The Continuing Adventures Of Camp Restricted!

[Scolopendra]

A corner of Titan lies squared away for the use of the Triumvirate as a whole, mostly dedicated to nature preserves and diplomatic retreats. One spot in this corner, though, is a fenced-off, triple-gridded, wavicle-shielded, ringed by surface-to-orbit emplacements, surrounded by three moats, hardened, reinforced, and perhaps even r-brane protected bit of steppe. This grassland is mostly unbroken except for the occasional crater, broken refrigerator (which may or may not be coincident with the craters), bit of giant decomposing pie, and some low bunkers scattered here and there like blocky hills.

This is Camp Restricted, the "top secret" research facility of the Triumvirate of Yut. It's not particularly secret, and the visible effects of whatever is tested there is often quickly seen and distributed far and wide by the watchful sousveillance eyes of interested fleet-watchers and reporters looking for a good scoop. The really, really, really dangerous stuff, such as Project FLIPPED TURTLE (which totally wasn't a strategic Genesis Device warhead), is usually tested out in the middle of nowhere. A year's travel above the Galactic Plane middle of nowhere. Sometimes, though, it doesn't quite work out that way, such as with the Infinite Falling Pie (eventually adopted by the C'tanelmacari spacy as the Can of Whoopass). One cannot manufacture inspirato--unless one has a skylight, a wading pool, and other strategic elements--and because of this, sometimes one cannot control where things are created.

The room is mostly steel that glows blue around its edges as it refracts the lights embedded in it. It looks roughly spherical, but is truncated on the top--a ceiling made of unidentifiable machinery--and the bottom--a floor made of a metal grille, coated in rubber so falling on it will only just hurt and not lead to excessive desanguination. The center of the room is dominated by a truly spherical glass, or maybe Plexiglas, sphere that rests on a cylindrical dias of polished aluminum. Surrounding it are four aluminum pillars with machined valves that lead from what may be pneumatic connectors to the inside of the clear glass sphere. Inside the glass sphere, suspended in nothingness, is a little brown blob.

"That's it?" The elven lieutenant commander frowns slightly. "This is what all the fuss is about? A little blob of... burnt umber... matter?" He squints and leans in slightly, the gold insignia on his Mandarin collar reflecting distortedly back at him whilst he folds black-sleeved arms in front of a green plastron. "That is a burnt umber color, isn't it?"

Weapons-Hrragh, the long-time accomplice of Lieutenant Commander Analton Curuvar, simply folds his broad orange hands behind his breeches, white shirt ending in foppish frills. "This is Chartreuse Matter."

Analton tilts his head over and to the back just enough to raise one statuesque eyebrow at the unconventional kzin. "It's burnt umber."

Hrragh nods, leans over, and flips a switch. The lights in the room go dark, leaving no illumination at all except for a brilliant, subtly malign neon glow of the chartreuse pellet floating in the isolation chamber.

"Huh. So it is chartreuse matter." Analton leans back to the vertical, blinks, and taps his chin. "So... ah... what is it?"

The kzintosh's voice is gruff and short. "Bad shit."

[Reploid Productions]

In a bunker near a building that looks suspiciously like an aircraft hangar, albeit a bit larger than one would expect, several Shogunate scientists are putting their vast intellects to use...

...playing Jenga.

Mind you, this particular game invokes a "no hands" rule, and hence handheld gravity manipulation units are getting a rigorous testing. With the Elite Victory Mk-III and SWORD projects essentially completed, the prototype units sit in the hangar, where they would be collecting dust except the place gets swept and dusted every few hours. Project Magical Girl has likewise since passed from prototype testing, and rumor has it that the thaumaturgic weaponry may or may not be part of HELLSING's impressive armory.

The latest project, miniaturization of G-Diffuser systems, has been proceeding almost too well. The new hand-carried 'G-Guns' are down to a size and weight where a humanoid reploid can heft the blocky contraption with ease, and a human of reasonably good condition can lift one for short periods of time. A side effort to use the technology's gravity manipulation to take the weight of the device off the person holding it hasn't met much success.

But the Shogunate delegation has been working on them for awhile, and you can only do so much levitating the maniac test pilot's bed in the middle of the night before it gets dull.

