Alice hummed to herself from around the corner of the long hallway, watching from a safe distance as Jo struggled to pull Twilight away from the laboratory she had just gotten finished using as a playground for hours.
She watched as Twilight hesitated from letting go of the door frame while eyeballing a sign in the hallway longingly. Twilight was talking to Jo, her voice slightly quiet from her distance away. "I already knew they held some luminescence in the absence of light, Jo... and... I know, Jo, I know... but... but..." Twilight turned to face the shorter girl waiting on her. "Science, Jo! Scieeeence!"
Jo began protesting against the Equestrian’s pleas, and slowly but surely, dragged her away.
Alice giggled and looked at her wristwatch. Finally! I thought that girl would never leave. Good job, Jo. She grinned slyly, and began dashing quickly down the empty corridor. Her eyes kept themselves trained carefully on the bearded man, Lex, waving goodbye from the door.
As Alice had hoped, the grandpa-looking professor entered his room once again, but none the wiser of her silent approach. The tile floor squeaked some as she made her move, sliding on her converse until she was right outside the laboratory. Just as she had slid across the floor, she slid the tip of a pen in between the lab’s door, and its frame.
The entryway was now propped open just a smidgen.
“Flawless victory.” Alice fist pumped quietly, then pressed her ear up against the crack she had made. And now for the good stuff.
Two slightly muffled voices reached Alice from inside the lab, she recognized them as Twilight’s nerdy buddies; the ones that were helping her; probably, anyway.
“Can you believe it, Lex? I can’t. I’m looking at these things and I still can’t believe it.”
Alice listened intently; she could either peek through the door crack or listen, but not quite both. Still, she recognized the first speaker as Carl.
“Well, it’s there, you aren’t dreaming and I see it, too.” The second speaker was definitely the older fellow.
Alice hummed to herself. Now to find out how well intending Captain Grandpa and his side-kick Stay-Puft Boy really are…
Carl stared at the crystal in his hands intently. “I was terrified she was going to take it back with her for a moment there.” He laughed a little nervously while raising up a pen alongside the crystal.
“It would have been well within her right if she did. Though... I’m glad she didn’t, too.” Lex chuckled, then snatched the pen away from his colleague. He gave the younger man a wry look and motioned him to put the crystal down.
Carl went from looking like a boy on Christmas day to one that had been admonished and sent to the corner. “Aw, come on, why can't I ring it again?” he asked excitedly.
Lex frowned, looking away to his workstation. “I’d really rather you didn’t, not until we know more. Twilight did say she had no idea what these things could do, and she’s the expert.” He harrumphed, and looked back at the information on the table that was only just a little bit more helpful than it was useless.
“Yeah…” Carl gingerly set the crystal back in the shoebox with its sister. “You don’t really think these things could turn us into ponies, do you?”
Lex let out a guffaw. “I think that Alice girl was joking, Carl, not serious. Twilight said as much herself.”
Alice frowned. What, it makes so much sense though! After growling unfavorably at the men from her sentry point; she refocused on listening. I hope just for that they do turn into ponies…
“Right...” Carl responded to Lex, heeding the man’s words. He shuddered and took a step back from his newly acquired mystery all the same. “So, are we really going to try and help her develop a machine with her theories? I mean, sure, that sort of thing excites me more than a trip to Hustler’s, but-” He grinned and let out a bout of almost nervous sounding laughter. “But, let’s face it Lex, even with this evidence right here in front of us and her plans, I have my doubts. And then there’s materials…”
Lex and Carl had moved close enough that they lowered their voices. Alice had a hard time listening.
Come on, talk louder you nerds! Alice grunted and strained her hearing. Wait, who’s that? She furrowed her brow as another voice entered the room, and pressed her ear against the door’s crack harder. The new voice sounded disgruntled, nasally, and very British; fake British, though. She switched from listening and took a peak, instead.
Irwin paused from storming into his colleague's work area. The man gave the area a quick once over, then proceeded. “So, they’re finally gone I take it?” he said dourly.
Lex looked up along with Carl, both raising an eyebrow.
“Hey, look who decided to crawl out of his cave.“ Carl chuckled, then looked back down at his notes. “How are you doing, buddy?”
“Good evening, Irwin,” Lex greeted more normally. “We were just discussing the-”
Irwin’s eyes shrank to mere slits towards Carl. “It is not a cave, any more than your corner over there is a legitimate workstation, Carl.” He strode across the floor, and stopped upon spotting the rather obvious and out of place shoebox with loose paper hanging out of the top. “Was everything that you were discussing with them true? Or is this an elaborate hoax played on me at my expense, as I suspect.” Slowly, he began walking towards the box.
