An invitation to a party appears on various university billboards inviting people to the Kappa Alpha greek house located in the mostly finished Castle Commonwealth mall on the edge of town. The notice instructs people to follow the access road at 67 Lost Nation drive and enter through the back door and promises that signs will be posted to guide people to the party itself.
The entrance is done up to look like a drawbridge passing over a stream that feeds into a pond visible a ways off. Just inside the door there's a sign offering directions to the party, the directions lead to one sign and then another travelling through indoor and outdoor areas passing apartments and food courts and tennis courts. Finally their path leads them back into a shopping area and then through a maintenance corridor, into a brightly lit lobby with a single elevator door. Off to the side is are tables with drinks and slips of paper on them. Whether from their long walk or something else they all feel a bit thirsty.
Each slip of paper has a descriptive phrase, some of them might be recognizable as song names, along with a corresponding twenty character alpha-numeric code on it. They are color coded.
Red) Heartbreak World
White) Be Prepared
Blue) It’s Gonna Be Ok
Green) Children of the Sun
Black) Year 3000
Yellow) The Real World
"Nah, I don't really have a preference. Let's just grab one at random."
She grabs the black paper and puts the rest back on the table and heads towards the elevator. "I wonder if there's a sticky note on the floor number or something to show which floor we're supposed to be at."
The elevator ride lasts a long minute and the sensations don't quite feel like what you would expect, but eventually the elevator doors open out onto a lounge where there's a woman sitting and eating some food. She might look vaguely familiar to Anna from some of her premed classes. There's a large backpack next to her. "Hi there, this is so exciting isn't it?"
"Sure." Riley puts down her fork, picks up her backpack and starts walking. "The first thing to notice is that there are no fire sprinklers, or fire alarms on the walls. There are also no exit signs." She leads them to the back of the lounge where it opens into a kitchen. "There isn't much of note here, though there isn't a clearly visible fridge or freezer." There's a door at the back of the kitchen. "Any other questions before we keep going?"
Riley opens the door and leads them out into a large hexagonal room. There's a large skylight above them and a spiraling ramp going downwards in the middle of the room. The opposite wall has another doorway while the four other walls have hallways coming off of them. "The hallways have pretty normal bedrooms, the bathroom over there is a little weird though. Do you want to see either or should we just go downstairs?"
"Sure." Riley leads them over to the bathroom. On the left side of the room there are a half dozen Jacuzzi sized bath tubs, in the center of the room there's a translucent circular divider that goes from about knee height to a little over shoulder height. Six shower heads hang down from the ceiling above the area it surrounds there's an entrance at the back. To the right are a collection of stalls and sinks. The back wall has a bank of washers and dryers. "It isn't totally lacking in privacy but it isn't typical either." Riley explains.
"Well then." Riley walks to the room opposite where the ramp lets out. "Allow me to present what I call the clinic." She opens the door to reveal a compressed hospital ward of sorts. There are what look like high-tech hospital beds with displays over them along the left and right walls as they walk in. The back left corner seems to be a telesurgery unit with a variety of robot arms mounted above and around the tables. The back right corner is set up as a small neonatal unit. In the middle there's what looks to be a traditional exam table with a couple small robotic arms of its own directly in front of them as they walk in. Further back behind that is what looks like a dental chair with a small suite of dental tools mounted on the same sort of spindly arms. Missing is a complete lack of storage spaces.
"Sure. Onwards." Riley leads them next door. This room has a number of worktables with cabinets lining the right and left walls. The far wall has a counter with two sinks mounted in it. "So this one is probably the next weirdest but honestly it's kinda tame. There's board games and art supplies in the cabinets. More variety of both than I'd ever really expect to see but nothing more exciting than that."
"Works for me." The next room is the gym, the floor is a bit springy. There are mirrors along the side walls with railings to hold onto. There are yoga and gymnastics mats stacked in one corner and the other three have general purpose weight lifting machines in the other three corners and a rack of free weights and resistance bands along the back wall.
"Yeah, I suppose so." The next room is the theater / tv room. There's a big TV at the end of the room, The left wall is lined with shelves of DVDs. Most of the room is filled with gradually descending steps with some furniture oriented towards watching the TV, possibly while doing other things. "I feel like if I was designing this place I would have had two TVs and split the place but, who knows."
"Yeah pretty much. Next up is the Greenhouse." Riley leads them into the next room which has bright daylight bulbs mounted above plants growing in planters. At the end of the rows near the entrance are large sets of bins. "All the bins I've checked have fresh produce in them. Nothing overripe or expired."
"Yeah, it seems that way. Though I suppose whatever it is could have left just before we arrived never to return. Anyway, last room is the Library." Riley leads them through the last door. There are stacks to the left and right side. The back wall is a massive window. Between the stacks are work tables and groups of plush chairs. Along the wall they've walked in through there are six computers that don't seem to quite match any computers they've seen before. "I haven't looked at the computers, this was one of the first rooms I visited down here and I figured if I started looking at them I'd get sucked in."
