Welcome to Tesladyne! Science while you wait.

[tesla_bot]

The door is a free standing frame on a small plywood dais at the focus of a tremendous amount of cabling and particle emitters. The whole area smells of ozone.

"Watch the step. The platform's cheaper to replace than the floor if the focus wanders."

Tesladyne's high energy (dimensional) physics area is done in early twenty first century institutional - white walls, semi-random grid of light, but varied floor tile colors. The framework is from a school of design that favors being able to clean an area with a pressure washer, The drains are a hint. Decorations are spotty. Beyond the collection of calendars with scribbled notes and the cork board spotted with envelopes and scraps of paper it's still mostly bare. The warning signs are clear, bright, unobstructed and supplemented with signs like 'Do not look in laser with remaining eye.'

There are no windows and only one door to the rest of the facility.

"Welcome to Tesladyne."

Comments

[evilontheloose]

The cute pint-sized evil genius waits, arms crossed.

Oh, interns... volunteers for experiments, later. Even if they do not know it, yet.

[tesla_bot]

There are reasons why Robo doesn't read the personals section in the company newsletter, when he thinks about it.

Moving on...

The victims interns are finally out of the range, though more than a few seem intent to gawk at what happens next.

"The range is clear,"says Robo, "When you're ready Jordan."

[evilontheloose]

"I'm always ready." The girl steps up, takes aim and fires.

There is a loud WHROOM sound, matched with a big honkin' Akira Toriyama energy blast visual effect. Unless the wall at the end of the range is stronger than three inches of hardened steel plating, it has a large hole revealing what is on the other side now.

You know, coupled with the thundering blowing-up-of-a-wall noise, scorch marks and such.

...

"That was full power."

[tesla_bot]

The end of the range is and it isn't, the verification lane sticks out into the surrounding earth to keep the rest of the building out of the line of fire. The shot terminates well into the dirt and dribbles a thin line of glass to go along with the wall fragments. Some of the interns are staring at arm with the kind of mental calculation of 'Do I really need two organic arms?'

"We're going to have to fill that in after we get some good pictures," says Robo, "And somebody go to the door to meet Jenkins. He'll have noticed that."

There's a whirr and a dummy torso moves in front of the hole.

"How about that stun setting of yours this time?"

[evilontheloose]

Jordan gives a nod, taking aim at the dummy and firing three times, spaced two seconds: if they are measuring, the bolts start at the power of a taser and grow in force by 50% each time.

They glow a nice neon blue, make a ZZZAPP! sound and obviously can be tuned for the size of the target.

Up to lethal force if needed.

[tesla_bot]

"Niiice," says Robo.

"I thought the third shot disintegrated?" comes from the back of the herd of interns and is followed shortly by the sound of someone being smacked in the back of the head.

"Phil, the results?"

"Should be good as long as she sticks to the second rule of energy weapons-"

"-Nothing above setting one unless there's vampires or tentacles. Right. Looks like you're good to pack for now Jordan."

[evilontheloose]

"Okay." Jordan grins and nods.

It is good they are fine with her multifunction blaster cannon, because there is no chance she would go without it.

Paranoia, we love thee.

[tesla_bot]

Speaking of which, meet Tesladyne's institutional paranoia.

"Robo," says a grim looking man with black hair and a military bearing, "Who's the new girl?"

"Jenkins, meet Jordan. Jordan, Jenkins. Try to keep track that you're both on the same side."

Jenkins grunts.

[evilontheloose]

Jordan gives the man a raised brow and a nod.

She really doubts the 'same side' thing, the Evil Genius is in her own side.

[tesla_bot]

At least half of that was to Jenkins anyway.

Jenkins, who is looking at the end of the range consideringly, "Not bad. How's she with the regular science guns?"

"Hadn't tried her out yet," replies Robo, "How about it Jordan, you up for a try with the company gadgets?"

[evilontheloose]

Oh, that sounds like a nice challenge and makes Jordan smile. "I'm always ready."

New gadgets are always fun to explore.

[tesla_bot]

"This," says Robo as he produces a bulky gun of white composites and enameled metal, "Is the 2009 model of the Tesladyne Science Rifle. Safety is here, trigger here, and power cells here plus the external power port. It has ten settings, here, don't set it above four if you want to find remains of what you hit, don't set it above seven if you want the gun to not blow up. If you shoot me or anyone on staff with it without a very, very good reason you're fired."

