Sal here. Just so you know, there are a few throwaway remarks that might serve as triggers. Don't take them seriously, they are meant mostly in fun. Mostly. ;) I just want that to be understood beforehand. Now, in the meantime, enjoy this picture of Greg Ki- I mean, Stuart Preus, and let's continue with the three blind mice- uh, lab rats.
"He's running a little behind today, isn't he?" C noted suddenly, looking at the time.
K shot him a sidelong glance. "Preus has never been the most punctual, to my knowledge. He's often five to six minutes late, at least."
"Perhaps, but he should have been here an hour ago," C pointed out. "No call or anything. How odd."
"He'll get here," K murmured. In the back of his mind, however, K wondered if Stuart's delay had anything to do with his rather barbed encounter with Freddie the night before.
Julia had not gone much into detail when she mentioned it to him over the phone that morning; she didn't have to. As soon as K walked into the lab today, he had found several members of the team snickering over the night's highlights as recorded by C's "mystery mike." The audio had obviously been edited- in Stuart's favor, of course- but that didn't hamper anyone's mirth.
Although he found it a disgusting invasion of privacy, one that bordered on criminal, K chose to keep quiet about it. For as the years had shown, C had a penchant for quiet, swift retaliation. While he himself thankfully had never been the victim, K had no desire to walk in tomorrow and be faced with his most crippling weakness: catching his colleagues as they guffawed heartily over his wretched singing.
(It seemed silly to some, but K did indeed have a real problem. Since childhood, K had hated his slow, wavering manner of speech, and hated the sound of his singing voice even more- and the thought of people hearing him sing "Lyin' Eyes" while scrubbing down in the shower was enough to make him turn bright red. Granted, to Julia's credit, the fear had drastically diminished; at his worst point, hearing his recorded voice literally caused him to crawl under the nearest desk and stay there, curled up in a ball with his ears plugged. Nevertheless, remnants of the fear still lingered, enough to do substantial damage to his confidence.)
The lab door clicked closed. On instinct K looked up to see Dr. Preus at last briskly making his way toward the machine, rolling up the sleeves of his pressed button-down shirt.
"Where were you?" C asked.
Stuart shook his head. "In my office, trying not to go completely mental on the security guy."
K frowned. "What for?"
C's next question made K's first one utterly moot. "You mean they still can't find the lost ten seconds?"
Dr. Preus shook his head, sighing. "There's just no footage, it's like that ten seconds never even happened; the cameras are moving toward the lab door one moment- and in the next, there's the door, clicking shut. No sign of the kid or anybody else hacking the code."
"It couldn't have been Danny," K murmured. "And it sure as hell wasn't me."
C arched his brow. "You were the only one down there with him, though."
"I couldn't have been, I was -uh, occupied. There must have been someone else. Danny would know."
Stuart thought a moment. "I don't know how much trust I'd put in an eight-year-old's recollection-"
"Danny's nine," K corrected him.
"Whatever. Point is, he's the one who brought B-13 over, this essentially is his doing. And kids will say anything to cover their own butts."
Danny's doing? K thought to himself. Funny, but Danny hadn't forced Freddie's hand to grab Julia's wrist. Looked pretty voluntary to me. But that's none of my business, I'm sure.
"But I'll still ask him- or see if Jules could get any info out of-" Stuart cut himself off. "Oh, that reminds me, she and are having lunch today at noon. God, I almost forgot. Yeah, I'll ask her then."
Then Stuart addressed the worker bees still swarming in and out of Speck, "How's it coming, team?"
"The final subsystem diagnostics are running, Dr. Preus," the young intern Madelyn announced, looking up from her screen. "Main systems are functioning at an adequate level for safe transport."
"Is the bridge still stable?" Stuart asked.
"Still holding strong at eighty-seven percent," Gabe replied brightly, which meant Speck's grasp on the moment had been weakened by only thirteen percent over the past three or so days. The more the continuum moved in the meantime, however, the faster the bridge would lose its all-important strength, making for a less than seamless transport.
Fortunately, the team had done such a thorough job of repairing Speck's fried servers and sub-servers, that even after the authorization request would be submitted and answered, they were estimating they could send Freddie back home tomorrow evening, thereby drawing Experiment "B-13" to as neat and concise a close as they could have hoped for. In about thirty hours at most, all this brouhaha would end, and Julia would never have to trouble herself with Freddie again. Stuart had vowed to personally ensure as much.
