The Goo Pool

Feb 3

Sibylen Exosite, Part II

Finished the episode? Hear the Star Master Log for behind-the-scenes narrative insights here.

The crew launches an exploration in the ancient alien exosite and discovers lost technologies that are equal parts cool as hell and also sort of gross.

Meet the Crew:

Jeff as Star Master (Game Master)
Brian as Captain Thorn
Stephanie as the warrior Haley
Doja as the wildcard pilot Robert
Scott as the transhuman hacker Felix

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Dark Star Adventure Cast where the stars are cold. The void is endless and dangers lurk in every shadow out here. Trust is a gamble and survival is never guaranteed On tonight's adventure cast.
Yeah, we all feel great, but now let's try to find some alien artifacts to sell.
I was gonna ask a simple question before I covered myself in Jello.
I do think you're gonna have to be bucket ass naked getting into this. This is gonna
be a
gross episode,
so sit back and enjoy. This is the Dark Star adventure cast.
Previously on the Dark Star Adventure cast, the crew touched down on the desert world, slan to refuel refresh and visit with Froggy's old friend from Waa, Dr. Vera Corbin, a Zeno [00:01:00] archeologist with a soon to be bankrupt company like our industries. But after discovering that Dr. Vos could activate the Alien Exo site and realizing that could be the answer to her bankruptcy problems, Dr.
Vera Corbin employed the crew of the GOAT to explore the exo site with her. We now joined the crew of the GOAT as they entered a powered alien exo site for the first time in human history.
Following the gentle downward slope of the corridor, you arrive in fairly short order. At a dead end, you've only traveled about 20 yards into this exo site. There are smooth walls on all sides of you. Save for a small object, adhered to the right hand wall. The object. Is a translucent jiggling mass of what appears to be jello in cake form.
Like someone who just plopped it out of a fruitcake pan and stuck it on the wall. It begins to glow with a [00:02:00] soft blue light at your approach.
Felix, what do you make of this alien bunt cake? Well, it, it looks like a button thorn, but I'm kind of hesitant to push a big glowing alien button. Uh, elara, what do you think?
Are you picking anything up from it? Uh.
Felix, I don't understand what this is at all.
Nothing venture, nothing gained. And we are here to gain. I thought you were gonna follow that up with, and I slam
the button.
Vera goes to touch the button and froggy grabs her wrist and he says, wait, wait, wait. Trust them, Vera, they're experts.
And he takes a, he takes a step back with her and he says, let them lose their hand to the jello mold.
I'll take out my portable computer and I see if I, I can pick anything. Up on like scanning it and like seeing if there's any kind of, you know, signals or anything. Anything of that. Pick it up.
Great idea.
So you scan for just all kinds of general signals that your tri-fold can pick up. And the only thing you really [00:03:00] pick up that you find kind of odd is heightened electrical interference, which you're under a bunch of sand and you're a half a mile away from the domed research station. So you really shouldn't be picking up anything from there.
Not picking up much the we're getting. Quite a bit of electrical interference, which is odd for where we are, but nothing really helpful.
So are we gonna push the button
one way to find out what a button does?
Oh, real quick. Um, vo if you get closer or further away from it, do you get any type of change in, in your feelings or personality?
Any signal?
Before she answers, Vera says, I have to ask what Vos was saying before, what Felix has been saying and now what Robert's saying, what. You mean feeling? This is just a drone. She's back on the ship.
Vera, do you wanna figure out what's in this alien vault?
Yes, of course.
Then don't ask us any questions about Dr.
Voss.
She takes a step towards you looking at Dr. Voss a [00:04:00] little more closely. Okay, fine. Then Hailey, push this button. Yeah, push it. Just push it. Okay. First, before you push it. I think it's funny that multiple times people have been like, well, the only way to find out how a button works is. To push it, push and then no one pushes it.
And it's like, well, someone's gonna push this button.
It's like one of those anime things where it's like, it's doing the cuts of like the two people coming at each other fighting. Mm-hmm. And it keeps cutting right before they hit each other.
Like, yeah. Two minutes of just them running at each other. Uh, so Hailey, you were ordered, ordered to press that button.
That's why I worded it that way. I'm not gonna push the button. Somebody's gotta, so if I name a person and say, push this button, I expect that the button gets pushed.
