A Nice Relaxing Day at Morgrave

          “What happened to my plants?  The professor spoke, “I will have my revenge on the entire faculty is they are injured or changed in anyway.”  The plants are question are a rare variety parasitic orchid that grows in a small area around the source of the Amazon River.  It would technically be illegal for the professor in question to posses the plants, but that would require that the governments of the world had the power to infringe on the  rights of a professor at Morgrave.
          From across the office, “Why do you automatically blame the faculty?  It could have been a student, or visiting professor,” Michael, a professor of biology, sarcastically added   “It is not good form to question; you assign blame and then deal with the problem.”  Michael threw well constructed paper torpedo to Robert.  “By the way, here is the reminder that you have to give a tour today.”
          “What! Not a student group, why do I have to do a student group?  Can I at least make them sign waver forms?  That way I can use them as test subjects for my shielding.”   He stopped when a long legal document appeared on the desk with a header.  From the legal department, Professor Siller of ESP please remember this document you signed before you try anything.  Thank you, the Department of Bureaucratic Nonsense.  Robert restarted his rant, “Just my luck, my plants are stolen, the legal department anticipates my idea.  What else could go wrong?”
          With an evil glint in his eye, Michael gave the last bit of information, “You have a teenage genus on this tour.  That should be entertaining for you.”
          A long drawn out pause takes of place of all the swearing that Robert could possibly do, “I believe today is a good day for a sick day.  Good bye, have fun informing my substitute about their predicament.”
          Michael laughed evilly, “Not going to work this time, the invitations went out that you would lead the tour, no matter how sick you are.  If you do not Deus promised that he will never stop sending his spies after you, and I promised to help.”
          “Traitor, I guess I will have to suffer it this time.  It will cost him; I will leak out one of his technologies to his competition, nothing like leveling the playing field I destroyed.  Well, I believe I am now fashionably late for the tour, if you do not mind I will make my impressive entrance.”  Professor Siller pressed some buttons on his desk and disappeared, everyone in the room knew he teleported by the sudden movement of air to fill the space he vacated.
          “Well, that student is in for a surprise, I doubt that they have seen a portable teleportation device yet.”  Michael went to secure his lab, not need to have hyperactive teenagers stumbling into his yeast vats; he had put too much effort into perfecting this batch.


          Outside of the physics building a single perspective student waited for his tour guide.  “Well this is annoying, we wait here for our professor/tour guide that we were promised and no one has shown up.  This is a waste of my time.”  Kamil had a habit of talking to himself, but this time he also had a wire attached that allowed him to stay in constant contact with Tara’tan.
          Tara’tan is a covert branch of NASA.  When most companies started secret research project 20 years ago, NASA created a new department to conduct industrial espionage, breaking into the labs of various corporations and universities and other government research facilities. Within a decade, Tara’tan had access to almost every research facility in the world.  To maintain its position as one of the premier research entities in the world, NASA built a large underground facility to combine the research gathered by Tara’tan.
          Through the wire came a command “Kamil, you are dealing with a person who is supposed to be a physics professor.  I have learned that physics professors are the worst people at showing up on time; just give him 5 more minutes before you leave.  We are interested to find out how he knows about our research into the origin of energy.”
          “Fine, but only 5 more minutes, I do not have the time to waste on an old professor who probably will turn me away because of my age.”
Professor Siller walked out of the shadows, “Age?  I do not know a professor at Morgrave who would use age as a reason to not listen to you.  I have never had a problem talking to the professors, despite being only 20 years old.”
“You must be a student.  Who is Dr. Siller, and what is he like?”
Robert laughed, “I am probably not the best person to answer that question.”  He walked to the wall, facing away from Kamil.  “You see, I am Dr. Siller.”
          Silence took hold of both the Tara’tan stronghold of Cavern Camelot, deep under the Himalayas, and in Morgrave.  For the first time is his life Kamil did not know what to say.  This must an extraordinary person to be a professor of physics at one of the premier institutes in the world.  Even Deus and his fabled knights have a hard time breaking into Morgrave.
