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]

She reaches a somewhat smaller but still impressively huge cavern with an enormous metal hatch door on the ceiling - easily fifty feet wide. There are three pipes, large enough for a human to fit inside, labeled with blue, orange, and white stickers, with nothing going through them and winding around the cavern. The place's the least broken she's seen so far, but still pretty decayed.

[synchrosyntheses]

Any less-enormous doors available? (She won't be surprised if there aren't.)

[peterxy]

Nope, no less-enormous doors available.

[synchrosyntheses]

Opening this door the normal way has the risk that it might not care to close again, and she doesn't want to disturb too many things.

She studies the door — from the inside, claiming interesting-looking parts and working from there, for perhaps half an hour — until she has a sufficient understanding the mechanism. (Wow, that is a seriously overkill slab of — iron or steel, whatever, not her expertise.)

She puts down a serious set of anchors against the soundest-looking parts of this room's foundations, carefully nudges the motor circuits and hydraulic valves into allowing free movement, pushes up on the door to ensure she's got the weight of it, and turns the knob.

[peterxy]

It turns. Slowly, ponderously, the door heavy and armored enough to make any bank jealous.

Then it opens. In the dimly illuminated section, a metal catwalk, with a detachable end held by cables that can be lowered to connect to one of the catwalks down in the room she's coming from, leads to a fenced off area under a flat metal structure that is held above the cavern floor with heavy-duty metal springs.

And a flight of metal stairs into the structure.

[synchrosyntheses]

She goes through the enormous door as soon as it's sufficiently open to quickly get all of her through, then shuts it again and heads out over the fence.

[peterxy]

The ceiling seems to expand almost indefinitely in all directions, and it gets darker and darker as she advances away from the huge hatch door entrance (though never properly truly dark). If she advances enough, she'll find the structure is inserted into the cave walls.

[synchrosyntheses]

Was worth a try. How about that staircase?

[peterxy]

It leads to a closed door... that has a crash bar, quite like an exit door should have. Except it is apparently not an exit but rather an entrance.

[synchrosyntheses]

What exactly is the giant hatch is supposed to admit if there is no comparably-sized passage on this side? Well, never mind, the space below didn't make sense by that standard either.

She opens the door. More square-paneled rooms?

[peterxy]

No, actually! A short hallway that turns right and opens into a circular room whose walls are screens displaying variously informative drawings about safety during testing.

And a fairly high-tech elevator lowers to her level when she approaches it.

[synchrosyntheses]

Well. That's the first acknowledgement of her existence she's gotten, and the first non-defunct machinery, not counting the teleport thing.

Plus: It's not an alarm.

Minus: Even if the elevator weren't laughably small, she's not turning over even token control of her route to the crazy testing people's systems.

She examines this area carefully. Can she enter other parts of the structure at this level, perhaps by removing wall panels? Does the elevator shaft have a service access of some sort? Is there a discreet cargo elevator? If all else fails, she can just mess with the elevator, but that's more intrusive.

[peterxy]

The wall panels inside the cylindrical room are all screens and detaching them will probably cause them to stop displaying the stuff they're displaying; the panels in the room before are possibly easier to detach. No service access, no discreet cargo elevator, but there seems to be mostly empty space up from where she's standing, as wide as the room itself.

[synchrosyntheses]

She goes back to the plain wall panels and attempts to make an opening either by detaching or reshaping the panels. If the empty space can be accessed from “outside the room” this way, she'll take it.

[peterxy]

There's space! It's not empty. It's filled with active machinery, a veritable web of mechanical arms and panels and jigsaw structures. They're all still, with specific shapes to the rooms built by the armed panels, and there are much better maintained metal catwalks between the machines.

[synchrosyntheses]

That will do fine. She leaves the confined space for the cluttered space.

She could follow the elevator shaft (which is still the only presented route from the caves below) or she could pick another direction.

She examines a couple arms and any other sorts of machines nearby. Is it connected to the same network she found with maintenance traffic before? If so, is the connection wired or radio?

[peterxy]

Yep, same network, and the interface is slightly different but still wired.

[synchrosyntheses]

She follows the network wiring; as necessary, tapping in and following the branch with more traffic. Whether this finds a control system or merely the most active area, hopefully it will be informative.

[peterxy]

There's not a whole lot of it exposed, and it soon hides within either walls or mechanical arms.

[synchrosyntheses]

Elevator shaft it is. She breaks into the shaft above the screen-walled area and heads up.

[peterxy]

The screens give way to regular walls and then bits of machinery that would have been visible to anyone actually riding the glass-walled cylindrical elevator.

Once she reaches the next landing, a male voice starts sounding: "Hello, and welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center."

[synchrosyntheses]

Person, program, (upload,) recording —

“Hel-lo. I am disoryented and I am in nehd owf teshnical assistanshe.” she asks, her tongue stumbling, as she gets clear of the shaft. (The elevator room is pretty crowded now.)

There weren't exactly a lot of audio recordings to work with, or casual conversation in text. Hopefully that made enough sense if anyone was listening.

[peterxy]

The voice continues: "We are currently experiencing technical difficulties due to circumstances of potentially apocalyptic significance beyond our control." The screen-walls around her start displaying schematic cartoonish information on what to do in case of apocalypse.

[synchrosyntheses]

Evidently there isn't going to be a conversation.

She goes through the door. On guard. The announcement was friendly enough, but.

[peterxy]

She walks into a small, white room. Or, well, it probably used to be white a couple of centuries ago. Now it's what white becomes after two centuries. There are a couple of cracks on the ceiling, and nature has started reclaiming it.

The voice continues: "However, thanks to Emergency Testing Protocols, testing can continue. These pre-recorded messages will provide instructional and motivational support, so that science can still be done, even in the event of environmental, social, economic, or structural collapse. The portal will open and emergency testing will begin in three. Two. One."

And an oval section of the wall, about as tall as a tall human, glows orange and becomes a hole - a portal? - into another room.