So when said maniac Ymari comes careening into the bunker, skids to a halt through the Jenga tower, and nearly pounces Dr. Nekura with a memo in hand, it piques some interest.

"Dr. Nekura! I've got a memo for you!" The excitable Nekoite exclaims.

"I see that." The shorter human woman tries to hide an eyebrow twitch as she snatches the datapad from Ymari, motioning to the rest of the crew to set the game up again. "What is this? Some sort of joke?"

"The guy that handed it to me seemed pretty serious." The catgirl helpfully adds.

By now, the Jenga tower is completely forgotten as the group clusters around Dr. Nekura to see what the fuss is about:

URGENT MATTER - ALL SCIENCE TEAMS
MEETING IN ISOLATION LAB $roomnumber

Nekura skims the rest of the notice, deliberating for a moment before passing her verdict. "Well, Curuvar doesn't strike me as being the sort to joke around. Power down the G-Guns and let's go see what's so big that there's a facility-wide notice about it."
---
At the aforementioned isolation lab....

"Chartreuse Matter?" Dr. Nekura eyes the innocuous looking little gob with one eyebrow raised in doubt.

"Looks more vermilion to me." Dr. Arstal, former head of Project Magic Girl observes, arms crossed in thought.

"I'd call it more burgundy, personally." Theta Labor-Twenty-Six, Dr. Arstal's assistant adds to the debate.

"It's red!" Ymari unhelpfully remarks, earning her annoyed looks from the rest of the Shogunate team. The test pilot quiets down under the slightly withering glares from the scientists. "What?"

"That makes it sound like something outta a movie or something." Alex, Dr. Nekura's aide declares condenscendingly. "Red matter? That just sounds silly! And it's too brown to really be red anyway."

A chorus of agreement follows on the heels of his statement. Apparently only fancy terms for the color of the mysterious goober of possible doom are appropriate to the science and research personnel. And Ymari, for all her enthusiasm, isn't at Camp R to be smart; the Nekoite is there to fly potentially suicidal prototype vehicles. Sulking, the catgirl slinks away from the room, leaving the nerd corps to debate the finer points of the color wheel.

"Color of the thing aside, this is a serious matter-" Dr. Nekura resumes, pausing when some of her cohorts snicker quietly. "-and we need to work with our colleagues to come up with safe ways to verify the properties of this chartreuse matter."

"... Why don't we just find some backwater uninhabited planet?"

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

Lorenzo Vettori looked at the little suspended glob with that familiar sick feeling in his stomach. Running a hand through his unruly hair, he stood back a bit, ignoring the commentary about the color of it all, though he frankly thought it was more a deep Tuscan brick himself, at least with the lights on.

His compatriot, Riccardo Borghese, seemed to have a completely different view on the subject at hand.

“Oh don’t be such a chronic doomsayer, Enzo. This is absolutely fascinating. How on Earth did you…no, rather what gave you the…”

“I’m sure we’ll get the skinny on it, Ricco. Now shut up, please?” Enzo asked tiredly, his eyes still on the little gobbet of whatever it was in the sphere. “What was that about ‘backwater planet’ again? I’d like to know a bit more before we go haring off to unleash God only knows what on the known multiverse, if everyone is in agreement in any case.”

“I wonder what would happen if we put it in The Box,” Ricco muttered thoughtfully to himself, his eyes alight with the possibilities.

That of course brought clear alarm to Lorenzo’s face, and he turned quickly to look at his colleague who was in turn studying the Chartreuse Matter with an all-too-familiar gleam of uninhibited curiosity, though admittedly, his eyes did slip on occasion towards the rather impressive form of Weapons-Hrragh – frills and all.

Vettori sank back against a wall with a longsuffering sigh of resignation. He rubbed his temples tiredly, and shook his head.

A nice quiet villa in the country … a quiet glass of wine in the evening … dinner overlooking the lake … just no more crazy shit like this.

