Barry doesn't make it back to the Cortex for a whole week after his first visit, bogged down as he is with other duties – and maybe, just maybe, the thought of willingly walking into a haunted lab sends chills down his spine. The knowledge that Iris passed along – that Wells did in fact die right there in the lab – doesn't help matters. Intellectually, he knows there isn't any danger, but there is still a sliver of fear in the back of his mind, and he finds himself coming up with excuses not to descend to Sub-Basement 3. Finally, he can't in good conscience avoid Cisco any longer, who is probably wondering about the state of their friendship. Cisco's lab is empty when he arrives, however, so he has to finagle the use of a freight elevator key out of Hartley, and man does he hate owing that guy favors. If this is going to become a regular thing then they have got to come up with a more permanent solution.
When he walks into the Cortex, Cisco is busy at work at a chalkboard (one of the ones covered in formulae, not the one Wells used for communicating last time), scribbling in the narrow margins not already filled and tweaking variables as needed. He looks up when Barry enters and grins widely.
"I told you he'd be back!" he crows. "You owe me twenty bucks."
Barry, a little quicker on the uptake this time, realizes almost immediately that Cisco is not addressing him. On Dr. Wells's chalkboard, the surprisingly snarky response has already appeared:
'I'm afraid I don't have any cash on me at the moment. You will have to settle for bragging rights.'
Cisco laughs, and gives Barry a double thumbs-up. "I never lost faith in you, my man."
"What are you working on at the moment?" He peers closer at the equations, his eye caught on an oddity. "Are those runes?"
Cisco shrugs and makes another correction, adding a small hook to the spiky symbol in front a series of numbers. "He'd run out of Greek characters. Think of all the variables never conceived before! You have to be able to think fourth-dimensionally; I have no idea how you were able to come up with this." Cisco directs this last comment towards the far chalkboard.
"They look kind of... arcane," Barry comments.
"They do, don't they?" Cisco agrees cheerfully. "Totally badass."
Barry stares at sharp, looping script, feeling out of his depth. "Anything, er… Anything I can help with?" He wonders, for the first time, just what he is doing down here. Hanging out with Cisco, of course, and learning from Dr. Wells, but it isn't as though he has anything meaningful he could contribute; there isn't a lot of overlap between forensic science and quantum physics.
But Cisco gives his offer serious consideration, as though it weren't a polite courtesy he'd be better off declining. "Actually… how good are you at taking down dictation?"
"Um. I'm not sure? I mean, I was a pretty fast typer when I was jotting down notes in class, but I don't know how many words per minute I can do; it's probably nowhere near a professional typist's levels.
Cisco waves him off. "I'm sure you'll do fine. Dr. Wells recorded some of his project notes as audio journals. The sound quality isn't good enough for speech-to-text to really work out - and there's not a lot of room for error in something like this. I've been going back and re-listening as needed, taking notes, but it would be a big help if I could control-F my way to finding the sections I need more easily."
"Okay, so you want me to just type up what's said on the tapes?"
Cisco clasps both his hands as if begging. "If you did, you would be a huge lifesaver."
Learning how to use the WebCor 'Royal Coronet' reel-to-reel player is an experience. Cisco picked it up at a flea market and repaired it himself; he knows it inside-out and backwards, and, like a drill sergeant, he isn't content to leave Barry alone with his baby until Barry has sufficiently learned the name and function of all its parts.
Barry understands reel-to-reel in principle - it functions exactly the same as a cassette tape player, except it's considerably larger and the magnetic tape needs to be manually attached to the second spool before it can play. But Cisco is fussy and replacement parts are hard to come by, so it is some time before he's satisfied with Barry's ability to use what is, essentially, a clunky, forty-three pound Walkman.
At long last, Cisco hauls out a dusty cardboard box of seven-inch tape reels from what used to be a small office back in the day but is now packed floor-to-ceiling with storage.
"These are mostly in order, I think. Not that it matters, really, but it could help you get caught up on what we're doing."
"Awesome." Barry picks out one of the earliest canisters and reverently brings it back to the player. He loads the take-up reel and the reel itself, carefully threading the tape around the tension arm and the spool, between the capstan and the pinch-roller, around a second tension arm, and finally winds it around the take-up reel. He triple-checks that everything is in order and that all the dials are where they need to be. (Cisco would seriously kill him if he accidentally recorded over Dr. Wells' journal entries.) With mounting excitement, he twists the knob to begin the playback.
*clunk!* [*hssssssss*] [*sound of a throat clearing*] Journal log entry number one. This is Doctor Harrison Wells, and assisting me is Doctor Tessie Morgan. The date is February 11th, 1952, and we are currently in STAR Labs, about to embark upon -
*clunk.* Barry pauses the recording. "Is it really weird to be listening to this with you present in the room?" he asks aloud, directing his question to Wells (he hopes. Being insubstantial, the ghost doesn't have much of a direction to direct towards).
Not, I should think, comes the written reply, any stranger than my mere existence in this room. When we find ourselves in such extraordinarily unique circumstances to begin with, our boundaries for what we consider to be, as you say, 'weird' are severely compromised.
Thus assured, Barry resumes the playback.
*clunk!* - a remarkable endeavor to reach beyond the summit of mankind's knowledge and usher in a new era of understanding. A lofty dream, I am quite aware. And yet, as incredible as it seems, by our preliminary calculations it should be possible to harness tachyons for human use - the potential applications of such technology is without limit. It will bring about advancements in power, advancements in medicine, and though we are years away from throwing the proverbial switch – or the literal switch, as the case may be – every journey must begin somewhere, and ours begins today. Right here, right now, in this moment. Tessie, this is our moment…