"Yeah, I'm hoping for that, I'm also hoping for instructions on using the clinic. Onward then." Riley leads them down the ramp to the ground floor. There are bike racks and equipment bins but they're all empty. There are several doors to the outside and lots of windows. "Well, that suggests we can find bikes somewhere. I don't think I want to go outside just yet though."
The ramp to the basement goes on for twice as long as the ones between the other levels and and lets out into what looks like the lobby of an upscale building. One wall is largely missing and lets out onto the corridor of what looks like a mall. There are signs for stores over large open storefronts. The stores are pretty normal aside from the odd absence of check out lines or cash registers. The mall corridor curves away in both directions. "Well this definitely isn't the same mall we were walking through on the way to the elevator. That one was mostly unfinished and this one's fully stocked."
"Sounds good." When they arrive back at the library and tap on the keyboard of one of the computers the screen shows a logo with a stylized kappa and alpha with a set of labelled icons on the left side of the screen: Employment, Encyclopedia, Interfaces, and Settings.
The encyclopedia has a pretty long list of topics, from plant species to drugs to cleaning agents to stores. There is a search feature if they're looking for something specific.
The settings screen displays at the top that these settings are for some specific citizen, when Riley is the last person to touch the screen it says citizen 1, when Anna is it says citizen 15, when Linda is it says citizen 14. It offers a light and a dark theme. Optional speech recognition input modes, and some other minutia.
"Well that's weird, it can tell which of us is using it."
"We're probably going to need somebody to look after the greenhouse, if we're stuck here for a while, and I've got a feeling we might be, but I don't know if any of us are suited to that. Maybe somebody else will show up who has more experience with plants then a a couple of herbs in pots on the windowsill. We should go to the lobby at some point and see if anyone is wandering around up there."
"Yeah, I'm not sure how we'd get back."
The janitor position talks about how Janitors are responsible for maintaining the smooth operation of the facility, keeping routes clear and making decisions about facility maintenance. It also notes that Janitors have some control over door locks, home automation, teleporters, and various installation-specific controls for things like pools.
"One of us should probably be a janitor if it gives us any control over the teleporter."
When they get to the lounge there are two women and a man serving themselves food at the buffet. "Hi there, welcome to wherever this place is." Riley greets them.
"What do you mean by that?" asks the man. "This is Castle Commonwealth. It's weird that this place is more finished than usual but construction goes in weird orders sometimes."
The two women look up curiously.
"I'm Alex, and these are Claire and Emily, they dragged me here." He's smiling in a way that indicates that he doesn't begrudge them doing so. Then he frowns. "Are you just pulling my leg with the teleportation thing?"
"Nope, I have the video on my cell phone if you want to see it." Says Riley
"Sure..." Alex replies.
"This had better not be a prank," says Claire.
Riley just gets out her phone and cues up the video. Indeed it does show the invitation appearing in a bit of a light show.
"That could be edited, but I'll tentatively accept your evidence," says Alex.
"Well then," Claire agrees.
"Anyway we came up here to get snacks, so we should get snacks and then go back down to fiddle with the computers some more."
She starts collecting a couple of platefuls of snacks.
"There's an encyclopedia thing on the computers. And there are 'employment options'. The 'janitor' apparently gets privileges over doors, and teleporters among the more obvious things, so it seems more interesting than you'd think. I was looking at doing that. There's also a gardener job, presumably meant to take care of the greenhouse we found lower down, and a security job. I don't know if any of you would be good at either of those. There's a medical tech job, but Riley really wants that one."
"I hope so, if nothing else I'm pretty sure you can read over my shoulder and consult on how we use the equipment."
"I help tend my parent's garden sometimes when I'm visiting home." says Emily.
Claire and Alex exchange a look. "I don't think either of us is especially suited towards being a security guard," says Alex.
"Hopefully everyone who comes will be nice," says Riley.
"Do you have any idea how we can go back?" asks Claire.
"Maybe the Janitor control over the teleporters will do it, but I'm not betting on it. Failing that we kinda have to explore and hope something comes up." Riley smiles.
"And you didn't think to warn anyone about the mysterious party invitation?" Alex asks a bit skeptically.
"I didn't think anyone would believe me until I had more evidence and besides who knows what would have happened."
Alex chuckles. "My grandmother will get in a lot of people's hair trying to work out what happened."
Claire moans. "Clinton will be sooo worried."
Emily tilts her head to the side. "My parents might be worried, I have disappeared before though, they might be used to it by now."
Riley looks at the floor. "I'm not very close to my family."
"Yeah, computers, there's enough for all of us. If more people show up that won't keep being true though. I wonder if we can find more in the mall."
"Are you sure this place isn't castle commonwealth? A mix of retail and residential is a big part of how it was billed." Claire says, a slight hint of hope in her voice.
"Oh." Claire frowns.
"I think that might be stronger evidence for something weird happening than the teleporting flyer. Videos can be edited," says Alex.
"Ooh, is there a way to program the computers. I'm good at programming computers," says Emily.
Claire's eyes go wide. "Please don't break the computers Emily, they might be important."
"I think Claire was referring to breaking the computers on a software level, not a hardware one, and I think they're networked so maybe it is a concern," says Riley.
Claire nods.
"One time Claire, I only managed to rewrite my computer to display exclusively eldritch runes the one time."
