her stepdad had done with a bellow before he'd given her the thing. Well, more like dumped it on her when she moved into her dorm. Along with a few garbage bags full of well-used and abused (some broken) equipment he hoped she could make use of.
More like dispose of, she thought grimly. But it wasn't all garbage, she did make use of most of it. Well, the robotics department had, anyway. A smile curled up the corner of her lip as she remembered the glee with which the technicians stripped and dismantled everything, turning it into useful parts and components for their machines. No matter how many times she explained, exasperatedly, that her major was in theoretical physics and not mechanical physics, her words had fallen on deaf ears. But it didn't matter. That was all in the past now.
Wait, she thought, her brow creasing. It was?
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt...
A heavy sense of dread crept over her like a blanket. She could feel it, the sense that something was deeply wrong. How long ago had it been since her stepdad had last tried to foist something onto her? Wasn't it just...no. It wasn't just the other day. Five...five years?
Her mind began to slowly pull up her memories as though it were trying to dredge them from the bottom of a swamp. Five years...no, ten years ago, her graduation from college. Her professors clapping, the dean handing her a framed certificate of stiff, ornamental paper. Mortarboard caps rising into the sky. Pictures with her mother.
Faster, her memories came, sliding neatly back into place in her mind.
A company hired her. Big company. She couldn't remember the name of it, but it was a research arm. DuPont? No, that didn't sound right. She set the thought aside as more information started flooding in. Five years spent there, working on particle physics. Easy enough, but not rewarding. Her side project at her home lab began to take up more of her time and her job performance started to suffer. Her superiors began to notice. Then, the breakthrough...the breakthrough!
That's right, there had been a huge leap forward in her work! But she couldn't recall what it was. She shook her head slightly, putting that thought aside again. More data.
She left the company. Got a grant from her university, found a research space. Five more years went by, she hired three assistants, and work began on a machine to implement her theories.
The VIEW system.
It required a tremendous amount of power, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she could bring the consumption down with optimization. The commercial feed to the building had been beefed up far beyond what the system needed, but it made sense for future projects at the time. Today had been the day to finally fire test the unit, and her assistant...
The explosion.
Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt...
Dusty's eyes snapped open as she dropped her arm to the floor. Above her, a shattered and dangling terminal screen flashed a warning at her in time with the alarm blaring from its shredded speaker.
Overcharge, it screamed in block red text.
Devon had entered in an incorrect set of data for the initial aggressive power curve from her research notes instead of the milder set for the test and - instead of confirming with her - had applied the settings. Within seconds, the bank of massive capacitors feeding the project began to smoke and expand as far more electricity than they were rated for made their internal windings boil and burn. His rapid expression of terror overcoming his confident look as the safety glass shrapneled past his face and terminal screen, ricocheting off his polycarbonate lenses was the last thing she could remember. She hoped he learned something from this, at the very least.
She tried to sit up and let out a pained groan as her back spasmed. The movement stirred up a thin layer of dust around her and she coughed, causing her back to spasm more. Sharp, stabbing pain assaulted her from three points and the effort to sit up left her panting. Sitting there on the floor, she felt grimy, her skin tacky from dried sweat under her clothes, her lab coat stained with smoke and grit. She looked around the ruined laboratory room, lit only by outside light from beyond askew metal blinds. Equipment and tables seemed to be plopped down without regard to orientation or organization and lay in a slight semicircle facing a jagged, sooty hole on her left. Carefully turning her head to determine any other pains, she noticed a hole in the wall to her right, a pile of rubble beyond. Wires dangled from the crumbled drywall, swaying and snapping, dropping showers of sparks as they made contact with each other.
"Mark?" She coughed again while attempting to stand, using a chair for support. "Mark, are you here?"
"Yeah doc, I'm here," came the tired, grumbling reply. Slow, shuffling footsteps punctuated by the tap of a cane on the laboratory's tiled floor preceded a shadowy form as it passed through a dark doorway toward her, resolving into the doubled-over frame of the building's superintendent Marcus Warren leaning heavily on his cane, his normally-spotless cardigan covered in a light film. He regarded her with watery eyes, his brow drawn together in irritation.
"Thank the gods," she sighed, her shoulders slumping slightly. "We need to get the power off so we can get this all cleaned up, I'm pretty sure my key doesn't-"
He cut her off with a sharp rap of his cane on the tile, his expression hard.
"Now look here, missy. I'm not in any shape to head down and get the breakers, my bum leg's tweaked something fierce. Either you or one of your assistants have to head down and get the electricity off."
Dusty shifted and pulled her chair forward, offering it to him. He plopped down into it without comment and set about massaging his twisted leg, his jowls quivering as he grumbled darkly in her direction.
"Thirty five. Thirty-five years I been here, keepin' the lights on and the water runnin' and never had..."
She tuned out his griping as she scanned the room more closely. She caught sight of one of her assistants nearby, half on a table and half inside a centrifuge. That was probably Devon, she guessed. He was closest to her, before the explosion. Across the room under an overturned equipment rack lay Angie, her newest hire from her alma mater. Her colorful belt around her waist with her favorite tropical flowers made that obvious. She couldn't tell from here if they were all right, but she couldn't see any dark splotches on their clothes.
Turning her attention back to the old man, she realized he had stopped talking and was wiping his face with a handkerchief, his face set as though he'd made a decision. Mentally, she rolled back his last sentence and replayed it.
"...I know you're doing good work for humanity here or whatever miss. But I have to report this. I have to."
Dusty crouched down in front of him, ignoring her back’s protest, and patted his knees as she looked up at him with the best smile she could muster.
“I understand Mark, go ahead and send in your report. I’ll send a full analysis to the board myself as soon as I can, and I’ll recommend that you get a good physical therapist for that knee of yours. We need to take care of all the members of our team, and you’re the most important one. None of this would be here if you weren’t there to make sure the building could support it.”
He blinked, then looked away as older men did when they were embarrassed, then patted her head with a calloused hand.
“All right, doc. I’ll go easy on the report, but you gotta get this all cleaned up.”
Dusty grinned and nodded. “Deal.”
She stood and nearly lost her balance as her spine screamed anew, then shook her head to clear the stars swirling at the edges of her vision and picked her way through the lab to Devon. Pulling him free of the mangled centrifuge and onto the table, she saw his face spiderwebbed with thin red lines and crusted blood from the safety glass. Yes, he still lived - she could see his chest rising and falling - so she gently patted his cheek to wake him. When that did not work, she rubbed her knuckles against his sternum. That did the trick.
He groaned as he came to, blinking blearily behind his hazed and cracked safety glasses. “Welcome back,” she greeted him. “How do you feel?”
“D…Doctor Voysey?” He mumbled, his head turning from side to side as he woke. “What…why are you…?”
“It’s all right, Devon. You’re still in the lab. There was a…situation with the test. Are you all right?”
The color drained from the young man’s face, presumably from his returning memories, and his eyes widened as he looked up at her. “The machine…is…is it…I’m sorry Doctor, I should have verified the numbers with you, I shouldn’t-“
She took him by the shoulders and gave him a stern look.
“It will be okay, Devon. Right now we need to secure the lab and get this cleared up so we can get back to work. I need you to get the keys from Mark and shut off the power to the lab in the maintenance closet in the basement. Breakers 4A through 4G. Got it?”
He nodded, his short brown hair falling over one of his eyes. “Got it Doctor. 4A through G, shut them off.”
Helping him to his feet, she made sure he could walk and pointed him toward the superintendent before making her way over to Angie.
