You can be persuasive

"Come on, babe." You put your arms around Crystal. "Once we get going, I'll make sure you won't have time to think about anything but you and me."

She glares at you. "That's fine for me. But what about you?"

"Huh?"

"There are all these hot girls. You'll be doing me and thinking about them. That isn't sexy, you know."

You slide a hand inside her open lab coat and caress one of her breasts. "I'm pretty sure you'll be able to keep my focus exactly where it belongs."

"Maybe." Her nipple has turned hard as you finger it.

"You two just do the relax," Anna says. "Me and Mara set up lab."

"Lab?" You look around. Sure, California is famous for businesses started in garages... from H.P. to Apple. Still, the Tahoe garage/cabin seems about as unlikely a laboratory as anything you can imagine.

And the lab itself doesn't look lab-like.

The two girls place lighted candles around the bed and bowls of water on the floor. Anna hangs a magnetized needle on a thread she ties to the overhead light fixture while Mara logs into the 'Did you Feel it' website. They even put Charlotte to work fluffing pillows... which, again, doesn't seem lablike.

"Uh, I'm over here."

You realize that you've been concentrating on what's going on around you... and ignoring Crystal. Not a great idea.

"Sorry. I'm trying to figure out what all that stuff is about."

"Well, the needle is obvious. If we generate electromagnetic pulses, the needle will swing away from magnetic north. The bowls of water are clearly to identify any subtle earth tremors. If we spot them at the same time as the U.S. Geological Survey, that'll mean we've identified the origin point of the earth movement which means we're more likely to be the cause. As for the candles, maybe air movements."

"Partly," Anna says. "Also ionized gas flows."

"No Geiger counters?"

Mara shakes her head. "It's not like we had a lot of time to plan for this, you know. I ordered one from eBay last night but it'll take a while to arrive."

You'd been kidding about the Geiger counter but obviously that joke had fallen flat.

You look over at Crystal, who's relaxing on the bed and see what you were afraid of. She's pissed. Because you let yourself get distracted from her and went all geeky with the science stuff when you should have focussed on getting laid.

Well, with a lot of luck, you'll do your best to remedy that.