I Took A Walk Episode 2 Lab 327b
Earning this bonus could cost Jimmy his life
Jimmy had never been to the basement where all B labs were located. Neither Griever nor Eastland were waiting for him and he made his way to the elevator. Surprisingly, the elevator down to them was unlocked.
300-399 was next to the bottom button. For the heck of it, Jimmy pushed all three basement buttons. Only the bottom one lit up. The elevator door closed, and it went into motion. On the third floor, the hallway signs took him down a long hall to an end door with Eastland’s name plate below the 327 plastic plate.
He pushed the door open.
Griever stood next to a large space-suit-like getup hanging in the middle of the floor. “Ah, just on time.”
“That looks a lot heavier than the one I wore.”
“It may well be lighter,” Eastland said, beaming with pride and, stepping from behind it. “Especially the battery pack. We have yet to find a way of reproducing them consistently and out of the hundreds of tries, this is the fifth successful one we have made.”
“Dr. Eastland is rather proud of them. Before being on this project, he was on the team that develop the new batteries. But he is correct; this might be twice the size of the usual battery of this power rating, but it is only one quarter of that weight. Another thing is, your emergency suit had some heavy insulation making up much of its weight. This one doesn’t need that, so that is part of its weighing less, but the substitute is a lot bulkier, as it is just air-fill bubbles. It was necessary to use low-density material wherever possible.”
“Why?”
Doctor Eastland spoke. “Because it costs far more energy, the denser a material is, to turn it immaterial.” He pointed to a large vault- like door. “That cabinet shifts the phase of the matter so two things can occupy the same area. We have done it with inanimate objects, and caged animals with the cages being sealed and having their own air. I have even done it to myself in a dog cage. I am the very first person to see the world from Phase II, though it was only the inside of a sealed cage.”
Griever cut in, “That was upstairs in the second-floor lab with full video coverage. He wanted to go down in history as the first man to be phase shifted. There are no cameras here and you won’t be in the history books as the first man to use a suit. That will officially go to some Air Force officer a few months from now under full military documentation. There are some improvements to the suit that we want to make so that the one for history looks perfect and a few things we need to know now.”
“So, I am to get in the suit and let you phase shift me?”
“You will need to walk out of the chamber and move around a bit. There is a problem with communication due to the phase shift we hope this helps us solve. We found that out trying to use drones. We could detect the signal the drones transmit, but it was garbage as far as having readable information. There are three LEDs on your suit, red, green and yellow, operated by switches on your wrist. You leave the dematerialization cabinet by just walking through the walls of it, and we will ask you some questions with flash cards.”
“If you are not recording this, how does it help?”
“We are going to make encrypted notes with the important data in them on Eastland’s laptop. This isn’t about the electronic information. We are using drones upstairs and recording those experiments.”
A thought occurred to him. “If I am dematerialized, what keeps me from falling through the floor?”
Doctor Eastland spoke. “Out of phase matter is locked to the gravitational level where it went out of phase. Out of phase, during the day, the moon and sun will move you up and down a few millimeters, but you can’t go any higher or lower than the height you were put out of phase at.”
“Time is short,” said Griever. “If you are ready, we can begin suiting you up.”