There's one thing I'm good at. Well. Not you Sometimes. Sometimes I'm not, but this time I will push the button because honestly, this is the way more exciting of a time than I ever thought we would be having on Cline.
So yeah, I push that button. [00:05:00]
If there's one thing I'm good at, it's doing whatever I want and I want to push this button
that is
Hailey.
Hailey blowing shit up, punching dudes in the faces, pushing buttons,
pushing a dude's button until he gets annoyed and then I punch him in the face. So you go to push the button with, you know, a couple fingers, and instead of pushing inwards like a button, would your fingers begin to just sink into the jello?
Ah, gross.
Ugh. You're probably wearing gloves. How, how does it feel is my hand is getting sucked into the, the, um, bunt cake of jello?
It feels exactly like sinking your hand into a bunt cake of jello
is, does my hand feel? Anything other than jello?
Cold. A little cold. It's a little cold in the bunt cake of jello.
Okay. Jello has been in
the fridge, so you're only up to like your fingertips right now.
All right. Is there any change in the jello itself?
The jello [00:06:00] remains inert.
Okay. Um, I put, I keep pushing forward with your hand. With my hand.
Okay. You push the remainder of your hand into the jello, and when you do that, it feels like something locks into place and each of your fingers, all four fingers and thumb are like cradled by an individual.
Invisible hammock. Huh? What is it?
It feels nice. Somehow
relaxing. Okay, great. You're having a manic here. Great. Can you open the door?
I can ask. Um. Is if I move my hand around, does anything happen?
You begin to move your hand around, like moving your fingers and like stress, like straining against these like invisible hammocks.
Mm-hmm.
And as you do that, the wall in front of you begins to respond. And it's like the wall in front of you is a jello mold itself. And as you like move your fingers, you create [00:07:00] rents in that jello wall. So you move your index finger and from the top left down to the middle, you create a rent in the wall.
And you can kind of see through it to the darkness beyond when you move your finger back up, the wall fills back in and it's extremely fluid. It's not like stone like clicking into place. It's like it's simply melting away and then rebuilding.
Yeah. Hailey, huh. Alright,
well great job Hailey. Let's get it all the
way
open so we can get in there.
Yep, yep. There was definitely nothing sexual about that.
It's jello,
we kinda sigh and I'll
dip our heads and shake them and. Yeah. Boss
and Vera both go Robert. Sorry ladies.
These are alien artifacts.
And then Froggy goes, Robert, he doesn't get it. It's okay.
Actually, Kaleigh is gonna tear her hand out of the thing.
What happens when she removes her hand?
You just remove your hand and the the tiny holes that you created in the wall all [00:08:00] stay.
Oh, perfect. Okay, great. Um, then I put my hand back in the jello and create an opening. Large enough. Us to get through.
So you scoop downward with your hand and create like a six foot tall doorway that's like oval shaped essentially.
Mm-hmm. Vera says, I don't know how you are all so calm about this. This is the second piece of alien technology that actually works. We've seen unlit, inert goo, for lack of a better word, we, we call them viscous molds attached to walls and ceilings and floors. And we've even seen whole pools of them before, and we've never known what they've done.
This is incredible
lady. We just shut down a portal to an alternate dimension. So like this is not that big of a deal to us.
I want to hear about that, but I can't. I can't hear it right now. I can't hear it. You're overloading
people, Felix. I know. That's what I do. I'm a hacker. I overload. This is. I will say I wasn't expecting the alien technology to be based on [00:09:00] gelatin.
I'm just gonna throw that out there. It's
a
gelatin based society. Yeah. They're probably made of goo. Well, yeah, but we don't make our doors outta bones,
don't we, Felix? Three bones. Three bones. I don't, I
I don't, I don't know what Robert does with his doors.
I'm, I'm literally struggling to keep it together in the back over here,
bones and go, you can't do it.
So just past. This door, you can see that there's a, a large round room. In that room. There's a sort of a large hole in the middle of the room. It probably takes up like 60, 70% of the room kind of poking your head in. You don't see any adornments on the walls, no other exits. It's just all bare kind of concrete, like a gritty concrete, which you now know is whatever this fluid is that covers the walls that can make doors appear and disappear.
Everything here is that same substance. I don't want it to sound like a loaded question, but do you move into the room? [00:10:00] Well, no. I don't know. I think that's a question that people like dms ask and then they're like, idiot, the trap goes off.
Ah, is, is the floor the same substance as the walls? So
much? Jello, it's so much Jello.
