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Science was part of the deal.

Experiments, sprung from everything from curiosity to necessity, had been part of Mimsy's life as far as memory extended. As technology increased and expanded, her ability to test had too - and she never turned back, because using retrograde techniques when superior options existed just seemed ridiculous. Yet here she was, in one of the labs deemed nonessential, working by candlelight. Or Bunsen burner-light, more specifically.

Maybe they couldn't account for the future, but it felt distinctly as if Dwight tricked her again. Science was part of the deal. Nothing at CERN would suffer from catastrophic power outages.

She wore an incredibly sulky expression as she peered through her safety glasses at the tiny graded marks on a volumetric burette, very carefully allowing a precise amount of greenish liquid to drip into a beaker of bluish powder, which violently fizzled and bubbled and threatened to escape the confines of its container.

But it didn't, because she wasn't careless enough to miscalculate.

It did, however, turn a thick orangey color, resembling the appearance of rust-filled water. She frowned. That was not the result she had been hoping for.

With a scoffed ugh, she reached for the flask of greenish liquid to refill the burette, steadying one hand with the other. This was the single disadvantage of skipping out on sleep, but when it was compounded with the disadvantage of practicing chemistry by candlelight, it became extremely frustrating.

She put the flask down and propped her chin up in her hands to frown at the burette, radiating annoyance. Unfortunately, annoyance wasn't a functional power source, so the lights didn't turn on again, and the liquid in the burette stayed the same.

It was impossible to win a staring contest with liquid that had no eyes (yet, because that couldn't be discounted entirely), but Mimsy would have failed either way, distracted by the sound of someone singing. Her eyes narrowed at first as she tried to recall the last time she'd heard such a thing. There wasn't much singing around here. From what she understood, she didn't think that there was much of a reason to.

She moved one hand to tilt her head towards the door. When that didn't suffice, she stood up straight and turned to see who the singing voice belonged to. She couldn't quite make out more than just a silhouette in the darkness, albeit a tall one, and the whispered inquiry masked the other person's voice. Bordering an unsettled anxiety, she moved to take a step back, fingers curling around a pair of scissors. Svensyl snorted indignantly, but scissors felt safer when she was faced with indicating her identity to a stranger whose presence filled her with uncertainty.

Until she heard her name.

There was really only one person that it could be. With a glance over her shoulder, she gently nudged the glassware to a more central position on the table, just to be safe.

"Hello, Robert. It's--" Oh, he'd realized that already. Right. "Why are you whispering?"

Why was she whispering? How did this always seem to happen? Was whispering subconsciously contagious?

The approaching silhouette of Robert dipped down a few inches and seemed to move less erratically, and Mimsy wondered if he'd been tiptoeing towards her as well. Surely he wouldn't treat that far into unsafe laboratory procedures. It was probably a trick of the light.

"Well, yes!" She feigned a look of surprise, but that wasn't so easy to determine in low light. "Surely you know how crucial intonation is when speaking. Whispering removes all pitch, tone, and other forms of verbal regulation. Think of all of the functions of intonation that whispering strips from your words."

She gave him time to think about that while she considered the validity of all of those words she'd just thrown together. There was a fair amount of certainty that it was all true, so she stared at him and frowned.

"Now you understand the grave circumstances of whispering. But no, it ultimately does not matter in the slightest. I was only curious if you had an actual reason for doing so." When 'it made sense' was an answer to 'why', she didn't feel any need to ask for elaboration.

Reflexively, her hand moved towards the glassware when he stared into it, knowing that there was a good chance she might have to steady it.

"I was testing solutions until I found the right reaction." Which also meant 'I'm really bored', in her own way. "Unfortunately, I am just finishing my work on this particular experiment, but you are welcome to stay here and help me return these to storage, if you are not otherwise busy."

On second thought, she put the stopper back on the flask and tapped it with the end of the scissors, eliciting a small clink.

"This one. You can help me return this one." Because it was the safest, and they were in relative darkness, and she learned very well from her previous mistakes.

While Mimsy gave Robert time to fetch the flask, she'd already turned to pick up the beaker with both hands, exercising extreme caution. She needed to be as delicate as she could with this one, because it would need to be neutralized before it could be stored again, and its current state was somewhat volatile.

