"I think it is almost ready."
"Righteous!"
"Will you kindly refrain from your continuous assault on the English language?!"
"Woah, I am sensing some seriously negative vibes from you, man."
"Really, why do you think that is?"
"Duuuude, just chill."
"Do not tell me to 'chill', you blistering idiot!"
"This blistering idiot, like, totally helped you get this thingamabob to work, Professor."
"And for that, I am grateful. But it does not keep you from being one of the biggest annoyances in the history of mankind."
The two fell into a cold silence, as they tinkered on the last few details of getting slider device working. It had been a rather difficult month. The only person that the professor managed to be even moderately helpful, and the two had been bickering since day one. But both were willing to admit before the first week was over that, whatever the personality differences, the other knew intellectually what was needed to get the slider device to work. Somewhat. Neither of them was Quinn.
Maxamillion had pored over every note that was left behind, meticulously went over every detail of the diagrams, and watched each video blog several times over, before even tackling with his own theories. He combed the house for even the least-likely clue. He wrote pages of his own notes, and, putting his amazing mind to the task, had several rather brilliant theories by the end of the first month. Some of them even panned out.
Conrad just stared at it for an hour, then went home. Two hours later, with a rather powerful smell about him, he would produce a page or two of sloppily-written notes that somehow sounded legit, and then would poke at the inner workings for a while, while Arturo would then rant at his complete lack of theory. Then begrudgingly added his notes to the pile of his own notes. Much as it bothered him to admit that Conrad had even a sliver of a hope of being right. Surprisingly, he often was. He just didn't seem to care that much for the science behind this in theory of course. He just seemed mostly to get rid of Arturo.
It took no less than ten months. Ten long, grinding months of work and bickering. Ten long, nearly sleepless night. Well, one of them slept better than the other. And neither ate by the end of that unless a certain mother by the name of Elizabeth managed to get them to choke down a bite. And she has a great deal of practice at getting preoccupied geniuses to eat, one way or another.
Conrad, in the end, decided to stay and continue working on the theories of his own. Max left as soon as it was safe to do so. But both made one slight miscalculation. The original device kept the sliders in San Francisco, but because of some faulty wiring that they overlooked, this was no longer the situation. Nor did it keep to the same time anymore. And Professor Arturo first realized this fact when he found himself in...but that is for another chapter.