Dr Precarious

Chemistry Lab

Following a few steps behind, Marissa tried to use concentrating on her tray to distract her from the balance of her shoes, knowing that any of her deliberate thoughts would only interfere with the automatic skill her legs were developing. Despite having rubbed her fingers with a napkin, the oiliness of the bacon made the tray feel slippery in her hands. Fear of dropping it and then concern over how she might squat on the spherical toes while picking up the scatter of breakfast items made her palms sweat, adding to the slick feeling.

Then she noticed how well Dr Precarious' pin-striped suit pants were cut. Squats were definitely a part of his work out routine. She still hand not made a definitive call on whether or not he was wearing underwear when she had to slow to match his pace. He then pressed his palm against a door that gave way before him.

The acrid smell said 'chemistry lab' even before she was far enough into the room to survey its contents. This was no student lab. Much of the bench space, and there was plenty of it, was taken up with active projects. No Bunsen burners. All heat was applied by rings on adjustable stands that radiated it out or gel pads used for conduction.

Marissa set her tray down where Dr Precarious had gestured. "You don't use electrical induction to apply heat?"

"Certainly not. Magnetic fields are much too complex and far reaching to allow that level of disturbance in here. All high level EMR experiments are done in the shielded EMR lab." He bent over a small vessel containing clear blue liquid, pipet in hand. "So what do you know about chemistry?"

"I achieved reasonable passes when studying it for two years at high school, but did not go on to study it for the final two years. Are you familiar with the curriculum?"

"Familiar enough to be pleased that they didn't have enough of a chance to get into your head and spoil you completely. There will only be a few misconceptions, half truths and distracting analogies to expunge you of. Good, good." He sucked up some of the blue liquid, which looked noticeably greener in the pipet, gave it a gentle shake to release a single drop, then took the pipet to hover over another vessel, also filled with liquid of the same clear blue. Marissa watched with expectation as he counted five droplets then returned the remainder to the original vessel. Nothing happened. Nothing except for the liquid losing its greenish tinge as it left the pipet.

Dr Precarious spared her a glance of his attention, "You look disappointed. Something did indeed happen, but we won't know what until I reduce this to a super saturated solution and then crystallise it. I have," his expression put the word 'taught' in parenthesis by drawing it out with uncertainty, "the source solution a more efficient but less stable way of forming five-fold-quasi-symmetry when crystallising. I'm now analysing the process of transferring this behaviour." He shot her another glance, "You look impatient."

"When you have a moment, I'd like to learn sufficient skills to identify the agent that you have chosen to focus my enthusiasm and then enough to manufacture the correct antidote."

"Oh really? That is an ambitious plan. If that is the way you want to do it, we had better get right on it." He placed the pipet in a draining rack over the sink and continued talking as he approached her bench. "To start with you're going to have to get your head around the basics of organic chemistry, because if it doesn't effect organic chemistry, it's not a problem in your organic system. Now the first element that you will want to become familiar with is carbon. Let's see. You know carbon has..."

Marissa interrupted him. "Wait, wait. Wait." She forced her hand back down to the bench to stop her holding it up in front of his face like a stop sign.

"But I thought you wanted to get straight into it."

"I did, but now you have made me think about it. More clearly." She drummed her fingers on the bench for a moment. Then, "I want to learn about all of the things I can consume that are harmless to me, but would have some chance of working as an antidote."