In the Year of the Cat (Queen or Freddie Mercury Fanfic)

3. What Does THIS Button Do?

"Surely you can understand, why we'd really prefer you stay mum about this place's existence," Dr. K said casually.  "Most of the students on campus who aren't med or dedicated psych students such as yourself know nothing about it."

I wasn't listening very closely.  Too interested was I in the huge six-sided room.  The walls shone in immaculate stainless steel glory on one side; on the other, LED screens glared with incomprehensible data.  The light seemed to come from all directions and bounced off of everything, giving the room a distinctly mirror-like feel.  People mingled busily about, tireless as worker bees, yet they were silent.  No excited chatter, no droning of status reports or whatever, nothing.  Seemed the computers were doing more talking than the people, what with the clicks and the taps and the beep-beeps coming from everywhere.

"What is this place?" I murmured.

"This," Dr. K said, "is where all the really magical stuff happens, so to speak."

"But this isn't even a science school.  It's a liberal arts college!"

"All the better a location to put an experimental base underneath, no?"

It was then I noticed a huge depression in the middle of the floor.  I drew as near as I could, to see the floor slope down around twenty feet in a cone shape, coming to a stop in the middle where stood what looked like some kind of cylindrical space pod from old sci-fi films. 

"What's that down there?" I whispered.

He beamed proudly.  "That's the little monster you'll very soon be making friends with," Dr. K said.  "We call her the TRDS-14K2.  For short, she's just-"

"Don't tell me," I interrupted.  "Tardis!"

Dr. K stared at me.  "What?"

"Tardis!  You know, like in that Doctor Who... show... um.  Never mind."

"Oh.  Well, actually, we just call her T-Rod for short.  I don't know why.  We just do."

I looked up, and was startled to see a kind of observatory booth, where a few intense, sharply dressed men and women sat enclosed all in glass like a rectangular fishbowl.  A couple of the faces I half-recognized from the news.

"Who are they?" I asked. 

"Those are some of our benefactors," Dr. K. answered.  "Good Lord, you are full of questions!"

Oh, right, sorry, I forgot I'm supposed to be a mute little lab rat, I grumbled to myself.  God, I wish I had been more on the ball and just signed up for those dumb studies- the normal, boring correlation ones, not an experiment, certainly not the kind you expect a superhero to walk out of.

"Here, we'd better get a move on, get you ready.  We're going to start this thing up in five minutes.  George doesn't like to wait."  He looked me over, and nodded.  "It will do.  It's a good thing you're wearing such nondescript clothes.  You could fit in anywhere.  No one will suspect."

I glanced down at my black turtleneck and jeans.  "Um, thanks-?"

Dr. K led me over to a table and had me open my backpack.  I thought maybe he would rummage through it, take some stuff out "to hold on to" perhaps, but instead he started stuffing things in, explaining each item as he went.

"Where you're going, there won't be any mobile signal, so your smart phone's IQ is going to drop a hundred points at least," he said.  "In order to communicate with us, use this."

He handed me an old Nokia phone.  It was a true relic, with a green monochromatic screen and the useless stubby antenna protruding from one side.  The thing had to be about twenty years old.  I stifled a smile.