A little dialog box appeared on one of the screens, announcing that the final subsystem diagnostics scan was complete, having found no bugs left to sweep. Burned out parts had been replaced, the systems not affected by Speck's bridge rebooted. The slightest of relieved smiles crossed Stuart's thin lips.
"All right, good work, everyone," he sighed, clapping his hands. "Now let's switch her on all the way."
It took about five minutes for all the data counters and visuals to recalibrate and reconnect themselves with the cross-continuum bridge. All present watched and waited with bated breath, hoping every long hour of overtime work (which fortunately, they could apply as extra credit or much-needed lab hours on their transcript, which made this vast undertaking a bit more bearable) had not been for naught.
In the meantime, Stuart turned to C. "By the way, I've been giving the, uh, spying some serious reconsideration-"
"Spying?" C looked offended. "I prefer the word 'monitoring' personally. If it's good enough for the NSA-"
"Okay, fine. Just listen to me. I've changed my mind. I don't want you monitoring Jules and the kid anymore."
K's eyes widened; he kept them on the screen so no one noticed. But C was beside himself. "Why not?" he demanded.
"Because I feel guilty spying- uh, monitoring my girlfriend and invading her privacy when there is absolutely no cause for it."
"I don't believe this," C exclaimed. "How many times have I-"
"Tim," Stuart whispered, drawing him out of earshot of the team, "whatever you think went on between Jules and Bucky, I just don't see it- certainly not after I did some research when I got home last night. I got an eyeful."
"Dr. Preus, that's the illusion! That's what he wanted you to think! Only just last night-"
"Nope. I don't want to hear it."
"But-"
"Tim, I appreciate the concern, but you're looking for trouble. Maybe years ago they kissed a few times, and maybe she got butterflies in her stomach in one hot, less-than-lucid instant when he happened to look at her the way he does- but even then, I think that's just the way he looks at people. The guy's not ugly, I admit, and I can see Jules maybe being attracted to him at some point, but Tim, look. He's gay. He's with some guy named Jim. It's near-impossible that what you told me is true. I'm serious, he and she couldn't be more dissimilar. She's a sensible, practical, no-nonsense kind of woman, whereas Freddie- let me put it this way: if he were any campier, he'd be Bette Midler."
K whistled. It was true, you didn't get much more camp than that- unless you counted RuPaul.
"Fine," C sighed at last. "If you don't wish to keep up the watchful eye, that's none of my business."
"Good," Stuart said. "So I need you to deactivate the mikes ASAP."
"Dr. Preus, I'm just saying, I really think you're making a mistake," C warned him one last time.
But Stuart shook his head. "She's got this. And I got this. Anyway, there's no point in keeping the mikes on much longer anyway. He'll be gone soon, perhaps by tonight. Might as well go ahead and take care of it now rather than later."
Stuart clapped C on the back- but K could see even as his colleague nodded, there was defiance in his eyes. Subtle, but still visible.
Why can't you just leave her alone, Tim? K wondered. George doesn't care one whit, this is your personal bee in your personal bonnet. Why? What did she do to you?
It was a true shame that K didn't get the chance to carry out his returned favor to Freddie, but it wasn't a surprise either. After all, Time was fixed. What occurred once, occurred for always. Nothing happened that wasn't supposed to h-
"Hurray!" the team cried, clapping in celebration. Speck was alive, fully operational, the bridge intact and ready to bring Freddie back to his big splashy Munich party.
"Let's zoom back in on the scene of the crime," Stuart announced.
So they plugged in the club's coordinates. The screen then swiftly swooped down onto the setting showing lifelike projections reminiscent of Google Earth quality, except in three dimensions, with flesh and blood, costumed people standing frozen in mid-speech, mid-dance, mid-drink, mid-other things. Madelyn navigated the controls, struggling to keep her jittery hands still as she moved toward the specific place outside where Julia and Freddie had been taken up from the past together, as would be determined by the green dot on the map pictured on still another screen.
"Going out the door," Madelyn muttered to herself in a singsong cadence, "All right, here we go- okay. There he is." She took her hands off the controls, rubbed them up and down her arms. It was a little cold in the lab. "We're there."
"Good," Stuart began- before doing a double take. "Wait. There he is? Who's he?"