Lex looked up from his notes, then laughed. “Were you eavesdropping?”
Carl laughed aloud as well, swiveling around in his office chair smoothly. “You really think we’d make all of that up just to-”
Irwin snapped his head up, glaring. “Just answer my question,” he all but barked at the other men.
Carl whistled idly and put both hands up. “Easy, buddy.”
Irwin scowled and crossed his arms. “Please, I’m barely your buddy. We work together professionally. And how could I not overhear those shrieking banshees? You would think this place was a kindergarten.” He gave the room an ugly scan, then looked down at the box again. “In any case, I won’t believe any of that garbage I overheard is legitimate until I see it myself. So? Is it true?"
Lex had walked up behind Irwin, and placed a hand on the younger scientist’s shoulder. “Sure is, as amazing and unbelievable as that probably sounds. It's too bad you couldn’t have joined us for the initial tests. You would have seen it all firsthand.”
Irwin hadn’t taken his eyes off the two examples of the crystals he had heard about. “As if I could stomach being around those pony obsessed girls.” He looked over at Lex incredulously. “Were you listening to the things she was spouting about ‘magic’ holding sway over matter? That electricity was merely another- That it was harmless where she was from, and-! Uggh, I can’t even bring myself to repeat that drivel.” He took a few angry steps away, glaring at the ceiling. “She’s mad, Lex, mad. You can't really plan to include her in our work, much less help her.” He picked up the clipboard Lex had set down, hurriedly scanning over it.
Carl resisted his urge to return fire to the other man and picked himself up out of his chair slowly, gathering his cane as he did. The snickering he was letting out couldn’t be contained, though. “Irwin you gotta relax and lay off some, you sound ridiculous.”
Before Irwin was able to quip back to Carl, he was pulled aside by the arm.
“Twilight’s not crazy, she’s a genius." Lex quirked one greyed eyebrow. "That much should be obvious if you’re half as smart as I know you know you are, Irwin.” He let go and leaned back against the counter, arms folded. He kept speaking. “Now, would you like to see some of these notes or keep on quibbling? I don’t have to include you, you know.”
Alice had a terrible feeling in her gut about this Irwin fellow. Insult my ponies, will you… she seethed internally. Inside the room, she could see the shorter man nod, begrudgingly, and look at the crystal laden shoebox again. Should I go get Twilight? She shifted her legs some to keep from getting stiff, ruminating on what to do. Before she could come to a conclusion, Irwin burst out with an exclamation.
“How much!?” Irwin gaped at Lex. “That thing generates actual electricity?” He now eyed the crystals as if they were bombs, or cobras, or cobra bombs.
Lex shrugged. “It generates something, I know that for a fact. Whatever it is, it certainly behaves like electricity enough to turn on a light… Similarities end there, though.”
Carl sidled up beside Irwin, grinning. “But here’s the interesting part.” Carefully, but not exactly being gentle, he picked up one of the crystals and attached a nearby set of metal prongs which led to thick wires, and then a machine.
Lex allowed this, standing back. The machine promptly booped alive and began measuring energy.
Carl chuckled. “Watch this.”
Lex managed to keep from flinching as his friend reached out and laid a hand on the specimen, which was currently putting out over a thousand megawatts; according to the device. Of course, the other man was fine, as he had been the first time Twilight had showed them the bizarre thing.
Irwin went bug eyed. “The machine is broken.” He said flatly.
“Tried the backup, too.” Lex replied, shrugging. “I guess they could both be broken, but…”
“Well something- This is-” Irwin slapped a hand over his mouth.
Carl leaned in front of the skinny man, grinning smugly. “This is what? Impossible? Outrageous?” He straightened and unhooked the crystal. “Dare I say ...Inconceivable?”
Irwin scowled at the reference, but ignored the other man for the most part. “What this is, is the find of the century, you buffoon. Do you realize that this thing-”
Carl shrugged and picked up the other crystal, then nonchalantly tapped it with a pen before Lex could protest. “Sticks and Stones mate- Hey!”
Lex had snatched the thing away, and placed it back in the box. Swirling around the men were the motes of light and the dulcet peel of sound that the crystal always emitted when struck; akin to a fragile bell. “Alright, that’s enough touching and looking for now. It’s time to set down some rules, you two. First off, no telling anyone about this; no one. That includes the others and anyone on the forums. Hell, your family, too, no one.”