"It was for my final project in a an AI class. I think I might have made a breakthrough but when I turned it on things got really weird." Emily blushes just a little.
"The government confiscated her laptop, I'm not sure what happened from there," Alex notes wryly. "I think that was one of three times they've classified things Emily has done."
"I'm not allowed to comment." Emily says.
"Well, if it turns out we're not going to be able to go home maybe you can share some of these fascinating stories." Riley is looking at Emily like Christmas came early.
The medical texts list dozens of drugs that neither Riley nor Anna will recognize, one of the stranger ones is labelled as a Teleportation Support Buffer, intended to protect against the side effects of interstellar teleportation.
Linda will find articles on the various types of teleporters. There are two types of code based teleporters, elevators and airlocks which are interoperable. There are also trapdoor elevators and there's a description of something called a broken ring carriage zone which apparently allows residents to navigate within a specific zone of connected teleporters but only leave under certain special conditions.
Alex meanwhile has located a physics textbook and is flipping pages rapidly.
"There's kind o a lot symbols here. There's ones for 'moderate danger' and 'lethal danger and the one way sign, and a few others that look particularly important. I'm going to draw out a chart."
She gets a pencil out of her purse and a notepad out of her tote bag and starts doing that.
"Lethal danger... we should definitely memorize that one," says Riley.
"I'm liking being stuck here less and less," says Claire. "Although, some of these books are really nice."
More Symbols include: Wild Animals, Deep Water, Advancement, Library, Museum, Residential, Security, Food, Servitor, Manufacturing, Live Wires and Hazardous Material
"I'm not sure it's that bad," says Riley. "The divider makes it kinda hard to peep as long as you're not literally showering at the same time, and plenty of gyms have showers like that. You squishy feelings people get so embarrassed about your bodies."
"Um, I second the desire for privacy dividers," Claire says blushing heavily.
"Of course, second opinions are always useful."
The first screen displayed again warns that using notes and other forms of cheating are strictly prohibited. Then it launches into a test with questions about cleaning agents, teleporters, types of stains, the various symbols used around the complex and a number of more obscure topics like how to care for a swimming pool.
Linda was paying attention when reading about cleaning and teleporters and such and has a reasonably good memory. Drawing out the important symbols helped with those. (The sheet itself is kept dutifully out of sight for the duration) She has never previously needed to know how to care for a swimming pool.
Well then at the end of the test it will pronounce her mostly competent and award her the position of Janitor (Section Black, Provisional) As part of her responsibilities as a Provisional Employee she is required to spend at least half an hour a day in training to close the gaps in her knowledge. The interface notes that she now has the ability to control the lighting and environmental systems, unlock doors, conduct diagnostics on the doors, and control elevator-type teleporters in areas under section black jurisdiction. It also notes that further abilities will be unlocked after further training is completed.
"Awesome," says Riley on completing her own test. "It says I have to spend half an hour a day in training, but I was planning to spend more than learning about the clinic anyways."
"I kinda want to go to the clinic and start fiddling with stuff there if you're interested Anna. But I'm open to working up a list of supplies instead. I poked around the clinic a bit before you showed up and there's no first-aid stuff there, that should definitely be on the list."
Emily looks up. "We need clothes. We should also get markers, there should be a sign in the lounge for newcomers."
Alex walks over staring at the textbook he's still holding. "Whoever built this place has a better understanding of physics than anyone I've heard of. Assuming this textbook isn't complete nonsense. I think I can mostly wrap my head around the equations but I have no idea what all the applications would be. I can definitely believe teleporters are one of them though."
"We're not on Earth anymore, are we?" asks Claire in a small voice.
"I um, Emily?" Claire looks at her friend.
"What? Oh." Emily gets up and gives her a hug.
"I'm on some medication. I um, I should talk with one of you if we'll be here for a while." She looks between Anna and Riley.
"It looks like there might be other treatments for a lot of Earth medical conditions, but we can probably get your existing medications if that makes you more comfortable. We can talk in private when you feel ready, I think if you only want one person to know it might have to be me."
Claire nods slowly. "I think I would want it to be in private, but maybe later."
"I think most people like pretzels. We can totally add pretzels to the list."
She tears a page out of her notepad and starts the list.
"We should get posterboard and tape to make a sign, that's a good idea Emily. And index cards to mark the bedroom doors. There's fruits and vegetables in bins in the greenhouse. I don't know what all is in the kitchen.. Speaking of food, Emily, were you going to try and apply for the gardener job?"
"We probably want bikes if we're going to visit some of the stores. The map says there are four hundred fifty kilometers of corridors if I'm reading it right," Emily says neutrally.
"Over four hundred kilometers," Alex's voice is tinged with disbelief.
"Okay, so definitely not Earth," Claire agrees.
"I wonder what secrets might be hidden in that much mall, and if that's just the mall how much must there be to explore outside?" Riley sounds excited.
"I'm usually picky, but um, I don't think having perfect clothes is our top priority," says Claire.
"People should be as picky as usual. Wearing uncomfortable clothes is an extra source of stress nobody needs," says Emily.
"I actually have a few changes of clothes with me." Riley pats her backpack.
