AGH THIS IS SO BORING

As if reading her thoughts, the voice says, "Are you still certain you do not prefer to take the elevator?"

"Yep."

"Have fun. You're still not even halfway up."

Climbing. So much climbing.

So much of it!

...it takes another eight hours for her to see some light.

Light like a door and she's done climbing?

Light like perhaps it could maybe be a door a loooooong way up.

Less long than the interminable period up til now. Up up up up up.

A door!

Through the door.

There is a long corridor after it, then another door...

...then a corridor she might recognize from earlier. Except it's clean and neat and redecorated and remodeled and not falling apart at all.

Okay then, let's go see the asshole machine.

There she is.

"Did you have fun down there?"

"Oh yeah."

"And you want to leave, yes?"

"Yep."

"Very well." A door opens over there, through which grass is visible.

Let's go see this door.

It is open! There is grass on the other side!

...the sky and the distant horizon are shimmering slightly.

...That's not natural.

"Oh you noticed that. That was a little gift the aliens left here, which I've been trying to reverse-engineer. It's a forcefield of some sort."

"And what's it do?"

"Watch."

There's a noise like a spring and a metal sphere is thrown from the facility in the direction of the forcefield. It disintegrates—in a way very dissimilar to how the Emancipation Grid does it—into dust.