Carl frowned. “But I already told the others in the-”
Lex interrupted, frowning some beneath his beard. “Well don’t tell them anything else. If they ask about tonight, tell them it was a hoax after all, for now.”
Irwin was standing stock still staring with disbelief as the dancing lights fell closer and closer to the floor. Lex couldn’t tell if he was listening, that is, until the man climbed down to his hands and knees to watch as the last purple dot faded into the tiles.
Lex coughed.
Irwin stumbled up to stand again, Carl chuckling.
“The crystals are in my care," Lex went on. "And I’m merely inviting you both to analyze them with me.”
Carl mumbled, just loud enough to be heard. “She trusted them to me too, you know.”
“Yes,” Lex raised an eyebrow, “but they’re in my name on the papers.” He heaved a sigh and looked to the crystals again. “I’ve been handed someone else’s property. I intend to make good on my end of this deal before I consider talking to their owner about the possibility of anything else. And telling the others would just complicate things, so no gossiping, you two. I shouldn’t even need to bring up other outsiders, like a science journal, but I will if I have to.”
Alice frowned her deepest. Others? She had been gradually frowning more and more as she listened; mostly from the sound of Irwin’s voice, but what Lex said was weird too. What on Earth do they mean by others? She ran her hands over her hair without noticing, redoing her ponytail out of pure nervousness. Don’t tell me these guys are some kind of… nerdy Illuminati.
She could see Irwin still looked none too pleased; Carl was unreadable.
Lex continued speaking. “Which brings me to my next point. You know the science community doesn’t work like that. We would need to produce everything we have on these crystals for them to be taken seriously at all. That means how we made them, where we found them, and so on. We don’t have any of that because we did neither, and we don’t have the resources on our own to do anything with them, either.”
Irwin had begun pacing slightly, scowling. “Professor, you are talking about articles the length of my arm that could power a small city; that completely disregard everything we know about...! About energy itself! This is the find of the century!”
Lex met his gaze for a few, strained seconds, then sighed. “Indeed it is.” He stood strode across to the crystals, studying them. He also heard Irwin walk up beside him to look, too. “Still, there’s no hurry, and I’m the one in charge of these… crystals that we’ve been trusted with. They aren’t related to our project, so I’ll be keeping the eye on them-”
Irwin made to speak, but Lex talked over him.
“-And, if things work out for us with Twilight, then we could already be in quite the excellent position to benefit from this, and the situation goes beyond just having a curious, unexplainable hunk of rock. Does that sound fair enough, sir?”
Carl spoke first. “Yeah. You’re the boss, old timer.”
Lex winced back and stroked his beard. “I’m not that old…” He grinned and looked away from the chuckling Carl to the other man there. “Irwin?”
Irwin stayed quiet a moment longer, then mumbled his acknowledgement. “Yes, very well.” He maintained his nearly constant scowl as Professor Lex turned to face him; the other man’s speech concluded. “So, you intend to help the loon try and return back to her make believe fairy land then?”
Lex took a breath and searched the room for a moment. “Not to openly discredit myself, and off the records… let’s say I'm open to the optimistic possibility that she really is from another world."
Carl clapped once. “Well put, sir.”
Irwin, however, barked with laughter, once. “Really, Lex? How long do you intend to wait to produce something worthwhile from all of this, then? Hmm? She’s crazy-”
Lex smirked and interrupted the man, stepping forward confidently. “I don’t think she’s crazy at all, though, Irwin.”
Irwin stared back blankly a moment, then threw up his hands and paced further away.
Carl raised his hand and peered at the hunched over angry scientist. “If it helps, buddy, I still kinda think she’s crazier than a fruit bat.”
“Oh great,” Irwin laughed hard enough to cough. “S-so, out of the men of science present the least accomplished of you is the one sane man here. Also, I'm not your buddy...”
“Heh…” Carl leaned over the long laboratory counter separating the two sides of the room. “I don’t think you’re much less accomplished than me. Don’t beat yourself up so much about-”
“I meant you! And I am not your buddy-” Irwin cut off as Lex walked between them, waving a hand.
“That’s enough, both of you. Carl, I know Irwin’s attitude is like shooting fish nailed down to the bottom of an empty barrel, but knock it off. It gets old. Irwin… same as always, grow some thicker skin. I know I’m not in charge of anything, but if you can’t work with us you don’t belong in the group.” The other men rolled their eyes or scoffed to the side respectively, which was typical. “You’ve been working together for years, and I think things are getting serious.”
The other men looked back, their attentions piqued.
