If there was anything Lisa could be thankful for, it was that this cursed independent project wasn't the only item on her agenda. With a Physics Department full of distinguished scholars, it was only natural that their pursuits took them each in different directions. And as a young assistant willing to sink her hands in all the research, Lisa had more intellectual means of escape.

As usual, her Mom had dropped her off at the University. After waving her farewell, Lisa eased her way into the large natural science building. It was the same physical structure she had entered last week and all the other preceding times. Still, Lisa couldn't help but gaze up at the tall glass panes comprising most of the exterior. Lisa believed that the architectural feature represented the University's commitment to transparency in science's laws and the means by which they can be examined. Not that it mattered that few outside the field took the time to really scrutinize their work, but it was a comforting thought.

This was her lot in life. To go in and do work correctly. No more stories were going to mess with her ability to accomplish such simple goals.

Lisa easily sailed through the normal registration; she swiped her University-issued card and signed into the electronic log in the lobby (which, she might add, had a spotless floor this morning). The last essential barrier was a metal door at the end of the hall directly behind the lobby, which a simple card swipe opened up.

"Salutations, colleagues," Lisa said as she breezes through the door.

Sure enough, all of the professors and researchers were huddled around a table in the corner. Her verbal cue shifted all of their faces towards her.

"Good morning, Lisa," Glausman said with a wrinkled grin.

"What procedure shall we be conducting today?" she asked.

"Styles believes he's ready to test his teleportation hypothesis."

Of course. Professor Tyler Styles had that young, unbridled aura of energy and ambition. With his jet black hair and sharp jaw, the recent PhD was quick on his feet, fighting to push boundaries. After Lisa, he was considerably younger than the rest of the room. And now, having heard his name, perked his chin up.

"That's right," he said suavely with one hand in his pocket, "I think I finally have what it takes to transport something as simple as, Oh I dunno, an apple from here," he pointed to the ground, "to the other side of the room."

Glausman chuckled.

"Let's see if your numbers add up this time," he said, placing his hand on Styles's shoulder.

"It's like you always say," Styles said confidently, "it all comes slowly. But that was a while back."

"A while is relative."

Lisa deliberately lowered her head and pinched her nose. Sometimes, she just couldn't stand that hothead. Even when she proposed radical ideas, she didn't present them with such unbridled arrogance. It was that temperament that made her question Styles's intellectual purity, that was whether he was truly in it for the science alone.

But just as quickly, her own mind snapped awake. Her eyes widened in a way she never thought they would when thinking of Styles.

Sure, it was a radical hypothesis. It was out there, highly unlikely, and she nodded with Glausman at his criticisms. Lisa had every reason to doubt that teleportation could be demonstrated today, with this small faculty, in this archaic laboratory.

But deep inside, a voice told her that nothing that wasn't worth testing. That's why she was here. Her skills had value. Styles was going to test her scientific prowess, to determine whether even a proposition this bizarre could be materialized. The how rested in the procedure, but she told herself she could easily find a way regardless. Her sole duty was to be efficient. Glausman didn't have time for stragglers.

She tried to shake it off. This was the same thinking that led her to that absurd rough draft. Science could never be rushed, no matter what. But on the other hand, she wasn't getting any younger. Lisa knew this whole week had been a stale, unproductive period of sloth. Surely, she would have made some progress by now. That's how it was as long as she could remember. She wouldn't let go of that commitment to progress. She simply couldn't.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Lisa quipped. The whole room turned to her, even Styles. Seeing the crew of reassuring faces, Lisa felt her metaphorical "spine" bolden with confidence, "Let's get to work."

"Agreed," Styles replied.

He swiped several stacks of paper from the table and distributed them among the professionals in the room. Lisa approached the group and grabbed her own packet. As usual, she read through the procedure one step at a time.

"This procedure utilizes the Teleportation Device, which consists of two titanium platforms cemented into the floor. Attached to the device is a complex array of electrical wiring"

Lifting her eyes from the sheet, Lisa turned to a window facing the adjacent room. Hoping onto a chair, she noticed the very device outlined in the procedure. She had seen Styles working on that apparatus for weeks, accumulating tens of thousands of dollars in expenditures from the University. Even she couldn't help but sigh. It would have been easier to get an external research grant approved. And if he weren't so accomplished, no one would have approved such a grandiose project for such a smug scientist. But now wasn't the time to complain too much. She had a job to do.

"Did you bring any preliminary research, Styles?" Glausman asked as the group shuffled into the adjacent room.

"Affirmative," Styles shot back as the printed packet soared in the air.

Even trapped in the clump of adult bodies, Lisa peered up at the papers hanging in the air, shone under the fluorescent lights. Her gaze narrowed in on the sheet. All the answers, thoughts, predictions, calculations were snugged between those pages. Even putting aside the fact that she had made one of her own, something about their physical appearance captivated her. There was certainty in the permanently printed typeface letters and numbers. There was confidence in how someone like Styles could staple the pages together.

