"So far I've got 'they wave back if I wave' and I'm maybe going to try clapping prime numbers of times, I don't know how to get anything special presented to you at that level of communication, but I'm working on it. You could like, set up camp here or something, if it doesn't look like an obviously inappropriate place for that? - I guess I can just have a peek at how it looks -" What does it look like to them here.

It's a squareish room, about 5m each side, but kind of cramped with old boxes and the corpses of skeletons. The walls, floor, and ceiling are rotten wood, and it very much looks like some kind of storage room in an old ship. Probably Philippe concluded "pirate" from the fact that the skeletons are wearing rotted fantasy pirate clothes.

"Perhaps you could... if the walls are just slimes, maybe convince one to step away so you'd go through it? From our perspective."

"Well, it didn't seem thrilled about this idea the first time but I'll see what I can do, just, give me a bit? I am making first contact of sorts with an alien intelligence and it might take more than five minutes to get it camera ready." She dismisses the illusion. Can she get the slime to like, kind of... dance with her, in such a way that she gradually scoots toward the "wall", with the slime rotated out of the way?

It doesn't keep mimicking her, no. It seems to decide that she might just be messing with it or trying to get a reaction or something and switches to just doing something that kinda looks like it's tilting its head at her and waiting for her to do something that makes sense.

But if she does still go towards the wall at the same time it's a different slime that hops over there to be ready to block her way.

"Did it already know you could see it the first time? Maybe it'll change its mind now that you are actually communicating."

"Well, the one I was waving at is no longer super excited by the mime game and - 'actually communicating' is really generous - but now a second slime has decided to get in my way here?" She plants her hands on her hips. "Excuse me!" she tells it in a sharp authoritative voice. "You are in my way!"

It wobbles in place but does not immediately move out of the way. It's not currently wall-shaped, though.

"Please don't make the dungeon angry, I do not want to see what this dungeon is like when it is angry..."

"Great! I'd love to not make the dungeon angry! How about you lot give me an hour or so before insinuating that I'm making shit up and then I can stop worrying about making my party angry by being too timid!"

"—apologies, Dr. Swan. I am not angry. I am nervous. If what I see is real, then I am in a defensible location that I can fortify and where I can react to threats; if what you see is real, I am completely exposed."

"Well, you'd be equally exposed basically anywhere in this giant holodeck, and it seems to be calibrating to what you see."

"Granted, but... if we are in a 'holodeck' my instinct would be to get back up the ladder and leave and strategise again. Although I do not know how to strategise about this..."

The slime that was ready to become a wall if necessary creates a tiny limb of its own to wave at Elisabel cautiously.

Wave wave! Reaaaaach past pretty please?

It stretches up to block her, but not suuuuuper quickly, and it waves again with its still-outstretched limb while tilting itself again, in something that might be mimicking quizzical?

Wave wave! She's not going to try to get into a speed contest with this thing. She points past it. "I wanna go over there," she informs it.

It lowers the part of itself it had stretched up to turn into a flat wall. It's still directly in front of her, but...

Can she reeeeach over it?

Yeah, it'll allow that.

"Putain de merde."

"Ce'st incroyable, quoi..."

"Yay! Thank you!" she tells the slime.

"What has it done?"

"It didn't get completely out of the way but it shrank down to let me reach over."