OOM: the one where the work begins
In the two months between Claudia's birthday and the anniversary of Joshua's accident, she has a lot more dreams about him than she usually does - than she has in years, really. And she starts reading his research books, trying to make sense of what Joshua was doing and what this Rheticus guy was up to.
It's dense reading, compared to the computer stuff she's used to doing, but it's fascinating in its own right. In a way, she can see why Joshua got so caught up in this, aside from the fact that it was a teleportation experiment.
"Do you think it'll work?" (She did ask him that a lot, especially as he got closer to what turned out to be the end point.)
"I don't know," Joshua says - and then the 'get me the hell out of here' look is in his eyes again, and Claudia knows this has departed from her memories. "I'd like to think Rheticus was on to something, even if he never quite figured it out."
(That dream helps, in a way, but it also really doesn't. She really doesn't want... whatever the hell's going on here to be getting her hopes up for no reason. If Joshua's really gone, he needs to just be gone.)
Even once she knows enough to say for sure that Joshua messed something up and probably did get himself stuck - and that takes most of the first two months - she can't see, right away, how she's supposed to do anything about it from here.
She does not want to be dreaming about the accident. At ALL. But she does notice something very key, being able to observe the event without being so caught up in the moment she can't think: the compass disappears along with Joshua. So wherever he is, it's there too. Interesting.
Claudia half expects the dreams to stop, after the anniversary of the accident; usually that's one of two she has a year, three if she has one at Christmas. And they do taper off a little, but she's still having them. She thinks she's getting closer to a breakthrough on this mess, but she can't see where it all ends yet.
And then the day after Christmas, another note in Joshua's handwriting falls out of one of the Rheticus books: go to the lab.
She doesn't try until after New Year's, partly because she has to find the key to the lab again and partly because she has to find a way around an electronic security system that wasn't there ten years ago. But she goes, and much to her surprise, all of Joshua's stuff is still there - liberally covered in dust, but there.
She keeps seeing a faint golden flicker out of the corner of her eye, but she can never get a full-on look at it. From what she can see, it reminds her a little of the light that was all over the place when Joshua... disappeared; it's enough that she can hope she wasn't just making all of this up, at least.
Claudia makes a conscious effort to slow down her research, over the next few months. For one thing, she's not going to help either of them if she dives into this headfirst and gets herself stuck in the exact same hole; for another, she needs to take more computers in to fix again, if she doesn't want to destroy the trust fund (and she doesn't). It's not at all about the fact that she's incredibly nervous about trying something like this.
Except, of course, that it totally is about that, which leads Claudia to actually change the course of one of her dreams before Joshua's panic face makes an appearance.
"What if I can't do this? What if I get stuck too, or you're not there to get out, or..."
Joshua hugs her, and she wishes like hell it was real. "Trust me, Claudia, I'm here. And I know you can pull this off. You're smart, you always have been. I'm not saying you'll nail it on the first try, but I didn't either."
Bit by bit, the pieces start to fall into place. She can see how this completely took over Joshua's life, really; it's just as well she didn't have much of one, or it'd be a disaster by now. Still, she wants to do this right, or else she probably would have tried something the second she found the lab.
Finally, by the second Christmas after Joshua's first note, she thinks she's ready to give this a shot. She goes to the lab, gets everything set, and... it's sort of like booting up a computer, she can't help thinking. Only on a way bigger scale, and... okay, it's pretty much not like that at all. But the analogy was worth a--
And then the room's all over gold light, and Claudia thinks she sees Joshua somewhere in there, but there's so much light that she can't tell. All she can think is that this isn't working, and she needs to kill the power before Joshua gets stuck in between the in-between and here.
When the lights fade, she doesn't have her brother back. What she does have is a nosebleed, and no idea where to go from here.