“Goddamnit,” McCro Alexander finished tiding the workbenches and looked at the digital clock that was nailed to the wall by a rivet, “she is late again.”

Forcefully he swept the screws off the table into a collection rail on the inner edge of the table which the conveyor belt transported them into a bucket on the ground.

“There she is!” the automatic door swung open and the figure of Tann finally appeared. However, life and energy seemed to have evaporated from her sleepy eyes. She laid down heavily onto a clear workbench. Rosy ran over and investigated, “Are you alright?! You seemed drunk!”

“I’m…fine…”

Rosy moved her face closer to Tann’s body and sniffed, “Did you just bought these clothes?”

“How did you…” Tann pushed herself up from the workbench, “are you a detective or something?”

Rosy back down folding her arms in front of her chest, “Mate, I visited a clothing factory before and I know exactly what chemicals they use to clean the products before sending them to the stores. Anyways, why are you late?”

Tann looked around the room and noticed something unusual, “Fell into the river while I am walking and I needed to buy these new clothes, but what is that on the board?”

Tann’s state caught Loci’s attention, “you mean the blueprint, McCro, tell her what happened.”

Hesitating McCro opened a tab on his tablet which showed a video clip featuring Loci, “Well, about a months ago, we decided to film this video for the club’s propaganda but accidentally, the turret was filmed in as well, which at the moment, some other teams across the other universities had stolen our minigun design and some of them even went ahead by installing a quad minigun platform…”

“So!” Loci cut in, “I came up with this! Who cares about miniguns, I’m building a railgun! Oh, that’s my team’s idea, your team…well that guy said you’ll building a chemical thrower, good luck with that.”

Tann secretly copied down Loci’s blueprint, “Oh, forgot I am in Team B. By the way, I want to ask if you guys have one thing…”

“Before that,” Rosy stared down at Tann, “tell me, where is the old turret right now?”

As Tann struggled to respond, Loci helped out, “Nah, I don’t want to see that thing again, hurts my eyes.”

“What do you mean?!” Rosy said annoyedly, “We spend literally a whole summer on that, and now you even reject the sight of it?!”

“…” Loci turned his back to Rosy and looked down at the ground.

“Ivy, what do you want?” Rosy shifted her focus back to Tann.

“Ummmm…Oh!” Tann who was still not used to be called by her simulation name, searched for her treasure with her eyes, “do you guys happen to have polarising filters?”

“Polarising filters?” McCro looked up from his cleaning duty, “What do you need them for? Rosy, I think we might some leftover from the laser gun?”

“Nah,” Rosy replied, “I returned them to the Physics Research Centre. Ivy, wanna come with me?”

“Sure thanks,” Tann followed Rosy out of the room.

The two walked in silence, with Tann directly behind Rosy, but suddenly Rosy stopped almost causing Tann to ram into her back, “Say, how did you know that glitch which allowed the program to be much more straight forward.”

“Ummm…studying I suppose…”

Rosy shook her head, “Like hell, I am gonna believe, I have searched every website, every hard copy resource and asked every computer scientist in this university and no one seemed to know that trick.”

“Ehhh…”

Rosy continued her walk, but she stopped once again as she heard no answer from Tann, “Hello? You there?”

“Oh!” Tann faced Rosy’s suspicious stare, “I once met this hacker, he passed away last year in case if you are curious, and he told me this trick.”

“Right,” Rosy sighed, “and hackers never reveal their real names isn’t it. Fine, one day I’ll sure get the secret that you are hiding. This way, that room ahead is the Physics Research Centre.”

The entrance to the Physic Research Centre was a pair of steel curtains which were controlled by a motor located on the top. Rosy took out a badge like an object and swiped against a scanner.

Brrrrrrr….

The curtains slowly lifted, allowing Tann to peek inside, unlike its modest entrance, the inside of the lab was stunning: the lab had a similar shape as a colosseum, with descending rings of the workspace that housed different research groups surrounding a huge circular particle accelerator in the middle.

“Keep your voice down,” Rosy led the way down the rings.

“I can tell,” Tann replied quietly, “where are all the researchers?”

“Not sure,” Rosy noticed the absence of researchers as well, “I think they are having one of the briefings about funding. There, that’s where all the optical materials are housed.” Rosy pointed at a small door located on the side of the bottom ring.

“Now, you want polarising filters, right?” Rosy turned on the lighting, which revealed the gigantic storage shelves that are filled with containers or materials. Rosy took out her phone and opened a shot-list that gives the serial number of each material, “Hmm…number…#4001…” She walked to the first shelve and entered the serial code on a digital pad.

A series of machinery sounds sounded from the depth of the shelves, as the robotic arm on the correct shelve manoeuvred to the correct position and grabbed the item requested. After a few minutes, a small box-like robot appeared from the dense forest of shelves, inside its container, was a roll of plastic films.

“Is that what you wanted?” Rosy took out the films and unwrapped it, revealing the individual sheets of semi-transparent films.

“Thank you,” Tann nodded, “how many can I have?”

“How many do you want?”

“Can I take all?” Tann asked curiously, “just asking.”

Rosy counted the film sheets one by one, “alright I should have trusted the digital numbering, but here are 40 of these 2 by 2 meters filters, but seriously, what are you using these films for, don’t tell me you want to use them as curtains in your room, that’s just a huge waste.”

“Just some random project to record the solar activity,” Tann thought hard for an excuse, “you

know, even the astrophysicist is panicking about the star movements in space…Yea, I just need

these to look at some bright objects…”

Rosy shook her head and took out a rubber band tie her short pink hair together into a bundle,

“Alright, I guess you just want all of it, but if possible, once you are done using, give them back to me so I can return to the centre.”

“Sure,” Tann smiled and took the films from Rosy’s hands, “let’s get going then.”

After pressing a ‘received’ button on the robot, Rosy sent the robot back into the shelves. Carefully, she made sure that everything was back to their original places and shut the gate to the research lab.

“Are you going back to your apartment?” asked Rosy, “I never see you at the student dorms.”

“Well,” Tann replied, “I rent a separate house outside the university.”

“That’s cool,” Rosy followed Tann closely, “guess you are super rich then.”

“Nah…” Tann looked around nervously, Qchong University is surprisingly quiet at night, “Shall we call it a day today? Aren’t you heading back to the dorms?”

“Nah,” Rosy walked even closer to Tann, “I have to go to the city to get some supplies.”

Under her breath, Tann muttered, “Damn it.”