[Kajal]

Most of the Kajali research contingent was off-world, futzing around and generally trying to explain Where Homeworld Went(TM), though as complete abandonment of works in progress would be downright irresponsible a small group remained. Dr. Lesaan had been recalled, and was somewhat enthusiastic about this "chartreuse matter" despite the general feelings of doom that had dominated most of the Kajali science community as of late.

"So," he said, sounding rather flippant. "You say this char-troose matter is... bad stuff."

Lesaan peers about the room, observing the rather beefy containment mechanisms before continuing.

"But, I have a question... Why is it bad stuff?"

At this point, there was no doubt about it. Everyone in the room was glaring at Lesaan.

[Scolopendra]

When it comes to "Things That Worry or Annoy Analton Curuvar," accents are not one of them. In this case, when it comes to the category "Annoying Things About Doctor Lesaan," it's actually quite low on the list and so he ignores it just as deftly as he ignores the Shogunite argument about exactly what shade it was. He is a Noldo, he has keen eyesight and an exquisite color sense, the blob is burnt umber and he is right and they are wrong. It's just that simple. The Noldorin have been using burnt umber as a standardized color for thousands of years; if all these young races decide to change the definition of burnt umber or not teach their children (children Reploids? later models?) the difference between burnt umber and redder raw umber, then that certainly does not make them right.

And the blob, even under the white light of the LEDs illuminating the containment room, is most certainly not red.

"That's a good question." He turns towards the 'tosh, which thankfully turns him away from Ricco's admiration of the kzin's various endowments. "So, why exactly is it 'bad shit?'"

"Hrrrr." Weapons-Hrragh grumble-growls slightly in momentary thought. He has to parse what exactly this stuff does to people who, while very well trained, wouldn't understand since they haven't been poring over the data for weeks. Language fails to offer short answers because, while there are many analogs, none of them sufficiently describe the effects. "It... depends."

"What do you mean 'it depends?'"

"Well..." Kzinti in general are not known for using discourse markers in their speech, and especially not hedging ones. "How exactly it acts depends on what ruleset is applied to it."

Analton scoffs. "That's true about any analytical model, Hrragh." Even pronouncing the name seems to hurt his delicate features; the Elves had always thought that the Hero's Tongue was much too close to the Black Speech. "The results vary depending on your assumptions."

"Within error bands, yes," the kzintosh agrees, "but this is different. Using reality models on loan from RealityWANCC and HELLSING, this matter is mathematically chaotic in terms of causality. It is extremely sensitive to initial conditions, but those initial conditions are the local rules. From there they diverge wildly. If the cosmological constant happens to be off in the twentieth decimal place, that is the difference between a 'subspace supernova' that is an ever-expanding superluminous wave of matter conversion--and hence self-powering--and a sort of black hole that generates gravity in a step function rather than an inverse square law; it pulls in things inside a certain radius, but the acceleration never increases, there are no tidal forces.

"There are even more possibilities, but I have not run them yet."

[Reploid Productions]

"So let's load some up on the SWORD prototype and send Ymari to drop it on some uninhabited backwater planet?" One of the other Shogunate scientists quips.

"Much as I wouldn't object to Ymari being removed from Camp R-" Oh yes, Nekura has a decided nervous tic that her dealings with the catgirl undoubtedly caused. "-that would be totally irresponsible. What if it causes one of those uncontrollable doomsday type reactions? Rips a hole in space-time? Opens some hellgate netherworld thing and gets HELLSING pissed off at everybody?"

This last is accompanied by a pointed glower in Ricco's direction.

"Personally, I'm curious as to how this stuff was even made. I wonder if it has any thaumaturgic properties?" Dr. Arstal notes.

"Oh no you do not!" Nekura shifts her frustration from Ricco to Arstal. "We're not going to start poking it with your weird magic-psionic-whatsits any more than we're letting it be mixed up with the Dominion hellbox!"

[Scolopendra]

"The question is 'how far away should the planet be' and 'what rules apply?'" Weapons-Hrragh states simply, one broad hand coming up to adjust his ruffly ascot. "From some of the initial studies I have done, it is extremely sensitive to everything from the value of the speed of light in a vacuum to the gravitational 'constant' to the cosmological 'constant.' The cosmological constant varies with dark matter distribution, our drives sometimes play games with c and big G, and FTL interdictors and inhibitors do likewise. A proper testing program for this Chartreuse Matter, one with isolation of variables, would be nearly impossible."

