He caught sight of his assistant at the back of the room. She cocked an eyebrow at him and he remembered what she tried so hard to instill in him.
“How about you?” he added, a little uncomfortable because he wasn’t used to asking.
Trey grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re getting better at this whole human thing, Doc, but I’ve got nothing.”
“Me, neither,” Nathan added, and Gemma grinned.
“What they said, Doc.” She moved toward her terminal. “So, which way did you want to use to explode us first?”
Marcus stared after them in surprise. “You don’t want to discuss this?”
Their head-shakes were unanimous as the others filed past him to their work areas.
He stared at Gemma. “Did you even bring me any sparkles?”
She laughed. “Sorry, Doc. The two-year-old switched to crayon, sans cardboard, and I spent most of last night with a scourer and bleach getting it off the walls.”
“Did you even dream?” he persisted, and she turned and rested a hand on her hip.
“Boss, I never dreamed a two-year-old could make a single crayon cover that much wall, let alone what one could do with six different colors.”
Trey snickered. “I’m so glad I’m single.”
“Keep up with comments like that, Trey baby, and you’ll have to explain to whatever partner you find why you can’t have offspring.”
He responded with a pained whistle and settled into his seat. “Come on, boss. Let’s see you prove your first theory wrong and not blow us up, today.”
It was a short-lived hope. They got the centrifuge to spin the gMU into eMU and send it out along the pipes and branches. Once again, the magic made the journey to the bulbs at the end of each line and successfully drew the radiation out of the soil and surrounding landscape.
And once again, the magic brought the radiation into the system and returned successfully along the pipes. Marcus held his breath and his entire body grew tense with anticipation. In only a few seconds, he’d find out if his dreams had steered him right or not.
“Sonuvabitch!”
The lab flashed out of existence and the team landed in the White Room.
“Well,” Gemma began, “that has to be a new record.”
“In more ways than one,” Nathan concurred.
“Now, tell me that was what the dream said would happen,” Trey added.
“Wait. We did science based on a dream?” Phillip sounded as though he didn’t believe it.
“I had to disprove a theory,” Marcus said and chose to answer his ex-student first before he turned to the others. “So, does anyone have a theory on ways we could do that and maybe not blow up?”
He looked around the room and was dismayed when all of them shook their heads.
“It was a good try, Doc.” Trey tried to console him but sounded resigned. “But your dreams were right. It was a surefire way to blow us all to kingdom come. What have you got for us next?”
“More of the same, I’m afraid,” he told them and they all groaned. He scowled. “Well, do you at least want to take a look at the idea to see if you can tell me why it won’t work or how we can tweak it so it does?”
“Sure thing, Doc.” Nathan sighed.
The White Room shifted around them and a moment later, they stood around a large table in the center of another room. Marcus didn’t waste any time. He stepped forward and explained the theory behind what he wanted to try next. It looked sound, exactly like all the theories before it.
Nathan studied it, his head tilted in concentration. Finally, he pointed at one part of the equation. “What if we switch this…” He picked a marker up and circled the formula “With this.”
They craned forward and each studied the options intently. “It’s not a bad alternative,” Gemma conceded and picked up a marker of her own. “You know…we could also try this.”
She wrote her alternative below the other two and combined elements from both formulae. With a glance at Phillip, she asked, “So, what do you say, Prof? This is much more your field than mine.”
The boy blushed at her recognition but stepped forward dutifully and selected another marker. When he was finished, Trey nodded in approval.
“Well, that gives us alternatives, anyway. What do you say, Doc?”
Marcus scrutinized the original formula and the alternatives and considered each carefully with what he believed was an open mind. “I say we’ve probably found four more ways to explode but I damned well hope not.” So maybe it wasn’t that open after all. Still, at least he’d tried.
They chuckled softly at that and headed to the lab.
“Let’s try them,” Marcus agreed. “Cynthia could you take a photo of that whiteboard and send it to our consoles, please?”
An hour later, when they came to in the White Room for the sixth time, he looked at Cynthia. “I think we need a break,” he said.
“Hell, man,” Trey interjected. “We need more than a break. We need a drink!”
“Uh-uh,” Gemma protested. “We don’t need a drink. We need all the drinks.”
“You have a two-year-old, remember? And you’re not allowed to drink and drive,” Nathan remonstrated.
She stuck her tongue out. “It’s not time to go home yet,” she informed him.
“True,” Marcus agreed, “but none of us are allowed to drink and drive a console and we have a whole afternoon ahead of us.”
“Ooh,” Trey snarked, “an entire afternoon of incinerating ourselves. I can’t wait.”
Rimmer smiled at him. “Well, I’m glad one of us feels that way.”
The man shook his head. “Trust me, no. I’d rather do anything else than go in there again and test another of your ‘I’m fairly sure this explodes us’ theories, Doc.”
The statement was more than a little sobering. “Yeah. Me too.”
They sat in silence for a while, staring at the floor, and Trey finally pushed to his feet. “Let’s get it done,” he said and offered Marcus his hand. “It’s better than sitting here and staring at our toes.”
The professor let Trey help him up and looked up at the ceiling. “Computer—”
“Wait!” Cynthia interrupted. “Don’t you think you should ask for help?”
“How do you mean?” he demanded and jerked his hand in the direction of the others. “We have every expert with any knowledge of the field right here.”
“Except one,” she corrected, and he opened his mouth to snap a challenge for her to name them.
“Only one,” she insisted. “Think about it.”
The scientists exchanged puzzled looks. Each one made a mental list of the experts in the fields related to what they were doing and reviewed any researchers who represented that field. It was Phillip who saw the obvious first.
“The Witch.”
“What?” Marcus looked at him. “What does she have to do with this?”
Gemma rolled her eyes. “Doofus. She’s only the world’s leading expert on magic, remember? You know, the stuff that’s an integral part of our purification process? The shit that’s fucking the works up? That expert.”