The device was tiny. It had to be. Jillian didn't have the advantage of a testing booth the size of an airplane hangar, like the military, or nasa, or those guys over at Area 51 who were doing a terrible job of convincing the population that they weren't hiding anything. No, all she had was the testing room in the far corner of MIT's biggest lab, which was only as big as one of those standard office cubicles that Jillian shuddered to think about. How a person could manage to look at the same four walls every day for the rest of their lives without going crazy was beyond her comprehension. But then again, everybody thought she was crazy anyway. Swings and roundabouts.
So, the device had to be small. Any bigger and everyone might die. It was unstable, untested, unsightly even because at this point in development, racing stripes were considered an unimportant addition. She'd add them tomorrow if the first test proved to be a success. She checked all the connections for the fifth time that hour. Made sure none of the wires were crossing, that the airtight sliding doors on top of the device - which was no bigger than a shoebox - were functioning. She clicked a button on the remote control in her hand, watched with a satisfied smile as they whooshed open and closed again, before leaving them open to examine the inside, which glittered with the open ends of a thousand tiny silver prongs. Prongs that, once activated, would rotate as one as they shot out a very concentrated beam of electricity, like a very deadly washing machine. If all went well, the college would still be intact when the test was over.
Jillian glanced at the watch on her left wrist, the dial glowing now that the sun had set and all the lights except the one on her workbench had been extinguished. She had ten minutes yet before she had to go, just enough time to add a few more details to her other project which, whilst much less dangerous, wasn't any less important. She knelt to retrieve it from where she'd hidden it under the bench and placed it gently on the table. It was a long tube of drawing paper, kept together by an elastic band around the middle. She pushed the band off and unrolled it slowly, revealing the almost finished sketch on the inside. Jillian stood for a minute, just looking at the picture and smiling at the two people on it who were looking at each other with love and warmth and adoration in their eyes.
They were Rebecca Gorin and her wife, Francesca. Jillian had taken a candid photo of them on their wedding day with a ridiculously low tech disposable camera she'd found abandoned by the buffet. She'd zipped around the reception taking pictures of anything and everything, gleefully imagining the look on the owner's face when they puzzled over the close up of a neglected toilet bowl, or a half eaten plate of sausage rolls and tiny sandwiches. She'd paused when she'd seen Rebecca and Francesca canoodling in the corner by themselves, oblivious to anyone but each other. She'd lifted the camera to her eye without even thinking about it and snapped the picture in seconds, and decided the owner wouldn't be seeing the odd photographs after all.
When she'd had the pictures developed later, the one she'd taken of the happy couple had instantly struck a chord within her. Now, with Rebecca's birthday just around the corner, she was almost done with the A3 recreation of the photo. Swiping a severely chewed pencil from the clutter on her bench, she bent to continue her work. A split second before the nib touched the paper, Jillian heard a sharp gasp behind her, and spun around so fast the pencil left her deft fingers and took flight across the lab before making a clattered landing somewhere amidst the dormant lab machinery.
"That's beautiful!" Jillian was stood half-resting against the workbench, her face a mask of dramatic anguish and her fingers clasping the edge of the desk as she tried to keep her body between the intruder and her secret gift. Her tinted glasses were more askew than usual, and her lab coat had been messily splayed open by her sudden turn, making it look like she was about to be ravished by the newcomer. A flush spread along Jillian's neck as she thought about it, and she shook her head to clear the ridiculous image.
"Rachel? What-" Jillian paused to collect herself. She stood and made a show of patting herself down, eyes avoiding Rachel's at all costs. She turned around and began to roll the portrait up again. She worked on keeping her voice nonchalant. "What are you doing here?" It had always been easier to speak to Rachel when she wasn't looking at her.
"I saw you in here as I walked past, heading back to the dorm. It's pretty late, Jill."
Jillian opened and closed several drawers, pretending to look for something, anything to avoid eye contact. "Well, you know how it is. Big things happening. Science and all that." She mumbled, remembering at the last minute to stash her mentor's gift under the table where it wouldn't be seen. "Besides, you're here, aren't you? What's the difference?"
"Oh, well, I've been in the library. Studying, you know." Rachel seemed a little embarrassed. She glanced at the shadows under Jillian's workbench and said "Did you draw that? I didn't know you could draw."
Jillian looked away, feeling inexplicably shy. "Yes." She didn't offer anything more and Rachel didn't ask. Instead she looked at the device on the bench.
"I heard about your big experiment. You're testing it tomorrow, right?" Rachel asked, voice as perfectly pretty as it always had been. Jillian briefly wondered how she knew, but she had more important things to worry about.
