Main Hall

The Academy

Drew stepped out of the male locker room and sighed with relief. While the rest of the class was just beginning a block of combat training after their morning workout, Drew was part of a group that had been directed to get cleaned up and wait in the hallway. His entire body burned with lactic acid build up and his legs felt wobbly. You people want me for my brain, not my biceps, get me in the lab and start building. According to an email he received last night today he would meet Instructor Laurier and begin working in a laboratory located in the Academy.

A door bearing the sign “Instructor Offices” opened up the hall and a short, pudgy man emerged. His skin was a light coffee colour. He wore a pair of khaki pants, a Hawaiian shirt, and a red bow tie over the shirt. “Hello, people. Those of you scheduled to meet with Professor Eldritch use the teleportation chamber, he is waiting for you in his library.”

The whole group walked down the long hall, when they passed the blue doors of Lecture Hall Two four students peeled off. With a grin, Drew stopped walking and pointed to the blue doors of Lecture Hall Two.

“You know something about Hall Two? It’s bigger on the inside?” The magical focus students turned to regard Drew with uncomprehending expressions. “It has a blue door and is bigger on the inside, you know because it takes you someplace else...get it?” The four shared a shrug and shut the door between them. Drew turned to look at the instructor and the five other students still standing in the hall. As a group, they were grinning, including Laurier.

“Time and relative dimensions in space,” one of the other students mumbled.

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“Come on,” Laurier gestured for the young people to follow him as he talked over his shoulder. “Don’t worry Poulin, there was only a 19.6% chance for any in that group to get it. The students getting combat training right now, are the jocks. The thaumaturgical students, well those are the yearbook staff. As for us…,” he left the sentence hanging.

“We are the kids the others cheat off of in order to pass their diploma exams,” Drew said with a grin spreading across his face. The others exchanged knowing nods between them.

“True, but I was going to say that we are the ones who get the cool toys.” With that announcement, the heavy instructor theatrically pushed open the door labelled “Technology Laboratories.” Inside was a grand chamber with a ceiling three stories high, and large bays arranged as spokes around a central meeting area. Laurier led them to the centre space furnished with a pair of large tables, a touch-responsive projector screen, and a holographic 3-d chamber. “We will meet here regularly to conference and brainstorm. If you have a dilemma with a project, bring it to the group and we will all work on solutions. This is not a grad or post-grad program where you are competing against each other.”

“Each of you will have a bay to establish a lab in. Survey the space. In twenty minutes we will meet again and you will tell me what equipment you will need.” An impish look spread across his face, “You people should have heard King when she discovered what my budget was. She absolutely had kittens, it was...just beauty. Now go, shoo.”

Drew headed into a work bay that bore his name on a wall. Along the walls and ceiling were steel gantry walkways. What would he need that much height for? The rest of the bay was empty, awaiting his decision regarding what equipment to fill it with. This place is fracking huge! It puts the lab space at the university to shame.

He decided which wall he would set his primary work bench at and set down a poster tube he had been carrying, in the hopes of establishing his own space today. He took out a cylinder of adhesive putty and used it to place his four posters up. When he stepped back to rejoin the group he left behind posters featuring: Firefly, a grinning Val Kilmer proclaiming “I love toxic waste,” actress Felicia Day, and a picture of a veterinarian talking to a bespeckled man “About your cat Dr. Schrodinger, I have good news and bad news.”