They came to a row of elevators and one of the doors opened for them. Nelson pushed Coop inside and hit the button for the sixth floor. The floors they passed were labeled ELDRITCH HORRORS, INTERDIMENSIONAL HORRORS, SUPERSCIENCE HORRORS, MISCELLANEOUS HORRORS, and PING-PONG TOURNAMENT. Coop braced himself for whatever kind of grotesque shit would be waiting on 6. The ride lasted just a few seconds. Despite the gun in his back, he braced himself to run.

The elevator pinged and the doors slid open. Coop could already feel the bullet in his back, but damned if he was going down without a fight.

What lay before him was the most boring scene he’d ever laid eyes on. Just a lot of men and women all in suits, sitting in cubicles, carrying papers and laptops around. Have I been kidnapped by accountants? If he lived, that was going to be hard to explain to Morty. “These people picked me up at gunpoint and forced me to memorize depreciation tables.”

They got on another elevator and Nelson stood in front of the number pad, so Coop couldn’t see where they were going. If these people really are a bunch of desk jockey weirdos, it isn’t going to be hard to escape. With the money I made from Babylon, I can probably get a fake passport and head for Mexico.

The doors opened again and they stepped out into an enormous room that looked like where NASA assembled orbiting death rays. Men and women in lab coats manhandled strange machines of all shapes and sizes. A bald scientist was being chased by a little ball-shaped robot covered in rotating blades. Another couple of Einsteins had a strange rifle. Every time they shot a target it changed. First into a typewriter. Then a pile of 78 records. Then a puzzled-looking lemur. A couple of heads in what looked like aquariums were having an earnest conversation with a guy holding up a blueprint so they could see it. Something that looked like a starfish in granny glasses took a clipboard from one of the scientists and walked through a wall. How about that, thought Coop. It was the only thing his overloaded brain could come up with right then. How about that. He kept walking, trying not to look too hard at the science circus, but keeping an eye out in case there was a good place to run.

It seemed a lot less likely up here than with the pencil pushers downstairs.

“Welcome to the DOPS, the Department of Peculiar Science,” said Bayliss.

“The what of what?” said Coop.

“The Department of Peculiar Science. I know it’s a strange name. I guess all those years ago when they came up with it, it was very cutting edge. But it does sound a little old-fashioned, doesn’t it?”

“Or psychotic—like all these people.”