"May I examine your work?" Lisa asked, extending her tiny arm.

By then, the group had spread out in the larger room. Styles was by her side, looking down at her. His bold face and self-assuring eyes did all the communication.

"Why certainly," he answered, lowering the manuscript down to her level. Lisa noticed how it appeared much bigger as it entered her hands.

There it was: all of Styles's supposed genius. His ambition emanated from the page, though it differed little from that of other professionals (neurosurgeons came to mind).

"Let us proceed," Styles declared.

Lisa peeked through the sheets, automatically moving her legs to follow the moving room of scientists.

"The device requires a solution of standard hydrogen electrode. It's to go straight into the fueling tank," she heard Styles say.

"I've got it right here," Glausman answered.

"Excellent! I shall now insert 50 milliliters."

As it turned out, reading while standing could be quite the challenge. Lisa's legs suddenly grew sore. She sat down, desperately hoping that could make her concentrate. But her brain felt weary, burnt out.

No. That simply couldn't do. Not now. Not ever.

From the stool she situated herself, Lisa knelt on the hard metal top and planted both her palms on the cold table while her eyes bore holes at the packet's contents.

"What are you doing?" she heard Glausman say.

"The particle disintegrator needs recalibration. But I can't do that when the entire device is hooked up to such a pedestrian outlet," Styles responded, "it needs a source more potent. We need to tap into the building's generator."

"I thought you had this all figured out."

"My apologies, Professor Glausman. But I can't test this out ahead of time. In addition, simple calculations cannot account for all the electricity this building wastes on other projects."

A pause.

"Very well," Glausman said flatly.

Trying her best to tune out the background noise, Lisa squinted her eyes and tried hammering it down. For whatever reason, none of the mathematics could be retained. At several points, she even lost track of where she was on the page. She knew that derivatives set to zero could determine either a maximum or minimum rate of change, but it often took her more than ten seconds to comprehend whether the subsequent equations were second derivatives or the start of a new set.

And above all, Lisa kept asking herself how this math related to Teleportation. How was it being proven? Even while knowing the equations corresponding to rate of change, Lisa couldn't help but get lost in the sea of numbers. The endless pages of archaic numbers and variables started melding into each other. What was happening, Lisa asked herself.

"Lisa," she heard Glausman say. Her head snapped to attention, "could you set up the computer?"

"Of course," she said mechanically.

Snatching the packet, Lisa hopped down and made her way across the room. Along the way, her eyes turned to the two large platforms. To think that such strange numbers with a seemingly arbitrary arrangement could be equated with a mass so solid baffled her. She felt like she could make the connection. If only she was in the correct mood.

Once on the opposite side of the room, she climbed up the appropriate stool and faced the desktop screen. Lisa tapped the mouse several times with one hand while using the other to drum her fingers on the table. She watched as the screen kicked to life. Her ears hummed as she heard the hard drive whirl into motion.

At one point, she got to the balls of her feet to look over the monitor. It was a Herculean feat, but she did it from the stool. Watching over the whole lab and her colleagues made her think of that prototypical laboratory image. It was almost like the one they experimented Algernon the mouse in. The major difference, of course, was that the computers and electronics at use weren't nearly as sophisticated in the 1960s as they are now. They didn't know better at that time. Their experiment was bound to fail!

Feeling her toes start to ache, Lisa plopped down. More heavily than she should. The stool underneath shook from the shock. Lisa had to clamp both her hands to the edge of the table just to stabilize her ground, which luckily occurred.

"Are you alright, Lisa?" Glausman asked.

"Uh, yeah," Lisa answered.

What just happened? Lisa knew better than to just plop down like that. Only now did she remember occasions of her and others complaining about that very stool being unlevel. And now, looking up, she realized that her risk was completely unnecessary. Given the lack of space surrounding the monitor, she could have just looked around. What convinced her so wholly to take this course of action?

Lisa shook her head. That story was just getting in her head again, that one piece of literature she shifted through just to give her elder sister a decent grade. She even went out of her way to discredit its relevance. It was time to reprioritze her thoughts.

By now, the computer was booted up and ready to go. Lisa opened to the built-in data analysis program and turned to her written procedure. The sheet outlined a specific set of parameters to properly, which wasn't too difficult to implement.

Now was the waiting. Styles still insisted on insuring everything was perfect before the procedure could commence. At this point, Lisa had done all she had been assigned to. And despite her efforts to ask for more, Styles simply wasn't inclined to grant it. As she stood there, watching the professionals shift through papers, hook up wiring, and communicate amongst each other, she found her legs growing weary. She needed to sit down.

