Grizz returns to the hood alone, having
pointed the D&C out to Veronica, then left her on
her own. Good experience, meeting new folks alone. He
notices the note by Boatingirl which the Prof. has
posted. He gives it a quick read, then goes on down to
the DISCO. Once there, he settles in behind the counter
on a stool and takes a postcard from his pocket. It is
from a friend who is traveling in Australia. Shows Uluru
rock paintings. He reads the note, and turns the card
over to look more closely at the rock art. "Very
strange indeed!" he whispers to himself, tapping the
card on the counter. He debates whether to consult the
Prof. now, or to wait for more data from his friend. He
decides to wait a day or two more. Better to be sure
than to raise a stir over nothing.
Then, struck
by a sudden thought, he goes back up and reads the note
by Boatingirl again, very closely.
"If that's
really true about the age of the cavern...I
wonder..."
He wanders off back to the DISCO, lost
in
thought.
_______________________________ Prop.
D'ni Internal Supply Co. "If we don't have it, you
don't need it!"
Cordelia returns from her Relto, all
dressed up and ready to link across to the A&C
Hotel. She notices that Grizz is back in the DISCO and
wonders whether Veronica actually made it
there.
Maybe she'll go and find out for herself,
or maybe she'll have somewhere else to go this evening.
Only time will tell.
She walks across to the
linking room and places her hand on one of the books.
Slowly she
disappears........ Cordelia Personal
Assistant to Professor Thietris Squirrel, CEO,
President and Managing Director, Institution of
Advanced Exploration of Myst Worlds
Bizzy packs up his tools and heads off to his secret
room by the light garden. He has a lot of work to do and
he's falling behind. No sooner did the door close behind
him than he found himself Bizzy again.
After getting a bite to eat and some
sleep, Speedy, Grassie, and Dr. Warrell walked over to
Thietris' office. "Hrm... is it just me or does
Thietris have new doors?" asked Grassie. "I think
they are new. I wonder when he got them?" Speedy
asked. "Shouldn't we just check to see if the
professor is in at the moment?" asked Dr.
Warrell. "Can do," said Grassie as he went to the
door and knocked. "Come in," said a voice inside the
room. Speedy, Grassie, and Dr. Warrell entered the
office. Luckily, it was Thietris who was at the
desk. "Ahh! Great! You have results?" he
asked. "Indeed we do!" said Grassie. "We were
checking out the north sector when Grassie managed to
get into one of the old mansions," Speedy began to
explain. "And we found this podium in the basement
that had a dancing badger on it," continued
Grassie. "A dancing badger?" asked
Thietris. "Well, a holographic image in two
dimensions... well done for their civilization I must
say..." said Dr. Warrell. "Well anyways, this imager
gave us clues on searching the cupboards of this
basement," Speedy continued. "But we found one in
particular to be locked," said Dr. Warrell. "So after
a while of pondering,..." said Grassie. "Well,
arguing is more like it,..." Speedy muttered. "We
managed to open the cupboard by pressing a certain
button on that podium we found," finished
Grassie. "And what did you find?" asked
Thietris. "5 books," said Speedy. "Really? To
where?" asked Thietris. "We don't know... you need to
see the covers to understand our perplexion," Speedy
said as Dr. Warrell opened the bag and pulled out one of
the books. Thietris took it and looked at the
cover. "A badger?" Thietris was puzzled. "And the others
have a mushroom, snake, some sort of swirl design, and a
cactus," said Dr. Warrell. "Well, this IS interesting
results..." Thietris said as he studied the
book.
Studying gives you knowledge. Knowledge
is power. Power corrupts. I am learning how to be
corrupt.
When Coredelia linked back to the
Institution all dressed up, she found the note from
Boatingirl once again attached to Professor Thietris's
door. "We do really need a proper place where important
notes and papers by the researchers can be displayed and
easily accessable to all. Now let me see, what can we do
about this?" There are things in this universe faster
then light, for even before Cordelia had fully
formulated the question, she already had the
solution.
Coredelia once again removed
Boatingirl's note from the door and took it to her desk.
Without sitting down, or looking at the monitor, her
fingers deftly moved across the keyboard. Cordelia
inserted the report into the scanner and pressed the
return key.
Instantly, the note appeared on the Institution's
imager. "There", Coredelia thought with satisfaction,
"the ideal place to post the important notes and
reports. The imager is after all the first thing that
most individuals check when they link into the
Institution."
It was indeed the imager that RW
checked fist when he finally, after what seemed an
interminable delay, was free to return to the ExP1
Institute.
[This message was edited by rohnerw on
Wed April 14 2004 at 07:12 PM.]
RW read enough of Boatingirl's note on
the imager to realize he needed to return and read it
with greater care and quickly headed to the Professor's
office. When he reached Professor Thietris's office, RW
could hear excited voices inside. It sounded very
important from the bits and pieces that reached him. It
would though have been rude and uncharacteristic of him
to interrupt. After all, the initial analysis of the
samples he had taken, one in particular, were
inconclusive......so far. His meeting with the professor
would have to wait.
The delay though was
somewhat frustrating to him, and that frustration
flashed across RW's face. The not so vealed
dissapointment on his face at seeing Cordelia's desk
cleared of business for the day remained much longer.
He had been unavoidably delayed on the surface.
Delayed much, much longer then he had wished to be.
There was though nothing RW could have done about it. It
was simply the nature of his surface job, and with that
knowledge, he let the frustration ease. Whatever might
had happened, and the time for it, had passed. RW knew
he could not change that. There would perhaps though be
other oppurtunites.
RW slowly walked back to the
imager to read Boatingirl's note in greater detail.