"I'm not picky," says Alex.
"Sure."
Emily looks hesitant for a moment but nods.
The kitchen has the remains of the buffet along with a variety of snack foods and some simple breakfast foods like cereal ad yogurt, and some starches like bread and pasta. Most of the cabinets are empty or hold cooking implements and dishes. There is a freezer stocked with frozen fruit and vegetables, along with a refrigerator that has a selection of drinks but is otherwise empty.
"Interesting, I wonder why this is what's stocked," Alex wonders aloud, looking thoughtful. "Should we make a list now or just make selections based on what's in the stores?"
"There're several grocery stores on the route, and more restaurants than that. I picked Asian Grocer because its my favorite but I don't know what any of them have in stock for sure," says Emily.
"Yeah, I guess. If I got into a cab and they drove somewhere I didn't want to go... yeah, you're right."
And shortly thereafter they have arrived. The bike store has a variety of bikes, including both mountain bikes, street bikes, and hybrids. It also carries both women's and traditional bikes. Along, with the bikes there's a variety of bike-related accessories including bike trailers for cargo and for small children. There's a spiraling ramp leading up to a second floor, much like the one in the lobby. Nestled off in a back corner there's a rack with what look to be brochures.
"There was also the postnatal area in the clinic, and some of the games in the cupboards were pretty juvenile," Riley notes. "To be clear, I don't want to have kids."
Alex grimaces. "I'm not really pleased with the implications either."
Claire looks at her feet and frowns.
"It was in the encyclopedia, I checked while I was reading. I'm pretty sure I can install them for anyone who wants one."
Emily tilts her head to one side then the other. "I think that might be nice, just in case."
"No thanks," Claire says her voice carefully neutral.
The brochure is apparently a map of bike trails. One that suffers from a lack of labelled landmarks. The map shows the area of a not quite diamond with a much smaller hexagon near the middle of the top left edge. Given the number of paths being marked the area must be enormous.
A few minutes later they have several bike trailers hooked up and everyone has found a bike they like. "Where to next Emily?" asks Riley.
"There's a pharmacy about a kilometer from here. There's a few clothing stores along the way if one catches anyone's eye though."
Riley walks inside and glances around. "If there's a prescription drug section I think we need to look on the second level. I think everything else is here though. Want to come check with me Anna? If there are stronger drugs it might make sense to bring some antibiotics and such."
"I'm also on some medication do you mind if I come and see if it's stocked?" Claire asks.
"Of course not, anyone else?"
They reach the second floor and it does indeed appear to have prescription medications. Everything is stored in carefully labelled cabinets with metal doors. The doors seem to be magnetically sealed but come open with a firm tug.
"So," Claire says hesitantly. "I'm on hormone replacement therapy. If the two of you are going to be taking care of us I thought you should know."
"Alright, do you remember specifically which hormone cocktail you're on?"
Claire shyly names the drug.
Riley finds some drugs that treat common conditions and a couple antibiotics. "It looks like some of these cabinets are refrigerated for the drugs that need it. I don't think we need anything which needs refrigeration, but it's interesting that there's no visible difference between the two."
Claire pokes around until, "I found it, thank you. There's a year or so's supply here, hopefully we won't be stuck here that long."
"I think the clinic might be able to treat things that we couldn't on Earth. For stuff like birth control pills it'll do IUDs which are a substitute. Claire, it occurs to me that the clinic might be able to do better gender reassignment surgery than what's available on Earth, would you like me to look into that?"
Claire bites her lip. "I think so, obviously it depends on how much better."
Riley smiles and nods, "Of course, and neither of us will tell any of the others."
"Alright, where to next Emily?"
"The grocery store is the next closest. There's other food stores though and maybe it'd be better to stop there on the way back. If we're doing that the only specialty stores left are the pretzel shop and the one with the satellite phones. The pretzel shop is in a couple more kilometers but the satellite phone place is a full fifteen."
"And there's nowhere closer?" Alex asks.
"At least it's not one of the one-off shops. There are some of those and the furthest of those is something like a hundred forty kilometers."
There are conversations about various trivialities. It turns out that Alex, Claire and Emily are all working on their Master's degrees. Alex is studying physics, Claire library science, and Emily computer science.
Soon enough they arrive at the pretzel shop. Emily sets her bike down and rushes inside to get a pretzel. Here the cabinets seem heated and the pretzel is toasty warm as she pulls it out and starts eating. She pauses between bites to say "So good."
Claire and Alex both each take one. "Definitely," says Claire.
"I wonder how this works, is the mall self-refilling somehow or are these pretzels going to go bad if they're left here long enough. Or is something weirder going on," wonders Riley.
"I was reading that physics textbook. I wouldn't bet against something weirder going on," answers Alex between bites of soft chewy pretzel.
"I think I was starting to see the basis for the teleportation but around the edges, I think I also saw the tools to control time. Not in the sense of time travel but perhaps in controlling how fast time passes in an area."
Emily looks up. "How is that possible?"
"I'm not quite sure yet, and I'm a long way from understanding how the engineering works but there were the outlines of a unified field theory in that book."
"It's exciting isn't it," says Riley.
