“So,” Dyna said, motioning with a hand. “Welcome to Psychodynamics.”
Mel managed to take her eyes off the steel insulated cases that held both the actual physical coffee mug that hadn’t existed a few hours ago and the fog machine that Dyna was hoping to see returned to her at some point. It was really only the second time she had looked away from it. The first having been when the black vans showed up with the containment team.
Psychodynamics’ main lobby was as grandiose as ever. Brightly lit and covered in brass and fine wood. All of which was made all the more impressive given that it was underground. The flurry of activity going on probably helped distract Mel. Silver-suited men moved about with purpose. Most coming straight toward her and the containment team.
“Psionic energy levels elevated,” Beatrice said after two announcement tones. “Class C personnel, please remain within shielded sectors of the facility.” Another two announcement tones dinged immediately after. “Doctor Fether, report to Emission Monitoring Station immediately.”
Dyna let out a long sigh as she watched the two men carrying the shielded case rush off in the direction of the intake bay. If all else failed, the institute better reimburse her for that fog machine. It hadn’t been that expensive, but it did sting that it was being taken away like this.
She needed to line her entire room with foil to hopefully keep such emissions under wraps. Then she could try again.
Though she wasn’t ready to give up on the fog machine just yet. It worked. Or something. She still wasn’t sure if it was an artifact or just the half-state artifact like the goggles or her mirror in the early days. Whatever the case, she wanted to at least test with it a bit before it got locked up in the Vault.
To that end, she knew who she had to speak with.
“Come on,” Dyna said, starting off in roughly the same direction the case had gone. Her destination was the observational side of the intake bay.
“Where are we?”
“Psychodynamics, I just said that.”
“Yes, but where?”
“It is underneath the Carroll Institute.”
“Why?”
“Because it is a secret laboratory and that is what you do with secret laboratories?” Dyna shrugged. “Actually, I think they wanted to separate most of the stuff down here from the surface. Physical distance for insulation purposes. Though you would be forgiven for thinking it is because of mad scientists with people like—” A door slid open in front of Dyna, presenting just the person she wanted to talk to. “Well, people like him.”
A bald man with rectangular glasses stepped out of a side room, paused as he looked over the group of Dyna, Mel, and two silver-suited men, then turned back to Dyna. “Delta. Excellent recovery time. You’ll put Emerald to shame like that. Though you could stand to make your report. Speed is of the essence in situations like this. Tell me, what was the object, its condition, location, and surroundings like?”
Dyna sighed and waved a hand. “This is Doctor Cross, head of artifact research.”
“Head of the Anomalous Materials Research Division,” Cross corrected in his distinct Russian accent. “Under which artifacts are a subdivision.” His eyes flicked over to Mel. He squinted. “Hematite? No…”
“This is Mel, she—”
“Malachite? Was that even one of you people? Bah.”
“Mel,” Dyna said again. “Melanie. She’s not… There are only seven of us. You could stand to learn our names, you know.”
“I know the names of the ones that are around often. Emerald. Ruby. Sapphire. Hematite. You.”
“You call me Delta.”
He stared a moment before nodding, apparently finding nothing wrong. He opened his mouth, but two announcement chimes interrupted him.
“Doctor Cross, report to Anomalous Materials Intake Bay Two immediately.”
“Walk and talk,” he said, moving down the hall while tugging on a pair of thick gloves. The gloves reached up to his shoulders, having to be hooked into place against his laboratory coat. “What are we dealing with?”
“A…” Dyna sighed again. “A fog machine. Electronic. Roughly ten centimeters, five centimeters, five centimeters. Takes in a special fluid and, after being charged up, emits a bit of white fog. Mel here is a psychic with the ability to craft illusions. The suspected artifact seemed to make the illusions a little more real than we are used to.”
“So she is an artificer.”