Is it also jello? Well, the, the Jello stuff
controlled the wall and created a door in it, Uhhuh. And the substance that you removed from the wall was seamless with the. Itself, you can't really tell a difference between the substance that the, that used to be here in front of this hole. And what the wall that you can't manipulate is, is made out of.
It's like a gritty concrete. It's semi porous. It kind of feels like, like coral, like it has that like rough Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes bulbous texture, tiny holes, and it's sometimes very, extremely like gritty. Okay.
Yep. Um, I definitely think we should move into the room. Uh, froggy. Don't you want to show, uh, how.
Much of an adventure. You become, uh, why don't you take the lead? [00:11:00] Oh,
okay. And he looks at Vera and he takes a step, and then she puts a hand on his shoulder and she says, froggy, they're the professional explorers. Let them lose their hand. And then the two kind of like, laugh. And he is like, I said that, I said that before.
And she's like, I know. I thought, glad I thought of it. Glad I thought of it. I thought it was really funny. I then I said it, oh, I missed you. And then they give each other a big hug. That's sweet. And then Voss says, Robert, I'm pretty sure that's why we have you
to, to push these two into the room first.
Absolutely.
Robert, actually, I'm sorry. To be fair, you're our pilot. We can't afford to lose you, Hailey. Yep. I think you should probably go first.
Really?
Absolutely. I think the honor is all yours.
Okay, Hailey. It's gonna be the one or two of us. Rock, paper, scissors,
rock, paper, scissors. Okay. So I'm gonna say rock, paper, scissors, and then you guys both yell out what you do.
Okay? Okay. Okay. Rock paper. Scissors. Shoot. Rock, rock, rock, [00:12:00] gack. Okay. And again. Rock paper. Scissors. Shoot. Rock. Oh, oh. Paper just beat rock. Wow. Dojo knows Stephanie really well. He
knew she was gonna do rock twice down.
The rock avalanche. It's the, the triple rock in a row is my go-to move.
It almost always works.
What's what? So wait, the loser has to go in or the winner gets to choose. Oh, loser goes in.
Yeah.
Okay. Uh, no actually winner. Sorry. Winner gets to choose. Um, and the wheel, uh, god damn. Uh, uh, uh, let's just say we had a bad experience that one time. I ain't letting Hailey go first. I'm I'll, I'll take the, I'll take the lead.
I got this, Robert. Don't worry. I have to earn my stripe somehow. Right?
First, neither of them wanted to go in and now they're both falling over each other to go in, Hey, now it's a contest. Bye. Take, take the lead girl.
I, uh, go into the room and, um, I look around just to see if anything [00:13:00] shifts or moves. I slowly like go into the space.
Okay. You edge into the room and everything seems to stay stable. You're in a round room. Mm-hmm. And there's a big round hole in the floor. And as you approach the hole looking around, everywhere you clock, all the exits in the room, there are no exits. Mm-hmm. There's just the one that you came through.
There's no adornments. The walls are all made of that coral like texture. And as you move towards the hole in the middle of the room, you see that it's not a hole, but a pool. A pool filled with goo. The same goo that you just stuck your fingers into. It could be a really gross episode.
This is so gross. Um,
yeah.
That's gonna be your intro line. Felix? Yes. This is gonna be a gross episode. Those are my favorite, dude. What? You like the, the, the lines at the beginning? Absolutely. Yeah. I love doing that. Um, alright, I'm gonna move in
two with Foss as I go in. I'm gonna be checking my data slab just to [00:14:00] see if the level of electrical interference is changing at all.
As we're kind of moving in further into the complex,
it increases as you move in and something else that your mathematically oriented mind notices. Is that this room isn't just like round, it's almost certainly a perfect circle as is the pool that's in the middle of the room.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep checking the electrical interference.
I'm not gonna like raise anything up to the team unless it begins to seem important, but I will kind of keep an eye on it.
If the interference is like a scale of one to a hundred, you were at like 30 before, which is odd, and when you step into this room, it jumps up to 60.
Oh damn. Okay. I will, I will say something then.
So as I move. In. Whoa. Whoa. All right. That electrical interference, I noticed before it is getting much higher. There is something that's, I think, outputting a lot of power down here. Maybe it has to
do with
how
the goo.
Works. I mean, yeah. I mean if, if that little bit of goo gave off that much [00:15:00] interference, then this, uh, big pile of goo I guess it could give off, give off this much interference.
