Author Games: One-Shot, One Kill

Round Two: Dan and Shay

Prompt: Entering an alternate dimension

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Dan

Collin was late again. Like usual. Not like I need him or anything. I could install supercomputers just fine on my own. It's easy, all you need to do is lift a 200 pound unit, place it far enough away from each other supercomputer, and hook it up perfectly. Easy-peasy. I'd done it like, at least fifteen times before in this same room. Wiping sweat from my brow, I stood up and surveyed my- sorry our -handiwork.

A dark room, a maze of knee-high computer towers, tubing, networking cables, and coolant flooding every square inch of the floor. A single square monitor shined from the far wall, opposite the door. Connected to that is a metal hexagon the size of a tall person and about as wide. Coolant splashed against my galoshes, drops occasionally splashing on the hem of my skirt. Heaven.

In my moment of self-reflection I let my wire strippers slip out of my hand and down to the coolant soaked floor. and I groaned and bent over, blindly groping around in the coolant. It felt kind of nice, at least through my rubber gloves. The door opened behind me. Fluorescent light pushes its way through the darkness, creeping up my back.

"Turn the fuckin lights on in here, dude," Collin, my abrasive husband yelled. Outlined by a halo of blinding light, his intense jawline and slicked back hair were immediately recognizable. Two steaming cups of coffee in hand, he stepped into the room from the steps leading down to the coolant pool, the splashing of his boots a loud percussion for the whirring of electronics filling the air.

"Where have you been?" I asked, standing up and cracking my back, slipping my wire strippers into my tool belt. My long black hair fell in front of my eyes for a second, shielding meas Collin turned on the lights. "You know I hate how bright those are."

"Yeah well not everyone has night vision like you, Jackie."

"Too much artificial light is bad for you, and I can find my way around the room just fine without it," I lied, because my shins were Jackson Pollocked with bruises.

He gently tapped my shin with his foot and I reflexively yelped. I pouted, tears in my eyes. He winked. "Cute skirt, by the way."

Collin got on my nerves but it's not like this project would succeed without him. It was a two-person job, after all, and it's hard to hide a room like this from your husband. We were both in the computer science department at our university, and we were both harebrained, bonafide weirdos. Add in our obnoxious brains and you have a match made in heaven for trying to do the impossible. It'd been three years since we moved in together and seven months since we decided to convert our basement into a mad scientist laboratory.

"How many more of these things do we need?" Collin asked, tapping one with his foot. He moved over to the hexagon, leaning into the space inside of it, inspecting both sides closely.

"I have no idea. At this point we just need to keep trying after each one until it catches on fire or we succeed," I said, adjusting my glasses.

"Well screw it, let's try again. Is this newest computer all hooked up?"

"Yeah, but if we're doing this we're turning the goddamn lights off."

"Deal."

Collin flipped off the light switch as I sat down on the swivel chair in front of the monitor. The flickering screen had line after line of green code on a dim black background. I adjusted some parameters. Collin walked back over, hands in his pockets, and rested his head on mine.

"Well, ready?" I asked, finger hovering over the Enter key. He nodded, his stubble scratching through my thick hair to my scalp. I smiled and tapped enter.