          When Kamil had received an invitation to tour Morgrave his superiors had literally jumped out of there chairs at the opportunity to penetrate the defenses at Morgrave, moments later they received a notice from Dues.  It was impossible to trace the transaction, but it amounted to Dues promising that the premier professor of physics would give the tour.  There was a catch to the whole thing, but it was not a problem, all information gathered on Morgrave during the tour would be shared with Deus.
          “Well?  Are you going to follow?  I have much more important tasks to accomplish today then escort an egotistical teenager around my campus. A grad student would have been a much better choice; I still need to find my orchid.  Maybe Deus took it; that would be something he would do…I will pay a visit to Atlantis soon, which should fix my problem.”  Robby started out talking clearly, but quickly degenerated into a mumble.
          “All I require is for you to show me around campus and answer any questions that I have.  I believe your job is to convince me that I should come to school here and that it is an important task.  Otherwise I doubt that the administration would force you to waste your time with me.”
          Grumbling, Robby started the tour of campus by telling the history of the administration section of campus.
          “We are currently standing in the administration section of campus.  Currently it is a peaceful section as we have more then enough funding to fund all minor projects.  This is where department meetings take place, and where we elect our president.  I try and spend as little time as possible here, and thus am mostly ignored when it comes to debates; as long as I keep my funding I am fine.  Each building here is meant to withstand anything short of a nuclear blast, but destroying a building is not the reason for war here.  Espionage is a very useful skill that is required to graduate.  The power of the department is based on the size of building that the department controls.  There is a strict law of never permanently injuring a professor for interdepartmental battles, only during an intradepartmental struggle is it acceptable to permanently injure or kill a professor.  The political science department is currently the strongest department followed by physics, biology, chemistry and mathematics.  This warfare started because the professors are highly competitive, and a couple of years back Morgrave adopted a new major.  This major quickly became the most popular major on campus, such that few students were part of any single department.  Five years ago Morgrave abolished all traditional majors and currently only offers a few majors that are a combination of all the departments.  Without being able to compete for students as a sign of power, the departments started to wage war against each other to claim the largest administrative building on campus.”
          They walked toward the third largest building, the current chemistry admin building.  “Right over there,” Robby said pointing to the building, “is what I mean by war.  The Biology department and the Chemistry department have been fighting for the building for a couple of days.  You can see the people trying to infiltrate the building, and those being repelled by the guards.  If I am not mistaken it appears that Biology is gaining the upper hand in this battle.  Anyways enough with the administration, I have always found that stuff boring.  On to the lab!”
Robby was almost shouting by the end.  From the contested building, they moved toward the physics building.  Surrounding the physics building is a labyrinth.  Designed by Professor Siller, the maze has set portals for teleportation to and from the physics labs, but each portal has to be activated.  The only way to get into the actual admin building is to pass through the labyrinth.
          The labyrinth is a complete sphere one kilometer thick, made of a clear substance that is near indestructible.  The department was not content with always having a clear labyrinth and a couple modifications later; the labyrinth could be made to take any color desired by the department.  In reality there was a very simple path through the labyrinth, but it is near impossible to find since it requires knowledge of the general structure of the labyrinth.  The labyrinth is made out of the same materials as Atlantis; and only the set portals can be used to teleport through the labyrinth.  Currently the labyrinth was set to imitate a flower garden.  Robby led Kamil to the entrance of the labyrinth, manipulated the control panel and opened a dark green portal to his lab.
          Just before entering Robby gave a little introduction to his lab, “Now, the lab is the most important part of a student’s education.  In the labs, there is undergraduate section, the graduate section, and the professors’ lab.  Each name details the type of people allowed into each section.  In particular, I have many experiments and inventions in my lab that Dues and other governments would love to get their hands on.  Most are slowly released, generally through Atlantis as that was where I started my research.  I will show you what I am working on and then the tour is over.”  With that, Robby passed through the portal, and Kamil followed.