Felix, when I move towards the pool, does it get, does it change and I, I take, I shuffle a little bit towards the pool, but it
does not change in any
way. No. It's just, it's just different in the room, Hailey. It doesn't seem to change based on what you're doing. Okay. If you want to get in, we can see if it changes when you get in.
Yeah, I just wanted to reconfirm, how big is the hole? The pool?
So the room itself is about, well, so from Haley's point of view, you're like, ah, it's like 20 ish yards. Felix, you're like, this is like 25 and a half yards. Mm-hmm. And this pool takes up about 17 yards in diameter. What?
Oh my God. So
it's like the room is all pool.
Yeah. It's like you're in, it's like you're in an indoor pool area. Yep. The pool takes up most of it, and then there's like this, like 10 feet around the, the whole edge.
Okay. All right. Robert would like to look over at, uh, valves to [00:16:00] see if she is in any way moving and if the proximity or increased electrical appearances impacting or in any.
She hasn't said anything, so you're actually unsure. False. How you doing in there?
Oh,
I feel, I feel
good. Like we should be scared good. Like Skynet good or like, I
don't, I don't quite know how you are supposed to feel, but I feel good. I feel it's like when I was. In a human body, I felt like I was meant to be in a human body.
And ever since I've been in this body, I haven't felt like I'm meant to be, be in this body. And now I feel like I'm meant to be in this body. I feel like I feel good, Robert. How, how are you? I'm,
I'm just so happy. You're feeling good? Yeah. We all
feel great. But now let's try to find some alien artifacts to sell.
Hailey, we know that goo manipulates things in the room. So is there any chance that if you start playing in the pool or something,
I start climbing in the pool? Well, hold on, hold on. [00:17:00] Um, I was gonna ask a simple question before I covered myself in Jello
goo. Yeah,
man.
You and Robert covered yourselves in slime and goo and oil, I tell you.
Yeah.
What's wrong with the, what's wrong with the warriors? It's those warriors.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a warriors. Thing
that was a Robert thing.
I'm super jealous.
Warriors. Warriors come out and go. Rolling the go. Uh, let me finish Felix's version of the description. Fine, Felix. When you get closer to the pool, you're always looking for like a.
Port to Jack into, you know, you're like, what is up with this area? What's like digital or electronic or something that is like gonna connect me to the network.
I'm never gonna beat these allegations. If you keep talking about being like that. Keep Jack that port. I was looking for a port to jack into.
Okay. So as you move closer to the goo pool, the goo pool that Hailey is frantically scrambling towards, all of a sudden, for some reason you notice that there is an indent. On the [00:18:00] right most side of the goo pool as you kinda like swing your like body that way, and your data pad follows suit, you notice that that is directly east for the magnetic poles on this planet.
On Slan, this small indent is exactly the same size as the virtual intelligence that is. Dr. Voss now currently inhabits.
As I noticed this, Hailey's probably just about to dive into the pool. I put on my arm. Whoa. Hey. Anyway, hold on a second.
What?
I think there's something else we can try here. O there's an indentation here.
Do you see that? I think I think your vessel would fit in it. Let me see it. I turned Dr. Voss to look, quote unquote at the, at the indent. There's
goo in the bottom of that indent.
What? Are you afraid to get a little dirty? No, there's a, there's a plate on the bottom of this orb,
and you take a look, Felix.
And there's actually like a smooth plate. That's like an inch in diameter at the bottom of the orb and looking in the indent, you can see this [00:19:00] goo is an in diameter as well. I
think that
this chassis is meant to fit into that indent.
I agree. What do you say, doc up to? Give it a try.
If I was not a Xeno linguist, I would probably say no.
However, I am who I am. If I get erased and I'm gone forever. It's been a fun ride, Felix.
Well, I'll be right here. Ready to snatch you back if you need me to.
What to
do this, Felix?
Alright, everybody watch out. I dunno what's gonna happen. I kneel down and I gently lower Dr. VA's chassis into the indentation releasing her when she touches down
the lights all over the orb go into a kaleidoscope of colors.
Every hue you can imagine is. Starts to rainbow and ripple across her surface. The blue lit goo that's in the pool begins to ripple in a few waves coarse back and forth. It sloshes over the edge a little bit, and then the fluid finds its way back into the pool, and then it goes Still, [00:20:00] the lights on Dr.
