"Surely you can understand, why we'd really prefer you stay mum about this place's existence," Dr. K said casually.  "Most of the students on campus who aren't med or dedicated psych students such as yourself know nothing about it."

I wasn't listening very closely.  Too interested was I in the huge six-sided room.  The walls shone in immaculate stainless steel glory on one side; on the other, LED screens glared with incomprehensible data.  The light seemed to come from all directions and bounced off of everything, giving the room a distinctly mirror-like feel.  People mingled busily about, tireless as worker bees, yet they were silent.  No excited chatter, no droning of status reports or whatever, nothing.  Seemed the computers were doing more talking than the people, what with the clicks and the taps and the beep-beeps coming from everywhere.

"What is this place?" I murmured.

"This," Dr. K said, "is where all the really magical stuff happens, so to speak."

"But this isn't even a science school.  It's a liberal arts college!"

"All the better a location to put an experimental base underneath, no?"

It was then I noticed a huge depression in the middle of the floor.  I drew as near as I could, to see the floor slope down around twenty feet in a cone shape, coming to a stop in the middle where stood what looked like some kind of cylindrical space pod from old sci-fi films. 

"What's that down there?" I whispered.

He beamed proudly.  "That's the little monster you'll very soon be making friends with," Dr. K said.  "We call her the TRDS-14K2.  For short, she's just-"

"Don't tell me," I interrupted.  "Tardis!"

Dr. K stared at me.  "What?"

"Tardis!  You know, like in that Doctor Who... show... um.  Never mind."

"Oh.  Well, actually, we just call her T-Rod for short.  I don't know why.  We just do."

I looked up, and was startled to see a kind of observatory booth, where a few intense, sharply dressed men and women sat enclosed all in glass like a rectangular fishbowl.  A couple of the faces I half-recognized from the news.

"Who are they?" I asked. 

"Those are some of our benefactors," Dr. K. answered.  "Good Lord, you are full of questions!"

Oh, right, sorry, I forgot I'm supposed to be a mute little lab rat, I grumbled to myself.  God, I wish I had been more on the ball and just signed up for those dumb studies- the normal, boring correlation ones, not an experiment, certainly not the kind you expect a superhero to walk out of.

"Here, we'd better get a move on, get you ready.  We're going to start this thing up in five minutes.  George doesn't like to wait."  He looked me over, and nodded.  "It will do.  It's a good thing you're wearing such nondescript clothes.  You could fit in anywhere.  No one will suspect."

I glanced down at my black turtleneck and jeans.  "Um, thanks-?"

Dr. K led me over to a table and had me open my backpack.  I thought maybe he would rummage through it, take some stuff out "to hold on to" perhaps, but instead he started stuffing things in, explaining each item as he went.

"Where you're going, there won't be any mobile signal, so your smart phone's IQ is going to drop a hundred points at least," he said.  "In order to communicate with us, use this."

He handed me an old Nokia phone.  It was a true relic, with a green monochromatic screen and the useless stubby antenna protruding from one side.  The thing had to be about twenty years old.  I stifled a smile.

Dr. K could read my thoughts as they showed on my face.  "Go on and laugh, you are going to love that thing later.  We've modified it so that for a certain amount of time -still not sure how long- we can reach you and we can keep each other up to date.

"And this," he went on, "is your official log.  Whatever you can't fit into the verbal time window, write down here.  You say you're a good note taker.  Let's see how good.  Everything you see, everything you do, everybody you talk to, goes in here.  This is very important.  Understand?"

I nodded, wondering what I would find at the end of this rainbow- and who it was wanted to know as well.  I looked back up at the fishbowl. 

"And for the last," Dr. K concluded, "your round-trip ticket." 

He held up his hand.  Between his fingers dangled a necklace, and from the end hung an oddly shaped pendant about the size of a quarter.  There was a button on one side, though a subtle one, so that the necklace didn't seem like the distant relative of a Life Alert.  Within the white wafer, a small LED light glowed a dull yellow.  He placed it round my neck and told me not to take it off under any circumstances.

"See that color there?" Dr. K said.  "That means it's inactive.  It'll stay that way until you go.  When it glows green, that means we're locked onto your signal and ready to bring you back in.  When the light is blue, we know where you are, and we can talk on the phone here, we just can't do anything about it. Red means you're out of range, and out of our sights."

"Green means go, blue means talk, red means I'm on my own.  Simple enough.  How long am I going to be- uh, out there?"  I still hadn't the faintest what was about to happen.

"Not long," Dr. K assured me.  "At least an hour.  At most, two.  In the notebook I gave you are specific instructions to follow once you're there.  If my calculations are correct, you won't have to go too far."

All the same, I whipped out my smart phone to send a message to my family in case they might worry.   But signal couldn't reach that far under the ground; the message failed every time I tried to send it.  I'd have to wait till it was all over, I supposed.

Suddenly a PA system screeched to life.  All activity in the room stopped.  Dr. C's voice (who had slipped up into the fishbowl- I suppose he was the emcee of the experiment) crackled over the speakers.  "All right, we might as well get started, this young woman's got to be home in Dallas before supper."

He waited as we politely chuckled before continuing, "Systems operational, team?"

"Operational and optimal, sir," someone called back.

"Perfect," Dr. C said.  "Let's open her up."

