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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Audrik" data-source="post: 7644151" data-attributes="member: 73653">Future/Perfect - Session 2dTheir next order of business was to speak with the old man at the gas station, Montgomery Greene. Clark was pretty sure he was the Monty from the interview tapes, and if so, maybe he had an idea about what happened to Potter. While Clark called the gas station to set up an interview, Dempsey stashed the dragonfly and the cube in a compartment in the back of the SUV. He placed Potter’s leaded gloves over the cube. It might not make much of a difference, but an ounce of prevention, and all that.The drive to the gas station was quick, but ever with the air conditioning on full blast, the SUV didn’t seem to cool off. It was like sitting in an oven with a dragon breathing in their faces.Montgomery Greene was old. He looked to be in his 90s, at least. Clark assured him they wouldn’t take much of his time. They just had a few questions.He was the Monty from Potter’s interview tapes, and Potter interviewed him because he developed an interest in the history of the Hughes Electrodynamics plant after poking around the ruins looking for scrap metal. Potter interviewed him because he was the only living person in town who knew the owner, Arthur Hughes. Hughes was a little creepy, and he was involved in revolutionary and groundbreaking science, but to Monty’s knowledge, no, he wasn’t performing “mad science.” No, Hughes wasn’t a harpy or weresnake skulking around Death Valley murdering people who got too close. He had died in the explosion that destroyed the plant back in ’52.Now, the old man had some questions for them. Were they serious? They were just covering all their bases. Were they high? No, sir. That was illegal without a prescription. Did they watch too much Scooby Doo? Well, Clark did, but that was beside the point.The agents thanked Mr. Greene for his time, and Clark bought a few Red Bulls on their way out to the SUV. Lorraine Minor’s house was nearby, so they headed over to speak with Emily Warren, Ms. Minor’s partner. That interview was even shorter than the one with Montgomery Greene.Ms. Warren was still grieving and understandably upset. There wasn’t anything she could tell them that they didn’t already know, and so the agents thanked her for her time and offered their condolences.They drove out to the ruins of the Electrodynamics plant. That seemed to be their only unturned stone. If this Hughes guy wasn’t a harpy or a weresnake, and if he really did die in the explosion more than sixty years ago, maybe he had been working on something which was responsible for the deaths. Sure, Monty had said Hughes wasn’t performing mad science, but they only had three theories, and one of them was bound to be right.The plant was destroyed, but maybe the Bathysphere could still be accessed. It was underground and supposedly structurally sound. If Hughes was a harpy or a weresnake, and he had somehow survived all these years, the Bathysphere would be the place to find him. If he had been a mad scientist, maybe he had Jurassic Parked a monster that Potter released. Harpy, weresnake, dinosaur … could be worse. Could be a razor tiger from Chicago. Clark tried to meditate on a perfect sphere just in case.The plant was little more than rubble, broken concrete slabs, and twisted metal struts. There were some old typewriters and filing cabinets mixed with the debris. It was easy to find where Potter had been working. It was a cleared spot about twenty or thirty feet in diameter covered in Bobcat tracks, footprints, Dr. Pepper cans, and candy bar wrappers. The Bobcat had broken the ground in a few places, and the dirt it revealed matched the dirt from the leaded gloves from Potter’s kitchen.It was the hottest part of the day, and the agents couldn’t find stairs or an elevator shaft which might lead underground, so they went back to sit in the SUV. Even an oven with a hyperventilating dragon was preferable to the midday sun in Death Valley.They decided to drive around the area and see if anything jumped out at them, literally or figuratively. It took only a few minutes for them to find what they were looking for. Not quite a mile northwest of the plant, the ground dropped at least twenty feet in a modest slope. At the bottom of the hill, the desert morphed into a garden of bright green speckled by tiny red fern-like flowers. A muddy stream ran along the base of the slope, and it was coming from a large culvert.</blockquote>

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