"It is," agrees Emily, "I'll miss my parents if we can't go home though."
"I'll miss my grandmother Jen," Alex agrees. "She's the one who raised me."
"Clinton, my little brother, and my parents," Claire says completing the pattern.
Riley sighs, "Don't be such a downer, I bet we'll find a way to get home and then we'll have all sorts of new tools for solving the world's problems."
So they mount their bikes and are once more on their way. After they've been biking for about twenty kilometers, they near a department store and Claire speaks up. "This seems like it might be a good place to stop for clothes and we've been biking for a while."
Riley shrugs. "If you want to stop I'm okay with it."
The clothing store itself is wide but shallow. There's an extensive selection with mirrors spaces regularly around the store. The one thing it's missing are any apparent changing rooms. "Maybe there are changing rooms on the upper level?" Claire muses aloud. "I'm going to go check."
"I know, it's so exciting." Riley smiles widely.
"I do wonder why we're being given all this advanced technology, and 27000 stores worth of merchandise," Alex wonders. "If this were a story there would be some sort of catch."
Claire shudders. "Don't say that. Let's hope there isn't one."
It takes another fifteen minutes or so but they arrive at the satellite phone store. "We're here," Emily sing songs.
"Finally," says Claire. "I am not looking forwards to the trip back."
Alex gets off his bike and walks inside. This is one of the small stores, only about ten meters across. There are neatly stacked boxes of phones laid out along one wall. The rest of the store has accessories: headsets, longer cables, cases, screen covers, stands external keyboards and other somewhat more outlandish things like drones. Curiously missing are any chargers.
Alex steps forwards and opens a box. The silver phone looks like a run of the mill smartphone, though it lacks the logo of any familiar brand. The only other thing in the box is a coiled cable with a hexagonal connector on each end. These match the port at the bottom of the phone. "The color seems to rule out solar power," Alex notes wryly. He pushes the power button and a stylized logo like the one on the library computers appears on the screen. It fades to show something that looks a bit like the OS on the library computers with apps for phone, texting, camera, and settings preinstalled. He tries the phone app first but an error message pops up on the screen. "No satellite connection. Please configure network," Alex reads aloud.
"Yeah, maybe." He taps on settings but after a minute of tapping around he gives up. "I hope so, it doesn't look like there's a way to configure this from here."
"If we're going back how many phones should we take?" asks Riley. "I think it makes sense to take at least a couple spares in case we lose one or more people show up considering how long a trip it is out here."
"Sounds good." Riley stacks up some boxes and deposits them in one of the trailers. "So, now we go back. Actually, maybe we should grab a couple of those drones. It might help with surface exploration. Cases too. I don't think there are repair shops around here so these phones need to last."
Alex nods. "Having the drones is probably wise. Same for the cases, you forgot about screen protectors though." Putting action to the words he picks up some of each and adds them to their collection.
There are lots of options to choose from. Food shops, Ice Cream Parlours, Hardware stores, Grocery stores other than the one Emily picked, hobbyist stores, places stocking knick-knacks, furniture stores, specialty clothing stores, electronics stores, and at least one camping store.
Claire nods, breathing heavily. "That, sounds fantastic."
The inside of the store is pretty normal, there's tents and sleeping bags featured prominently. There are freeze dried meals (just add water), camp furniture, and any number of trinkets intended to make your camping experience that much better, if you don't overstuff your bag with them.
On the more immediately useful side there are backpacks large and small.
Riley walks around and ends up picking up a flashlight an electric lantern and an extra water bottle. "Everyone should probably grab a water bottle they like, if we're going to keep exploring it'll be important to stay hydrated."
Emily picks up a water bottle as recommended but also some rope, a couple emergency blankets and a towel. "Can't go wrong when you have your towel," she jokes.
Claire supplements her bottle with a nice pair of binoculars.
Alex just picks up a nice multitool and a bottle.
"Like the clinic. I can't wait to get back. Speaking of which is everyone feeling rested enough or should we find another store nearby to poke around in?"
Claire takes a deep breath. "I think I'm alright, I wouldn't turn down another couple minutes of downtime though."
If this becomes a regular event they're going to be in very good shape. Finally, they arrive at the grocery store. Almost everything is in cabinets, freezers, or cases of one sort or another. Some are labelled while others have windows to show the food within. The only exceptions are the various paper plates and other non-food items.
She leads the way, as they approach the lounge they can hear voices.
"Now we're stuck because you thought this would be 'funny'!" a female voice says.
"How was I supposed to know this was some kind of freaky sci-fi thing?", a male voice replies.
"Guys, guys don't fight okay?", a second male voice cuts in.
"Yeah! That's really not helping the situation, guys." agrees a different female voice.
One of the girls, a blonde says, "Yes, rather. Coming here was all Dave and John's idea in the first place."
A dark haired boy says, "I'm John and this is Rose and Dave and Jade!"
Jade says, "I think this is kind of cool actually. What all else is in this place?"
Dave leans against a wall casually, "it was totally the best idea."
Rose raises an eyebrow at him.
"Well there's a mall with 27000 stores, and lots and lots of bike paths and some sort of super-science clinic and a room with lots of board games and art supplies and probably more stuff waiting to be discovered. I'm Emily."
