The Lab Incident

Erin Gilbert, suited and booted for another day of being a Conductor of the Metaphysical Examination, or a Ghostbuster, as the rest of the team had resolved to call it. She carefully placed her Proton pack in the boot of the Hearse and jumped into the passenger seat, knowing full well if she even touched the steering wheel Holtzmann would disengage her Faraday cage and as a result her hair would have irredeemable static for a month. She'd look like Don King on a bouncy castle.

Once in, car door shut, waiting for the others, she looked over to the driver's seat and saw a tube of Pringles, top popped off and crumbs littering the leather. Holtzmann must have left them, she licked her lips, her stomach suddenly rumbling with the empty spaces that her forgotten lunch would have filled.

Holtzmann wouldn't mind if she had one…

She leaned over, grabbed the red tube, placed a hand in to grab a pile-

'NOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAR!'

The wild, caveman scream from behind her scared the living daylights out of her, she yelled in shock, her face an ugly mixture of terror and shame.

She glimpsed a mop of curly blonde hair and yellow tinted glasses.

It was Holtzmann, she must have fallen asleep behind the seats.

'Ah, Erin' Holtzmann said, her eyes wide and wild, as if corroborating her whereabouts 'what day is it?'

Erin's heart was in her mouth, she was hot and sweaty as she caught her breath, not realising that her hand was still in the Pringles tube.

'It's… it's Tuesday, Holtz, Jesus what are you doing!? Don't yell like that!' she tried to mop the sweat from her face but only bashed herself in the face with the salty, cylindrical tube of goodness.

'Apologies, sometimes in my sleep I astral project and end up wandering into the strangest places… I'm pretty sure I was Donald Trump's bath drain'

Erin stared, unsure how to respond.

'Are you eating my salty parabolas?' Holtz said, pain and deep, deep hurt marring her large eyes.

Erin thought she looked suddenly like a cute puppy.

'Erm… no, no… I, um, I was cleaning up the crumbs and my hand got… got stuck in the tube… you know, it got stuck right on in there' she waved it around with a goofy smile.

Holtzmann, very seriously, leaned in really close to Erin's face. Erin was trapped by the dashboard and could not escape the intrusion of her personal space.

'Reminds me of the 'Lab Incident' at CERN…' Holtzmann still stared very intently at Erin, who wriggled uncomfortably, the Pringles pot still on her arm.

'Er, what happened?' she asked gently, probing.

Holtz stared dramatically, and then… her face cracked into the biggest, wildest smile as she said-

'Dr Gilbert-it was effing AWESOME!'

Picture this, me, white lab coat, yellow safety helmet, trademark safety goggles and black gauntlets looking like an evil genius. It was the final stage of my interview at CERN to work for the esteemed Professor Gunther, he helped develop the machinery for The Large Hadron Collider. For the last stage of the interview I was to design a piece of equipment that would supercharge particles to such an extent that it would be twice as effective as the LHC.

Not only did I design that beautiful little baby, I blueprinted it, engineered it, built it and patented it sweetheart! And it was bigger and more beautiful than even I imagined- it would supercharge particles to such an extent that it would be 5 times more efficient than the LHC.

'But how did you generate enough power to-' Erin's question was interrupted by one of Holtzmann's fingers crushing against her lips.

'Shhhhh, Holtz has the floor'

Professor Gunther wanted a demonstration. So we went down to one of the empty labs and plugged that sucker in and well… it gave those particles the time of their lives!

I'm not sure whether it was the nuclear fusion device I installed on the machine that birthed the mini-black hole or because I used this strange metal I found inside an asteroid that landed in Central Park- either way the result was breath-taking and actually the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.

Before I had a chance to take a selfie with it Professor Gunther got sucked right in to that big old mouth, he popped right out the other side but his hair was really long and he had a beard and he was wearing a tunic made from these waxy blue leaves.

As soon as he saw me he ran at me, I thought he was coming in for a big old hug but actually he started to strangle me, talking in this weird garbled language like 'gak-gak-gak brrrrrrug- gah-gak!' it sounded like he was from Jersey! But with more spit.

Anyway, he got hauled outta there strapped to a stretcher and I sorted out the black hole.

Thankfully it was isolated to the inter-betided pre-divisions of our planetary sub-dimensional walls and Hawking's Radiation fixed in a jiffy.

That lab is still condemned though, every now and then these little blue pygmy alien dudes keep turning up down there.

That was fun.

Didn't get hired though… and they didn't even email to tell me why…

Erin stared, perplexed, and then a thought came to her.

'But, when we first met, you said that he, Professor Gunther, had woken up, screamed and went back into a coma? Was the coma an affect from the black hole?'

'Uhh… no, no… the guys carrying his stretcher tripped and he ended up falling down 15 flights of stairs… nope, can't take credit for that… I'd done enough for one day!' Holtzmann looked down at Erin's trapped hand, she pulled the Pringles tube so it came away with a loud, theatrical pop, then grabbed a handful of them and handed them over to Erin.

'Thanks' Erin said as she picked the top one off and began to crunch on it.

'This lovable moustached and bow tied angel will one day be my downfall' Holtzmann expressed tragically as she climbed into the front seat and turned on the engine.