Regrets, part 3

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie's Office
Warehouse 13
South Dakota

"Uh, so, uh--Pete saw his father, but you didn't, right?"

"Yeah." Myka's face on the Farnsworth's screen looks unnerved. "But I should probably mention that I saw Sam, earlier."

Pete turns to Myka with a frown. "What? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Well, y'know, Sam's dead, and your father's dead--I mean, you can understand my reticence, right?"

"You're both hallucinating??" Artie leans close to the Farnsworth. "And when were you gonna mention that to me?"

"Well, we just did," says Myka with a little shrug. The lights above the two agents flicker and there's a rumble of what might be thunder.

"What--what was that?"

"Tropical storm Inez."

...awww, crap. "Uh... you didn't say that there was a storm."

"Why is that important?" asks Pete.

Artie pinches the bridge of his nose. "How many times do I have to tell you about electrical energy? It can crank up the intensity of an Artifact, I don't know, tenfold? And if an Artifact is causing these hallucinations, then a powerful electrical charge can make these visions seem absolutely real."

"Well, they seem pretty real now."

"Alright, listen. You're gonna have to stay in constant contact, you got that? Constant. I don't care if you have nothing to report. Every hour you're gonna call me, alright? And meanwhile you're gonna find out everything, everything about these inmates who killed themselves. Start with the last one, Lee Donaldson..."

---

They did, as it happens, have something to report roughly forty-five minutes later. The prison's on-site ME had turned up dead shortly after talking to Pete and Myka. He had a personal tape recorder on which he was transcribing the autopsy report, but it quickly devolved into him shouting at what he believed to be the ghost of his patient, accompanied by a high-pitched static whine. The field agents sent a recording of the latter to Artie to analyze.

"It's ten thousand cycles per second," says Artie to the Farnsworth as he runs said recording through a spectrum analysis. "It could be the electrical interference that any natural material makes when it vibrates."

"Okay, so where does it come from?" asks Myka.

"Well, any number of minerals or heavy metals, or it could be an artifact that contains both... just give me a second, just one s--ahh." He calls up a recording of a quartz crystal humming as a current is run through it. "Yeah, okay, does that sound familiar?"

"That's it."

bangbangbang

"So, Artie," says Pete, "we're looking for some kind of mineral Artifact that causes hallucinations?"

bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

"...is that banging--do you hear a...?" Artie looks up, distractedly. Where is that sound coming from? "Yeah, you do that, you do that, but I..."

bangbangbang, bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

"Artie? Hello, what--?"

bangbangbang, bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

"No, I'm okay, I'm okay, I just..." Artie picks up the Farnsworth and moves slowly across the office, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise. Somewhere up above... the rafters, maybe? A vibration carried from elsewhere in the building?

bangbangbang, bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

"Y'know what, Artie? We got it," says Myka. "Uh, thanks, we'll call you later."

"Yeah, alright--" Artie thumbs the On/Off button without looking away from the ceiling.

bangbangbang, bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

There's definitely a pattern to it. Groups of three, fast, then slow, then fast again.

bangbangbang, bang - bang - bang, bangbangbang

"S...O... SOS??"

Artie bolts for the windows. Somewhere in the Warehouse, someone is calling for help. There's only one person out there who could be doing that.

"CLAUDIA!"

[Dialogue from Warehouse 13 episode 1x10, "Regrets."]

Comments

[claudiometer]

"Oh, why not?"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"The entire Warehouse buckles in on itself, crushing us both to death," says Artie in the same tone he might use to talk about the weather.

[claudiometer]

...is the roof supposed to make that terrible creaking noise? (Perhaps more to the point, is it on cue or something?)
"...okay, yeah, I changed my mind. Sugarcoat it."

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie might have a snarky response to that, but he's too busy fine-tuning the machine that's connected to the magnets that are connected to Claudia. At least he is until the Farnsworth buzzes at him. "Just a minute!" he calls up to Claudia before answering the call. "Yeah?"

"Artie!" Myka's image on the screen is wobbling and blurring with interference--whether from the storm on their end or the magnetic field on this end, Artie couldn't say. "Artie, thank God--okay, what shuts down quartz?"

"Of course, it's quartz, it's quartz, right, see, that makes perfect sense, I should have thought of quartz--"

"Artie." Myka's voice snaps him back into the present moment.