Ear protectors first, and over to one of the regular lanes. Then, have a gun Jordan.

"This one is locked to level one. Go on."

Regular paper target at the far end. You spend money on things that aren't intended to be destroyed several times a day.

[evilontheloose]

First thing to be known, is that Jordan is stronger than she seems: the girl hefts the gun, tests its balance, then opens the safety, taking aim.

Second thing to be known, is that Jordan is a good shot. Of course, target practice is no combat drill, but as far as accuracy goes, she is good.

[tesla_bot]

Jenkins grunts again before saying to Jordan, "Easier on the control for the recoil, it's actually two smaller pushes, not just one large knock."

Capacitor flex causes the smaller of the two.

"That's Jenkins for 'Not bad, now try it again'."

"How come she's a better shot than I am?" comes from the back of the crowd again.

[evilontheloose]

Jordan had noted the dual-kickback. "Ever thought about putting a k-sink in to handle the recoil?" The next series is more precise, as she grows used to the gun.

Oh, the question makes her smirk and speak louder: "Eight years of practice..."

[tesla_bot]

"We've had issues getting reliable production of sufficiently shock hardened ones for anything that costs less than the rest of the gun," admits Robo, "Besides, I love the look on a mooks face when they try the gun for the first time and have no idea what it's doing after they grab it from me."

Jenkins almost seems to perk up at the eight years mention. The narration suspects he want Jordan to come and humiliate the next batch of fresh geeks off the boat.

[evilontheloose]

"Hmm, true, that would be pretty funny." Her own weapons are usually rigged to explode, but for her it is much easier to link weapon and owner.

Asking Jordan to weed out the newbies? Well, it would reduce the number of new people drastically, but they would also end with only the good ones.

[tesla_bot]

Eh, Robo can takes small arms fire to the face. Having the guns explode would just be a safety hazard. Of course Jenkins is a safety hazard too.

"That'll do for a provisional pass. Talk to the range master," Jenkins stops to point out an older man in a Tesladyne jumpsuit, "To get a real certification some time."

"Well that's the immediate things," says Robo, "And we're ahead of schedule. By now there's usually been a -"

BOOM!

"Ah, there we go. Coming?"

Most of the room is heading for a door marked 'Safe Room 5-B', or it was before the placard was slipped out and reversed to read 'Janitorial 5-B'.

[evilontheloose]

Oh, explosions are always interesting; Jordan rests down the gun and follows, wondering what blunder caused the nice 'boom'.

[tesla_bot]

A sufficiently keen eyed glance at one of the standardized evacuation maps along the hall with some mental arithmetic would suggest the explosion came from the test area for humanitarian developments; things like water purifiers, mini-generators and tiny portable fridges for medical supplies.

"Anyone remember what was scheduled for trials right now?" asks Robo, "Generators are next week, so..."

"I think it's rapid build shelters."

[evilontheloose]

Check, check, check; all those she is familiar with, since all those are also very useful for setting an emergency base out in the middle of nowhere. "Well, explosions are useful for quick digging..."

[tesla_bot]

"It better not be," grouses Robo, "We just re-stabilized that side of the island after the last giant robot debacle."

Bipedal walkers are hard, a target for every grunt with an RPG and something that Action Scientist keep trying to build.

Elevator again, then more jogging though corridors that have emptied themselves. Except, of course, for the other emergency response teams. Some join with the group heading up, others wave as they move to locations in case things that to spread.

[evilontheloose]

Oh, humanoid mecha... Jordan still hopes to overcome the design flaws of the concept and deploy one sometime soon.

But, business at hand: she jogs after Robo, keeping her arm ready to fire if needed.

Stun setting for now.

[tesla_bot]

It's probably not worth the work. Robo's world keeps pushing at them because it's the kind of idea that sticks in the brain, not because it does anything worthwhile.

"Oh hell."

The scene when they get to the trial space is one of roving spider tanks trailing strips of wet cement that foam to knee high fighting it out against tracked minidozers armed with drills on the ends of hydraulic arms. Two small teams of technicians are trying to restore control while the majority of the scientists visible have been stranded on scaffolding.

"Dozers. Mine," says Jenkins as he moves out.

[evilontheloose]

Ah, right.

Jordan is staying back for now; genius and impressive weapons aside, she is very much human, and not interested in becoming part of the landscape, buried in cement or crushed by haywire machinery.

While Jenkins goes show his stuff, she will wait back and just in case, charge up her arm-cannon.