“I don’t… think so. I mean, I don’t know how… I just barely bought the thing. Less than five minutes. It was one of a few dozen, I didn’t feel anything from it at any point… I was going to use it for my own projects,” Dyna said, trying to convey some meaning in her emphasis.
To his credit, incompetent though he was at recalling her name, Cross looked over and nodded knowingly.
“I don’t know how it could possibly act as an artifact so soon. I mean, my mirror took a month or so. And I’ve been working on another thing that I was thinking about bringing to you for the last month, but… This went from mundane to setting off all the alarms in less than five minutes.”
“Wonderful,” he said, sounding a whole lot more pleased than Dyna felt. “Let us see what we are looking at then, shall we?”
Another door slid open at the end of the hallway. The two silver-suited escorts stopped at the door, but Dyna, Mel, and Doctor Cross all headed inside. A few technicians were operating terminals around the observation room while, on the other side of some shielded glass, suited men worked on extracting the contents of the containment cases. They first removed a coffee mug, which they promptly set into a small shielded transparent case that looked rather like a platform with a glass cake dome over the top. The fog machine followed from the other case, this one went onto a pedestal surrounded by sensory equipment.
Shooing one poor technician aside, Doctor Cross took over a terminal. Despite his thick gloves, he managed the keyboard with expert precision.
“It’s still there,” Mel whispered. She did not sound like her usual confident self at all. Following her gaze, Dyna found her eyes locked onto the coffee mug on the other side of the glass. “I swear I’m not doing anything.”
Dyna motioned toward the suited men in the separated room. “Those outfits they are wearing can block just about any psionic emission.” The Hatman couldn’t get through them. If he couldn’t, Mel certainly wouldn’t have a chance. “The glass is shielded as well. There is no way that you are in any way affecting them, not even if you were trying your hardest. The fact that they could pick it up or even see it at all is telling.”
“I don’t… You didn’t slip in a coffee mug while I was distracted…”
“A full cup of hot coffee? Where would I have gotten it from?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s real,” Dyna said. “Don’t know how to explain it myself. That’s this guy’s job.” She pointed a thumb at Doctor Cross. “So, you know, try not to panic or anything. Everything is under control.”
“What if I made my friend?”
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“What?”
“My friend. My imaginary friend.”
Mel motioned to her side as if to craft the illusion to demonstrate. Dyna remembered that faceless little boy with the solid black pits in place of his eyes just in the nick of time and grabbed hold of Mel’s hand.
“Let’s not,” she said as fast as she could. The Hatman and November were more than enough entities running around. They didn’t need Mel generating more every few seconds as she crafted illusion after illusion. “Let’s just avoid using our abilities until we get the okay from Doctor Cross… Okay?”
“Yeah…” Mel sounded dazed. “Okay.”
Dyna pressed a hand to her forehead. “Damn it. You are going to be Malachite, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“Nothing. I’ll tell you later. Just…” Dyna turned, found the five lenses of the room’s security camera, and stared straight into the red light underneath. “Is Walter around?”
“Agent Walter is en route. Estimated time until arrival: Twenty-two minutes.”
“Walter?” Mel asked.
She knew him, but not as the head of artificers. Just as one of the Carroll Institute recruiters. Dyna’s recruiter, specifically. “He can answer any questions you might have about artificers. He’s sort of in charge of us. And… Oh dang it. There are probably going to be people after you now and Id and… I’m sorry. It’s all my fault.”
“Perhaps not,” Cross said from behind Dyna. “I will be more thorough, but preliminary analysis indicates that the object you have brought to me is not an artifact.”
He sounded… annoyed.
“But the mug. It didn’t exist. I swear, we both saw— Is it like the mirror was at first?”
“Unknown. We need more examples of your… early work to compare. But I am quite confident in stating that this is not an artifact proper. Perhaps it will be one someday. Perhaps not.”
“But… It…” Dyna trailed off. She didn’t know what to say. And that uncertainty over her words gave her a moment to actually think.