But instead of walking a calculated, gradual path to the countertop, she found herself in a staredown with him. She opened her mouth to ask if this was really the best time, but slowly closed it when he got closer and closer and--

She dropped the beaker.

As one might expect, the glass container shattered on the floor at her feet. The liquid fizzled and bubbled and sluggishly began to discolor and eat away at the leather of her boots, but she could only stare at him. This horrifying lack of a proper reaction might have disgusted her under more normal circumstances, but it felt a lot like her brain wasn't working at all right now. She managed only to dredge up a few important words.

"A spill has occurred," she alerted him, in a small voice that sounded a lot like a whisper.

There was nothing but stunned silence from Mimsy in the entire duration of the time that she was lifted onto the table and inspected for chemical burns. She knew exactly what to do in this scenario, had known this for over a decade, but never expected it to happen. She was too good for this.

When he'd checked the tenth toe, she finally came to her senses and shook her foot to shoo him away from it.

"Never...do anything like that in a lab at all!" She held her hands in an awkward, general 'up' position, as if she was struggling between shoving him or putting her hands on her face in horror. "I had a perfect, a flawless lifetime laboratory safety record, I..."

Her eyes found the liquid on the floor, which was no longer reacting to the new environment. Interesting! It seemed to affect only biological materials, since her boots were leather, and...right, the spill.

"I need you to put my shoes into the hazardous waste containment storage, and retrieve the spill kit beside it." The containment station that she pointed at was just along the edge of visibility, flickering in and out of the darkness. "Pour the absorbent material on this and move it to the plastic container in the spill kit, then put everything that touched the spill into the containment storage."

She paused, a thoughtful expression crossing her face, followed by a sigh and something that kind of looked like 'I guess I have to'.

"Put on the gloves that are in the spill kit fist."

Another pause.

"I will attempt to make a small confection for you if you follow these steps correctly."

"That is unfortunate. Now you are contaminated." He wasn't in agonizing pain, which Mimsy presumed would be the case if it had come into contact with his skin. It was, most likely, sufficiently neutralized, and no longer posed an immediate threat.

But this was more interesting.

"In fact, anything that you have touched since you began the spill cleanup is now contaminated. Do you remember everything that you touched?" She frowned and began to shake her head. "I think that the most suitable response to this is to quarantine the entire area. We will have to return with the proper equipment. Or...oh."

The frown was something more sympathetic now, something like pity. She touched her cheek like a soap opera actress that was trying to convey concern and sighed.

"I will have to return with the proper equipment. I imagine that you will have to live the rest of your days in quarantine."

She was well aware that her skills of deception needed quite a bit of fine-tuning, so she tried to distract from that fact by thinking of a way to make the situation seem very serious. It didn't take long to come up with something, and gave the most stern of stares to accompany the end of her threatening scenario.

"Without cake."

The reaction was savored as it slowly unfolded, and Mimsy tried very hard to hide her smile. It was every bit as interesting as she might have hoped that it would be, down to the very last whimper. She took a deep breath in preparation for a contented sigh, but the breath caught in her throat and came out in a strained little cough when he turned to look at her.

It was difficult to tell why he was angry. Was it the cake? The quarantine? Or had he figured it out? She lamented the fact that it was too dark in here to observe as well as she might hope to.

But the internal questions all stopped when he touched her, and she stiffened when his grip tightened, and she fought to look him in the eye when he got much, much too close.

"We are going to die." The words were a strangled whisper, and the panic in her eyes flickered in and out, in spite of how hard she tried to keep it there. "We will die here. Any moment now."

The reactions that followed made Mimsy believe, very strongly, that it was the threat of no cake that upset him as much as it had. There was absolutely no way that he recognized the truth behind her words, then went on to respond like this.

It got better and better, in spite of the fact that he was touching her and made no indication that he planned to let go. The ends of her fingers curled and uncurled, her movements slight and nervous and unsettled, and she tried not to think of how close he was. She focused on his words and bit her lip, considering her options. She could reveal that this had been a fun exercise, but the spill really needed to be attended to at some point.

Or she could keep going.

"I am sorry." A grin twitched at the corners of her mouth, and she tried to hide it with a smile full of sadness. "I am certain that it will be painless and fairly quick. At least you won't have to die alone - I will be with you. That is a small comfort, correct?"

That might calm him down enough to let her go. It was reasonable. Dying alone was something that people generally wanted to avoid, she thought.

She hoped.