Walking inside the cafeteria, Troy saw it mostly empty. Luckily, though, a certain somebody was sitting, alone, finicking with some small mechanical things. For him, he recognized it as an overly wide, mechanical pencil.

For the first time today, Charlie had been seen without his tall companion. Troy wondered where he was.

“Troy!”, Charlie proclaimed, finally looking up from his fancy toy, and seeing Troy coming closer to the table. “You're certainly early. Where's Dr Hale got herself off to?”

It would be weird, with her not being here. She always was, no matter how much she had detested it.

“She's back at the department,” Troy answered, his tone level. “We're having a few issues, so I got to go to lunch early. I don't know if Dr Hale will be getting lunch today.”

If this was supposed to be surprising to him, Charlie didn't show it. He acted, like it was all too normal, nodding in confirmation, before going back to working on his… whatever that thing was supposed to be.

“They had been getting a bit too great at their job lately”, Charlie stated, his hands gliding over the gears on the outside. At a seemingly random point, he pressed down hard, an audible click coming from the mechanical monstrosity due to it. After that, he set it back down on the table. “When you came along here, I thought they were done messing things up, over at their department. With another pair of hands to hold the stone, they shouldn't have been too stressed. Yet, it looks like another person did not stop anybody from making their usual quota of errors.”

Troy isn't putting much focus on the words coming out of Charlie's mouth. From the normal words, which he heard at lunch, he had a reasonable idea of it. No, what currently transfixed him, was the wide, cylinder one the table.

The gears on it had started moving. Troy had not seen Charlie do anything to start it up. The thing had just… started itself.

“What is that gadget, which you're working on?” Troy asked, not putting in any effort of continuing the large man's attempt at the subject of work. “And, why's it moving?”

Charlie didn't mind his rather quick shift too much, his smile widening. He just seemed to love it, when anything about him was discussed. Troy didn't understand it. More discussion equalled more criticism. And, not the constructive kind.

“Oh, I am glad you asked, my little friend,” Charlie said, bluntly throwing the thing up in the air. Troy was afraid of him doing a repeat of his prior token chips, but he luckily caught in, with his right hand. Didn't even look at it. He really was a madman, when he wanted to show it. “This thing here is something that the physicist of yesterday would have hanged me for even thinking of making. It's a contradiction, on what Newtonian space should allow. I can't explain too much about it, but, personally, I'm thinking of calling it 'Bender', when it gets mass-produced.”

“Anything more, that you can say about it?” Troy asked, fully knowing, that Charlie was simply leading him on. He was being short on the details, not giving more than necessary. Or, as it was otherwise known, he was being a right prick. Not the irritating kind, yet, fortunately.

“Well, I am sure some of it would simply curve around your head, I am sure, that I could simplify a few of it core concepts for you”, Charlie answered, with a smirk, right back to his past as an autocrat. Okay. He was the irritating kind now.

Dr Hale would be asking him to shut up in… Oh. Yeah.

“Please do,” Troy encouraged, not having the will to call him out.

“As you want”, Charlie stated. “If I had to describe this thing in a few simple words, I would call it the 'anti-magnet'. It does the exact opposite of, what a magnet should do with metals. Also, it also works on things, that arent metals. But, that option is currently switched off, for not-so-obvious reasons. Also, as a fair warning, my expertise isn't on magnets, so that allegory of mine isn't very accurate.”

How nice of him, to state that his information was untrustworthy. After, of course, he had made a big deal out of that information at the same moment. At this point, Troy should have just asked him to cut the act, and be a little more serious in his explanation. But, he didn't. That wasn't his role in the social dynamic. The person, with that particular position, was missing, from where they should have been.

“So, it's actually on, right now?” Troy asked. The wording was not the best. The 'Bender`, as Charlie oh, so creatively, called it, was very obviously on. It was moving, for god's sake.

But, if that anti-magnet was on, as Charlie was apparently hinting at, what would happen if, hypothetically speaking, of course, Troy threw some metal at it?

“Right now, there are really only four options, that this thing could be in,” Charlie surmised. “It's either off, partly on, or fully on. And, it isn't off.”

“Excuse my lower levels of math, but I think that was only three states,” Troy pointed out.

“Well, if it does anything, other than those three, I don't want to seem stupid,” Charlie amended, sounding incredibly stupid in saying such things. “And, I haven't really tested it too much, yet, so there may be more than five options.”

This was good to know. Very good to know, in fact. From a few sentences earlier, this thing was on. It was limited to being partially on, which accounted for it somehow affecting metals, in some unknown capacity. And, it might just do a lot more than that, seeing as Charlie was drawing slightly back on his poshness when detailing the potential flaws.

So, to distract himself, from prior events, and also out of pure curiosity, Troy took a spoon, from the box of cutlery at the end of tables, and threw it directly at the mechanical monstrosity. Or, the 'bender', if he ever saw a viable reason to call it such.

Contrary to his beliefs, Troy did not throw the spoon at his target. He had even done as the pro baseball players and made the object curve in the air. A mythical feat, seeing as he hadn't even thrown it that hard. And, that the target had been under a meter away.

…

Troy didn't throw it badly. He should have realised that from the moment he needed to think about it.

Fishing out a few more spoons, he did the same. Each piece of cutlery flew directly at the small machinery, as it should. Until, of course, the moment they reached a distance of about fifty centimetres from it. Then, they began turning, being driven to the sides.

