Testing

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Testing
 
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Doctor Norman Adrinos set a metronome down on his work desk, flicking the metal rod to one side to begin its rhythmic ticking. He sighed, picking up a thermos of coffee and taking a swig straight from the uncapped neck, the coffee cup he’d been using for the past two days sitting neglected to one side. 
He gulped the cold coffee, running a hand through his matted, grease-covered hair. He’d ignored the communal crew showers ever since the suit of armour at the centre of the room was brought in.
It was imposing, to say the least; nearly one full tonne of compressed titanium and tungsten plating, entombing a jet-black undersuit. The deep onyx material peaked through in a few areas, shiny under the fluorescence from up above.
Suspended as it was, the armour and the faceless visor gave the impression of a silent guardian. A statue, keeping watch over every sullen, overworked face in the experimentation chamber. Robotic arms of an assembly system held it aloft from the ceiling, and another set of arms rose up from the floor to hold the armour about the waist.
On the decking beneath, concentric circles were marked out by white tape at meter-wide intervals. Five circles separated Adrinos’s desk from the armour, as it did many of the other desks, tables, and instruments in the room. The only thing that seeped into the demarcation zone were wires. Cords, cables, thick power lines and other snaking lines wrapped around the armour. They clung to sensors, interfaced with the onboard computer at the back of the helmet, and the thickest cables of all were hanging from the small of the armour’s back.
Right above the belt there sat a box. Wires were coming from it, too, sliding up into the MJOLNIR’s considerable back plate. The box glowed with a pulsing blue light which made Norman’s teeth itch in their sockets. The device was distinctly human in design, blocky, brutalistic, and functional. But there was enough obvious influence to make it uncanny.
He couldn’t see the box, staring as he was into the MJOLNIR’s reflective golden visor. The suit was on loan from one of the Spartans while they recovered. They had free reign to test as much as they could, as long as they didn’t break it.
Shuddering, the doctor couldn’t even imagine how long it would take the entirety of the science team to repay that blunder, should it have ever happened.
Turning to one side, he stubbed out a cigarette in an ashtray made of glass and inlaid gold, then reached over to the monitor sitting on his stainless steel desk. He clicked the button on the side, the translucent blue screen winked on, showing him his own face.
“This is Doctor Norman Adrinos, the date is November 17th 2536. We are…” he furrowed his brow, checking his watch. “We are in hour eighty six of tests on MJOLNIR attachments and supplementary enhancements. See prior notes for details. This is test number twelve, as we are moving on from the Electromagnetic Dispersal Field generator.”
He reached over for a thermos of lukewarm coffee—the mug he’d been using exclusively for the past two days sat discarded, and neglected, off to one side. He downed the old coffee, not caring how old it was exactly, only that it was there, and he needed it.
When he put the thermos down he turned back to the screen and gave it a well-worn smile. “I would like to once again respectfully remind the administration that we are running on fumes, and require second shift personnel.”
His smile turned chipper, and he stood up, smoothing down his lab coat and bending over to tap the screen. The view on the monitor changed to that of the MJOLNIR suit as the camera swapped to rear-view, and the doctor buttoned his coat up, stepping around the desk.
“Alright, people!” he clapped his hands. The rest of the weary faces in the room looked over at him, some of them jumping up from their positions slumped over on their desks.
One woman snapped her head up with a sheet of paper still clinging to her forehead, which she pawed at to unstick from her glistening skin.
Adrinos heaved a sigh and held up his hands. “I know, we’ve been running a bit ragged lately, but let’s just get these tests done quick, and we can grab a couple hours of sleep before the next lot.”
A flurry of movement erupted from the room—or at least as much as a few unkempt scientists dragging their heavy muscles around could be called a ‘flurry’.
Adrinos turned to the monitor and motioned to the suit of MJOLNIR over his left hand side in frame. “This is a suit of HARMOST-Class MJOLNIR,” his hand trailed down to the wires. “We’ve connected it to an external micro-fusion reactor along with supplementary fusion coils, as is standard.”
He stepped to one side, walking over to the suit of MJOLNIR and stepping on the apparatus holding it aloft. He hit a button, and the whole thing began rotating to one side. The wires, leads, and cords were dragged with it, but stopped before they went taut. Plenty of slack remained coiled up on the ground, slithering over the taped circles.
“Alright, test number one,” he said. “How’s our power looking?”
“Power looks good,” a woman said from the side. “It’s got a full charge, plus the backup power we're feeding it directly. We should get a steady shield,” she moved her head from side to side, her ponytail bouncing behind her. “If it works.”
“Right,” Adrinos nodded, and turned. “Instruments?”
“Recording,” a man said. “We’re getting a steady stream from the MJOLNIR BIOS.”
“Excellent.” Norman nodded. “We’ll be testing at maximum power settings, don’t wanna waste time here.”
He turned back to the camera. “For the record, we’re hoping for a steady shield projection to extend out five meters, hence these lines,” he motioned his hands down to the floor. “If we can get a bubble around the armour, it will be a breakthrough in Human understanding of energy shielding.” Despite his fatigue, he couldn’t suppress a bout of excitement bubbling up from his gut.
“You know,” he continued. “If it works, like my colleague said.” He gave a pithy laugh to the camera, then cleared his throat.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Ready!” came the reply.
He nodded to the woman who spoke. “Activate the shield.”
She sat down at the power station, pulling a laptop close to her body. “Activating shields in three, two, one!”
She hit the button.
The world detonated.
A rush of rapidly-compressed air swept through the room, kicking up papers, coffee mugs, datapads, and scientists. The air upended desks and everything on them, caused the wires to whip back from the MJOLNIR in sparking arcs, and tossed debris all over the room.
Adrinos was lifted up and pushed back with violent force, smashing into his desk and rolling off before the desk itself cartwheeled through the air. There were screams of shock, and pain, and a constant thrumming sound of something electrical in the air. 
It ended as quickly as it began, with the room lapsing back into silence, save for the thrumming noise.
Adrinos groaned, sitting up among the debris of his desk, his bones screaming like they’d been crushed. Or like he’d just been hit by a monorail. The MJOLNIR was nowhere to be found, at least not in any one place. Bits and pieces of it were scattered around the room, embedded into the floor, or in twisted heaps. Hydrostatic gel and ferrofluid leaked from where the bulk of it had been explosively tossed towards the back half of the room, presenting a grisly scene.
No other scientist in the room had fared much better, with some even nursing wounds from debris. 
“Is everyone alright?” he yelled into the dust and destruction. No desk was left unturned, and no monitor uncracked.
He got a flurry of confirmations—no fatalities at least—and gave a sigh of relief. Turning to the monitor on the ground, he noticed that it was still recording, albeit in patchy static and with a crack across the footage. He hit a button on the side of the monitor, his own bloody, dazed face staring back at him.
The Doctor blinked in an owlish fashion a few times, shrugging his shoulders.  “Alright, well… the, uh, the Deflector Bubble worked, at least.”
He turned back to where the MJOLNIR stood not a few seconds prior. The only thing left was a rotating blue shield extending the full five meters to the edge of the five meter circle. In the centre, floating in a perfect vacuum, was a box of distinctly-human design, with a pulsating blue light in the centre.
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