He does not, for a moment, suggest in his words or tones that maybe testing it is not a wise idea. "The best we could hope for is to get enough empirical data to make analytical models as accurate as we can get them."

"Um... I did hear something about a 'subspace supernova.'" Analton looks up at the big 'tosh. "What exactly does that entail?"

"An FTL explosion that converts matter to energy, and then uses that energy to propel its expansion. The more matter it impacts, the larger it gets until it runs out of energy to expand." Hrragh coughs slightly for effect, an odd chroaring sound coming from the back of his throat. "According to Destruction of Exergy, the conversion of Sol would make a conversion sphere about ten light years in radius... which would of course contact other stars, and it would continue expanding, possibly until it consumes the entire galaxy."

Analton nods, jaw set, lower lip pushed slightly against the upper as he speaks in a voice of someone appraising some old bit of junk he saw in a pawn shop. "The entire galaxy. Right. And we want to test this because...?"

"We can be relatively certain when we test it that the conditions will not be close enough to the initial conditions necessary to eat the galaxy."

"Relatively certain. Right." Curuvar glances over at Ricco. "And you want to put it through the hellbox."

"If the hellbox is a stable spacefold portal," the kzintosh muses, "then it would be the safest delivery method."

"Oh, not you too." Curuvar sighs and rubs his temples. "So, we have this blob here. We 'know' from analysis that it can make crazy discontinuous black holes and subspace supernovas. What else do we know about it?"

"I used up all my runtime on the mainframe just finding those," Weapons-Hrragh grumbles. "That is part of the reason I think we should test it, in the middle of nowhere, at about FLIPPED TURTLE distances."

"One year out on cruising tesseract-assist?"

"Stellar density that far away should be sufficient to prevent galactic consumption."

"'Should.' Maybe everyone else could run simulations too and see what they come up with before we annoy the GEC further by asking if we can commandeer Clark Terrell again?"

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

Ricco looks, well, hurt at the ‘hellbox’ accusation. After all, no matter how twitchy it made HELLSING or the rest, it hadn’t actually done anything bad … so far. It just sat there, spitting things back out into the general area of where the box was when things were put into it.

He’d theorized it could be ‘tweaked’ to change where things popped out, if the various bits it was made of were altered slightly, but thus far, no one had been willing to let him try. On pain of … well, all sorts of horrible things, really – death being quite possibly the least awful of them.

His eyes got rather big at a further mention of his little box, especially considering where it came from. Although the ramifications of possibly unleashing the Literal Death of the Known Universe had his expression looking a little wild.

Vettori, for his part, looked like he was going to be sick – or wanted to be sick, but couldn’t quite manage it. He was running numbers on a datapad, looking pale and muttering quietly to himself as Hrragh spoke, shaking his head now and then, most notably when he glanced up at the little brown glob.

“No … no, I’m not sure we want to jump into live testing … I mean, the consequences … responsible for trillions of lives … Mannagia … simulations, most definitely required from as many as can …”

“You mean you think we could use The Box, really?” Ricco piped up, his voice squeaking slightly towards the end. He coughed, cleared his throat, then continued, trying to calm himself slightly.

“It hasn’t done anything bad, really. And you know, my theories on fine-tuning its ‘send’ ability could really come in handy – Now don’t get all pissy about it, Enzo, you know we’ve got ample backup should anything go really wrong –“ he interrupted Vettori, as the other man started to sputter a protest.

“Its just a thought, anyway. And barring that, if you recall those Treznor ships that got lost all that time ago? Those drives of theirs are capable of some seriously amazing jumps. I mean mindblowingly amazing jumps in a much shorter time than perhaps can be expected. And I believe they’ve made some strides in working out some of the bugs. Perhaps an unmanned probe, so as not to inadvertently strand someone? If we’re going to be working with matter-conversion and the like, we might well end up destroying the planet, moon, or star the ship would need to slingshot back out, after all.”

