Examine the notes for new additions.
Nope, nothing. Probably was a bad idea to make the armless guy’s job to work with paper.
Examine the scratch-marks on the broken door.
Yup. Those are slashes, all right. Pretty deep ones too. You also notice that the locks in the top of the doorway also appear to still be protruding.
mix that recipe in the lab. We do have all the ingredients, right?
You take the note from the chem lab and underline stuff related to the couple of chemical recipes listed. You also lay out what you have so far: X-UNREF, M, and CAERN DEW. According to the Chem Map on the console, you also have a (dry) hose hooked up to the main input which is supposed to contain CHEMXFEED, and a beaker of FULGMIX in the 'catalyst' input. You ponder what to do with this information.
mobile laboratory in hopes of collecting more.
Extensive testing of the chemical extract proves that it does indeed meet the conditions of a Chemical X. However the small amounts in which we are capable of producing it are… laughable. Additionally, the amount of fulgurite and raw nutrient fluid we must burn up to produce the most insubstantial amount of pure Chemical X is excessive to the point of hyperbole. Our work here is not yet done. When we have refined a process with which we can manufacture our own Chemical X we can return; until then we will not stop.
Our experimentation has produced several interesting results. By inputting pure Chemical X into the intake and mixing it with caern dew, a volatile, highly unstable explosive gel is created. Another product of our testing we are calling the solvent, which has been able to purify the acidic ‘nutrient’ waste that until now we had been simply dumping; this has allowed us to extract more raw Chemical X for fortifying with the fulgurite mixture.
One mixture, which we are dubbing the ‘mutagen,’ has proven not to be an inoculant at all. In fact, it has nearly the opposite effect – it would be better described as an ‘oculant.’ Humourously ironic. Perhaps this is the solution we have been
use the thingy that makes the original door (the locked one from the start) to make it close then take that rod out of it.
You pull the locker lever that makes the first door go up and down, but can’t get to the other side while it’s down.
Get into UFO-thingie and watch the tape
You return to the spaceship and plug in the new cassette tape.
The screen flickers to life.
Les is setting up the piano from Patch’s hideout.
“—believe this actually came in handy? I mean, I mostly just brought it because I figured I’d get some good practice time out here.”
“As if. It took you half a year to even take out the thing.” A giggle.
“Not the point! Not the point!”
“Pres, I had to remind you we still had it in the first place!”
“Let it be officially noted on the record that it was the brilliant mind of one Preston A. Les that had the bright idea to bring his piano in order—”
“Well I’m going to make a note
above that saying that it was one Preston Les who responded ‘My what?’ when informed that the piano was still in the ship!” She tries unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“Betrayal at the hands of my own subordinate! The Les-Feringus expedition is undone!” They are both laughing now.
“Les-Feringus? I believe the official title was ‘Feringus-Les,’ you walking ego. And I had better not catch you calling me ‘subordinate’ again. I’m your
partner.”
A more subtle smile. “’Course ya are, Cla—”
“—eems the best place we’ve got. I mean, we haven’t found water elsewhere yet. It’s right near the base, but still going to get a lot of sun.”
“Anywhere we put this thing is going to get a lot of sun. Honestly, does it
ever get dark here? Hell, or
cold? I’m sweating like a leaky faucet here.”
“Come on, we spend most of the time in the caves. This is bearable.”
“Sure, but how… how is this planet not
cooked? It’s so close to the damn sun!”
“Right, yet it was still showing a chilled, possibly habitable reading from the scans outside orbit. So something’s keeping it cool despite its proximity, and that’s one of the tell-tale signs. It’s here, Les, it has to be.”
“I’m not arguing that! I’m roasting!”
“Here, I’ll get the bot to plant it already and we’ll head ba—”
Several robots with shovels are standing around the room you woke up in. Les’ voice is speaking.
“—on’t touch anything, you buncha bolts… all right—oh, hell, it’s already running—okay, this is, ah, a room we dug into. There’s… uh, some kind of weird idol with a big head with a line through it, or something, and it’s sitting on this giant slab of rock. There’s… okay, the wall on the far side of the room has drawings on it, or something like that, and there’s what looks like a lightning bolt, a drop of water… some kind of sun? And that head thing aga—oh, it’s an eye! A big singular eye with some kind of line through the pupil. All right. And… below each of the markings on the wall, except the eye, are three smaller circles—medallions?—with the respective marking on them too. I guess we’re going to take a look at the medallion things, and… uh, maybe move this slab? So that’s our next step. …End log, I guess.”
“—ium sounds dumb. ‘Feringium’ is way better. There’s number four, too, I’ll shut them down for the night.”
“‘Feringium’ is terrible! Lesium is an undeniable improvement.”
