"Yeah..." Marcia said after a few seconds. It sounded like her excitement started to fade, even after the treasure trove of leads that the recording gave. "It's setting in again..." She faintly said.
"What's setting in?" Antares asked. She sounded panicked and looked towards Marcia, who had her arms bent in front of her on the table, as if she were barely propping up her head from the table.
"Look at my notes again." Marcia quietly said, moments before she could no longer prop herself up. She was completely slumped over on the table.
"Marcia- where am I supposed to look? What happened?!" Antares asked. She lightly shook Marcia's arm to try to get a response, but there was none.
Antares stood up from her chair and briefly thought over what to do.
"She told me to read her notes, but something isn't right. She shouldn't have ran out of energy that quickly. I should message Regina, but Marcia told me to read them." She picked up Marcia's pile of notes and levitated them in front of her in a neatly arranged grid, but she still looked puzzled.
"She showed me her notes but I didn't immediately see anything about why this happened." Antares thought. By touching any of the pages that were floating in the grid in front of her, she quickly looked at them one by one. She moved pages that she recognized as ones she already read to the side in a stack that grew.
"I didn't see this one before but it's not about this." She thought and moved another to the stack. "However, there could be more that I didn't read yet! There has to be if she wrote about what was coming back." She cautiously looked through the next batch of pages and the notebook.
"This must be it..." She looked over another set of notes. When she skimmed through them, she caught details about the physical toll that Marcia took when visiting the other universe. Antares took a closer look and read through them:
"If the wait in silence were merely boring, this wouldn't be so bad. I'm still waiting to hear more and have the time to write this. It's helping me wait and stay focused. The arrival was a success on the first try, but manifesting a physical form and maintaining it are exhausting! This terrible exhaustion. I feel it in my strings of code, in my core to enter sleep mode longer than usual. I feel like I'm going to fall apart if I can't correctly dematerialize my physical form. What would happen then? I have no time to ponder this, and need to keep my physical form as long as I'm here. We are to this other universe what ghost data is to us."
"Marcia, this is the toll this has been taking? This is terrible, but I don't have time to think about an existential issue now!" Antares thought, taking a step back. She materialized a chat window and prepared to message Regina.
However, she didn't immediately start typing. She thought for a few minutes what to say to carefully choose how much to explain:
"Regina, I need for you to check on Marcia. She crashed, but before then, she suddenly wasn't feeling well."
She sent the message and hoped that it'd be enough information. A few moments later, she received a reply:
"I'm on my way there."
Antares walked to the front windows of the meeting room and peeked through the blinds to see Regina approaching, and opened the door. Regina stepped in the room and closed the door behind her. She had a solemn expression and laid Marcia on the floor. A holographic screen materialized in front of Regina. She looked focused as she brought out her wand and waved it over Marcia. Information started to appear on the screen, and she invited Antares to take a look at it.
"What does this mean?" Antares asked.
"We'll need to wait until it's done but nothing looks unusual yet." Regina kept looking intently at the information on the screen as it was being updated in real time. "She doesn't have any injuries and wasn't infected by malware. That lines up. She hasn't fought any malware lately or been attacked." She explained then sighed. "Did she run out of energy while you were studying?"
"She did, but she recharged before we started."
"Alright." Regina sounded more concerned. "I found the problem. She ran out of energy again, but has a worse than usual level of exhaustion. It might take twice or three times longer than usual to recharge enough for her to wake up out of hibernation mode again. So, we know the problem, but we don't know the cause."
"Huh? This isn't the meeting room." Marcia thought. She naturally woke up, but in a daze and with only a little bit of energy; perhaps it was just enough to do a few tasks, or to run away from an enemy if she had been in a combat situation. The curtains were drawn and filtered the daylight, but it was still bright enough in the room to remind her it was morning.
"This took a lot longer than usual. Was she told about it?" She thought and started to worry. "I didn't mention this in my notes!"
She frantically materialized a chat window and started to message Antares, but saw an unread message from her. Marcia read the message first:
"I couldn't wake you up so I asked for Regina to run diagnostics. We took you to your room and I also put your notes back on your desk. You risked your life for this knowledge and now I'm worried sick about your ventures again. Please reply as soon as you can."