"I'm Alex, Emily has introduced herself, these are Linda, Anna, Claire, and Riley."
"Hello."
"Hi."
"I should do that." He jogs out of the library and comes back a little later with a phone and a cable. He sits down in front of one of the computers and examines it until he finds a port to plug the cable into. He enters the interface section and is greeted by three options: application sync, phone configuration and diagnostics. He chooses phone configuration. The screen that appears next offers him the chance to select a custom phone number or generate a random valid number. He hits the button for random. It also has options for enabling or disabling mesh networking, data satellite connections, and localizer satellite connections. All three are initially off and he switches them all to on.
He turns on the phone and tries to dial his grandmother. There's a gentle bell like sound and then a voice says "No device is currently assigned this number please try again."
"Well, that's not a good sign."
The encyclopedia doesn't actually have very many security articles. There are specific articles on a handful of security systems from occupancy detectors, to user identifiers, to threat recognition profilers. Those articles explain what they do but not the mechanism. There are also references to mall store locks and six stores that carry them. The closest of those stores is a very long way away though. Even further away there's a store called Matrix security that sells security cameras of some sort.
"I'll be reading over there whenever you're ready to go."
"Alright," Alex goes over to find one of the physics textbooks and continue trying to understand it.
The gardening test has questions about dozens of specific plants including what climates they grow in and what their nutritional value is, how various soil conditions influence plant growth, how growing crops in greenhouses influences their growing season, the properties of fertilizers and various other miscellany.
The Security test asks questions about forensics, how various security systems work, close quarters combat, and the meaning of the various symbols for dangerous or unusual conditions around the complex.
Then they will both be judged moderately competent and given their roles provisionally with a request to spend at least two hours a day in training.
Jade can now access readouts on the past and expected crop yields from areas under her management and order different crops to be planted in the next cycle. She can also change the preferred ripeness stage for various plants and which parts of the plant are preserved or discarded.
His new abilities largely amount to the ability to lock and unlock doors as well as the ability to shut down a teleporter in his zone so it can't receive incoming passengers, and reactivate it at a later time. He can also check occupancy for buildings in his area from a console. If he does so he'll have a long list of buildings including manufacturing complexes, apartment complexes, warehouses, museums, libraries greenhouses and more. There are also references to six biospheres. The only occupied building is the 'Black Section Home Complex' which contains ten people including him.
"Interface begin physical for the citizen on exam table one."
An arm extends from the side of the table and overs over top of her it makes a first pass from head to toe then it does a second pass of her head and torso moving slower.
A smooth female voice begins to speak. "Citizen 9 is physically within expected norms, she is currently under the influence of hormonal contraceptives. Her heart rate is currently seventy beats per minute her blood pressure-"
"Interface discontinue verbal readout. The full details will be recorded in your medical file. You and I will both have access."
Riley looks away slightly and the link breaks. "It could be something else. That's why I want to look at the scans. I didn't see anything about brain implants in the database either. I feel like neural engineering to, I have no idea how you would do eye contact telepathy without implants. You can handwave all you want about the eyes being a direct conduit to the brain but that doesn't buy you a transmission method." She sighs. "The alternative though, is calling it magic outright."
"Well let me run my physical first just so we have two scans for comparison. Then we can go tell Claire Emily and Linda, I don't think the other five will be back yet." She lies down. "Interface begin physical exam, cancel verbal readout." The scanner runs up and down her body then there is a short beep and the scanner retracts.
And so Claire leads the way up to the bedrooms. The hallways are arranged so that there are four bedrooms that look out to the sides of the wing and two bedrooms that look off into the distance. The bedrooms that look out the sides still have ok views but two of them are facing the bedrooms in the same position on another wing. All the bedrooms themselves are quite similar, there's a decent sized wardrobe, a dresser, a desk with a chair, a queen-sized bed, and a single side table. "So it looks like the main distinguishing factor is the windows."
The wait a few minutes and Emily returns with ten nicely decorated name cards and suction cups. "The tape doesn't want to stick to the walls." She sets aside four of the cards. "I think we can pick at random and then trade." She shuffles the remaining six cards and deals them out. Going clockwise the rooms are assigned to Linda, Claire, Anna, Emily, Riley and Alex. The right side is the one facing another wing of rooms. "Ooh, I get my end room without trading."
"Well, a lot depends on whether we are stuck here for some time. If we can't get home quickly we might want to focus on what would be immediately useful, and I'd expect injuries to come up before serious illnesses. Unless somebody has health problems we don't know about. We should maybe get a scan of everyone, just in case."
"Yeah, I have to figure out what allowances the interface will put up with. The rule is that any physical interfaces, which means anything that needs to touch you, must have unobstructed access to and range of motion around the affected areas. I think we can find a way to make that compatible with modesty for most procedures."
By the time Riley has everything together everyone has arrived. "So, we have a lot to discuss. I don't know that we have any leads on getting home just yet so that seems to rely on exploring and hoping we stumble upon something relevant. There's also figuring out what else we might want to be stable here, which probably includes finding the makings of privacy barriers for the bathroom and the clinic. And then there's the weird discovery Anna and I made this afternoon. Apparently, at least her and I but probably the rest of you have a weird telepathy power that works based on eye contact."