“But they’re not going to say ‘less-ium,’ they’ll say it ‘leese-ium,’ and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to correct people.”
“Hey, if that’s the price I have to pay to have the discovery of the millenium named after me, I think I can—”
An oculoid sits on the table, a few mouth-appendages cut off from its face. A needle is beside it. It appears to be a bit loopy; perhaps tranquilized.
“—
must be tied to the creatures, though. They only started appearing a little while around when we found that chamber. And you can’t say the eye and idol don’t look just like the creatures’.”
“But what about—what about the weather stuff, though? I mean, the weather’s unusually active on this planet, and the creatures seem to worship it, but they don’t have the intellectual capacity nor the physical ability as far as we can tell to craft something like it or the dolmen. And there’s not a chance the creatures exist in quantities high enough to generate the readings we took. I just don’t know what else we
can do.”
“So, what, so we should give up? Call it a day? I didn’t spend the last year of my life to slouch back with my tail between my legs. ‘We got really close, but then we came back’ – that’ll be the quote in the byline. And then a million other teams will come back here and keep searching and they’ll find it and some useless superfluous management schlub will get to name it and everyone will say ‘boy wasn’t it lucky that Ray Woodward happened to be there thank goodness for him and his Woodwardium and— No. I’m not okay with that.”
“But ultimately, wouldn’t that be a good thing in the long run? I mean, obviously not for our careers specifically, but to humanity as a whole—”
“That’s not good enough! We’ve worked too hard for this already.
I’ve worked too hard for this.”
“Claire…”
“
I am not going back with nothing.”
“
Doctor Feringus. Relax. We’ll keep going, all right? Let’s… let’s take another look at what we’ve observed so far.”
“…All right. All right. Okay. I’m okay. Let’s do that.”
There are some deep, defusing breaths.
“So…” Les begins. “First off is the strange temperature. I mean, it’s hot, but… not nearly as hot as it should be with the proximity to the sun.”
“And our readings showed the planet’s overall temperature to be much cooler on average than we’ve found anywhere here.”
“Right. So we know that somehow some unknown process keeps this planet cool. Second is the weather. Rain, thunderclouds, and lightning brew up out of nowhere. Furthermore, certain sound vibrations – combinations of specific notes in a row repeating endlessly – can trigger these weather reactions.”
“So there’s something in the air that reacts to the vibrations.”
“Not necessarily – the sudden, inclement weather could be caused by changes in temperature as well. But either is a possibility.”
“Wish we’d brought a meteorologist.”
“Want to go back and get one?” Les slyly comments.
Silence.
“Not in a joking mood, huh.”
Silence.
“Well… okay, third thing: the creatures. We can’t figure out where they came from, or who built all this runic stuff related to them.”
“Honestly, I think that’s all tangential.”
“We did find our first traces of Chemical X in one of these things, though.”
“They themselves are important. Their fancy ancient culture I couldn’t care less about.”
“We do have
an amount of the chemical, though. And we can increase that in time.”
“Over years, maybe. And even then we’d only have enough to power maybe ten ships. No, we need to find the real source. There’s got to be something we’re missing.”
“Well, we’ve outlined a possibly relationship between the temperature, the weather, and music vibrations. We’ve noticed a correlation between the creatures and the weather, and presumably music vibrations as well. So our next step is to identify a cor—”
“—ere, and when they try and take it, the ceiling will rumble a bit. So it’ll scare them off, and we’ll know more have been trying to get in.”
“The ceiling will rumble? Les, how did you hook this up? Do you really think it’s safe to shake a cave?”
“Relax, they’re instictive creatures. Animalistic. They’ll back off before anything happens, every time.”
“Seems a bit of a crude system. What if
we want to take it out?”
“It’s hooked up through the computer, so there’s no—”
“Whatever. I don’t really care how you entertain yourself in yo … are time, so … as you don’t…”
The audio is beginning to cut out. Looks like the last of the power is beginning to fade.
Several oculoids are… what…?
“….eat test … mber se…” you hear. Les’ voice.
There is a very long period of static, penetrated only occasionally by the oculoids’ cries.
The audio has now completely reverted to static. On the screen, Feringus drops some oculoids into the incinerator. She appears unhappy.
You are not sure exactly what is going on here.
Feringus stands between the three giant oculoids, holding a whip.
Chaos.
With that, the screen goes dead.
THAT TOOK A LONG TIME. AUGH. Even ignoring the three hours I spent dicking with my tablet/driver settings to get it to work properly again.
Anyhow, unlike the lad vid-flashback, this isn't the end of the round. We've got a few things left to do first.
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Topic: [ISG] Adventure Guy! - Epilogue (Read 517453 times)