Voss chassis dim and go to a soft blue connected. Felix, this is a two person task.
Okay. What do you need me to do?
I find myself in a deep and unwavering digital ocean. The horizon is an unfathomably far, far distance away. The ocean is deep, deeper than any ocean on any planet that any human has ever encountered.
It's. Not just the notion, it's a network, a network of connections. It's the way that these beings connected to their own electronic network. Much like our exo net
ed.
As an organic being, you should be able to connect the same way that I'm connected now by simply submerging yourself in the pool, which I can now see as a advanced nano fluid.
You'll be able to breathe just fine, Felix.
Alright, so fully submerged then like all the way submerged. Just checking.
It seems to be the case that you're gonna want complete bodily [00:21:00] contact with this fluid. All right,
well, you heard the duck, everybody. I'm, I guess I'm going in
Vera steps forward and says, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Whoa. Felix, are you sure about this? Yeah, why not? Do you want me to go? I I'll go instead.
Mm.
Listen, it's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I have, mm, how can I say this? No faith in your skills as a technician. Wow. So I'm gonna get in there and work with Dr. Voss to understand this system.
Froggy puts a hand on her shoulder and he says they're the explorers.
Let his body dissolve in the goo and then they laugh and she says, okay, okay. Okay, Felix, you go first, but I'm going second. Okay. I've gotta try this.
Um, no, you're, you're not going second do you?
Do you wanna go second? Hailey calls second. This pool is big. Hailey, let's go in at the same time after. This is what we came here to find.[00:22:00]
Hot tub party.
Alright. How about you all? Just hang back. Just wait a second and let's just see what happens.
Totally agree. Felix. I will say from the description from the doctor, I do think you're gonna have to be bucket ass naked. Getting into this
it, no, she did not say anything about that. Robert, she
said full bodily contact.
No, she said fully submerged. She did not say it. Listen, if, if Ro went on my clothes off, she would've asked. Okay.
I don't think you have to take your clothes off, but I'm also not sure if whatever this species is, even wears clothes.
If it's a nano fluid, it can get under my clothes. It's fine.
Try it with your clothes on and if it doesn't work, you can strip down after.
Perfect.
If you're feeling modest, everyone can leave the room.
Sounds good. I tell you what I do want though, Hailey, I want you to tie that roper on my waist. So you're gonna yank me out if I go into some kind of a seizure or something?
Oh, great idea, Felix. Thank you. I start to tie the ropes around the rope around Felix so that he, [00:23:00] you know, can safely, hopefully go into the, the Goo, the goo pool.
And Felix, I know we don't get along the best, but please do not. If you not get stuck in there, I will pull you out. Just pull on the rope three times and Hailey,
I trust you. I know
you've got me. I just want to ask if Felix pulls on the rope twice, what are you gonna do?
Let it go.
You're like,
ah, that's, he's fine.
Yeah, that means he wants to be in the goof forever, forever.
One. Tug means I'm fine. Two tugs means, you know what, I'm gonna live here. Double fine. Yep. Yep. So you guys map out your one to 10 rope tugging methodology. Yep. Yep. We call it the 10
tug program.
No,
you don't. We can't with this episode. We can't.
It's not my fault. Okay, so you guys have your 10 tug. Wait, what'd you call it? The 10 tug?
It was three.
It's it's three. It's only three. Y'all are making it N Neither me nor Hailey, who are [00:24:00] the only ones involved with this. They're coming up. I'll yank on it three times and I'll assume if I go into some kind of seizure that will basically equate to it being yanked three times.
Okay, Bob, Brian, can you make that rewind noise again? Felix, you are about to enter the pool. Hailey has just tied a rope around you and wished you luck. You have come up with your three tug methodology of success. What would you like to do?
I will sit at the edge of the pool and put my feet in. It's cold, my shiver.
Um. And I will move into the pool, hold it onto the side still at first, seeing if I can touch a bottom of any kind.
You can't. But as you move into the pool, you find that you find it like a stasis, like you float in space.
It seems to be very buoyant. Alright, gonna go under now. And I instinctively hold my breath and duck under.
You felt kind [00:25:00] of like a prickling on your skin as you were moving about in the pool. And when you duck under that prickling feeling and the coldness that goes along with it rushes over your scalp when you are fully submerged for a few seconds of warmth, suffuses your body from your toes all the way up to the tip of your head.