Madelyn blinked, confused. "Maybe- maybe it's the wrong alley."
Gabe scurried over to have a look for himself, and shook his head. "No, it's the same one. Freddie has his hand held out, and everything. That's the one."
K piped up quietly, "He shouldn't be there at all."
Gabe looked up and frowned. "Huh?"
"If we froze the moment where we captured them both and pulled them across the continuum, he shouldn't be standing there."
Whoops.
"You're right, Steve." Stuart sounded nervous. "That's the exact second we pulled them across the bridge, right? Or did we lose it?"
But even after they sifted frantically through the data records, they found it was indeed the very same moment, down to the fraction of a millisecond. And it floored them. Julia was gone, but Freddie wasn't. He still stood there in his ridiculous harlequin tights with a contorted, angry expression, hand clenched round an invisible wrist, posed as if he was shaking his fist at God Himself.
Stuart shook his head. "This can't be right. This makes no sense. Freddie can't be here and there at the same time."
"Maybe there's a glitch," C suggested. "Maybe Speck's A.I. doesn't recognize Freddie as a separate mass, because as far as it was concerned, all it was transporting was a heavier Julia."
While C was talking, Stuart cracked his knuckles and had the grad students step aside. It was time for the master to take the helm.
"What are you doing?" K asked.
"I'm going to test a theory," he replied. "Speck can't transport what's not there. Once the A.I. realizes it's still focused on a residual image as opposed to an object with mass, it will right itself."
Stuart targeted Freddie in his action stance, told Speck to calculate and load his total mass for the purpose of another transport. Everyone held their breath, whether they meant to or they didn't.
"Aha!" Stuart cried, for now the machine was beeping to signify an "Error." "That's what I thought." He tapped the dialog box, read the explanation- then his face froze.
C caught the change. "What is it?"
Stuart blinked slowly. "All right," he said after a minute or two of utter silence, "I'm going to read this to you out loud, and let's see what this sounds like to you." He cleared his throat, and read the "Error" description.
At first, K didn't quite make out the whole message- his hearing wasn't what it used to be- but he could tell by the horror on his colleagues' faces that it was far from good.
"What's the matter?" he asked. But no one answered him right away. Stuart backed up, pulled out the swivel chair nearest him, and fell back into it. He looked up at C, then down into his lap as his rubbed his eyes and cracked his neck.
K blinked. "I'm still a little lost here, what did it say?"
C whirled on him. "Well, you obviously can't hear anymore," he snarled. "Can you at least still read?"
With that, he seized the screen Stuart had been facing and swiped the dialog box up onto the enormous central display for everyone to look at for themselves:
"Unable to execute command. Organic mass contained in target has been previously duplicated and transported."
K swallowed, not knowing how to best react. The word kept playing in his head, sounding more and more formidable with each repetition.
"Duplicated," he whispered carefully. "Funny. I didn't know Speck could do that."
"Neither did I," C said.
"Me neither," Stuart said glumly.
C squinted. "But you designed it!"
"That was a decision made by the A.I.," Stuart whispered slowly. "I didn't design the A.I. we installed. That was someone else- someone whom I intend to get in touch with as soon as I get my head together here."
"Duplicated," K said again. "Wha- how- what does that even mean?"
"I don't know," Stuart replied. "But if it means what I think it means- then our problems just got three times worse."
C swore to himself, slamming his fist helplessly against the immaculate white desk beside him. It was anybody's guess what Speck meant by "duplicated"- though Stuart clearly had some disheartening theories of his own already- but one thing was for certain: Freddie wasn't going anywhere in the next couple of days. No wonder they're bummed, K chuckled quietly. Where's your bravado now, my friend?
"Guess I'm taking a rain check on that lunch today; I have a few angry phone calls to make." So saying, Stuart whipped out his phone and sent Julia a quick apology, but was very careful as stay mum on the reason why he was bowing out of the lunch date so unexpectedly. No one said a word as Dr. Preus sat there a moment, then rose from the chair, and walked out the door. As soon as it clicked closed, everyone started breathing again.
"Well, you know what they say: two Freds are better than one," Gabe joked quietly, causing everyone who heard it to groan- and the half-listening Madelyn to nod and add, "I'd take his one over two of anybody else's, myself."
K sighed to himself, trying not to visibly react. Miss Madelyn, I think you have a problem.