"Uh, yeah, tomorrow. Big things. Controlled explosions, forcefield disharge, retraction, containment. Thirty percent of my grade, might get me into CERN." She set about organising her workbench, something she never usually did and yet it seemed really important at this very moment that she clean up her space. She could feel Rachel watching her, could imagine those bright green eyes following her every move. She looked at her watch. She needed to go, Rebecca was expecting her for dinner. "Look, I have to-"
"Can I come and watch?" Rachel suddenly asked, and Jillian finally looked at her.
"Watch? Why would you want to do that?" Jillian wondered, her mind zooming through a million and one different explanations, none of which seemed plausible in the slightest.
"Because...because I know this is a big deal for you, and I want to be there to see it!" Rachel explained, sounding a little frustrated now. Jillian was nonplussed for only a few moments, and then she vigorously shook her head.
"No, its too dangerous." She said, wild hair bouncing as she continued to shake. Rachel looked crestfallen and Jillian felt an ache in her chest at the sight. But she had to stay firm. "There are a billion things that could go wrong, you could get blinded, or burned, or maimed or killed or burned-"
"You said that twice." Rachel interrupted with a small smile.
"There's a double chance of getting burned." Jillian replied, entirely serious.
"And what about you? Couldn't you be burned?" Rachel asked very quietly, as if she was afraid of the answer.
Jillian nodded without a pause. "Yes, but that's okay." Jillian already had a myriad of healed wounds all over her body. Injury was part of the job. It was part of being Jillian Holtzmann.
"What do you mean that's okay?!" Rachel blurted, as if Jillian was insane.
"Because it would be my fault, my mistake." Jillian explained, completely unaffected by the idea that she might be seriously hurt by her own invention. The thought of Rachel being hurt, though, set her nerves right on the edge
"Jill..." Rachel grabbed both of Jillian's hands with her own and held them tight. Jillian looked down at the soft fingers slowly becoming entwined with hers. For the first time ever she thought about her rough, calloused hands, how hard and unyielding they must feel against Rachel's. Part of her wanted to pull them away in embarrassment, but another part was enjoying the ripples of excitement that were coursing up along her veins, igniting a fire in her chest that made her feel more jittery than ever before. She raised her eyes to meet Rachel's and her heart began to pound a heavy beat within her chest. They were a mere foot apart. It was both too close and too far at the same time.
"I want to be there." Rachel whispered. The vocal plea was matched in Rachel's eyes and there was nothing Jillian could do, she couldn't resist those eyes.
"Okay." She whispered back with a slight nod. "Okay." And then the janitor came clattering through the door with her heavy cart and the girls were pulling apart as though they had already been burned. No longer able to stand the overwhelming anxiety-mixed-with-excitment Rachel's presence always produced, Jillian fled the room with a stammered goodbye.
"Alright Jillian, we are ready, you know what to do." Jillian nodded at Professor Gorin and adjusted her heavy duty safety mask so that she could see into the testing booth more clearly. She was trying her best to ignore Rachel's presence, but no matter which way she turned she was constantly aware that she was there, watching what could either be Jillian's greatest achievement or her biggest, possibly fatal failure. Trying to clear her mind, she took a long, deep breath and held up the remote control in her hand.
"Detonation in three...two...one..." She pressed the big red button at the top of the remote. The power button, the button that would begin the build up of the power that she was going to release in less than twenty seconds. She counted them using the metronome she had placed in front of her. Timing was crucial. A second too early and she would miss her chance, a second too late and they could all be dead in minutes, and she didn't think it would be a painless death.
She watched the metronome intently, sweat dripping down the side of her face. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty! She pushed the green button on the remote and the sliding doors on the device opened. A beam of energy surged upwards and out like a fan, thankfully stopping just short of the ceiling as she had planned. Now for phase two. She flicked a switch on the side of the remote and suddenly the triangle of light was filled with an explosion of flame. Miraculously, the billowing fire remained caught in the forcefield she had created, entirely contained.
She let it continue for five more seconds and then she pressed the red button again. The beam began to retract, slower than she'd hoped, but still it retracted, taking the contained explosion with it until it was safely within the device. Jillian pressed the green button to slide the doors closed and then there was an eerie silence as everyone processed what had happened.
And then there was cheering. Unadulterated joy assailed her as well as half a dozen of her classmates. She took the punches and the bear hugs with pride, giving as good as she got, completely overwhelmed. She lifted her safety mask and it was promptly knocked from her head. Lost in the small crowd that surrounded her, all of them shouting words of congratulations.
And then suddenly Rachel was there. Rachel was grabbing her by the lapels of her lab coat. Rachel was kissing her and people were hooting and hollering but it didn't matter because Rachel's lips were touching hers and sparks were flying inside her stomach. She'd just managed to contain a freaking explosion in a god-damn energy forcefield and yet nothing could measure up to the explosions that Rachel's kiss set off in her chest.
When Rachel finally pulled away, a shell-shocked expression on her face, Jillian grinned and pulled her back.