          On the side of the entrance way to the lab is a check out list of classified devices and the people and/or location of each device,
v Shield:  Wolf, Michael, Robby
v Temporal Disruptor:  Michael, Robby
v Mark V’s in testing phases: Michael, Robby
v Kinetics Gloves:  Michael, Robby
v Teleporter Mk I: Many places, portals set up around campus, Atlantis, and other old Knight projects
v Teleporter Mk II:  Robby, Michael
v Scrying Bowl: Never leaves the lab

          Robby did not make any comments about the strange list before entering his lab.  “In reality the is only one difference between the different labs here is the level of security that the department maintains.  As I said, competition is extremely important here, and to aid the call for competition it is difficult to maintain security. The physics department decided that it is in the best interests of the students if the department does not implement any security.  All security is the job of the individual; this means that in general the professors have the best security as we have had the longest amount of time to set it up.  Otherwise, the labs are the same, each lab has the same equipment and computing power.”
          Robby then continued with a long, and boring tour of the lab.  One hour later the tour was ended with a brief show-and-tell of some inventions.  “I could make you promise to never tell about what you are going to see, but it would not make a difference.  You would probably tell anyways, and I am confident that no one else can replicate what I have done with the little you will see.”
          Robby picked up a small cylinder and activated a panel producing a black blade.  “This is one of my favorite devices, I stole the idea from Star Wars, and this is my Mark V saber.  This current model is still being tested as it looses power and is destroyed.  Other then that slight problem, they are wonderful weapons.  Great for sparing purposes, as the blade can be anything from 10 cm to 1.5 meters in length, and the blade can be made non-lethal and used as a self-scoring system where each skin/clothing contact is marked.  As a weapon, it can be used to cut through my shield, but only at a great loss of power.  After cutting through a shield it cannot be used as a weapon for at least half an hour.  For my own amusement, the Mark V’s are also a defensive device, capable of generating a shield for one quarter of an hour.  Again, this uses up the reserve power source and it takes at least half an hour for the saber to regain the energy loss.  This is the only weapon that I work on, my other two projects are not as destructive.  One is used to make cooking easier, and the other is to help the Political Science department as they have been kind enough not to release engineered viruses against the main populations yet.”
          Placing the saber back in the safe, he pulls out a glove.  “This is my Kinetic Control Glove, it allows my to control the kinetic energy of anything within an 8 meter radius without having to touch the object.  I believe there is a desire to use it for research purposes, but I have been developing it because it cuts down on the hassle of gathering ingredients and remembering where I put the oven mitt down…yes, much of my research is geared towards making my life easier not for any desire to improve the world.  This has the potential to be far superior to robotic labor because the control that the wearer has over the objects is absolute, anything that the mind can imagine happening can as long as it can happen through the manipulation of kinetic energy.  Allow my to demonstrate.”  Putting the glove on, Robby started to make objects move around, until suddenly the objects started disappearing.  Quickly Robby removed the glove, “That is my current problem.  Sometimes the object being manipulated in ripped into subatomic particles.  Enough of my games, let me get my third piece.”  He carefully placed the glove in its compartment and brought out a silver bowl.
          “This the latest in computer technology.  This little bowl can hack through any system on the planet as if it was not there.  Its strength is its weakness; it accesses every device that has a network connection.  This is a problem because I currently cannot focus the power into an area less then a 100-kilometer radius of the target and all the information that it gathers is recorded immediately.  That is about all there is to say about this piece currently, all it needs is a constant supply of liquid helium and it will work without stopping.” Robby sealed the 3 devices in his safe, “that is all I have for today.  Please exit through the door marked ‘exit’.”
          As soon as the computer registered that Kamil had completely exited the campus, an automatic message was sent to Deus.
          Deus,
          Here is a transcript of everything that your agent, Kamil, heard and saw while at Morgrave.  If you really want anything that badly please present yourself in person next time.  We are pleased to inform you that the security upgrades for your power plant will be finished in one month.  We here at Morgrave are grateful for the continuous supply of scientists you send us as professors, but you need to screen your student applicants better, they are woefully incompetent and many have died within a quarter, generally from suicide.  Hopefully this partnership can continue.
         Until the next idiot you send arrives,
         The staff at Morgrave Institute of Technology, Politics, and Espionage