edge_of_forever | weeeeeeeeeeeeeee-bleep!

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weeeeeeeeeeeeeee-bleep!

I hadn't been around when the robot rats came out of the walls, a fact which I couldn't really say I regretted. But just knowing it had happened was enough, sometimes, to make me a little wary when I heard noises I couldn't place the origin of. Of course, being that this was a pretty big place, and pretty old to boot, there were a lot of noises I couldn't place the origin of.

Mostly I'd trained myself to ignore them, but every now and then I was just bored enough or feeling just adventurous enough to follow the sound and see where it was coming from. Today happened to be just such a day-- lucky me-- when I walked past the door leading to one of the classrooms and heard a motorized whirr coming from behind it, along with a little high-pitched muttering that sounded like two kids talking through vocoders at each other.

The door opened when I stepped closer, and I froze immediately at the sight of two tiny vaguely cube-shaped robots on wheels rolling around the room, chittering to each other as they went.

They stopped as soon as they saw me, and we spent a second just staring at each other. Then, almost at the same time, they emitted a startled bleep and zoomed away toward the far wall, where a panel slid aside to let them through. "Hey!" I yelled, almost involuntary, the urge to somehow stop them and make them come back so I could figure out what they were for and why they'd been-- what had they been doing, anyway? Vacuuming? It was a mystery, and one I suddenly really wanted to solve.

I was on my knees inspecting the panel that had opened to let the robots through when I heard footsteps behind me, and half-turned to see who had stumbled upon me acting like I'd completely lost my marbles.

[tag one, tag all! no one but bruce will see the tiny robots, but anyone's welcome to tell him he's imagining things. :)]

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Steve thought he'd heard Bruce's voice, and he followed the sound to the classroom, frowning when the door opened and he found his friend on his knees beside the wall, clearly inspecting something.

Far from thinking that Bruce had gone mad, Steve jumped to the only logical conclusion, as he walked up closer.

"What are you looking for?"

I looked around, glad it was Steve standing there and not a stranger. I sat back on my heels and said, "Okay, this sounds crazy, but there were these two little robots in here a second ago, cleaning or vacuuming or something, and I think I scared them because they ran away. This wall just opened up and they zoomed inside it and now I can't even see where it opened at all, let alone how."

I grinned a little sheepishly and added, "It's possible I'm really bored and way too excited about this."

Steve was curious to know in what world this sounded crazy, because it certainly wasn't in theirs. He'd seen enough of Tony's lab to know that it was everything but. Besides, he trusted Bruce.

And when faced with his self-conscious smile, Steve answered with a bright one of his own. "I think we're all terribly bored. Do you want me to try and open the panel?" He'd managed with other panels on the station before, after all.

I actually hadn't considered that before; Steve was probably strong enough to get it open. But if he did, then what? It wasn't big enough for either of us to fit through, and the way the robots had fled from me made it pretty clear they didn't want to be seen.

But. Bored. "Yeah, why not?" If Steve was willing to commit a little B&E, who was I to stop him?

"This panel here?" Steve checked, and waited for Bruce to confirm and move aside to move in. It took far more effort than it should have, but he eventually managed to pry one corner loose, and from there on, tearing it open was a piece of cake.

Even with the nanites, Steve was still ridiculously strong, and he stripped the wall back like it was a banana peel. "Nice," I said, grinning as I ducked my head to look inside.

It was definitely a passage behind the wall, like I'd expect an air duct to look if I got a chance to inspect one. I bent closer and saw on the floor, little track marks where the robots had careened away. "Huh," I said, backing out and indicating Steve should look in. "How far does it look like that goes?"

Steve obligingly sticks his head in, really praying for a lack of rats this time around. He doesn't envy what happened to Sharon last time he pried open a wall panel. The small passage - definitely too small for a human, even one not as broad-shouldered as Steve - lies in half-light, but he can make out a bend at the end of it. "Twenty feet or so, before it turns?" he offers, and pulls his head back out.

"Cleaner robots would make sense," he adds, thinking back to Bruce's words. "Or the station would be covered in dust."

"Yeah," I said slowly, thinking. "And I guess that means these passages go all over." Which wasn't really a thought I was ecstatic about-- looking in, I could see the duct was too small for a person, but there were a lot of things smaller than a person that I still wouldn't want running around inside my walls.

I pulled back and turned to give Steve a speculative grin. "What do you think-- wanna go pull apart some more walls and see if we can tell where this leads?"

The grin Steve gave Bruce then could only be described as boyish, and he moved back in to peek inside the tunnel. "Okay, let me see..." After a quick estimation, he moved down the wall and pried open another panel, and then one behind it - and only then found the bend in the tunnel.

"There's a crossroads up there," he told Bruce, moving back for him to have a look for himself. "And I think tunnels up and down." There was probably a maze of these tunnels inside the station.

I looked inside and did a few mental calculations.

"Okay," I said, pulling my head back out and getting to my feet. "If we go into the next classroom, we should be able to see straight down the cross-tunnel." Now that we'd begun, I was really getting into this. It was sad, really, that this was the closest thing to a scientific experiment I'd gotten to do since coming here.