Maybe she shouldn’t say anything at all. If Doctor Cross called it a completely mundane fog machine, it would probably be the quickest way to get it back into her possession. And it was special. It had to be. That mug had definitely come from nowhere.
Though if it wasn’t displaying any odd properties at the moment, did that mean that the artifact anomaly that popped up on whatever sensors or satellites operated around the town had come from another source? No. That couldn’t possibly be. It was far too much of a coincidence. Mel made the mug real and then some other artifact popped up?
Dyna started to shake her head, but glanced up to the camera again. “Beatrice, was that artifact instantiation event centered on the bus stop?”
“Analysis continues. Event center point is difficult to determine due to incomplete sensor coverage, poor satellite resolution, and general abnormal shape of such emissions.”
“Structures, vehicles, flora and fauna, and especially people all absorb psionic emissions. Mostly people,” Doctor Cross said with a sad shrug. “The large burst that happens with rapid artifact instantiation does not always appear centered over the artifact. If we could pinpoint it more accurately, Emerald and the singing boy would likely have returned from Korea by now.”
“So you’re saying you don’t know. Could there be another artifact out in Idaho Falls? Or did the burst come from one of us maybe? Emitted from a psychic instead of an artifact?”
Cross didn’t answer, instead glancing up to the same camera that Dyna had been using.
“Waveform analysis is 71.949% consistent with known artifact instantiation events.”
“Is that high or low?” Dyna asked.
“About average. No two artifacts are the same.” He leaned down to the terminal’s microphone and pressed a button. “Get a team back to Idaho Falls. Sweep the red area for any additional sources of high psionic energy.”
“What…” Mel started. She stopped, trailing off as everyone looked back at her. She had been quiet up until now. Probably a bit overwhelmed. Taking in a breath, she started over again. “What about the mug? Could I touch it again?”
Doctor Cross stared at Mel for just a moment. Privately, Dyna wondered if he was trying to figure out who the strange person was after having forgotten that Dyna had already introduced her. But, without a word, he turned back to the glass window separating the two rooms. After a thought, he leaned down to the microphone again, pressed a different button, and said, “Move the cup to the psychoscope.”
“Psychoscope?” Mel said, tone vaguely unimpressed.
Maybe she was getting a little more used to what was going on.
“It’s a device for rapid analysis of psionoic energy. Not as good as the psionic spectrometer, but it works for preliminary decision making with regard to artifacts.”
Dyna, having heard that tone from Mel before, had a feeling she thought the name was silly rather than was wondering what it did.
Neither Dyna or Mel bothered explaining that to Doctor Cross. The room simply fell silent as the suited men on the other side of the glass put a cake dome over the top of the fog machine and then maneuvered the mug onto the recently vacated sensor-covered platform.
After a few minutes of spooling up the sensors, tapping a few things on his keyboard, and waiting for the results to appear on the screen, Doctor Cross sucked in a small gasp.
“What?”
“What is it?”
“That,” Doctor Cross said, “is very interesting.” Stepping slightly to one side, he pointed out a series of graphs that Dyna actually somewhat understood these days.
“That’s higher than my mirror,” Dyna said. “Which might make sense. Whatever else happened, that mug didn’t exist an hour ago. It is a complete psionic construct. Matter pulled from the mind?”
“Likely not mind,” Cross said. “The matter may possibly have come from that other side.” His grin faltered and his tone shifted to one of annoyance. “I’ll have to consult with Doctor Teeth.”
“So I really made that? It’s real? Is it going to disappear?”
Doctor Cross looked back to Mel, eyes narrowing. He probably couldn’t answer the latter two questions, so he focused on the first. “You did that?”
“She’s an illusionist. I tried to explain—”
Interrupting Dyna, Doctor Cross looked Mel up and down. “We’ll want to keep you for observation. And experiments. We’ll see if we can replicate the event. If it produces the same psionic emission, we’ll know for sure whether or not an artifact caused all this or if it was you.”