Lowering herself onto the stool's flat top, Lisa took the time to continue reading the calculations. Maybe she could get back on track. Maybe this mental block would finally be lifted. Lisa narrowed her eyes so completely, that she only allowed herself to see one line of numbers at a time. No distractions, no extraneous information. Just her and the hard numbers.

But the longer she looked at it, the more her mind wandered elsewhere. Now she thought about Algernon and how that pesky rodent used his newly acquired intelligence to race through the maze. To think him on the ground could outpace Charlie, who had the advantage of seeing the whole configuration from above. Of course, that was before Charlie got the operation. It was also before...

"Lisa, are you ready?"

She snapped to attention.

"Yes."

Well, it was worth a shot. All she hoped for now was that she would have a chance at some point to understand. It was only a shame she would now have to read the procedure while it's happening. She jumped to the feet and peered around her computer screen.

Styles proudly paced between the platforms with a small unit block between his fingers.

"I will now administer the transport of a small, uniform object," he said.

Snapping around he planted it on the platform. His body merely hung in that position, wishing that others would see that it was he doing the vital work. Then after slowly raising his body from that position, the real performance commenced.

"Lisa, could you hit the start button on the program?" Styles asked, cupping one of his hands around the rim of his lips.

Without speaking, she clicked on the digital button. Immediately, the zeros on the screen began their fluctuation throughout multiple decimal places. While the machine had yet to begin its operation, the sensors were already detecting subtle changes in particle mass on the platform, little gusts of air, even imperfections in the so-called "uniform" mass. As much as she wanted to witness teleportation in action, Lisa understood that her value lied in this activity. Watching the screen was the least she could do to get on track.

"Alright, here we go," Styles said.

The two platforms revved up their operations. Lights flaring on, generators igniting, cooling units flurrying, and chatter amongst the professionals filled the room with a proper industrious air which flowed into Lisa's ears.

Several seconds later, her the corners of her eyes picked up a magnificent white light. Even with her vision focused squarely on the changing screen, her eyes stung, forcing her to blink compulsively. For those crucial moments, the black digits on the screen suddenly appeared red and blue and purple and yellow. She thought that the decimal place shifted several spots to her right, but how was she to know?

"The trial is a success!"

Rubbing her sore eyes, Lisa peered up at Styles. She could hardly believe it. The uniform block mass was now in the other platform. That had to tell her something. The calculations buried in that packet (the ones she struggled to understand) could produce a material result. And now Styles, despite his haughtiness, had actions behind his boastful remarks.

Looking around, a few of the other physicists shared her awe. In none of their years in the field had they ever seen anything so remarkable. Even Glausman, muted as he was, inched his cheeks back. The young upstart had done it.

"Well I must give credit where credit is due," Glausman declared, "you are off to a decent start."

Styles swung around and locked eyes with the sage-like being.

"Well, just wait until the next trial," he replied.

He rushed to the table and revealed a black fedora.

"I will now proceed with a non-uniform object."

The article was slowly lowered onto to the platform. As Lisa watched, she wondered if it could be done. After all, a simple square block had a straightforward structure and its parts can easily be reassembled. But the fedora couldn't even be considered evenly distributed (it had a feather on one side but not the other). Surely, there was no way Styles had this process perfected.

And if someone like Styles had this perfected at this stage, where did that leave her? Certainly, he hadn't taken years to get to this point. In fact, it took no more than a few months. Lisa's heart tinged as she imagined her own time limit widdling down. Before long, she would be considered such terrible labels as "lazy", "incompetent". Dare she even say, "naive".

Lisa didn't want to see discovery be stalled. Regardless of her petty feelings, she always tried to tell herself that innovation and progress were the prime purpose of humanity. Who was she to build a needless hurdle in that endless march forward (that movement she desperately wanted a part in)? But a voice in the back of her mind spoke to her. Maybe if this one failed and if Styles realized that even he needed more time to perfect his work, that the state of her own project would be validated.

Her eyes briefly turned to the observant Glausman. Lisa told herself that he was honest with her in the office. Everyone needed time to perfect their work, from hotheads like Styles to babies such as herself.

"And now, we shall conduct the test," Styles declared.

Nodding, Lisa reset the program and refreshed it in anticipation of the new data. With one eye on the monitor and the other on the platforms, Lisa acknowledged her own breathing, Feeling each inhale and exhale as if they were seismic shifts in the Earth shook her legs.

After thirty seconds of fiddling with the machine, Styles stood back, bewildered. The others in the room turned to each other while the inventor clamped one hand to his side and the other under his chin.

"Clearly, the machine needs further recalibration," he said.

