JOSIE WAS JUST SITTING DOWN AT HER SOLO lunch table when she got the text from Penelope. Meet me in the lab. Stat. She didn’t need to be told twice. Penelope bounced excitedly on her stool as Josie rushed into the classroom. “Well?” Josie asked. “I was there all night,” Penelope started. She spoke in quick, disjointed phrases, the hallmark of caffeine-fueled sleep deprivation. “At the warehouse. Set up the laser and did some modifications. Nothing big.” “You modified a free-electron laser?” She knew Penelope was a wiz, but this bordered on genius. “Yeah, yeah,” Penelope said. “It’s just commercial grade. No biggie. I couldn’t figure out, you know, how the laser and the contents of the vial were going to work to create a portal. I thought maybe a rapid cycling of photons might disrupt the gravitational field, but realized that the laser would have to be like a bazillion times stronger.”
