Miranda burst into Doctor Berger's laboratory without even waiting for a response to her cursory knock, and went directly over to the bank of controls and the Caucasian woman who was burrowed into it up to the waist. "I think we need to have another little chat about lab safety protocols," Miranda said to Doctor Berger's legs, her voice curt. She was getting tired of coming all the way down to Sub-Sub-Basement 2G every few days, but the stream of complaints about Fiona's lackadaisical attitude toward her fellow scientists' well-being kept flowing into her office. And with the kind of research Fiona was doing, Miranda couldn't afford to take those complaints lightly.
But apparently Fiona felt differently. "Absolutely," she called out from within the nest of wiring and circuit boards, sounding as though she hadn't heard a word Miranda was saying. "Just leave it on my desk and I'll sign it later." She wriggled a little bit deeper into the control console, disappearing almost to mid-thigh, and Miranda heard a loud popping noise as something shorted out. "Ah-ha!" the young woman shouted, still not seeming to realize that Miranda was there to be anything more than a convenient audience. "That's where the problem is. Can you hand me that pair of needle-nosed pliers?"
Miranda picked up the tool from where it lay on the floor, seven inches from Doctor Berger's blindly groping fingers. "I will give it to you," she snarled, "on the condition that the moment you finish those repairs you come out here and discuss my concerns. Are we clear, Fiona?" The alabaster-white hand on the floor went still for a moment. There was a long pause. Miranda held the pliers up a little higher, just in case.
Then Fiona said, "Yes, of course, absolutely." She held her hand out expectantly, and Miranda dropped the rubber-handled tool into her outstretched fingers. Her arm disappeared into the cabinet with the rest of her, and Miranda heard a few grunts of effort and the sound of plastic scraping against metal. "You only ever need to ask, Director Tillens. I'm--erff--always happy to, nnnggg, to discuss my research with, gnnh, with my colleagues--" Her words finally broke off entirely with the clang of metal against metal, and a cry of, "Got it!" A few seconds later, and Fiona Berger emerged from the control cabinet.
Her long blonde hair was singed in places, and grease and soot stained her angular cheekbones, but her bright blue eyes still sparkled with excitement as she hauled herself to her feet. Even though Miranda stood almost six inches taller than the diminutive young woman, something about Fiona's boundless energy always made the facility director feel just a little bit helpless when dealing with Doctor Berger. The woman was a whirlwind--a double PhD in neuroscience and biochemistry by age twenty-seven who could probably hold a third degree in electrical engineering if she'd ever bothered taking the courses. Even a qualified physicist like Miranda often struggled to keep up with her intuitive leaps of deduction.
But brilliance, even though it could get you a position at one of the most prestigious and cutting-edge labs on the Eastern Seaboard, could only take you so far. Fiona's lab protocols had been sloppy, perhaps dangerously so, and even if the military was dumping money into Doctor Berger's projects like the young woman could turn lead into gold, Miranda had a duty of care to the other researchers. So she allowed her irritation with the pixieish scientist free rein and snapped, "I can't help but notice that you were carrying out these particular modifications while the device remained operational." She gestured to the large projector in the center of the room that looked something like a heat lamp mounted on a robot arm. "Was there a live current flowing through those circuit boards?"
Fiona rolled her brilliant blue eyes and turned to check the readouts on the display bank. "Oh, only a little one," she huffed, sounding a bit like a petulant teenager. "I disengaged the control linkages and left everything running on minimal power while I tested the current flow through the problem areas. Someone walking through the beam wouldn't have felt a thing." Miranda looked over at the projector. It was, once again, pointed square at the laboratory door. She shuddered in sudden, retroactive fear. She had walked through the beam. She must have. If something had gone wrong....
"Goddammit, Fiona!" she shouted, irritation combining with anxiety to flash-boil into rage. She slapped her open palm on the corner of the console for emphasis, adrenaline flowing so strongly now that she barely even noticed the stinging sensation in her hand. "You better than anyone know what the pacification ray can do! If something had gone wrong, if the short-circuit had re-engaged the control linkages and elevated the power levels--"
Fiona sighed loudly. "Then you'd have stopped in your tracks and taken a nice relaxing mental vacation until I turned the machine off, with no lingering effects. That's what we designed the pacification ray for in the first place, isn't it? As a safe alternative to riot control weaponry? All this device does--all it can do, by definition--is create an entirely temporary state of calm passivity. We've done plenty of tests on chimps, and there's absolutely no sign of any permanent alteration to brain chemistry. Let's not pretend that anyone's in any real danger here."