Marcia was happy to read this message, but was also concerned. She replied:
"Hello. I just woke up and might have just enough energy to send this. How did you get through the night? I tried to be thorough in the notes, but didn't mention it may have taken longer than usual to start up again. I didn't know that this'd happen to me when I went there. May there be a way for me to continue these ventures without this danger of destabilizing my form, and risking uninstallation or deletion. If there isn't, I'd rather keep taking the risks. It's morbid, but this knowledge is too great to pass up. How much does Regina know about what happened last night? I don't like the thought of keeping things from her, but you know how she can be."
While she waited for a reply, she glanced around her room. Some of her worries subsided. "There they are!" She thought when she looked at her desk. The notes she had in the meeting room were all there in a tidy stack.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. "Howdy! Peace, love, and biccies*, mate!" Two people said, one immediately after the other. (*"cookies")
"Alright- Come in, you two." Marcia said.
"Yep she's awake." One of them quietly said.
"I bet they did the trick." The other quietly said before opening the door.
"I can still hear you two." Marcia snarked. "In case you were trying not to be overheard by someone with sensitive hearing, like you know-- a cat person."
The door opened; Kiah and Ruby entered the room and approached Marcia.
Ruby carefully twirled in a circle while holding a plate in one hand. "We made these! Let the biccies speak for themselves through their wonderful taste and texture; chewy and sweet with the right amount of spice and meat!" She cheerfully said, and placed the plate on the nightstand by the bed.
"Thanks. They smell really good!" Marcia said. She sprung up, now seated in bed and reached for one of the cookies. "But I thought you were vegetarian." She said towards Ruby before taking the first bite.
"She is, but I tried one --or a couple of them-- to test the batch and it has my approval!" Kiah said with a hearty laugh.
"It has mine too, but--" Marcia said after finishing the first cookie. She looked directly at Ruby. "What led you to make these this morning? Did you know I ran out of energy again and it took hours to-" She asked but then stopped herself, and nervously started eating another cookie.
"I didn't say anything about that, but I knew." Ruby said and chuckled, looking directly at Marcia.
"Did anyone tell you?" Marcia asked, on edge.
"Oooh-- What's this?" Kiah asked eagerly. She approached more closely. "Did I miss something?"
"You know there's a fine line between being detectives and just being nosy." Marcia flatly said.
"Being nosy is sometimes part of a detective's job." Ruby said with a chuckle.
"Is there something going on that's a threat to your well-being, or the team?" Kiah asked, taking another step closer towards Marcia and sounding more serious.
"Lay it on us* (*"Tell us"), Marcia. What happened?" Ruby asked. "As nosy detectives, we need to ask these questions."
The seriousness from both of them, the cowgirl and the hippie, caught Marcia by surprise.
"I-- I studied in one of the meeting rooms last night when I ran out of energy again, though I recharged before I started. It was for a tough subject. It was fascinating, but took a lot out of me." Marcia said and sighed. She started to eat another cookie.
"Were you with someone?" Ruby asked.
"Yes, but why did you ask that?"
"I saw you being taken back to your room last night."
"You did?! How?" Marcia asked in shock and almost leapt up from her bed.
"Aww shoot! It's your turn to spill the beans!" Kiah said.
"I got back late from band practice, and when we were heading back to our rooms, I happened to be at the right place and time to see this." Ruby explained, but sounded nonchalant about it. "I only saw for a few seconds, but I think I saw Antares and Regina taking you back to your room. They had to carry you there. You weren't walking at all. Awww-- That must've been some hardcore studying as I don't see you as one to party!" She continued and laughed. "Oh-- oh... I was thinking about when I needed to help one of my mates back to our dorms in uni after a party after I told my mum that we were studying!"
Kiah joined in on the laughter, but Marcia was deadpan. "That's amusing, but it sounded unwise to lie about that." She said.
"It was!" Ruby said, sounding embarrassed but she still chuckled. Moments later, she looked concerned. "Did either of them witness you running out?"
"Are you expecting me to implicate someone?"
"Sheesh, I'm a detective, not a prosecutor, mate." Ruby said in a teasing tone.
Marcia sighed. "Alright. Antares and I were studying something that fascinated both of us when I suddenly ran out of energy. I feel like I ran out sooner than I should have. She called on Regina to run diagnostics. There's something I need to ask her, but I still haven't gotten a reply yet. She'd usually be up by now." Marcia said. Ruby looked worried, but Kiah looked alert and determined.
"Leave it to me! I'll check!" Kiah offered and immediately headed out of the room.
"Look out Sherlock and Watson, you have competition." Marcia said and chuckled.
