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

[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.

[synchrosyntheses]

Those five minutes are not wasted; she's been watching it load from storage. Nice that it runs slow enough to be easy to analyze.

What might the booted computer be displaying?

[peterxy]

A picture of a woman wearing a lab coat above a white rectangular box with a blinking vertical bar, with a circle made of triangles on the background.

[synchrosyntheses]

Wow, these people sure did like computer graphics.

She presses each key on the keyboard and watches what effect it might have on the display and in the memory of the computer. Nothing, nothing, enter character, display some kind of message, nothing, remove message, enter character… This isn't likely an effective way to get the computer to do anything useful — but now she knows how text is encoded and stored.

She turns off the power, unplugs the storage device from the rest of the system, and starts copying and analyzing its contents. Lots of unknowns, but it should be possible to extract some text-only documents and start analyzing the language.

While her computer is busy with the data format and language grammar analyses, she starts looking through the file cabinets and books (and signage) for pictures that might help identify some nouns. Unfortunate that in a place like this there aren't likely going to be any children's books.

[peterxy]

The books there are all technical, for varying definitions of the word. From physics to engineering through philosophy, the few pictures present are diagrams, graphs, and formulae.

[synchrosyntheses]

Time for the “mathematics, the allegedly universal language” approach, then. Figure out what an equation looks like, find diagrams of physical systems, feed the captions into the analysis as candidates for “equal”, “sum”, “mass”, “force”, “tension”, “jine”, “metal”, “initially at rest”…

She checks on what sort of data she's extracted from the computer, based on her best translation so far (which isn't very good at all).

[peterxy]

Lots of data! Lots of presumably text data! Structured in a way that might just suggest reports, or experimental data collection, perhaps. Or maybe that'd be reading too much into the white coat and experimental setup around.

[synchrosyntheses]

The whole teleporting-and-kilometers-deep-rock thing does rather suggest experimental physics is part of the point of this facility, yes. She is unaware of the significance of white coats.

Does any of this text perhaps have mentions of (as far as she can yet tell) the layout of the facility or even mentions of what section this is?

[peterxy]

Not as far as she can yet tell, no. At least, not in simple, clear text format.

[synchrosyntheses]

She thinks it's time to end this branch of investigation. She uses her fragmentary understanding to copy the most possibly-interesting files from the storage, discards the most cryptic and repetitive, shuts down power to the equipment, and picks some plausibly helpful-to-bootstrapping-understanding books.

Then ascends one of the elevator shafts (after jamming the car at the bottom so it can't give any trouble if it were somehow activated).

Her journey is questionably improved by being able to read some of the signs.

[peterxy]

"Testing facility 4#3@0."

"Be careful of @$63$70$ 90!$0#!#6."

"DANGER: DO NOT TOUCH"

"Know your 94#400%32!"

Along with a variety of drawings.

The elevator shaft leads her into the stone ceiling and very quickly into-

-the insides of one of the weird rectangular rooms, apparently. Its layout is different than the ones from below, but shares the basic fact that there's no obvious way for someone who can't fly to get to the other door there.

It's also much darker in there than it was downstairs (even though there hadn't actually been a whole lot in the way of a detectable light source there...), the only light coming from the hole she just came out of and a few glowing bits visible through windows into the room.

[synchrosyntheses]

Well, this is inconveniently confined and dark.

Poke at cracks in the walls. Is there more empty space there? Are they backed by movable arms like the walls of the teleport chamber were?

[peterxy]

No movable arms, yes empty space, although it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world to see anything there.

[synchrosyntheses]

Compared to inside this chamber, it might as well be sunlight.

She pokes the door. Perhaps it will politely fall off its hinges.

[peterxy]

Nope. Pretty sturdy and reinforced - someone really didn't want people to leave this room.

[synchrosyntheses]

Yeesh. At least there are no skeletons in the corner.

She floats up onto the exit door's level, takes a look at how it moves, snakes some wires into the mechanism and feels out what's probably the motor, and applies locally generated power.

[peterxy]

It reluctantly opens, leading the way to a metal walkway above a dark (if less than the room she just left) precipice above an extensive body of (presumably) water and another elevator.

[synchrosyntheses]

The point of all this inconveniently arranged walking space continues to elude her.

She sets new anchors against the rock walls and explores the space for other possible routes than the bizarre one she's on now.

[peterxy]

The rooms are not rectangular there! They're spheres. Many spheres, connected to each other via these elevators, inside this huge, cavernous... cave. The bottom of the cave, from which her elevator shaft emerged, is stone and water (or potentially not water, the words DANGER and KEEP OUT keep repeating every now and then), and there are some other squat buildings there, connected to the whole rig.

[synchrosyntheses]

She searches the buildings for information (or, perhaps, means of communication).