Granted, he spoke a bit quickly, and granted, he was a bit excited about it all for various reasons, but he hoped at least some of it had made sense, in spite of the horror some of the ideas seemed to inflict on his colleague.

“MORE SIMS FIRST FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!” Vettori managed, looking a bit more flustered than normal.

“Er … ah … right. Sims would be a good idea, for well, several bits of …” Ricco shrugged slightly and trailed off looking a bit sheepish.

[Cetaganda]

A Cetagandan named Asher Griffith, chosen more or less at random from the available researchers on account of 'bad shit' being rather vague, peered over one of the reploids to get a better look. While he has several degrees, he's not so much a experimental research scientist as a general-purpose geek, a former science officer who's now part of the administrative staff and there to help keep track of all the projects in progress and see where different specialties could work together on, ah, interesting projects.

"I don't see any reason not to put it in the box," he said idly, before frowning. "Uh, maybe I missed the answer to this, but... where the hell do you get this, Weapons-Hrragh?"

[Scolopendra]

Hraagh gently scratches his neck just under the knot of the bow in his mane that keeps it in a proper late-seventeenth-century ponytail. "Chartreuse Matter is developed under extremely particular conditions where organic slurries are passed through extremely fine keratin matrices onto a colloidal lipid substrate under hot temperatures and in a standard atmosphere of pressure with a certain chemical mixture of air and dronabinol. The reaction appears to be initiated by a localized combination of constant changes, particularly millionth-place changes in pi and the natural constant, caused by a certain thaumatological background count reacting to elevated psionic activity of extreme frustration mixed with elation. Finally, the matter crystallizes, sublimates, and condenses in a more stable allotrope on a vaguely regular bed of thermoplastic fibers."

Curuvar parses this for a moment. "So... in plain English..."

"It--"

The elf holds up one lanky yet not quite arachnodactylic hand; graceful in its thin smoothness. "Let me do this myself. In plain English, you're saying it develops when some sort of carbonaceous goo passes through what sounds like a dust bunny onto something cheesy where it's warm and the air is full of pot. Then the local reality is bent ever so slightly, not surprising with what we do here, and there's a magical aspect, which isn't surprising considering that Magic Girl wasn't particularly shielded (indeed, being able to hide it in the open was the point), which is activated when someone is really frustrated yet happy at the same time... or at least the two emotions are occurring simultaneously, no matter the number of people. That could happen whenever anyone plays the Wiistation-360 or cheats at Risk. Then it collects on a nylon pile."

Lowering his hand, he nods appreciatively. "You scraped it off the back of a couch in one of the break rooms frequented by TEAM MELTA; I'd guess it'd be Forty-Seven Alpha, as it's equidistant from the Cetagandan psionics lab and the Arpean thaumatology lab. They also recently had pizza, and somehow some of it always manages to get behind the couch, which, if I recall correctly, sits right next to the central heating register in that room."

"Impressive," Weapons-Hrragh says simply.

"The question is, how did you know it was there?"

"It smells like bacon," the kzintosh replies.

"I do not even want to know why you would look behind the back of a couch for bacon," Analton grumbles.

[Cetaganda]

"So...." Griffith scratched his head. "Basically, for an undeterminate amount of time, we've had some sort of horrible death-matter sitting in a break room, nominally harmless but just waiting for something to poke at various cosmological constants and make it go boom. Cosmological constants that people around here poke at on a daily basis."

[Scolopendra]

"I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen sooner," the lieutenant commander says, stifling a yawn politely with one hand. Except that the yawn is fake and the hand is actually secreting some of his emergency anti-anxiety medication into his mouth.

[Reploid Productions]

If Nekura is particularly rattled at the idea that Instant Blobby DOOM was found behind a couch in the break room, it is nothing short of pure force of will that keeps the woman of Asian descent on her feet; it doesn't hide the slight paling of her complexion, but she doesn't fall over from shock.

"Equidistant from the thaumatology lab and the psionics lab..." Arstal, on the other hand, is surprisingly unfazed by the news. "You know, I wonder if we can recreate the scenario that created the stuff by commandeering that break room?"

"Simulations first." Nekura declares. "I'll see how much of our computer resources we can divert to running more simulations, and I would suggest we all do the same."