Miranda's eyes widened in frustration. "Even so, that doesn't mean you can operate the machine without taking any kind of safety precautions! That thing is an accident waiting to happen, Miranda! Look at it--the damn thing is pointed right at the door! Anyone walking in could get bombarded with a therapeutic level of kappa particles before they even realized it!" Miranda didn't bother mentioning it--Doctor Berger almost certainly knew already--but the situation was even worse than that. One of the known side-effects of kappa radiation was lethargy leading to temporary catalepsy; someone standing directly in the path of the pacification ray would almost certainly be unable to get out of it until the projector was deactivated.
But Fiona only smiled in response, the kind of smile that nurses gave to small children who worried about getting their shots. "That's really not possible," she responded reassuringly, gesturing to the control bank. "The pacification ray is kept fully powered down at all times unless actively needed for testing purposes, and even then there's a default timer in place to prevent extended exposure. Unless someone is actively entering input to the system, it shuts off after five minutes. Five minutes isn't going to hurt anyone, Miranda. You've read the extracts I provided. You know that."
Miranda put her hands on her hips, glaring down at the shorter woman. "But you don't have a set testing schedule, Fiona, and you don't use your indicators to let anyone know when testing is in progress. Doctor Krieger told me that she came down here yesterday and the light outside your lab was green, and do you know what happened when she walked in?" Fiona paused, a shifty look on her face. Miranda smacked the console again, aware of the diminishing returns such displays of temper provided but unable to find another way to keep the mercurial genius focused on the seriousness of the situation. "Well? Do you?"
Fiona shrugged. "Of course I do. I was there. Greta--excuse me, Doctor Krieger--experienced a thirty second period of externally induced lassitude, after which I deactivated the device and she returned to normal. Isn't that right?" Something about that calm, collected recitation of events bothered Miranda, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. Perhaps it was the uncanny similarity to Greta's version of events; the other woman had been distraught, even angry, but when she explained what had actually happened to her, she used the exact same words and tone as Doctor Berger just now.
Miranda sighed, trying a new tack. "Yes, but... look, I just don't think we can take these kinds of risks, not when the machine hasn't been fully cleared for human testing yet. Even if Doctor Krieger seems unharmed, we're still experimenting in areas that we're not authorized to go right now, and...." Miranda tried to find a polite, non-accusatory way to say 'I suspect you're using these accidents to get data on human subjects without consent' and settled for, "I'm concerned about the possibilities of an unforeseen side effect."
Fiona let out a musical chuckle. "It's really not possible, Director," she cooed reassuringly. "See? The control linkages are disengaged, the timer's set to auto-shutdown in three minutes and forty seconds, and the power defaults to minimum when not adjusted by the controls. There's no way that anything could happen by accident. And again, even if it did, the only potential consequence is a mild, temporary state of induced calm. Believe me, I saw Doctor Krieger's face after the beam cut out. Kappa radiation might have flattened her brainwaves temporarily, but she bounced back pretty quick."
Miranda couldn't help but smile a little at that. "She was a little bit angry, yes." No angrier than any of the other scientists who'd come to her office complaining about being caught in Doctor Berger's pacification ray, though. Five incidents in the past three weeks, and every scientist had come up to Miranda's office with the exact same outraged tone in their voice. And every time, Miranda had gone all the way down to the sub-basement and extracted a promise of caution out of Fiona, and every time it had utterly failed to do a bit of good. She had to get to the bottom of this. If nothing else, for the sake of her reputation as a manager.
"Look, something has to be going wrong," she said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. "Perhaps you need a safety cover for the linkage engagement mechanism? It's just this one green button here, and it's placed down at the bottom. Here, look." She stood directly in front of the console and leaned on the edge. "See how my hand can very easily press it down without even realizing it? That's a safety hazard, Fiona. Not only does it activate the controls and ramp up the bombardment, but it also resets the timer for automatic shutdown."