Meanwhile, down in Coober Pedy, the
stranger finished up his research the next day and
retired to his hotel room once again. He pulled up one
special picture on his laptop and studied it for some
time. Then he switched to his email composer and wrote
for a time, called up and attached the picture to the
email, and pressed 'send.'
He slept
well.
The next morning, he packed up everything
and headed to the small airport to catch a shuttle to
Sydney. He was going home the fast and easy
way.
_______________________________ Prop.
D'ni Internal Supply Co. "If we don't have it, you
don't need it!"
"So what would you like us to do with
these books?" asked Grassie. "Well, we are going to
have to explore them at some point in the nearby future,
but I am not that confident right now if I want these to
be on public display. Did you find anything else in that
room you were in, such as journals?" asked
Thietris. "Not that we could see," replied Speedy,
"even though we only had one flashlight and Grassie's
night vision," "Hrm... I recommend that you return to
that basement with more lights and thoroughly check that
area... actually, check the whole house. Surely there is
more than one hiding spot," Thietris commented. "That
makes sense..." murmurred Grassie. "Ok, we can get
more lanterns at Grizz's place," Speedy said. "And I
think we should get more film and evidence bags. I want
to learn more about their technology," Dr. Warrell
said. "So, should we keep the books here?" asked
Speedy. "I think that this place is the best place
for right now. We don't have a vault yet for
not-yet-explored books," Thietris said. Dr. Warrell
gave Thietris the remainding 4 books in the pack, and
the squirrel put the books in his desk drawer. "Ok,
good luck, and bring back any thing else worth
reporting!" Thietris said as he waved those three
off. "Ok, now, off to Grizz's!" Speedy said as the
three explorers went to replenish their
supplies.
Studying gives you knowledge.
Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. I am learning how to
be corrupt.
RW studied Boatingirl's note at length,
reading it several times. "Very good observation's.",
thought RW, "Good observations and good questions." RW
hoped he would be able to discuss these and other
observations with her at greater length. It was however
late and other then those individuals in Professor
Thietris's office, he didn't think Boatingirl would be
around at this time, unless she was one of the
individuals in speaking with the Professor. In the mean
time, he would leave Boatingirl a note.
RW would
have prefered to use byte, but without a way to print,
that wasn't really feasable. He pulled a mead
composition notebook from the pack and began, in the
best hand he could manage, which wasn't much, to
write.....well, print anyway.
Dr.
Boatingirl,
It is with great interest that I read
your note to Professor Thietris concerning the apparant
anomoly regarding the stalactites having formed over the
much younger, and underlying masonary.
Note, I am
not an expert in the area of geology, however, during my
research in Atrus's library on MYST, I did discover some
material which may offer one possible explaination, at
least partially, concerning how this could
occur.
Atrus was at the time testing variations
to what he called the "Art" of writing linking books and
Ages. The age he was working on was essentially a large
rock island surrounded by water. It was Atrus's hope to
introduce a boat to this age. It was during that attempt
that something, not totally explained, went wrong. When
the boat materialized it was broken in two.
What
was unusual about the ends of the broken boat is that
the ends of the boat, where the break occurred, were
entirely wrapped in the stone of the age. It was as if
the rock, millenia in age, had literally formed around
the boat. This had the appearance very much like your
description of the stalactites of ancient age forming
over the underlying and recent masonary here.
Concerning the water. I do believe you may be on
to something. As you are aware, most caverns of
limestone composition are formed by the action of weak
carbonic acid which is present in all surface water. As
I understand it, this is true concerning the formation
of approximately 90% of all known limestone caverns. One
notable exception to this is Carlsbad Caverns in New
Mexico. Carlsbad Caverns rests alongside an ancient sea
bed. In 1970, evidence was discovered that the unique
reaction of H2S(hydrogen sulphide) seeping to the
surface from the many underground oil deposits in that
area, and recently discovered microbes in the
underground water combined to form sulfuric acid which
disolved the limestone of the cavern.
My recent
samples and their analysis indicates the lake is a weak
sulphuric acid solution. This solution is to weak to
cause harm to humans exposed to it for short durations,
although I would NOT recommend SWIMMING in it and
definately would recommend an IMMEDIATE shower
afterwards. I most certainly would warn, as the DRC did,
against drinking the water from the lake.
As
stated, the concentration is weak. The little algae
found in the lake has no doubt been able to adjust to
living in the elavated PH. The real question is how the
sulphuric acid concentration came to occur in the first
place? I think theri are essentially only two
possibilities, natural or artificial. As you no doubt
know, sulphuric acid is used in a wide variety of
manufacturing processes. I believe either the sulphuric
acid formed naturally through volcanism, or the D'NI in
fact are responsible.
Their are several
additional items that I would like to mention.
Indications are the temperature of the water is much
warmer then what might be expected naturally. Secondly,
the level of the water appears to be artificially high,
and third, utilizing the sonar on the sub by the pier,
the depth of the water is many times greater then the
distance from the surface of the water to the roof of
the cavern over the lake.
I would be most
interested in discussing these items with you further
and providing any aid or assistance to you in the
furtherance of your research.
Kind
Regards,
WR
RW tore the pages from the
notebook, placed them in an envelope and addressed it to
Professor Thietris and Dr Boatingirl c/o Cordelia, and
left the envelope on Cordelia's desk.
RW reached
down to his side, and linked to his Relto. Another very
long day awaited him
tomorrow.
Experimental Program
1
Supplier of umbrellas to the D'ni for
Centuries.
Bizzy packs up his tools and heads off to his secret
room by the light garden. He has a lot of work to do and
he's falling behind. No sooner did the door close behind
him than he found himself Bizzy again.
