"You're in a situation where you could die, get ripped out of that second before it happens--you're alive and dead at the same time, like the damn cat." John replies. "We're all the cat, this is the box, and the radioactive crap..."

Jon keeps going, and it...makes sense. And it doesn't--it's so far out of John's frame of reference, his scope of understanding that he's barely clinging to it but it makes sense. The thing that could kill the cat, or not, preserving this place or destroying it. But no, that--that wouldn't be the element decaying. Maybe the Geiger counter?...

...but what if the Geiger counter is broken? What if the box has a hole in it? What if what if what if what if.

The crack. Something's broken--and when Jon grips his hand, John is gripping back and it doesn't hurt.

John forgets that anything hurts, just for a second, straining to make sense of the whole thing until Jon lets him go and he suddenly remembers.

Rolling his shoulders to try and shake off the sudden, sharp chill that sweeps in to fill that void where, for an instant, he felt connected, he rubs his arms briskly and refocuses on Jon.

"Whatever you do, I'm in." John assures him, gathering up the pieces of the tape recorder to bundle them up for Jon. Wrapping them hastily in a bandanna from his pocket, he hands them to the other man as he gathers his things.

"Could be clues to where it came from in the pieces--save 'em for scrap at bare minimum. The working tape deck breaks? You got parts."