"Perhaps someone can ask Shodey if she'd be willing to loan us some of that massive amount of computer power she's sitting on top of as well?" Theta points out. "If this is going to be a subject of group effort, it makes sense to put the computing expert on the computing task. It's probably also a good idea to routinely check that lounge, especially after MELTA's been in there. We don't want to gamble on more accidentally being created and not properly contained."

That gets nods of agreement from the rest of the Shogunate delegation; trusting MELTA to not destroy Titan in a flashbang of a black hole just doesn't seem like a good choice.

"The next question, of course, is how much of this stuff do we need in order to test it? Can this little goober be used for multiple tests? If not, then we will need to find a way to synthesize more of it once we've done enough simulations. Preferably a way to make more that doesn't involve the sofa in the lounge, or Team MELTA." Nekura's assistant Alex points out.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

The revelation of just where this new matter had come from hit the Dominion team like a bolt from the blue. Vettori stood there in shocked silence for a moment, then quietly retrieved a chair, and just as quietly sat down in it, reaching into the inner pocket of his lab coat, and retrieving a small silver flask, and taking a long pull at it, replacing it afterwards. Ricco’s eyes got rather wide, and his brows shot up, eyes flickering between the ‘tosh and the elf, amazed that they were so calm upon delivery of said information. He nodded silently in agreement of Griffith’s statement of fact, looking fit to burst as he tried to contain his excitement and feelings of stomach-tilting dread of ‘what might have been’.

“Are we certain nothing else currently exists in there that might, ah … destroy us all or worse,” he asked as calmly as he could.

“MELTA. It just had to be MELTA,” Vettori was muttering quietly from his seat.

“They aren’t bad folk,” Ricco protested mildly. “Really, once you get to know them, they’re a rather entertaining group. I mean, without some of their insights and practices I’d never had managed …”

A flat look from Vettori caused the other man to trail off, then look sheepishly around at the rest of the group, all of whom by now were quite well aware of who was responsible for the aforementioned ‘hellbox’, and the state in which he, and it, had been discovered.

“Anyways … agreed on the simulations, checks, and … curious as to the reproduction of more. I mean, how much do we really need, and if it does such horrific things, potentially, given the right circumstances, do we really want more floating about? I’m as anxious to see if something that tiny can cause catastrophic failure in generally accepted causality as the next person, but perhaps sims first, decisions whether or not to create more after?” Ricco finished, somewhat lamely.

“Since when are you Mister Safety?” Vettori smirked, capping and replacing his little flask for the second time in as many minutes.

“Enzo dear, don’t be a stiff. We could use your mind to focus on the task at hand, not get mired down in your usual gloom and doom,” Ricco said archly, with perhaps just a touch of mincing as he shifted positions slightly.

Vettori gave Ricco a look that said clearly ‘I know where you sleep, and I will solve you later, and not in a nice way’, then scrubbed his face, and ran a hand through his unruly hair once more, letting out a slow breath.

“Right then. You’ve got our systems to work with as well. Whatever we need to get this looked at properly, or as close to properly as we can all manage.” Vettori started off strong enough, then faltered a bit as he looked hopefully to the Scolopendrans.

“First, can we safely burn that damned couch?”

[Cetaganda]

"Burn it? We can't burn it!" Griffith protested. "What if there's something essential about the shape or fabric of that particular couch? At the very least we have to make sure we've thoroughly examined it before disposing of it. For that matter, what if there's more of this stuff sitting inside it? I mean, for all we know there could be azure matter or goldenrod matter sitting in it and it's gone unnoticed because they don't have a delightful bacony smell."

[Scolopendra]

"Agreed, we can't burn it," Analton says, eyes drooping slightly, "as there's nothing to say that bur-ahhh"--he stifles a yawn--"burning it might not make whatever Crayola Matter is still in it very angry." He slowly moves his gaze back up to the 'tosh. "Will burning it make it angry?"

"It de--"

"Pends, yes, yes. And I'm sure it's electrically actuated under certain conditions, and will explode under shock if Mimas is full, and if it's after Maghrib the third Wednesday in Lent it'll get mad and explode if you take Ameratsu's name in vain."

