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

[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.

[tesla_bot]

Idle hands, Jordan, are the devil's plaything but Jenkins is pretty watchable.

"Jordan," says Robo, "See about helping the medical teams running the evac. I've got the wall layers."

The evac teams are mostly medical, but there are a few with the kind of gun Robo had Jordan try out on the range that are zapping any of the automatons that get to close.

[evilontheloose]

Hm... minor mayhem from moral high ground, that looks good: Jordan could help with the medical part, but she prefers to power down her cannon, switch to a high stun setting, and find out how well insulated against localized EMP charges the automatons are.

Part of her is hoping the answer is 'very well insulated', so she can move on to more destructive methods.

[tesla_bot]

Indicator lights flicker with the stun shot but-

Vruuum!

-What kind of robot goes down from things like lightning strikes? That's when you need shelter most of all.

Enjoy.

[evilontheloose]

Oh, joy... property destruction from moral high ground!

Ominous 'huuummmmm' sound. Big honkin' WHROOM energy blast, aimed to knock a haywire bot into another.

Recharge, five seconds...

[tesla_bot]

There's a certain elegance in the application of high energy physics. Also, in savage violence. That'd be the lighting shooting canons and the Jenkin's respectively.

As for the bank shots? That seems to be working.

CRASH!

It's like stacking dominoes or marbles. Maybe it's more like playing marbles.

[evilontheloose]

Like marbles, indeed: hot, supercharged plasma bolts explode very nicely upon impact and send targets that are not firmly grounded flying.

WHROOM! CRASH! Like that.

[tesla_bot]

Glow in the dark marbles.

"Can you keep them off the road?" asks one Tesladyne employees in the official jumpsuit but marked with a red cross, "We're about to take the golf carts with the worst injuries out of here."

Three of the small carts hold individuals mostly marked by burns with the occasional bit of shrapnel visible between the first aid applied generously.

[evilontheloose]

"I can open a path." She takes a look at the injured people, curious, not emotionally involved. "Get ready to use it."

Time to go bowling with haywire machinery.

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

WHROOM! CRASH!

Hopefully that is enough, the heatsinks are working overtime and she needs to let the gun cool.

[tesla_bot]

It takes a special kind of driver to get tire spin out of a golf cart. It takes a special kind of golf cart too.

Skreeeeech!

Tesladyne does try to make these sorts of things possible.

"Why doesn't Jordan have a standard gun yet?" yells Robo from the center of a crowd of the spider bots as they try to swarm him with raw numbers, "And someone remember to dock Henry's pay for using the military drone code libraries for civilian projects."

It does a lot to explain the fact that they're sweeping into some sort of pincer formation on the people still around the scaffolding.