"What are you... doing?!" The two men looked up to stare at Ria Torres with mild interest, who stared back in bemused disbelief.
"Building an aeroplane," the older of the two replied, frowning at Torres as if she was stupid. "What does it look like?"
"It-it's Saturday!"
"You're here, aren't you?" It was Eli this time, focused on carefully sliding a design off a piece of paper and onto the little plastic wing.
"But I'm... I needed to collect a folder," the young woman insisted defensively, holding the folder up as proof.
"We're workin'," her boss told her smoothly, sitting back in his chair. "Social experiment." Cal motioned to a screen and Ria stepped forwards to watch the CCTV footage of a group of people, ten maybe, sat in a room with smoke slowly furling under the door. "Seven of them are plants," he told her, looking bored. One of them was invited here to complete a survey, after a few minutes we set off a fire alarm – before you ask, we turned off the sound from the security cameras. It was getting irritating. Anyway, we set off a fire alarm and got a smoke machine in under the door. We've told the plants to just sit there and carry on with the survey, and our survey man – you can see all over his face, he's nervous, he thinks there's a fire. But he's just sittin' there, because the rest of them are. I'd been readin' up on it, wanted to see it for myself." He gave her a lopsided grin. "I thought it might get boring so I brought along an airfix Spitfire. Thought it would keep Eli quiet for once."
"We've been bonding over poly cement and snapped plastic," Loker chipped in, nodding and keeping his eyes fixed on the plane – now sitting proudly in its stand - and willing it to stay together. It held and, satisfied, Loker relaxed into his chair and grinned at her. "Usually it's new iPhone applications and Chinese food."
"Usually?" she asked, regretting it even as the words rolled over her tongue and wincing, bracing herself for the answer.
"Sure, we copy little experiments every now and then. In a few months, Lightman wants to clone a sheep."
Torres waited for a joking little hint of amusement. They stared back at her, deadly serious.
"You're not kidding."
"We're gonna call it Molly," Cal nodded matter-of-factly.
"Of course... I'm gonna get going now." She glanced awkwardly at her watch, feeling as though she'd walked in on something bizarrely intimate, then motioned towards the CCTV footage. "You should probably get back to your social experiment." Eli gave her a little wave as she closed the door, then turned to see Survey Guy knocking on the door of the room. Cal hit a button and the sound sprang into the room.
"-ished the survey. ... Hey, hello? ... I'm opening the door now..."
"We should probably go and talk to him." Eli mumbled, carefully sliding his model safely to one side and standing up.
"Yep," Cal replied, striding cheerfully to the door. "Ah, I love weekends."