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

[mstestsubject]

What the... Okay this deserves some more careful investigation. Where are the pieces going? Where are they coming from?

[unbitwise]

She'll have to follow them further to find out. She could turn left (back towards the main testing area) and follow the smashed emitters, right to see where the new ones come from, or try to follow the chute that the tinkly smashed bits are being dropped in. There's no convenient catwalk for that last option, though.

[mstestsubject]

Right it is.

[unbitwise]

Right, right. After some twists and turns and gratuitous rearrangements of how the emitters are being transported, she arrives at the emitter production line.

Here are lots of robot arms and conveyor belts and machines that do something-or-other to partially completed emitters. The least cryptic parts of the process are in the last two steps of the production line: first, shiny new panels arrive and are demounted from their supporting arms, have a hole lasered in their centers, and the emitter is mounted in the hole and joined to the arm. Then each one fires a High-Energy Pellet at a waiting catcher, presumably to test its proper operation.

There does seem to be something a bit off about the general behavior of the line, though. There are unnecessary movements — not just complications, but little back-and-forths. There are occasional missing inputs and everything has to wait. Despite all this, all of the produced emitters are passing the test.

The panels are arriving from the opposite of the direction she arrived from. She could try to follow them back, but there's no catwalk and she'd have to jump along a row of panels moving along a track — which, inconveniently, have their portalable faces facing down into the abyss. Alternatively, there are a couple of catwalks heading off to the left and the right. (How gridlike.) It's hard to tell over the noise of the emitter factory, but left seems to have more sounds of activity.

[mstestsubject]

Left!

[unbitwise]

The sound of — bullets! And childlike voices!

[mstestsubject]

Is this a cue for her to turn around and leave? Maybe. But she knows she can deal with turrets - their bullets hurt but it'd take a lot of them to kill her - and active turrets might mean there's someone else there. She goes after the sounds.

[unbitwise]

Following the sounds leads to another factory section.

Here's an access door with a Material Emancipation Grid behind it. The sound of turrets firing at intervals is clear now.

As are some more unusual sounds, and voices. “Did I hit it? I hit it, didn't I?” “Uhhh, no bullets. Sorry."

[mstestsubject]

...what.

Through the grid - if it was going to emancipate her ear canals it would've already - and exploring.

[unbitwise]

Behind bulletproof glass is a test range for turrets. They're brought in on carriers on rails and put in front of a dummy, which they shoot.


Well, some of them shoot. About half of the turrets are obviously defective: they're missing several components, their words and tone of voice are less innocent-child, and they fail to fire any bullets.

Those that do have bullets seem to have just enough to complete the test — they run out and fire on empty for a moment before they're moved onward.

[mstestsubject]

Run on empty...? That's peculiar. She's never seen a turret run out of bullets before. And, moved onward where?

[unbitwise]

The conveyor rails pass from underneath the corridor she's standing to the testing position and out through a hole in the opposite wall.

[mstestsubject]

Can she follow them somehow?

[unbitwise]

There's an observation-room passage that seems to go the direction the turrets are going, but the door from this room to that one is shut and doesn't have any handles, control panels, or motion sensors to open it with.

Near the ceiling, there is a panel missing from the glass, and so she could portal into the test range, if she wanted. Specifically, the part the turrets are shooting at.

[mstestsubject]

...is there a good reason to? Is there another convenient missing panel to the next room so she could portal there?

[unbitwise]

If she went into the test range, she could then portal to there, yes, as the observation room is also missing its glass. It'd require just the right timing to be hit by zero bullets while doing this.

The weight of the recently-acquired implements in her recently-acquired backpack suggests another option.

[mstestsubject]

Another option that'd take way too much time. She's good with the portal gun and timing, she'll use that.

[unbitwise]

Well, okay, if you insi—huh. There you go. No bullets even fired.

Ahead: a catwalk leading through a relatively tight passageway. And also several voices.

“Template.”
“Hello.”
“Response.”
“Hello.”

“Template.”
“Hello.”
“Response.”
“Hello.”

“Template.”
“Hello.”
“Response.”
“Yeah, how ya doin?”

“Template.”
“Hello.”
“Response.”
“Hello.”

“Template.”
“Hello.”
“Response.”
“Um.”

[mstestsubject]

Yep, she's pretty good.

Anyway, some of those voices are- very much turret voices. She goes to investigate that.

[unbitwise]

The walls open out and there's a good view of the turret conveyor line. (One of the things that makes it good is that they are facing away from the catwalk.)

Apparently this is another QA step for the turrets. There is a “template” turret in a control room, and some machines are scanning and comparing the construction and voice responses of each turret on the conveyor to the template.

The turrets that pass the test move on to parts as yet unknown. Those that fail the test grumble about it and are diverted onto an alternate conveyor which makes a right turn, crosses under the catwalk and into a hole in the wall. (The alternate conveyor looks slightly newer than the rest of the equipment here.)

[mstestsubject]

Can she follow the failures?

[unbitwise]

It's not a very big hole. If she's willing to snuggle a defective turret, she could ride one of the turret carriers in. Nothing indicates that this would be immediately fatal.

[mstestsubject]

...she'll leave a portal on this side and then do that.

[unbitwise]

“Pleased to meetcha.”

Past the hole is assorted plumbing and bottomless pit, and of course the turret conveyor, which makes a right turn up ahead; it continues to look like it was recently added and not part of the original design.

[mstestsubject]

She declines to communicate with the defective turret, and doesn't really react much to the bottomless pit. She's seen worse.