"I want to try it!" says Jade.
"I don't want your sticky little fingers up in my tender brainbits." says Dave.
John makes a face, "Ewww, that's gross, Dave."
"I am intrigued." Rose says, "We can try it."
They stare into each others' eyes for a moment.
"Well. That is intriguing."
"That's freaky as hell." says Dave, "I mean, what the fuck."
"You didn't even try it!" says Jade.
"I stand by my commentary. What the fuck." says Dave.
"No, I've taken high-resolution brain scans of myself using the clinic and there's no sign of any modifications that would account for this. It's possible that whatever is causing it is just too subtle, or I don't have enough knowledge to recognize it but there's no quick and easy explanation."
"Yeah, it might be a fun side project but there's more urgent things to focus on. So, there's three broad categories of things to do. The first is trying to figure out how to get home, the second is trying to learn the advanced science and such this place can teach us, and the third is to set things up so we're comfortable in case we're stuck here for a while."
"As for practical matters, we need privacy dividers for the bathroom. And the clinic I suppose, but I think that's less urgent. We also only have nine working phones currently, so somebody will have to share one until we get around to getting another. It's a bit of a trip though. Anything else?"
Dave speaks up, "There's apparently some manufacturing buildings somewhere out there, and also warehouses. I don't know how easy it will be to get high tech manufactures running or how much metal and stuff is there to use though."
Jade says, "We should mount an expedition!"
"Maybe not in the scale of days though." says Rose.
"Agreed. Moving back to the privacy barriers thing. I don't think we're going to solve that tonight so that seems to leave three options, we don't take showers until we have the barriers set up, we just put up with being a bit more exposed than we'd prefer temporarily, or we schedule time slots to shower either alone or in groups of people comfortable with each other with nobody else allowed in the bathroom while they're doing that."
"You mentioned the library. It looks like half of the library is made of fiction books. So far I haven't seen anything in that section that looks like it has alien origins, but I haven't looked inside every book. You can tell which ones are alien because they're missing a copyright page. A bunch of the nonfiction is from Earth, it looks like it's mostly the science textbooks that have been replaced but again I haven't checked everything."
Dave says,"And I can lock them, if there's some place that's not safe for just anyone to be able to walk into anytime. I should also write down a list of useful buildings that are out there so we know what to look for."
Jade says, "I can tell the greenhouse to grow stuff, if there's something it's not growing that we'd like it to grow."
Dave says, "There's more greenhouses out there too if we want more plants than there's space for in the one in this building."
"I think that most everything addressed, the only thing that isn't is actually making the privacy barriers. Does anyone have ideas for how to do that? I'd say wood or something if we could find a hardware store except you know water. Maybe there's something in a furniture store. Also, how many barriers do we want set up and where?"
"The bathtubs are pretty easy, but I'm more curious about whether we'll run the area with the stalls and the sinks as gender neutral or if we need to do something elaborate with those. As for the showers, dividing them in half doesn't seem to cost anything. Dividing them further might be hard. I think it might be better to run it as two different shower areas with occupied signs than one area for men and one for women."
"Well either we go to a store that sells barriers pre-made or we make our own. If we're making our own I think there's a hardware store on the way to the end of the mall. There might also be a furniture store going that direction, but we definitely passed a couple on our way to the phone shop."
There isn't more information about the types of teleporters. It's noted that Janitors can activate Elevator-type teleporters and that Security Guards can deactivate teleporters in their area and query the codes for any they are physically present at. Anyone can ask for the code to be displayed by active teleporters which have one.
Janitors and security guards both get a list of active teleporters in their area. At the moment that's just zero. There are references to Director-level privileges, those references seem to be sprinkled in a bunch of places if she runs a search but nothing has any hint of how one might acquire these director-level privileges.
"If they were just curious about us and wanted to observe some people closely they could have like asked for volunteers or something. I'm sure plenty of people would have volunteered to come to a place like this and learn about alien technology in exchange for helping aliens learn about us."
" ... and joining us now is Dr. Whitaker, visiting professor of physics at Yale University. He will interpret the latest data for us. Thank you for joining us doctor."
Without waiting for a question the professor starts talking,"As you can see from the diagram here, The Intruder is just over four billion kilometers from the sun right now. To put that into perspective, that's sixty percent of the way to pluto. And as you can see from the diagram, it's coming in almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. Earth is actually closer to The Intruder right now than any of the outer planets." There was a large diagram of the solar system behind him, with a straight line shooting through the sun from the bottom up.
The professor continues. "The new data from NASA is giving us a much cleaner estimate of Intruder velocity compared to what we had this morning. The original estimates are confirmed. The Intruder is moving 7.7% to 7.8% of the speed of light relative to the sun. The best estimate for impact is still between 6 PM and 7 AM Eastern Standard Time tomorrow, but the new data has dropped that by about twenty minutes. Solar impact is now estimated at 6:10 AM, give or take a minute or two. That's the time impact will be observed on Earth. Actual impact will have occurred eight minutes previously."