It might be sad, but as far as Steve was concerned, it was also some definite kind of fun. Not as 'fun' as kicking Nazi ass, but close enough, and you took what you could get when you were stuck on a space station.

"Then let's go," he concluded, as he got back to his feet and led the way.

Logan's out for his morning constitutional [with breakfast in hand] when he sees Banner on his knees trying to climb into a wall.

Nice. Earth's mightiest heroes my ass.

He cracks the can and leans against the wall.

"What's up, Doc?"

I looked up at the little creak as Logan settled against the wall, and gave him a distracted smile before turning back to the panel.

"Just wondering if this can open from the outside," I said, pressing my fingers along the seam between the panel that had opened for the robots and its neighbor. "It opened a minute ago, and I'm just wondering if it was a signal of some kind that did it, or..." I trailed off, sitting back on my feet and looking at the floor to see if there was some kind of catch that had triggered the door.

Logan looks at Banner with a look of equal parts doubt and pity. He's finally lost it.

"You want to know if you can get into the wall. OK. Any particular reason, bub?"

"Yeah," I said, "I came in here a minute ago and there were these two little--"

I stopped, all of a sudden realizing that trotting out a story about a pair of tiny whimsical cleaning robots was probably going to sound insane, and Logan wasn't exactly the kind of guy who'd take me at my word. I made a face and tried to look like I had my shit together.

"This is going to sound nuts. There were these two little robots in here, and when I came in they freaked out and the wall opened up to let them through. I was just trying to see how it worked, if I could get it open again." I looked him in the eye and held it, trying to gauge if he thought I'd completely lost it or not.

Maybe Logan's a little drunk, but that made a lot more sense.

"Listen." He scratches his head. "There's a lot of stuff we don't understand here, right? I figure; all of that is really none of our business."

Banner looks at him like he's the one who's nuts.

"What are you gonna do if you actually catch the tiny robots, Doc? NAME them?"

"Well no," I said, grinning in spite of myself; it was kind of a funny thought, not one that had occurred to me. I shrugged and admitted, "I'm less interested in them than where they came from."

I considered what he'd said, though. I couldn't not take it seriously. "What do you think will happen if we investigate-- if I investigate," I amended quickly, seeing his eyebrow go up. "It just seems strange-- stick a bunch of people in a place like this, expect them not to be curious about it?" I shrugged.

Logan shrugs.

"How do I know what they expect, Banner? I'm not a sonofabitch scientist."

Kidnapping people and putting them in little tanks isn't Logan's style, to say the least, and it pisses him off to even try to figure out the motives of people who would.

"Well, speaking for the sonofabitch scientists, it doesn't make much sense," I said, maybe a little testier than I'd intended. "I'm sure they-- whoever 'they' are-- are studying us, but punishing us for investigating our surroundings doesn't seem like their style."

Thor had proven that we could cause damage to the station without repercussions, and I wasn't willing to believe the paranoia that suggested the people who'd left the station had done so because they'd screwed up in some way. I just didn't want to believe I was at the mercy of beings who'd punish us for things we didn't know were transgressions... but who knew? I'd seen enough Star Trek to know that aliens could do some pretty screwed-up things themselves.

Hey! Violet heard the shout, and although she did not trouble herself to come running, she did make her way to the door and allow it to open for her.

The man was low to the floor, peering strangely at the wall as if it held the secret to some divine mystery.

She mad a 'tsk' sound and tapped her cane. "Is there something particularly fascinating about that bit of wall? Otherwise I cannot explain such queer behavior," she stated, expecting an explanation.

"You're not...losing the zen, are you?"

Bruce is an excessively zen person for the most part and that's a good thing, considering his condition. Clint is usually fairly even-keeled himself and he's found that he likes the scientist, as different as they are and as little as they'd known one another back home.

I huffed a laugh, rolling my eyes a little. "Do you even know how to make noise when you walk?"

I got to my feet, dusting myself off. "I'm fine. I just saw something weird and wanted to check it out."

"I do, I just choose not to," Clint quips, but there's a grin there to temper it. At the latter, though, he pauses and he's all business again. If there's a threat, he wants to know about it.

"What did you see?"

"So, uh." Caroline stared at Bruce with raised eyebrows from where she leaned against the doorframe, her arms crossed. "The wall's... super interesting, huh?" She sort of looked like crap-- after Narnia, she'd sort of vanished for a couple of days, and now there was a lot more to worry about, what with how sick Klaus had been. "I mean, if that's your bag now, staring at walls, I totally won't stop you, I just didn't know if you needed a little... help."

She looked at him with raised brows, expectant.

"I'm not staring," I said, so close to the wall my nose was almost touching it. "I'm investigating." I got to my feet and looked seriously at Caroline, hoping she'd see I wasn't kidding.

"The door opened as I came past here, and there were these two little robots in here. They ran away when I came in, like I'd scared them. And this panel of the wall opened up for them. Wouldn't you want to know what that was about?"

"Robots? Seriously?" Caroline comes closer, her head tipped to one side, as she padded into the room. "When you say it opened up, do you mean like the doors or something, or like, there was a hole in the wall?" She moved to the wall and crouched where she was, reaching out to touch the wall, which to her looked like an untouched section of the wall.

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weeeeeeeeeeeeeee-bleep!

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