"Yeah yeah yeah okay listen--um--Pierre Curie and his brother Jacques, they proved the existence of a converse effect of piezoelectricity. So what you've gotta do is..."

Something scraping across the concrete in his peripheral vision makes him trail off. It's an ice skate, and as he watches, it shoots up into the air, blade first--

[claudiometer]

"Artie!"
CLAUDIA DOES NOT APPROVE OF ATTACKING ICE SKATES.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie gives her a quick glance to make sure she's not bleeding before turning back to the Farnsworth.

"Yeah, uh, sorry, yeah--uh, okay. The frequency of, of a piece of quartz can be completely canceled out by its proximity to a second piece of quartz. Now, the second piece is probably what the Artifact is."

The image on the screen is getting blurrier.

"I'm having a little difficulty seeing you, the image is breaking up--now, it's a large piece, okay? The quartz. Is the storm getting worse?"

"A lot," says Pete through the static.

"Now, when you find the Artifact, you've got to put it exactly, exactly where it was before," says Artie, slowly and loudly. "Because it's triggered by proximity. Find out its original location, it's essential to neutralizing the halluciantions! You hear me??"

He has no idea whether they heard him or not, because the audio and video feeds both fade into white noise before the transmission cuts off. Artie mutters a curse under his breath before jamming the Farnsworth back in his shirt pocket.

[claudiometer]

"Hey, hello, can we get back to me, Artie? There's a bicycle on me."
Yeah yeah Pete and Myka are on a case and she'd deserve it if Artie left her to get down alone but that's not the point. The point is: BICYCLE. ALSO BUCKET. ALSO OMINOUS CREAKING NOISE.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"We're going to have to, ah, reduce the magnetic field, but we're gonna do it very gradually," Artie calls up to her. "We have to do that because we wouldn't want to destroy your central nervous system."

[claudiometer]

"No. No, we wouldn't. We would not." Claudia likes her central nervous system! It is her friend!

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie nods and starts gradually adjusting the equipment, starting a slow drain on Claudia's magnetic field which should--

GROOOOOOAN

...

That didn't come from the roof. That came from somewhere at ground level.

[claudiometer]

O_O
"Hey, what is that? That sounds bad. What is that?"

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Artie doesn't respond. He just stands there, poleaxed, as he watches a Peterbilt truck (a truck!!!) creaking its way toward Claudia's column, dragging boxes and knocking over shelves in its wake.

[claudiometer]

"Artie! Artie?"
Maybe she doesn't really want to know the answer. But it's better than being stuck up here dreading... she doesn't know, the Titanic or something.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Okay. This isn't the end of the world (yet). They can still fix this. They just need to speed up the timetable a bit.

"Uh--uh--Claudia? New plan. But listen, you have to do exactly, exactly as I say, got that?"

[claudiometer]

"You're the man."
Not like she has much choice in the matter, at this point.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

Groans of metal-on-metal reverberate throughout the Warehouse. Artie could swear that he sees the roof starting to buckle, but he's not about to take a closer look and check.

"Stay right there!" he shouts as he takes off down the aisle.

[claudiometer]

...
......
Claudia would facepalm, but that's slightly complicated at the moment.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

The necessary components are, thank whatever gods might be watching, relatively close at hand. Robin Hood's crossbow, a coil of rope, that carpet from that job in Istanbul...

[claudiometer]

"Hurry, Artie!"
But, you know, the ground-level noise is at it again. "...What is that? It sounds like a truck!"
PLEASE DON'T BE A TRUCK THAT WOULD KINDA HURT

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Oh, no, no, there is no truck..."

[claudiometer]

"...ohmygod."
This is officially the DUMBEST THING CLAUDIA HAS EVER DONE. And that includes busting Joshua out of limbo.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"--alright, it's a truck."

A truck with a radio antenna sticking up. "Oh, wait, wait--" Artie climbs up on its sideboard and, with a bit of effort, manages to wrench the antenna off.

(The crossbow doesn't have any ammo. He has to improvise.)

[claudiometer]

"Come on, come on!"
Claudia does not want to die today, kthx.

[doyousmellfudge_archive]

"Okay, hang on--" Wind the rope around the end of the antenna, slot the antenna into the crossbow, roll out the carpet near the base of Claudia's pillar...

[claudiometer]

"Hey, what's that for, to get rid of the body?"
Refuge In Sarcasm! (Because she needs a change of pace from Refuge In Panic.)