The hallway was covered in wood paneling, orange-yellowish tiling and a general orange-yellowish atmosphere. There were several doors, each labeled clearly and succinctly: 'Section 3 Offices', 'Service Closet 3B', 'Maintenance Room 3G'. These, among others are the doors that two scientists, a man and a woman, whizzed by - seemingly in a hurry.
Hughes was filling out documents, verifying dates, writing signatures, calculating all sorts of data. Bella kept supplying him with a seemingly never ending collection of papers to go over, all in some way important to the test. The hallways were uncharacteristically empty this time of day, everyone was knee-deep in whatever work they were assigned. Cave Johnson was set to personally oversee the testing. Everything had to go smooth and proper-like.
The stream of papers had subsided by the time they reached the end of the hallway. There was a metal door with a rotating handle, it looked like it was stripped out of a submarine. Hughes twisted it open as Bella reorganized the papers; everything had to be in order.
The metallic door opened to a claustrophobic concrete tunnel system, illuminated by small industrial lights. The two hurried by electrical wires, fuse boxes and other appliances. The door at the end, this time a simple crash bar door, reminiscent of a fire exit, was the only thing blocking their path. This too was clearly labeled: 'TESTING SHAFT 09 ACCESS'.
Hughes pushed the door open, Bella treading behind him. It opened up to a catwalk, right above a chasm. Neither the top nor the bottom of this large underground chamber was visible. Going here always freaked Bella out. She glanced over to her right, pondering at the large metallic sphere suspended over the air by protrusions, almost as if it were a virus of some kind and she a mere bacterium. Equally enormous and strange spheres were laid below her, though in total she could only see two, maybe three. Looking above, there was only a single sphere, clearly not finished, the shell only reaching halfway to the top - almost as if the entire thing was sawed in half. Inside were a few platforms and large pipes. She could not easily discern what exactly she was looking at.
He looked at his watch, then glanced back to Bella. "Quarter past eleven. I reckon from Cave's office it's a thirty minute elevator ride down to this level. We should still have maybe twenty minutes to spare." Bella nodded. The catwalks closed in on a room suspended over nothing. Its outside was colored a concrete gray. Large yellow letters marked it as 'CONTROL ROOM 58'. There were windows to the inside, where the decoration seemed almost identical to the orange-yellowish hallways they were going through only a few minutes ago. As they went closer, the entrance automatically opened, leading to an unusually large room filled with all manner of computers, still running magnetic tape, and cubicles filled with employees. None of them looked up, all were busy tending to their allotted tasks. A few of their tables had schematics, others mathematical formulae; all were equally messy.
The two made up their way a small staircase to a higher level of the building. This floor had separate sections, quartered off from one another with glass panels. Though the people on the other side of the panels were still doing similar work to those below, in some way they appeared more important. There was a man sitting on an office chair, reading the day's newspaper. He was next to an unmarked electric double door, locked. Bella and Hughes approacheed.
"Excuse us," said Bella as she and her partner were clipping off their employee ID badges, "we are the lead research team on the project." The man looked up from his paper, inspecting their badges. 'Dr. Jeremiah Hughes, PhD.', and the other 'Dr. Bella Marcelo, PhD.' Both checked out alright to him. He waved them past, opening the electric doors and letting them through. The two entered yet an other concrete hallway, though this time much shorter and only containing three large submarine doors. One was open, the others were closed. There was a dark-skinned man with a hardhat and a safety vest standing outside.
The two approached. "Morning." Bella said to the worker. He only nodded: "Please show me the palm of your hands." The two looked at the strange request, but decided to follow through with it. As the two extended their hands, the worker placed a boxy, pistol-like device in the center of Bella's palm, which stung her, whirred for a second and a green light appeared on its back side, facing the user. Bella winced at this. "Why is this necessary? It wasn't needed last week." The man explained while going through the same process with Hughes: "Earlier today we ran final tests on the internal teleportation apparatus in the engine room. As we simulated active delivery, the system uh... delivered Dave's skin three feet behind him. Our working theory is that some skin types interfere with the delivery process, so we have to test and clear people to enter." The two froze in place, still processing what they've just been told.
"Anyway, it only set us back thirty minutes and now we're as close to the schedule as can be. Both of you can go in."
They entered as the door closed behind them. There was a large cavern, complete with a fully functioning, underground dry dock. There were dozens, maybe even a hundred workers across the place, all similarly dressed in hard hats and safety vests. A series of catwalks surrounded the walls of the dry dock, leading on to small suspended rooms similar to before. In the middle of the chamber was a large ship, some sort of arctic icebreaker. No one knows how it was transported down here, but it definitely didn't end up underground on its own. Its hull was all painted red, but the name 'BOREALIS', in white, was visible near the ship's bow. Sparks were flying around everywhere around it as workers were making last-minute welds and adjustments so the ship's outer structure would survive the test. People were shouting to each other from across the chamber; there was constant noise.
The two went up on the catwalks, and maneuvered their way into a small control room. There was a visibly tense man dressed in a lab coat standing there next to some control panels, watching the ship through a window. Hughes called over to him "Morning, Greg." The man turned towards the door. "Finally! I've been expecting you two for the last ten minutes, where have you been?"
"We expected more time until the test start, the walk here is long and we weren't prepared to-" the man cut off Hughes mid-sentence: "What? You know we're banging rocks together here right?" said the man as he pointed toward the ship, in a slightly bent over and exhausted pose. "We have not teleported an apple through this new medium, yet Cave wants us to smash through with an entire ship!" he straightened himself out and continued, "And here you tell me that you're not prepared to start the procedure? Where are the papers? Where's the telemetry data, the field equations?"
Bella stepped forwards and put down the large stack of papers she's been carrying on one of the control panels. "We have it all here, we filled them out earlier today." Gregory looked back through the window and motioned for others to come up to the control room. He leaned down and started shuffling through the papers: "Everything must check out. We already had an incident earlier today and we can not mess anything else up. I hope you two did the calculations correctly." Bella looked at Hughes, who in turn looked back at her. The calculations had been all done in a hurry, based on questionable weather data from the salt mine and Cleveland. There were no assurances of success.
Three men rushed into the room. Gregory split the papers up among them, and told them to carry their shares to other control rooms around the chamber walls. Hughes looked out the window and watched as the workers hurried around the catwalks. In one of the highest rooms, he could see a man in a blue suit carrying a briefcase. He was talking to some employee pointing at the ship - neither had the characteristic hard hat-safety vest combo. "I didn't know that Cave authorized government agents to oversee this side of the test. Aren't they only allowed at the jaunt center?" Hughes turned to Gregory. "Hell if I know," he said while inputting commands in the control panel in front of him, "This entire operation has already broken too many safety and government-relations procedures. All I can focus on is finally getting this thing to Cleveland."
Suddenly the announcement system roared to life, echoing through the dry dock: "We just got word that Mr. Johnson has reached this level of the shaft. Everyone wrap-up, assume your positions. ETA 1 minute." The sparks stopped. Workers ran away from the ship, carrying their tools away to their designated storage areas. Two dozen people started hurrying off the catwalks surrounding the ship, some in their lab coats, some in overalls, others in plain clothing. The mass of people lined up orderly in front of the ship, almost as if they were expecting a major general, or the president of some country. The door opened.
There was silence.
To Be Continued...