All right, then. Here’s update 9.3, I’ll say.
READ DEM NOTES!
You flip open the notepad. It appears to be a personal journal. It reads as follows:
Day 142
I have used up another notepad. Before we left, I had thought that three would be more than enough to compile my personal thoughts. I was sorely mistaken.
We have been here nearly half a… year, I will say. Still no progress of any sort. Our quarters are long-since completed and yet even with this pressing matter far behind us we have learned nothing. When we found the dolmen we had been excited to research it, but were unable to dent or scratch any of it to take a sample. Weather patterns have been… unique, but we did not come here to study the weather. I know it is here. We know it is here. In time we will find it. We must. I pray the extended isolation will not take us first. Les believes
(there are a few ripped out pages here)
unfortunate. But they are mere setbacks. We have invested too much time to be turned away now. It will be found.
Day 279
I had at first assumed I had made a mistake, but it has been a week since my last journal entry. I had thought it had been a day, perhaps two. Is it our isolation that causes time to feel as though time is flying past us, or our life underground? We spend time on the surface when we can, but that is so rare with the storms. The hut has fallen into disrepair as well. We no longer care to rebuild it.
As I sit here I try to think of what has happened in the last week and I realize that I have said little in that time. I cannot recall a single conversation with Les. There is little to say, I will suppose. Our work is all that we have left.
Les believes we will make progress within a month, if nothing unexpected happens concerning the mutagen. I am less confident, but unle—
The word trails off in a splotchy ink mark.
A creature was under the bed. I have shooed it out. I will make a note to begin designing new defense installations tomorrow. This cannot go on.
Until tomorrow, diary.
Day 407
At long last: progress.
(there are several blank pages here)
for safekeeping:
The bottom half of this page has been ripped out. The rest of the notepad is blank, until the last page.
We are undone.
Search the bed/mattress
search under the bed as well.
You throw the room apart. There is nothing but a dead oculoid tentacle in the damp water.
Get the labcoat on
Doesn’t really fit you—it’s rather small, actually.
Try to look clever by doing a poor impersonation of a scientist, using the notepad.
WELL WHAT DO WE HAVE HERE??
You don’t know exactly what scientists act like but you are having a lot of fun!
300 panels!
Check the labcoats pockets
You check dem pockits.
There is an ID card. It reads Dr. C. Feringus, P.H.D. There is also a photo.
“user: phdcf” is written on the back.
Check out the dock in the volcano, what the heck is it made out of?
You leave the labcoat behind before you go. It’s really restricting.
It appears to be made out of some kind of wood. Where it meets the magma, it is not melted or singed in the least.