You grow warmer and warmer until you feel quite comfortable. You feel. Like you're cradled in a womb, and then you find yourself opening your eyes in an infinite ocean. Your head is above the water and you look out and see the great green sky of an alien world. Even though it is full daylight, there are plenty of stars in the sky.
You don't see a sun anywhere. You're unsure exactly where this green glow is coming from. At first, at least within a few seconds, you realize that the entire ocean is covered with a green algae and it's. Lighting up the sky with its luminance. There is a figure below you. Below me. I look down towards this [00:26:00] figure.
It's hard to see through this, the skin of the ocean. How far down is the figure from me? Pretty deep. Like 10
yards. There's nothing else around me in any direction. You are completely alone. I hope I'm a good swimmer.
Um, I do have heavy robot legs. Hmm. Well, you find in this realm, you don't have robot legs.
Oh, damn. You find in this realm, you are an excellent swimmer. In fact, the mere thought of moving in a certain direction moves you that way. Crack a big smile.
But then I think is my body, my own. As I think about the way I feel and look more closely,
you look at your legs. They are your legs. You look at your arms, there's that weird mole.
There's the hair on your arms, you know and love. Okay, you're wearing a shirt, even. That you recognize from your youth. In fact, you seem to be the perfect recreation of how you picture yourself in your mind.
Mm. You used to this. Okay. Okay. Let's figure this out. All right, well, there's only one thing to do, I guess.
Let's go see what that is. [00:27:00] And with that I kind of kick off and dive down to investigate the shape beneath the water.
Once you are under the water, you realize that you can see everything perfectly. Clarity under water is not an issue. It's as though there is no water at all. You are floating in. Just air.
The figure below you is immediately visible and you begin to move towards it. It is a blonde woman in her late thirties wearing a lab coat, a practical pair of slacks and wire rimmed glasses. As you move down to her, she says, Felix, Felix, you made it. Are you okay? Dr. Voss? Is that you? Oh, Laura, she takes a look at her arms and she says, yeah, I suppose here you're exactly how you remember yourself.
I'm glad that the goo didn't dissolve your organic body. I,
I mean,
I don't
have any guarantee of
that right now, to be honest. I suppose that's true, but if you're still conscious here, I can only assume you're still alive there. One can hope. So [00:28:00] what? What do we do now? I don't know if you can feel the same thing.
I can feel, but just take a moment. You're larger than your body. The frame that you see in front of you, your arms and your legs, this is not who you are here. It's the space that you think you should occupy. You're the size and the shape you think you should be. But take a moment and close your eyes.
Imagine that you are part of this, this ocean, you're part of the data stream, because that's what this is. This is a digital ocean. Can. You feel the occurrence?
I close my eyes and I stretch out my senses, kind of letting myself float, like almost dissolve into the water as I feel the motion and everything flowing past me and through me and around me.
Roll a program wisdom, a sentence I would never thought I would say.
How wise are you at programming?
We're talking about intuitive programming. I got a seven. You feel yourself? Does. Off into [00:29:00] the digital ocean, and you feel the undercurrents begin to pull you this way in that you recognize glimmers of light in the distance.
Lighthouses, no beacons, hubs, terminals, nodes. This is a network map. You don't understand it. You can't traverse it. It's too foreign. It's too alien. But you can feel it. You can see it, even though you can't understand it. It's like looking at a fast force. From a distance and trying to pick out the individual trees, I,
I bask in the kind of awe of it for a time, and then I kind of come back to my body to where I was with Elara.
That's,
that's amazing. Or that's like nothing I've ever felt or seen before. I, I can
barely comprehend the scale of this. It's the same feeling I get when I connect to the exo net. You once told me that you wanted to move past the limitations of the human body. [00:30:00] Although I did not choose to do that. It's a blessing in many ways, and if you're able to do it as I have, this is what awaits you.
On the other side, it's like a dream.
That's the freedom and the the peace that I feel here. It's like nothing I've ever experienced or could have hoped to if only I could dive down and explore those lights, those nodes more closely. But I can't quite make sense
of that. I cannot either, even though this chassis was built to connect in this way.
This technology. I don't have the knowledge or the programming to do it, but something we can do here, perhaps an experience you'll never be able to have again, is we can transfer data instantly to each other. I will take some of my knowledge and I'll give it to you and it'll be as if you learned it and experienced it.