"Is there any hope Professor?" the newswoman asks.
The man gives a beaming smile. "Yes! The new data is strongly suggesting The Intruder will miss the core areas of the sun. If this new orbit holds up, The Intruder will penetrate only the outer solar layers and not to the radiative layer and definitely not the core. It might not even touch the convective layer. We'll know more in a few hours. Best estimate now has it exiting the chromosphere twenty to thirty seconds after penetration. I think the Earth can survive that, and survive it very well."
Thankfully it's a short walk. Alex starts flipping channels until he find one with the information he's looking for. "Alright, I think I understand everything they're saying. If I had like a week or access to their data I might be able to check what they're saying against the improved physics this place has on offer. As is, I don't really see a way to. Maybe there's some sort of stellar mechanics exhibit that explains it all at a science museum or in some piece of software in the mall. Otherwise, I can tell you that if they're bullshitting it isn't obvious."
"The angle they're saying the neutron star is coming in at is more so. They're saying it's going to hit the sun coming almost perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. That's a good thirty degrees off the galactic plane which isn't entirely out of the question but it's still a little weird. The weirder part is that it's hitting the sun. The sun is pretty tiny in comparison to the solar system let alone the galaxy at large."
"There's very dense object called a neutron star on a collision course with the sun. Depending on precisely how the two collide there's a lot of uncertainty as to how bad this will be. The scientists on the news seem to think it won't cause the sort of radiation burst that could theoretically wipe out all life on Earth but well we're here so if it isn't a coincidence this is suggestive in a not so encouraging direction. On the least bad end the sun will just get a bunch of it's mass torn away and orbits will shift in small but hopefully not catastrophic ways."
Alex sighs, "There's a neutron star on a collision course with the sun. We're not sure exactly what's going to happen but it's probably not good. Maybe it's just pessimism on my part, but my guess is that those of us here will be the last of humanity as of 6 or so tomorrow morning."
The next lounge as expected has green accents, unlike the previous lounge though it's a mess some of the furniture is broken or stained and there's what looks like blood on the floor. A couple women are cleaning things up. One of them looks up when the elevator door opens. "Hello, did you come from Earth? If so, I have some bad news for you."
The Scandinavian girl grimaces. "We didn't quite realize something was up at first, the lounge seemed kinda normal and the food was good. People were drinking. Then someone wandered out and started exploring and pretty soon everyone was kinda accepting that something weird was going on."
The Japanese girl continues. "Some people who were a bit too drunk decided that we must be in a horror movie so they started grabbing knives from the kitchen. And then people were yelling about whose idea it was that got us to come here, and things got worse."
Anita nods and brushes her clothes off before leading the way to the door at the back of the kitchen. She leads the way down to the Library. There are a couple people milling around the shelves or sitting in the seats and one person is sitting at one of the computer consoles. "Hey guys, apparently the people who went to the black party figured out how the elevators work and they came to visit. I think we're going to meet in the library or it's the least messy place. I'm going to go try to find everyone else." She walks off towards the game room.
"That's the shorthand we've been using. In the hub of the mall, there are these six cryptic phrases that seem to make reference to something. The one for Red is 'In the quiet between the trees.' We think that means some sort of clearing in a forest or a grove of trees but we haven't found anything more specific yet. I'm kinda assuming you're from another section. Which color if so?"
Milan leads them down the ramp and pokes his head into the various doors saying variations on "We have guests from one of the other parties." A few minutes later about fifteen people are gathered together on the landing. "Well, we're all together a bit earlier than planned, but how about we each share our updates."
There's some general nodding and by unspoken agreement a woman speaks first. "Hi, I'm Karen. I've been investigating the computers. It looks like they have a mall directory on them, and so I got kinda distracted looking through that. There's some stores I really wouldn't expect, like there's a pet store."
"It's pretty far away. It's near the end of the mall."
"We'll have to take that until the shopping group gets back then they have all our best bikers. Oh, I'm Cindy"
There's a brief silence before a Chinese man speaks. "I've been watching the news. There hasn't been any new information on the neutron star but people are reacting really badly. People are panicked and in some places that's led to riots. I'm the Middle East it looks like tensions might be escalating towards war. Everyone wants to control the holy sites."
"Not at all. Let me go grab what we've come up with." Lyra ducks into the craft room and comes back out with a sheaf of paper. "Here's the ideas we have." They vary from the very minimal, which just adds a divider around the back of the shower area and around the tubs to the complex, which separates out some of the sinks and stalls from the rest. There are various other options presented including the idea of splitting the shower area in half or into three.
Another man speaks up. "So, I've been cataloging the food that's growing in the greenhouse. And I got suspicious, absolutely every bit of food in the bins is fresh but when I compare that to what's planted the growth stages aren't all freshly harvested. So I stuck my phone in one of the bins and as it turns out time passes really slowly in the bins. At least a factor of sixty, maybe more."
"Alright, I think the main things we have to share are that you should read the list of symbols on the computer, especially the ones for dangerous stuff like one-way doors and lethal danger and that the computer will hire people for jobs that grant special abilities. I've also got a phone for you to keep so we can keep in touch."