Weapons-Hrragh, for his part, does not roll his eyes. He simply nods. "Yes, it is something like that. This is why I have it in this reality-protected isolation chamber, which only lets light through. An improvement on something Cetagandan." The ratcat smirks slightly in Griffith's direction. "It is not light-reactive, only energy-reactive. We could hit it with gamma radiation and as long as the heat transfer is kept under control it would not 'get angry.'

"As for synthesis... I have computer models, but they need to be verified by test. For now the only known source of Chartreuse Matter in the universe is in Break Room Forty-Seven-A, and only under those particular conditions--which are isolated, as we know the time of the MELTA party, the amount of cannabis consumed, the overall background counts, and what game they were playing."

"How do we know all that?"

"The secretary of TEAM MELTA is somewhat obsessive and keeps extremely good notes."

"Huh. I suppose the next step, from a military standpoint," the uniformed Menelmacari expatriate declares slightly drowsily as the only representative of the Combined Services in the room, "is to secure that room, then. Preferably not with HELLSING." He thinks about this a moment, then sighs. "Matyus will throw something at me, I just know it."

[Cetaganda]

"God, yes, not wit HELLSING," Griffith said. "They're exactly the sort of trigger-happy goons who would get us all disintergrated. Ten to one says they'd try to hit it with that hammer of theirs."

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

"Sweet Jesus, I agree there," Ricco says emphatically. "Don't get me wrong, I'm certain they're fine chaps and all once you get past all the creepy 'purge the evil' vibes, but damn. Olivia hasn't been the same since, and I thought sure they were going to roast me alive."

"There's days I wish they would have," Vettori mutters under his breath.

[Cetaganda]

"Maybe Olivia should have thought about the possible consequences of her actions before attack innocent interns," Griffith replied.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

"Yes, she should have," Vettori agreed, offering Griffith an apologetic look. "I do hope Matthew didn't suffer any lasting effects from all that ..."

Ricco nodded somberly as well, looking mildly uncomfortable. After all, the poor man had gotten cracked over the head with a potted plant on his account.

[Scolopendra]

Sometimes, especially when under the influence of powerful nitrobenzodiazepines, Analton finds himself wondering why cavemen like the Dominioners were even let into Camp R. Hitting people over the head with flowerpots. What madness. He does, of course, realize that he must never say such things aloud and that even thinking them is somewhat unfair, all things considered, so he doesn't. Instead, what he says is "So, to make sure we're all agreed, we secure that lounge, then we start on a production and testing schedule. It will probably be quite some time before we have an appreciable amount to test, so in the interim we can run simulations to guide what direction the testing schedule should go in. For the time being, we should assume this to be a 'pure science' study with maybe some countermeasure analysis thrown in, but besides that, I somewhat doubt that the TYCS has any interest in militarizing potentially galaxy-eating matter.

"I mean, at the very least, the public relations angle would be a total nightmare."

Analton yawns again, this time for real, and covers his mouth politely. "Excuse me."

[Cetaganda]

"We should probably also conduct a thorough sweep of every other lounge on the base," Griffith said. "In fact, it might be wise to check personnel quarters as well. I mean, if this stuff appears because of emotions and dubious hygiene, God only knows what could be lurking under some people's bed." He paused in thought for a moment. "We should also examine TEAM MELTA, just to be thorough. There might be some personal factor involved. I'm sure any... study necessary would be completely painless and not at all embarrassing."

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

"Just so you know, I fully expect to find some Elder Horror lurking in the bellybutton lint of a random Team MELTA git, now," Vettori grumbled petulantly. "And none of this is going to help me sleep any better tonight. If I get any sleep. Which at this point is doubtful."

He then glances around nervously, having thought in retrospect that even the mere mention of Elder Horrors might summon the aforementioned HELLSING fanatics, which made his stomach want to do some flip-flops.

"Perhaps a start on the simulations then," Ricco suggests, hoping to move past some of the more awkward points. "Though I don't wish either the searching or the possible ... er ... scanning of MELTA team members, I would suggest some security along with a science team member to handle any one of the individual searches. The prospect doesn't make me terribly happy, but in the interest of working together and Not Getting Blown Up, I'll volunteer, if needed."

