Michele, whom had been flipping through her files, flipped the swich to her intercom.

"Deriecho here," She always used her last name over intercom, an old habit of hers. "Nothing exiting over here either." She sighed, "I can agree with you there, Carson." She then sat back in her chair, sighing once again. Lately it seemed that all they had done was go down an endless rabbit trail. Picking up a dated fantasy book, Michele tried to occupy herself. She scanned the pages with her dark brown eyes, through her thin, titanium glasses. Her face was very long and plain, and it coupled with her petite slim figure nicely. As she leant back in the chair, her unbottoned lab coat hung at her sides, revealing her casual green shirt. Noting how tired her eyes were already, Michele put down the book with a huff. Flipping the intercom again, she said, "Sergeant is going to kill us if we don't get anything productive here." This was said randomly, and the discouraging comment was irrevelent to the situation, but Michele said it none the less.

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Carson smiled a bit at Michele's last comment. He turned his speaker back on. "We'll just tell him we're working on a formula that could potentially be the key to human immortality." He rubbed a hand over his eyes and pushed his chair back from the lab table. "I'm off to get a cup of coffee. Anyone else?" he invited.

Michele's speaker was still on, so she simply spoke, her hands across her stomach and her eyes closed.

"Hmm... Does that require a mind at work to get up? Or would a certain mind -one that is not at work currently- kindly get the former a latte?" She asked, her voice carrying only a slight hint of humor, or any emotion at all, though a small smile spread across her face.

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Carson was already walking down the hallway, and he didn't answer Michele's question. In the break room, he poured himself a cup of coffee, and grabbed a latte as well. He sipped the dark liquid as he went into Michele's lab and set the latte on the table in front of her. "Here you go-one of the most brilliant scientists in this section of the world, reduced to delivering latte's." he said in a joking tone.
Pulling out a chair, he sat down. "You look tired." he commented.

"Michele lauged at his joke,

"Ah well. Even gienuses take a break sometimes. Scientific advancments are probably doomed without a good amount of caffine." She sipped at her drink, happy to have an energy boost. "And yes, I am quite tired." She paused, and her brow furrowed. Looking up from her coffee, she looked at Carson. "And I don't know why I'm tired, either. I've been getting plenty of sleep..." He voice faded off as she tried to think of what could make her so tired.

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"And if I'm flying solo/at least I'm flying free/To those who'd ground me/take a message back from me .... Tell them how I am/defying gravity/I'm flying high/defying gravity ... " Alanna had completely zoned out, quietly singing along to the music playing in her earpieces as she fine-tuned the Time Portal itself. Life was good; she was happy, and they had finally gotten this baby working. True, the song was slightly archaic, but it was classic.

"Hey, Elphaba." Morris, the head techie - in other words, one of her minions - grumbled in his characteristic rasp into her earpieces. "Tone it down. You're broadcasting, but just because you have a mike doesn't make you a broadway star."

"I'm just undiscovered," Alanna laughed, grabbing a portable screen and lying down on the smooth, shiny floor. She scooted underneath the base of the Portal and started some component diagnostics. "No. The real reason is that I love you so much that I just can't bear to be parted from you. They offered me a good part, too."

"What, the janitor's position?"

"You're ruining a good song, Morris." Alanna turned off her mike, situated in one of her earpieces, and finished the song.

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

"Caffine definitly is crucial to science." Carson said, then frowned. "Maybe you should see the base doctor. Don't want you falling asleep right before a major discovery or anything."

Lol, Ellie. Yeah, I caught that reference to Red vs Blue. I laughed, a lot.

-----

Corporal Dafyd Winter beamed as he double-checked his equipment. Actually, by now, it was probably a lot more-checked than just twice. After all, he was in the army, and he loved it, so why not show it? Nobody would ever be able to complain that he was negligent.

"So, where are we going, Sarge?" Winter asked. It didn't really matter to him--he just enjoyed going places with the army. He knew it had something to do with that Time Portal he had been hearing increasingly common rumors about, but he had never heard anything specific, and he wasn't sure exactly where it was, hence the question.

Even if it was likely to be some Research station, it could end up interesting if he could persuade somebody there to teach him something--he loved learning how to do new things, which is probably why he enjoyed being in the army. He got to improvise all the time on missions.

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Michele nodded, ajusting her glasses.

"I might... but I don't know. I'll wait a while, then go in. With everything going how it is around here, it might just be stress. This whole project is wierd. We don't know hardly anything about it..." sighing, she picked up her intercom and paged Holly.

"Deriecho here, anything new concerning the portal? We need some information on that thing... Its going to rob me of more sleep as it is..."

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((I don't think Elegost's (if that's who you're referring to) character is on the intercom, seeing as his group haven't arrived at the station the scientists are at yet))

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((No, I was referring to Cortez... I'll go back and edit that in... Sorry for the confusion.))

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((OOOooooh. Ok... Oi. Soo sorry... I thought that they were in the same place, just in a different room or something... All go and edit that...))

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(Dude I thot the thing was working, which was why they are testing it?)

Alanna finished the diagnostics and looked at her checklist. One final test, and the Portal would be officially cleared for human subject testing. She flipped her mike on. "Okay, moving on."

"You're not going to sing?" Morris' sarcasm was barely controlled.

"Not yet. We just need to look at the power drawn by generating the event horizon - it's very sensitive, so silk gloves with my baby, Morris. Give it just enough juice for a singularity to form, and we'll look at the numbers."

"Roger that."

The engineer retreated to her console and nodded to Derek Yenkovich, the supervising astrophysicist. He was mainly here in an observational capacity. He gave her a thumbs up, and she signalled the techies to begin.

Hmmm. A little Mendelssohn wouldn't hurt. She keyed up his violin concerto and leaned back in her chair, keeping a casual eye on her readouts as the hum of power surging through cables to the Portal gradually increased.

Two-thirds of the way through the blistering first movement, something popped loudly. The room turned pitch-black, save for the computer screens, which cut smoothly over to an auxilary generator, casting the faintest of greenish glows over the large room.

There was silence, before the voice of an extremely displeased female engineer sliced through the eerie gloom. "Morris. You broke my baby."

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>

Winter grunted as Sarge unceremoniously dumped the crate in his arms--it was heavier than it looked. He shifted it to a more comfortable position, and then carefully placed it in the back of the Puma. He wasn't sure what was in it, but he certainly didn't want to take the rap for breaking medical supplies or something.

"So we're going through this Time...portal, thing, Sir?" he asked, uncertain of exactly why soldiers were the necessary test subjects. It would make more sense to just send scientists or somebody else back in time--he barely knew anything about the history of even the past fifty years. Not even his own mother would've hesitated in saying that he was hardly genius material, so why was he supposed to go through this portal?

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((Are they going to go to the station?))

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(SG: yes. hint: the power out has probably not only affected the Portal lab)

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<center>Nothing but the Rain</center>