Lex waited a second, pausing, then went on. “Which brings me to my last point, gentlemen.” He shared his flat, lecturing expression between both men equally. “We may now have the possible fulcrum we’ve been looking for to make the group's pipe dream project… well, slightly less impossible. We might be able to test more than a theory.”
Irwin sighed with blatant exasperation and flourished a hand towards Carl. “That’s what I was trying to say. The last part, anyway.”
Carl seemed to struggled to keep his mouth shut after the other man spoke.
Irwin continued. “But honestly, I say we forget about that stupid hobby, something which could backfire horribly, and switch to something more relevant in this age. Understanding this bizarre gift could- could bring Tesla’s vision true!”
Lex smirked. “Maybe, but we’re taking this a step at a time, Irwin.” The older man put an arm around Irwin, which he seemed to only grudgingly allow. “I had more to say, though. For now, we have the possibility of our missing ingredient, as well as the possibility of a new member, who could really assist us with the project.”
Irwin gritted his teeth and spun out of the other man’s grip. “You can’t be-”
“Irwin.” Lex raised his voice warningly. “It isn’t my decision to make, it’s everyone’s, and you’ll get your vote. But I do want you to know the reality is there, and it’s simply that she does know her stuff. Plus, it might be our best chance of getting her help-” He glanced at the shoebox, again laid on the counter. “With the project.”
Alice’s eyes widened, somehow, yet another fraction. Her face was practically pressing itself in through the door’s crack. What project!? What project!!?? Tell me your damned secrets already you pasty nerds!
“Excuse me?”
Alice straightened bolt upright where she was crouched beside the office door and jerked the pen in her hand free from where it was wedged. She looked up, and right into the questioning, rueful gaze of the studious looking lobby-lady.
Alice grinned slightly. “Ah-heh, hi?”
The woman’s gaze narrowed immediately. “Just what do you think are you doing, Miss?...”
Alice uhmed aloud, then answered the other woman slowly. "...Rutabaga?"
The secretary deadpanned. "Rutabaga..." she repeated.
"Ah huh." Alice's eyes darted quickly towards the doors at the other end of the hall. She had been taken completely by surprise. I'll need to work on that, she resolved, while gathering her thoughts for an escape plan.
"Well," the stately looking, and sounding woman continued. "Miss Rutabaga, if you would kindly produce both your student, or faculty I.D. as well as an explanation for why you are crouched beside one of the laboratory doors, then I'll be happy to help you in any way I can." She smiled smugly, peering beneath her glasses at the blonde woman.
Alice stared back blankly a moment, brain racing for something good to respond with. She coughed, and stood up. “Well… youuuu seee…”
The lobby-lady’s eyes widened suddenly.
Alice ducked in quickly, leaping up from the floor, and initiated a french kiss with the stranger. The other woman fought back, after a moment, of course, but the distraction had worked.
Alice danced away before things got too… complicated. “Oh geez, you know, I wish I could stay, but I really need to go find my pony.” She jogged backwards, waving and laughing, leaving the wide eyed, utterly confused secretary behind. “Bye now! Take care!” Nimbly, she turned on one foot and swooped her way out of the building.
Jo frowned slightly over her steering wheel, trying to figure out what Alice wasn't telling her while looking out the corner of her eye. "So, you found a frat party to crash."
"Yup!" Alice cheered, whooing aloud. She was again seated in the back of Jo's car, beside Twilight and secured beneath a seat belt for their long, nighttime drive home.
Twilight chuckled again while smirking at her other friend's happiness and silly behavior.
Jo went on. "And that's why you had red lipstick smudged all over your face?" she asked.
Alice leaned up and winked. "Oh, Jo, a girl never kisses and tells... Isn't that right Twilight?"
Twilight blushed and gulped, then looked away. A few indiscernible mumbles escaped her, which included the likes of. "Well, I..." and "But I mean..." and then "Not really any of..."
"I was just kidding, Twilight." Alice began giggling all the same in response to the ex-unicorn, distracted from her questioning. She awed audibly, finding the other girl's reaction to be too cute.
Jo stared dully at them both through her rear view mirror, then looked back at the road. "Right."
The drive went on for a couple hours, a few lines of speech traded every now and then. Alice asked more about Equestria, and Jo had stopped telling her not to ask. Twilight had already found out they had been avoiding the risk of upsetting her, after all. Sometime near their quarter-way point, two of the three girls dozed off for a car nap.
It wasn't until they were nearly home, that Alice perked up suddenly, as energetic as if she had rested a full night's sleep.
"Oh!" Alice exclaimed, grinning over at Twilight. "And you'll never guess what I overheard after I left that frat party."