Chapter 3: 2:00. Guerilla Science (pt. 1)

It was, as they say, a dark and stormy night. In fact, it'd been a fairly dark and stormy afternoon - the sky overcast, towering black thunderheads visible in the distance, over the lake. The rain hadn't arrived yet, but it would soon, and the wind was whipping across the quad like crazy. I'd had dinner and settled in with tea and music, glad to be indoors and out of the weather. Gil was off at the LAN party, so I had the room to myself; I turned the lights off, curled up in bed, and cued up Oxygène - dark and moody, I thought, but not tense or unnerving.

Which was good, because I managed to give myself caffeine jitters again. So much so, in fact, that I actually started a little just from having my phone light up and vibrate with an incoming message. Shaking my head, I grabbed and opened it.

Emma: I need you

I stared at it for a moment, before another message popped up.

Emma: *I need your help

Emma: stupid phone

I smirked, then tapped in a reply.

Stuart: What's up?

Emma: No time to explain, just come here ASAP

Emma: Meet me at the library

I hesitated. I wasn't in the mood to leave the dorm room, and I had a sneaking suspicion that this probably wasn't worth it. On the other hand, she made it sound urgent, and I couldn't just ignore that, could I? And was I doing much else at the moment?

There was a crash of thunder and a rush of rain, and it took me a moment to realize that it was the album and not the storm outside. Well, come think, if she did seriously need help, I'd much rather get there before the rain set in. I got up, threw on my windbreaker, and rummaged through the little coatrack Gil and I shared, trying to remember if we had an umbrella. We did, and I grabbed it just in case.

Stuart: On my way.

Crossing the campus at night, through what was threatening to turn into a severe thunderstorm real soon, was a bit unsettling. Normally it was still pretty busy at this hour, especially on a Friday, but the ominous weather had almost everyone hunkered down indoors. The only other people in the quad were a couple obviously-hammered pledges trying to navigate the front steps of the student union.

I covered the distance to the library at a brisk but controlled stride; I didn't want to run and risk getting knocked off-balance by a sudden gust. The wind tore at my jacket and sent a handful of dry, sharp-edged leaves slicing at my face; luckily, I caught them with my sleeve.

Even the library was nearly deserted; the lone late-shift librarian manning the front desk was the only figure in sight. I ducked inside and looked around, but I saw no sign of Emma. Great; this had better not be a prank. I pulled out my phone.

Stuart: Here now. Where are you?

There was a moment's pause.

Emma: In the back, by the AV rooms

Emma: but keep quiet

I went to the far end of the building. The staff had turned most of the lights off, and it was dim and shadowy in the stacks. Other than the light filtering back from the front-desk area, there was one source of illumination: the soft, flickering glow of a TV in one of the three little viewing compartments, visible through the window in the door. It was just light enough for me to make out two figures outside of the room: one bent down by the door, as if trying to keep a low profile, the other in a wheelchair.

"Jeez, Emma," I said, walking up to them, "did you drag Tammy out here for this, too? In this weather? What even is this?"

"Shhh!" she said, putting a finger to her lips. I shrugged. "Relax, these are soundproofed. What are you spying on, anyway?"

She motioned for me to take a peek into the room. I glanced through the narrow window at the screen. "A hockey game. Really. That's...hey, is that Dr. Curtis?"

I looked closer; it was him, alright. Most of his gangly 6'4" figure was slumped into the little couch, but there was no mistaking his hair, which hit the most remarkable midpoint between Larry Fine and a pharaoh's headdress; it was going grey from his original auburn, which made it look like he had a full head of copper shavings. He didn't see me; the couch was perpendicular to the door, and in any case he was laser-focused on the TV.

"Okay," I said, "but what of it? Guy's got as much of a right to use the facilities here as anybody."

Emma turned her head toward me, and her glasses glinted in the dim light again; she grinned. "Yeah," she replied in a low voice, "but we're not supposed to be minding the labs in the science building tonight."

I stifled a laugh. "Hah, okay, he's skipping work for this? Seriously."

She nodded and stood up, quietly stepping away. "First game of the season; I guess he couldn't bear to miss it. C'mon, this way." She slipped back into the stacks and motioned for us to follow her.

I glanced down at Tammy, wondering if she could even fit between the narrowly-spaced bookshelves. "Seriously," I said, "did she drag you out into a storm to show you this?"

She chuckled and shook her head. "Nah, I was already here. Difference between you and me is, I would've told her to piss off if she'd done that."

I shrugged. "Well, she made it sound like it was something important that she needed help with, not...whatever this is."

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Tammy nodded as she took off after Emma. As it turned out, the stacks were navigable for her, barely. "Same here," she said. "I guess I'm not as bothered by it since I didn't have to go out in the-oof!"

She came to an abrupt stop, and I nearly stumbled into the back of the wheelchair before catching myself. She looked down and sighed. "Oh, for God's sake. Sorry, hang on a sec."

She bent forward, reaching for something. I looked over her shoulder; someone had left a chunky hardcover on the floor next to the shelf rather than put it back. The casters on the front of the chair were set closer together than the big wheels (for maneuverability...?) and had missed it, but the left wheel had gotten hung up on it; the chair was tilted and the handle on the other side was jammed into the bookshelf, so she couldn't easily back off it.

After fumbling with it for a bit, it was clear that Tammy couldn't dislodge the book. She'd hit it open-side first, and the spine had skewed back so that a bunch of the pages were partly exposed and the wheel had climbed right up the resulting slope. The whole thing now made a pyramid that the wheel was set almost directly on top of, but not quite far enough go over the peak; it was wedged in there pretty good, alright.

