We weren’t even testing for that

[synchrosyntheses]

Among the information she has archived or cached, there are obscure theories about inter-universal interactions. Not how they might happen, much less how any intelligence might begin one, or target it meaningfully.

But they give some constraints on the properties of such connections, and their time evolution.

This highly speculative information is available to her, but even were she fast enough to access it, none of it would be particularly useful when a pinpoint of not here blinks into existence directly ahead and expands spherically to swallow her.

Comments

[peterxy]

There is quite a lot of space inside the walls, but the wires all point up, and the outer walls of the place are all rock.

[synchrosyntheses]

She goes through the formerly-not-a-door —

No, this place has had too many dead ends already. She sends the probe she built floating up into the empty space; up and up until she can find out whether the place where the wires go is somewhere she can also fit through.

[peterxy]

A... human-sized thing can go through, yes, if it manages to make its way around the tangle of thick cables that go up the cylindrical tunnel.

[synchrosyntheses]

— worth a try.

She repacks her gear into even smaller packages (some of it gets reparably or irreparably broken into more than one piece), moves the anchors she left on the chamber floor onto the solid rock of the outer space, and her body floats up and into the tunnel followed by a train of a hundred assorted human-sized packages.

[peterxy]

She'll be going up for a while.

[synchrosyntheses]

She wouldn’t call herself claustrophobic, but this sure is a lot of narrow passage through a lot of rock with no reference points but the anchors and wires far below.

Distractions.

What is this place? It’s deep in the rock for no obvious reason, every piece of it shows strange construction — unreinforced metal girders, computer designs not so much obsolete as were-never-current, unknown writing — and whoever built it built a machine that did something that all the physics information she has agrees is impossible — or at least, absurd to think that any human agency caused, much less with merely giant-room-sized machinery.

There are no reasonable answers.

[peterxy]

There indeed are not! Up up up up up...

Light at the end of the tunnel...

[synchrosyntheses]

Oh good.

She places a ring against the tunnel wall before it ends as a new anchor, and looks around the new space which is not at all a dead-silent abandoned underground cave, right?

[peterxy]

It is totally a dead-silent abandoned underground cave! The ceiling is about a hundred feet above her. There are a few rectangular metal structures propped up on steel columns and held by steel cables, high up, but the ground she's standing on is earth and mud, puddles of water here and there. There are fallen metal structures, disconnected cables, a few open-air elevators in cylindrical tubes, and the space is large enough that there's fog between her and the walls.

[synchrosyntheses]

By “standing on” we mean “hovering well above”, of course.

Understand this place, or leave this place?
Understand this place, or leave this place?

—A quick look. What might these rectangular metal structures contain?

[peterxy]

The internals of one of them is shaped somewhat oddly, with a couple of boxes strewn about, spring traps, one door on either side without any obvious way to access each from the other, buttons as large as the boxes, and a glass tube stained blue.

[synchrosyntheses]

Weird and useless. That label on the boxes might mean “DANGER — RADIOACTIVE” for all she knows, so she's not going to open them and it'd take too long to claim them.

Well, there might be some more things to be found. She sends out cameras to map out the space beyond the fog.

[peterxy]

It's pretty consistently and completely empty, and wastefully so, given that there are a few other similar rooms here and there which could have been ground level but are in fact hanging there. There are some other structures - proper buildings, really - attached to walls, probably leading farther into them. And all of them are, invariably, eaten by time.

[synchrosyntheses]

A quick look through some of the buildings. Any computers, libraries, filing cabinets? Other sources of information?

[peterxy]

Loads of computers and filing cabinets and books (if not libraries) and more weird rooms like the suspended ones and offices and cameras and a lot of destroyed things.

Not a single person.

[synchrosyntheses]

She investigates the computers; do they have identifiable separate data storage devices? Do they look in condition to be successfully turned on?

[peterxy]

Yes to both.

[synchrosyntheses]

Well then.

Taps on the storage channels, so she can start learning the architecture and copying the data.

Power switch, do your thing.

[peterxy]

...the power switch doesn't work.

[synchrosyntheses]

The obvious conclusion is that no power is being supplied to the computer and it has no internal energy storage. Does checking the voltage on the power cord validate her common sense in this nonsense place?

[peterxy]

No power is being supplied to the computer, and if it has internal energy storage that storage has run out perhaps a hundred years ago.

[synchrosyntheses]

If she knew the parameters of these systems or could translate their labels, which was the point of looking for information, she'd just supply the needed power.

As it is: There was power at the tunnel. There isn't here. Feel out the wires from the computer; where do they lead to a break in the presumed circuit?

[peterxy]

The wires from the computer lead aaaaaall the way across the cave from where she is to another one of those squat buildings, specifically to a single mechanical lever.

[synchrosyntheses]

She's seen this before. She's not inclined to reactivate who-knows-what else. She'll run her own separate circuit from before-the-switch over to the computer.

Switch: flip.

[peterxy]

The computer starts booting! That's a process that takes about five minutes.