“I get to do it again?” Mel said, sounding genuinely excited. She perked up, straightening her back and widening her eyes.
“We’ll see. Beatrice! Get Teeth to the psionic spectrometer. We’ll begrudgingly get his opinion. Then get a shielded test chamber set up.” He paused, looking straight at Mel for a moment before adding, “and get Livermore too. He can do a preliminary examination of your psychic abilities.”
Announcement chimes dinged over the Carroll Institute Announcement System’s speakers. “Doctor Teeth, please report to Materials Analysis Laboratory four.” Two more dings immediately followed. “Doctor Livermore, report to Psychic Evaluation Department please.”
As Beatrice made her announcements, Doctor Cross leaned down to the microphone again. “Pack up the items. Prepare for transit to the analysis laboratory.” He straightened his back and turned away without even glancing over to see if his orders were received. “Mal—”
“Mel.”
“Mel. I would love nothing more than to jump straight into the experiment. However, I have been unduly informed that failing to follow protocol will not be tolerated.”
He didn’t look over to Dyna, but she still had a feeling that he was talking about her.
“Okay?” Mel said.
“Glad you agree. Follow me, please. Doctor Livermore is a nuisance, but he’ll be able to ascertain the exact limitations and ramifications of your abilities in the shortest amount of time. Please cooperate.” He started toward the door, but paused and looked back to Dyna. “De… Dyna.”
“That took a lot of effort, didn’t it?” Dyna said, crossing her arms in annoyance. She wasn’t exactly angry with Cross for forgetting her name. She wasn’t Harold. And she had mostly gotten used to being called Delta by him, even if she didn’t understand why. No, she was upset that it didn’t look like she would be getting that fog machine back anytime soon.
Of course, Doctor Cross didn’t even blink at her annoyed quip. “You were present during the event?”
“I was on the bus stop bench next to Mel, yes.”
“We’ve already got analysis on you, though the situation may warrant another pass. Please remain on standby. In addition, we’ll want you observing and perhaps participating in the actual experiment. I’ll have to consult with the other doctors beforehand, but I believe that is a highly likely outcome.”
“It better be the outcome.” If she wasn’t getting her fog machine back, she at least wanted to see the results of her actions.
Doctor Cross nodded his head. With that dismissal, he headed out into the hall. Mel hesitated a moment, but after a gesture from Dyna, followed after him.
Dyna didn’t go with them. She didn’t really want to meet with Doctor Livermore. Watching endless prodding and humming might teach her something, but her presence was just as likely to steal his attention. He kept sending her requests to test out that amplification chamber again, but she really didn’t want a repeat of the previous incident.
Besides that, she had a slightly different goal for the moment.
Heading down the hallway, Dyna changed floors and moved to the artificer quarters. Ruby should be around. Maybe Sapphire as well. Neither were really her destination. She just wanted a little privacy.
Entering her fairly spartan quarters—she preferred her regular dormitory room—Dyna approached the wall. She looked up into the five-lensed security camera’s red light and frowned.
If she had to cover her whole room in tin foil to keep this whole debacle from happening again, she would. Although…
Perhaps…
Instead of buying a car, maybe she could rent out a small apartment in Idaho Falls. Turn it into a little psychic workshop. She could fill it with items that she was trying to turn into artifacts. And if she could properly shield it, it wouldn’t matter if there was a big artifact instantiation event. Or rather, it would be good if there was an artifact instantiation event. It would likely mean that she succeeded.
“Beatrice… is there anywhere I can get—I can requisition large quantities of psionically shielded material? Enough to cover a small room with. And maybe some sensors that aren’t hooked up to… well, you?”
“I can direct you to the necessary supply rooms. May I ask why?”
Dyna blinked, somewhat caught off-guard. Was Beatrice one to ask questions like that? Maybe because Dyna specified that the sensors not be hooked up to her.
“Just an experiment of my own I want to try. Nothing dangerous. Don’t worry.”