Someone tapped around on a touch screen.  It was quiet enough to hear their finger squishing against a panel.  My body tensed.  Dr. K patted my shoulder and smiled a You'll-do-great smile.  And T-Rod hissed below as its dome-top hinged open.

Whoever designed this unconventional beast had been thoughtful enough to provide a stairway.  When the machine was fully open, Dr. K gestured that it was time.  I can't begin to describe how nervous I was.  I couldn't move, my feet paralyzed with what-ifs and maybes as I stared back at that capsule into the unknown. 

"We are waiting, Miss Samuels," Dr. C cajoled from above.

Only one thing could get me moving.  So I did it.  It was ridiculous, but there was no other way.

I began whistling "Killer Queen."  The purposeful march tempo, the sashaying tune, that piercing voice in my head pulled me out of the swamp.  I closed my eyes, and let the music play.  I hoisted my backpack upon my shoulder.  Down I went.

By the time the song finished, I'd seated myself comfortably in the hard chair at the bottom.  I clenched my hands together in anticipation.  Dear God, please get me out of this one piece, I prayed.

Someone threw a switch or something like that; the walls of the cylinder began to close around me.  Everything seemed so far away, so high above the hole where I was trapped.  Dr. K.'s face peering down was the last thing I saw, as the gap up top grew smaller and smaller, till all that was left was a pinprick of fluorescent light, and then nothing but the screens and scales within the capsule itself.

"Capsule is secured," crackled a voice.  There was a speaker inside with me. 

"Okay, let's do it.  Fingers crossed, everybody," said someone else.

"You all right in there, Julia?" Dr. K called.  "Push the red button on the console in front of you if there's anything else you have to say."

My palsied hand did as it was told.  "I'm all right,"  I squeaked.  Which wasn't true.  I wanted to throw up. 

But they didn't need to know that.

"Thanks again, Dr. K," I whispered.  "I sure wasn't expecting this today."

From then on, I heard a barrage of foreboding announcements:

"Commencing coordinate installation."

"Location of touchdown locked."

"Chronological adjustments complete."

I shut my eyes.  The humming sound I had instinctively ignored grew louder.  It was about to happen.  And I had no idea where I was going, or who would be there to greet me, or if this was all just some elegant trick they were all pulling on me. 

Then, the final command:

"Dr. Christopher, execute."

I could almost see Igor throwing the switch.  I screamed a little in my throat.

And then all was quiet.

I opened my eyes.  The screens still glowed with their numbers and mumbo jumbo.  I looked at my necklace.  The light was yellow.

I reached for the button, my heart no longer in my mouth.  "Did it work?"

And then, the speakers erupted into disappointed chatter.

"She's still here."

"You mean it didn't work like it-"

"Now, now, be sensible, this is the first human we've test-"

"Maybe we should try again."

"No, no, we've terrorized her enough."  That was Dr. K, God bless him.  "Let her go home.  Come on.  We need to make a few adjustments."

Not everybody felt too keen about the idea, but as the minutes passed and I sat enthroned in the claustrophobia-inducing little T-Rod, he convinced the important people at least that they needed to regroup, work out one more bug they hadn't expected.

"Okay, Julia, we'll let you go," Dr. C announced unhappily.  "Lift the dome again."

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.  For no reason, I felt the need to pull out my smart phone again.  "I still get my twenty points, right?"

"Absolutely," Dr. K said.  

This had worn too hard on my nerves.  I had to stare at a familiar face.  I pulled up Google and typed the name of my obsession into the search box.

Suddenly all the screens around me went blank.  I jerked up, startled.  Then the one directly in front of my face took on the exact same look as my phone. 

I frowned, squinted, but it was no hallucination.  There was the Google search bar, there were the words "Freddie Mercury" within it.  One by one, the rest of the screens also relighted, but they said different things. 

Above and around, I heard concerned voices say something about the hatch being stuck, but I wasn't listening.  One screen said, "Location."  Another said, "Time." 

Cool, I thought to myself.  Screen mirroring.  Funny little Bluetooth connections.  NOW there's signal.  How weird. 

"Why isn't the computer responding?" someone outside exclaimed.

Time and location.  Those must be filters for the web results. 

So for location, just for fun, I typed in his home address.  Maybe there are pictures of him at home I haven't seen, unlikely though it is, I smiled.

"Something's happening to the coordinates!"  The bedlam rose.  "What's going on?"

Time?  Like, what?  The date of the picture?  Ooh.  Conundrum.  Too many good pictures of him, and yet there were plenty of disturbing images that would only upset me further.

I pressed the drop-down arrow for previous searches and saw the date February 3, 1971.  I did not remember ever searching for that date, but my brother had a way of hacking into my phone and searching for the craziest things.  Freddie was pretty in '71, but I had a better idea.

1977.  Yes.  His absolute prime.  Thirty years old and beautiful.  Before fame completely consumed his soul (I thought).  When he was still writing good songs.  No better time than that.

So, I typed into the box: "July 1, 1977."  The day I picked for no particular reason, maybe because 7-1 was on my mind.  Wonder what Freddie was up to that day, I thought.

"Something's happening!  Shut it down!" 

I pressed Enter.

Then the room flashed, like a million cameras going off in my face simultaneously.

And the capsule went black.