He hadn't been lied to. The thing before him really was the opposite of a magnet.

“How?” Troy asked. The concept of the 'Bender' existing, in reality, was something, which he had imagined before, sure. Yet, it looking anything like this was not anticipated. If he had been told that it had been bought from a fancy tourist shop, Troy wouldn't have even questioned it.

Charlie loved the expression fastened on his face. Troy could just see it. A mix of totally uncivilized intentions, and simple happiness of making something so boggling likely kept him from expressing the worst of his current tendencies.

“Oh, you would just love to know,” Charlie said, the smirk on his face as present as it would ever be. He was clearly loving the air between them, and Troy hated every second of it. Nevertheless, keeping his curiosity at bay, with anything other, than what it wanted, always turned out in failure. He briefly remembered being on a two-week research binge, on how the old country of Great Britain served their tea. It hadn't been vital at all, yet the lacking sources had forced him to do such stupid things. “Wouldn't you?

Normal people would have stopped Charlie, at this point. They would have told him to maybe shut up, with that pretentious voice of his. He may think it funny himself, but others just found it all too annoying.

He didn't say anything about it, yet again. Nothing was shown on his face, except for the true curiosity.

“Yes”, Troy answered bluntly. There wasn't any reason to drag it on. He already knew, how it would most likely end. “I would like that, actually”

Charlie found his answer all too funny, making a full-belly laugh because of it. The few others, in the nearly empty cafeteria, looked over in irritation. However, none of them objected to it, just like Troy didn't do. Except, they had a good excuse for it. How he envied them.

“Well, I have got some bad news for you,” Charlie muttered, not from nervousness, but from sheer lack of oxygen. He was desperately trying to control himself, so he could get on with the large reveal. A large reveal, which Troy was guessing, that he had been leading up to the entire time. “I can't tell you! You don't have the requirements, to be told stuff like that.”

Okay. Now, Troy knew that Charlie was just messing with him. He wasn't even leading him on, basing his lies on truth. No, this was a direct lie. Anything he could know about, Troy could know about as well. Like, Troy could theoretically see the documents about Charlie, when he was working on the 'Bender'.

While Dr Hale would usually be the one calling Charlie out in this scenario, Troy actually felt it reasonable to do so himself. In their earlier conversations, where Darlow also had been present, it had been said, that he had the second-highest clearance, of the entire group. Which meant, with Francis being the highest rated one, Charlie was below him. With already this already being established, in the shared knowledge bubble, and they both knew it was in the bubble, it would be natural for Troy to call it out. At least, he had tricked himself into thinking something like that.

“Are you sure? I have a higher-”, Troy began, already planning how the future conversation would turn out. Yet, even the start of this future was stopped, as Charlie cut in on his talking.

“Oh, yes, you would think that, wouldn't you?” Charlie asked rhetorically, with the smug, which Troy oh so recognized from previous alterations. He hadn't been smart when objecting. It had all been planned. “But, no, you're wrong in everything you previously thought. Yes, in theory, you should have access to everything, that I work on myself. Your general security level is simply so much higher than mine, that I technically shouldn't be able to hide anything from you.

Except, I actually can. Take what I just said, and see if you can guess, what loophole there might be, for me to do a thing like this?... Okay, I'm not gonna give you time to think about it, because I'm telling you either way.

Its the general part, which you need to focus on. Generally, as in, with nearly all of my day to day activities, they come under the general security level. It's because, it works fine with most things. The higher general security clearance, the more the government trusts you, to keep your mouth shut, about the things you see.

Yet, even a government, as kind as ours, aren't able to trust us with everything. Some things are just too important, or, they have the potential to be so. With those projects, ideas, concepts, or whatever it might be, there are special security clearances for them.

And, this isnt even the kind of special security clearance, which you gain access to, at the higher general security levels either. No, it actually works the other way around. These special clearances give you access to many more things. I am currently loving the new things that I get to look at. So many diagrams, schematics, and all other jazz. It isnt a high as yours, of course, but it is closer to it, than it was before.

The point of it all is, I made it so, I can't show this to you, and I need for you to know that, for my own amusement. Do you understand that?”

Troy understood a good part of what he had just said. A few things, which had been hinted at even. And, a few things, which he just had to ask about.

“If this project, that you're involved in, is so secretive, how did you get invited to it, on such short notice?” Troy asked, irritation now a greater part of his inquiries. Curiosity had been sated slightly, yet he still needed a bit more, before it retreated to the back of his head, to rest for the next new thing. “With how little this stuff is tested, the project has to be extremely new. So new, in fact, that I can't see any reasons, for why they put on new people now, of all times. So, how exactly did you learn of it, even?”

“Oh, that is a finer detail, which I have just been waiting for you to ask”, Charlie began, making Troy know that it was going to be an unnecessary detail, that explained everything away. A simple 'A friend told me' would have been sufficient. But, he just had to love explaining things.

… Troy was going over from numbness to irritation extremely quickly. He needed to put a damper on things, or he was going to explode in Charlie's face. Anger problems were not on the list, which he had, and he was not going to be adding that problem to it for now. He just needed a deep breath. And, some food, when that began showing up.

“So, it all began five years ago, when I got slightly, extremely intoxicated on various substances.”

At the very least, Troy would have a lot of time to breathe in.