[Scolopendra]

Break Room 47A

"Hey, sarge."

"Don't even ask, I don't know." The break room is no more than the sort of lounge one would expect from any organization that employs a large number of creatives; the institutional couches, coffee tables, and entertainment equipment have been 'spruced up' by people with enough excess time and energy and still made to look ratty by the bunches of people who don't care, particularly TEAM MELTA. This makes the two crisp, clean Mobile Infantrymen in the partial armored exoskeletons that go over their fatigues, armed with pistols and stunsticks, look particularly out of place, just as they feel. One requires a high-level security clearance just to work at Camp Restricted. One needs an even higher one to have any idea just what's going on at any given point in time; the rest is just overheard rumor. "I don't know why we're securing a break room in light exos armed with low-power neural interrupt sticks and rounds. I don't know why our sticks are covered in conductive sponge padding. We'd do more damage hitting them with feathers, really. I guess these guys are just really delicate."

"That wasn't what I was gonna ask, sarge. I was gonna ask what that smell is."

"I'm really not trying to think about that right now, Private."

* - * - *

Club TEAM MELTA - Only People Of Sufficient Cool Quotient Allowed!

At least, that's what it says on the door.

The Infantrymen tasked with providing site security for the TEAM MELTA sting, one per researcher volunteered or voluntold, are equipped identically to the ones securing the break room. They stand on either side of the door, ready to slice the pie and make a proper entrance. Once everyone says they're ready, the one on the latch side of the door turns the knob and pushes the door open, allowing the opposite Infantryman to slide through and push the door open. They quickly, and without much fuss, surround the poor souls in TEAM MELTA's hangout--which looks like a futuristic college frathouse--with well-(if non-cripplingly)-armed soldiers made of professionalism and coated in strength-enhancing ballistic plate armor.

"Your colleagues," says the sergeant in charge of the M.I. for the sting, "would like to speak with you."

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

“Dammit!” Vettori slams his fist down on his desk in frustration, glaring at the screen he’s been staring out for a good hour now.

“It just keeps falling apart part way through the simulation! There’s too damned many variables, and I need more programming to tweak it further.”

There was a pause, a brief silence in the room, then a voice across the way piped up with a smoothness previously unknown in what passed for ‘normal’ interactions there.

“Have you taken into account the smell?”

Vettori looks up in confusion at the blonde woman working at her station. She looks up, and meets his eyes, one sculpted brow arching up slightly. “The smell. Bacon? Given how random things seem to be, perhaps taking that into account will help?”

He still wasn’t sure what was more disturbing. The fact that Olivia had … mellowed out after her visit away from the lab for that mysterious period of time following the hellbox incident, or that he sort of liked it.

“Ah … no, I suppose I hadn’t,” he replies carefully, looking down as a musical chime sound indicates he has interoffice mail.

“I’ve sent some initial calculations over that might help, along with some additional figures I believe might compensate for the irregularities we’re seeing along the initial event horizon indicators and some of the fluctuations in eventual entropy readings,” she says, adjusting her glasses and smiling pleasantly.

Vettori suppresses a shiver, and nods his thanks with a brief ‘bene grazie’, his fingers already flying over the keyboard as he inputs the new calculations into the already complex series they had feverishly been developing using the information already gathered, and continually being compiled by the other teams.

That ain’t right … just ain’t right … hope to gods Ricco isn’t doing anything stupid with MELTA.

--- --- ---

Meanwhile, the scientist in question is tweaking slightly. Hours spent soaking up MELTA culture, and drugs, and all the rest, come back with frightening … well, not really clarity so much as a terrible sense of familiar blurriness.

“Mmmm … paroo, nachos, and pot …” he murmurs, then shakes his head and focuses on the problem at hand. “Uh, hey guys. Sorry for the barge-in and all, but you folks sort of managed to do something … um … think we can go talk somewhere less … MELTA-ish?”

Looking around in mild despair, given all the surfaces that will need examination, and the current state of some of them, he shakes his head again and comments to the others. “This … is just not going to be pretty, I don’t care how we cut it.”