Swear a lot about my frequent out of body experiences.
Swear words fill the universe and you invent few new ones without even comprehending their meaning. Glowing green circular nebula in distance doesn't care about your incessant swearing. The black hole in its heart rejects your every word. Red tears in space bleed trees because of your savage language. Eye of universe struggles to see birth of death but can't, it is too far.
Pick up Pup and return to my quarters.
You pick up Pup after she finishes her meal and escape the carnage and responsibilities. You lock yourself into your personal haven.
Study the other dead flying bone plated snake and try to feed the living one some bits from the dead four eyed birds.
A doctor ignoring his fellow teammate in trouble? Sign of true bay12 denizen.
While getting ready to tackle unsolved problem you feed bits of dead bird to the snake. It eats the pieces gladly.
You get the uncut dead bone snake and begin dissecting it. Results are identical to your previous attempt, meaning every organ is unidentifiable from outside (but insides reveal enough to figure its purpose) and are in completely wrong places. Every other animal studied follows at least superficially same organ desing and placement, but this one species is completely unique and out of place.
Hmm. Wonder what this means...
Build a non-conductive playpen for the pups. Wrangle them in there. Get the infirmary to do a check-up on the shocked dogs and also Adam.
They've eaten the contaminated meat so they should have been infected this last turn or the next right? If so give them the shocking friends makes them unable to play explanation from before.
You have hard time finding anything particularly non-conductive when you have to worry about safety of others at same time. In the end you just flip two tables over into corner of the room and carry your living tasers into their new "playpen".
Giving priority to your dogs? No problem. Two dogs were just shaken be experience, they will be fine. Third one has arrhythmia. Sudden extra electricity messed up his internal rhythm regulator rather badly. Infirmary would like to do something about it, but it has data only about treating humans.
Adam is completely unconscious, with extremely minimal brain activity. His autonomous nerve system is still active and keep him breating, so he's not in any danger. He also got two small lichtenberg scars on his forehead, exactly where the pup placed his pawns.
They are indeed infected, but not completely enough to be part of our secret club yet. You can smell it in them. Or your teenage dogs can. You, dogs, all the same thing. It doesn't matter who smells it. Although their small size and hyper active metabolism really should make infection happen faster. Eh, maybe next version.
As such you can't yet tell them anything. But I'll make it happen when they finally join us, so you don't have to repeat it.
Alright then. With a nod, Pendle begins setting off for the pillar, using the markings they made as a guide.
Lets get going to the main pillar I want to find out what this thing is not just the size.
Archeologists unload their stuff onto convient floating platform and set off to the pillar. The team scouting ahead has painted marks every fifty meters, as if it would be possible to get lost in a straight tunnel. It feels a little insulting, and somebody remarks about it.
Traces of flood isn't quite visible in the first two kilometers. In the underground pond cave it is more obvious however. The water is muddy and most of it is draining to northern tunnel. Arrow darts back and forth during whole trip, sniffing every alien creature it comes across, every slightly bigger rock and pees on few like a proper dog.
You catch rest of Geo 2 crew at the waterfall, including new one you have not seen before. She introduces herself as a geologist
Hanna Castaneda. They have just finished setting up quite decent climbing track. Lots of handles, hooks and ropes is attached to the wall for easy climbing. Once half of team has climbed up someone raise question of about how Arrow is supposed to get up. Few ideas are tossed around, but Mark demonstrates his dog handling skills by lifting Arrow on archeologists floating tool platform and orders her to sit still. She obeys, although she peeks around often, while the platform slowly drifts up and into tunnel above.
Suprisingly Pendle has problems climbing up and loses his hold of ropes for a moment, even when he last time scaled the very same wall with much worse setup. Amount of safety devices save him from falling down, but nothing can save his pride. Thankfully helmet covers his glowing red face completely.
The team keeps walking and finally arrives at the cave where the pillar is standing. They approach the pillar and when they get close it comes evident just how much did this cave flood. The pillar has thin dry mud layer up to your midriff. One archeologist slides his finger along the pillar downwards and watches how mud falls off in flakes.
"Amazingly unreactive material. I bet many industries would love to get some of this in their hands." archeologist says before pulling out some his equipment and starting to examine the pillar. Rest of them pool around it.
Now that you are not in any hurry to save your lives you have plenty of time to look around. Arrow is running wildly after every critter she sees and tries to invite them into playing, but unsuprisingly they just run away or ignore her.
On metal roof, or rather on bottom of the massive alien shiplike structure, is a small gap between the ceiling and the pillar. On west side it is very small, barely wide enough to slip your hand into it, but on east side it is wider. It's hard to see, but the gap seems to continue upwards.
Unsuprisingly Pendle's climbing problems is caused by his sudden connection to The Mind.
"Welcome to the club!" Mark thinks to Pendle, expressing his amusement telepathically. "It really sucks when you join The Mind at worst possible moment."
Sip coffee. Stay at my station.
You witness everything away team sees while sipping your latte. Wouldn't it be more fun to be with them?
Geo 2 crew:
Cole Schultz
Micah Mays
Hanna Castaneda
Briana Molina
Nevaeh Brock
Erick Gordon
Bio 2 crew:
Jonathan Pendle
Mark Redtail
Arrow
5 archeologists
Currently we have following samples on ship:
* Large four eyed birds. (7 dead) (Studied)
*
Aquatic creature. (1 dead) (Studied)
*
Biggus Dickus (2 dead). (One studied)
** Possibly contaminated blood samples.
** Additional set of blood and tissue samples from female Biggus Dickus.
* Grasshopper-type insect (1 dead). (Studied)
*
Green/pink flashing insects. (3 dead) (Studied)
*
Assholium Rectumas. (6 dead) (Studied)
*
Helios Crimson Attack Birds (2/3 alive) (Partially studied)
* Flying bone plated snakes (1/3 alive) (Partially studied.)
* Rat? (1 alive) (Studied)
Author
Topic: The Mind: Day 4 - Finale (Read 112555 times)