Further recalibration. Was that an activity in her department? Surely, she had been entrusted to data collection, making her the only other person with any real responsibility. After all, the professionals had relegated themselves to adjudicators rather than active participants. They were testing Styles, or at least that's what she had thought. Now, she was being told she herself was a subject in all of this. Such a position could be the only possibility after her previous slipup.

Besides, Lisa told herself she had a solution.

"I believe I know the answer," Lisa announced.

Just like that, every set of eyes in the room turned squarely to her. The flutter in her heart was no new feeling. Despite her confidence in her own abilities, Lisa knew she wasn't above petty human emotions; her rollercoaster over this past week should have been enough of an indication. If this were a detached moment, she might have asked why this sensation was more emphatic than usual. But context filled in all the clues. The lab, those eyes, that cursed mouse.

"It's simply a matter of wiring," Lisa said. She hoped her voice sounded confident enough, or at least more confident than her mind. Now, having barely thought through the problem (or the manual), she hopped down from the stool and approached the machine.

"Professor Glausman," Styles interjected, "surely the experiment must be completed solely by the primary scientist in the room."

"That's true, but the results are more important, Professor Styles," he said flatly.

Exactly, Lisa thought to herself. Who cares about silly little emotions anyway? All anyone cares about is results? It doesn't matter if you're four years old or had a bad day. She knew she needed to deliver.

Luckily, there was an open hatch on the side of one of the platforms. Her little hands clutched the thick wires and finagled with them, twisting them around, moving them to detect an open gap, an outlet of sorts.

"What are you doing, Lisa?! You need rubber gloves," Styles said, approaching her, "you are not prepared to handle this."

"I haven't touched a socket yet. I'm just moving around the wires."

"Lisa," she heard Glausman say.

Her reluctant eyes turned to her mentor. She was hoping to find encouragement or frustration. Either extreme would have been a strong indication of her actions, whether a soft nudge or firm denouncement. Instead, the answer wasn't so clear. Lisa noticed his jawline more pronounced than usual, resembling mild disappointment more than condemnation. But those old, watchful eyes struck a far more painful chord. Even from several feet away, Lisa's heart stung just seeing the sorrow, the concern, and the unpalatable pity.

Deepening her resolve, Lisa jerked back to the hatch and continued working.

"I don't need protection," she said firmly as her hands tightened on the wires, "this is a simple operation, just a simple reworking."

"Lisa, it's dangerous," Glausman said, raising his voice. Her body shuddered and her gripped loosened hearing that powerful voice lose some of its tranquility. But she persisted anyway. Eyeing a socket, she yanked it out.

Several seconds, the cooling units stopped. No worries, she thought. All she had to do was move this wire over there, maybe build new connections, and start it up again. Then, it would be able to teleport anything and everything. What did Styles know anyway, she thought. It took him nearly thirty years of life to learn about this. Besides, he needed a little humility. Sure, he got one object to teleport, but this was still a team effort.

"N-now Lisa," she heard Styles say, "stand back. I am the one with rubber gloves, after all."

No, Lisa told herself. He had his victory, his reason to gloat. She never had time for all those arrogant tics he flaunted around. For once, she needed something to be proud of. If she was going to lose everything that made her worthwhile, she deserved a break. That's what drove her hands deeper into the wiring.

"Lisa, stop!"

Why now? She was so close to solving the problem. Just one more move. Jam the red wire into the open socket and the machine would be up and running. Without even looking, she pressed it towards the back of the internal panel, only to be met with solid metal resistance.

Her nervous eyes only got a narrow outline of the circuitry before she was lifted away. Lisa squirmed, trying to break free from the aging, coated arms wrapping her body. But despite kicking her legs in midair, Glausman hauled her away.

"Professor," she said, trying to catch her breath, "I-I can do it! I have to do it!"

"You need a time out," he answered.

Her eyes widened. Her little fingers sunk deep into the coated arms, trying to bear with those two dreaded words.

"I'm fine, Professor! I'm a good girl! I-I...I just need-"

"Relax, Lisa," he said. The fact that his voice returned to that low calmness didn't help matter, "just take a seat and watch the rest of the procedure."

As she was lowered into the "high" chair, Lisa could only watch as Professor Andrews took the helm at the computer. Within seconds, Styles had reset the device to its normal setting. For once, the sound of cooling units terrified Lisa.

Her hands snuck on the chair's round metal rim and gripped it. Was this real? How could she descend so low? She caught a glimpse at Charlie and his messy grammar. Those words and their cringe-inducing spelling seared in her brain while waves of anger rippled about. Why did Styles have to win the day with that attitude? Lisa had the superior temperament.

"Just take a deep breath in."

She turned to see Professor Kelly Weston beside her. With a soft smile on her face, she brought her immaculate hands to her chest and inhaled through her nose. Lisa could have sworn she heard her utter the words "In" and "Out".

At least Charlie was an adult, she thought.