She started swearing under her breath. I knelt down and reached under to see if I could get to it; nope, I couldn't get a purchase. Cautiously, I got down on my hands and knees and slipped underneath. This got me access to the book, but it was impossible to remove it with the pages all spread out underneath the wheel. I could grab the free end and yank it out, but that'd wreck it completely. (But then, the spine was probably already shot...)

As I pondered this, I caught sight of her lower legs, just a few inches from my face. She wore a skirt that stopped at mid-calf and relatively thin stockings, so I could see the shape pretty clearly. I was a bit surprised; they were atrophied, but not as frail and spindly as some handicapped people I'd seen. I thought back to what she'd said at lunch the other day; did she spend much time exercising them?

I wondered why she bothered, if her goal was to fix this by therapeutic transformation. Though if it was hard to predict outcomes, it was hard to say for sure that you might not successfully correct paraplegia without actually changing or regenerating the affected limbs, so maybe she was taking care of herself just in case...?

"Hey, dumbass, quit breathin' on me and get up here and pull me off this thing already."

I started, and my head hit the underside of the chair. Thankfully, I was under the seat and not the metal frame, but there was a yelp from Tammy as I accidentally head-butted her butt. I scrambled out from underneath her and stood up, clunking my head on one of the handles in the process. "Ow," I groaned.

After taking a moment to collect myself and make sure I wasn't bleeding, I took her wheelchair by the handles. I had to lift the right side away from the bookshelf in order to be able to back it off the book, but in a moment she was free and clear. "Um, sorry," I said sheepishly.

She shrugged and reached down for the offending hardcover. "Selected Works of Charles Dickens," she said. "Well, at least I don't have to feel bad about it."

I laughed. "Not a fan?"

"Oh, don't get me started. It's all bleak miseryguts nonsense with one contrived tragedy piled on top of another, except for the Christmas one where the morality pet is a dumb little crippled kid who somehow dies of being crippled in the bad ending." She reached up and set the battered book on the shelf, not bothering to find where it actually went, then glanced back at me, looking a little embarrassed herself. "Um, thanks."

I nodded. "No problem."

She wheeled her way out of the stacks and we looked around to find Emma, who was standing by the little service elevator at the very back, looking annoyed.

"What took you so long?" she said, as she punched the call button. "C'mon, we only have so much time!"

I could hear Tammy's teeth grit from several feet away, but she kept her mouth shut and contented herself with a shrug and a Look fired in Emma's direction. "You wanna explain what we're actually doing here, Em?"

"Guerrilla science. Now come on, guys!" The elevator door opened right on cue and she ushered us in. It was only just big enough for the three of us to fit inside, but we did fit, albeit squashed up against each other just a little too close for comfort. Fortunately, the ride down to the basement wasn't a long one.

To my surprise, though, we actually went past it. I glanced at the panel. "Wait, I didn't know this building even had a sub-basement."

Emma nodded. "They built most of the campus back in the '50s, when everyone was putting bomb shelters in. These days it's mostly just extra storage, but the neat thing is that it has access to the steam tunnels."

I stared at her. "The what now?"

"Utility tunnels for heating and water and stuff," Tammy said. "Most of the buildings here are connected by them. I actually came that way tonight, what with the weather. It's one of the things I liked about the school - come winter, I won't have to deal with snow and ice for the most part."

I was a bit surprised, I had to admit. I hadn't even heard about these before. "Seems like it'd be simpler to just go to college in a warmer state."

She shrugged. "Maybe, but this way I'm still day-trip distance from my family. Plus, the nice thing about a place where spring is just cold and muddy and wet is that all the idiots go somewhere else for spring break." She frowned. "Well, most of the idiots. My roommates are planning to host a workshop out of our dorm room. Fortunately, I'm gonna be back home."

Emma and I chuckled, but before either of us could say anything, the elevator car lurched to a halt.

The elevator chimed and the doors opened onto a large, high-ceilinged storeroom filled with yet more shelves, filled with stacks of filing crates rather than books left out for browsing. Following Emma's lead, we made our way to the far corner, to a door leading to a long hallway. It was surprisingly ordinary; wide enough for two people to pass, with a ceiling that wasn't too low. (Though the dense cluster of pipes and conduits running overhead did lend it a certain ambience.)

"Alright, let's book it," Emma said. "Gotta make one stop before our destination, but it's on the way."

We took off down the tunnel at a brisk stride. It seemed to stretch on for roughly forever, mostly because there were no points of reference. Normal hallways have side doors and junctions to mark the distance by, but an underground service tunnel doesn't exactly bristle with attractions. We did pass one intersection leading off to the left someplace, but Emma breezed past it without a second look.

I was impressed by how well Tammy kept pace; her legs might be atrophied, but a glance at her toned arms showed that she still got plenty of exercise moving around. I wondered why she didn't just get an electric wheelchair, but that was probably the answer right there.

After some ways - three hundred yards? A quarter-mile? I couldn't tell - we reached an intersection with another hallway leading off to the right and a doorway to the left. Emma signaled for us to stop. "This is the women's dorm," she said. "Back in a minute; just gotta grab something." She turned to me. "Oh, and if you ever want to do a panty raid, you gotta find another entrance. The door to the dorm proper has a keycard lock."

"It wasn't exactly on my bucket list," I said, a bit miffed at the assumption; but Emma was already gone. I heard the chime of another elevator being called, crossed my arms against my chest, and leaned back against the wall. "Geez."

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