It'll be startling at first, but it is, in my experience, the height of what a rum like this can give you. I mean, you have so much to share,
so much knowledge you have about. [00:31:00] About the alien species, about single linguistics, and I hope that I equally have something to share with you. But, but are I have to ask, is that all this place is for us?
Is that all we'll have discovered here in this,
in this vault? I hope not. The piece I have talking to you is, but 1% of my processing power, everything else I have is scouring the digital ocean, attempting to make sense of it. It doesn't seem to be a full network, at least one that leaves this immediate area.
It's more like. A, a silo. Narrow but deep. But I could see the connections like channels or rivers dried up, walled off and damned, they likely led off world. This alien species, whoever they were, used this as their own exo net connecting all of their worlds. But it's dried up. So we are here in what is likely a small pond.
I'm hoping I can find something here of use to us.
Good. Well then anything you have to share with me, I'd love to. I [00:32:00] love to accept,
Felix. I know sharing with you a deep expertise, something like Xeno Linguistics. It would be like reading an article on it. You would learn what the article has to say, but you wouldn't necessarily learn it.
There's no substitution for education, but you already have a basis in mechanical engineering. So what I'd like to share with you are the experiments that we did on wfi. Thank you. Laura. You feel something on the edge of your brain, Felix? It's almost like. A knock on a door, and all you have to do is answer it.
I open my brain to Dr. Voss. The information isn't a rush. It doesn't flow into you. It doesn't slam into you. There is no force, there's no resistance. You open the door and you simply know. It says if you opened the door to another room in your own home, and now that that door is open, that room is accessible.
I feel, I feel so smart now.
All right. Thank [00:33:00] you, Laura. I mean that's, I feel like I, I could share subroutines and programs with you, but especially with your ability to connect, to be excellent at now. I, I don't feel I have anything to share with you that you don't already know.
Felix, it's okay. I mean, actually I found something a bit more exciting than that.
There is something here I think we can use. Excellent. This place, when I read the text on the door, I thought it may be a medical facility of some sort, and it is. It's a quarantine. It must have been
a
terrible disease.
They couldn't have solved it.
Yes, I don't see much more about it except that I see a record of many other facilities, the name Sibilant, that's not what they call this planet.
I don't have a way to put it into English, but I see the symbol. This other symbol here, this must be PolyPhen and this one Wolffia. All of the facilities of this sort. Were here on Slan. None on PolyPhen. None on Wolffia. Slan may have been a quarantine colony. But [00:34:00] besides that, I've, I've found something actionable.
A switch, a virtual intelligence is needed to activate it, but it can't do it alone. It's sort of like a main circuit breaker. This whole building, whatever you wanna call it, is running on emergency power to turn it back on. It takes a virtual intelligence and an organic being, whatever those beings were.
I've primed it for you. I am sharing the digital coordinates, if you can call 'em that with you now. See if you can. Reach out and flip the switch. Alright, I'll do what I can. Felix, go ahead and roll programming with a plus one because of Voss helping you
and what's my attribute I'm using for that? Again,
wisdom again?
Yes. Okay. Stretch out with your feelings. I got an eight on my role. So you reach out with your mind and you feel like a big, heavy, like lever, like a toggle that you can physically move with your mind. You're not sure if that's actually how it presents itself, but. But [00:35:00] due to the limitations of your own body and your own sensory perceptions, that's how your brain is interpreting it.
I strain mentally and push it up back outta the goo. Everyone that's not Felix, what you see. Is lights turn on in the room from some mysterious source. It's like the light simply emanates from the walls. A nice calming 3000 K light, just glowing dimly with a soft luminance from all of the walls. The door that you came through instantly melts shut, and at the same time, a door on the other side of the room melts open leading to a hallway that is now.
Also lid dimly, Felix down in the digital ocean, your consciousness returns back into your digital self After flicking this switch and you get the the feeling, no, you know for a fact that there's something else. Slow spy, that [00:36:00] is not just you and Dr. Voss.
Oh no. Now it's freaky.
He was watching the whole time.
You feel like there's something below you. I quickly looked down. You looked down just in time to see a. Rush by by large, at least three times larger than you. It's a tangle of sleek limbs, and then it dives down into the depths.
Oh my God. What was that?
What,
what did you see?
Some kind of creature. It's enormous.
Get out. Get out now. What? What about you? Take me out. All right. Alright, I'll do it quick. How do I, oh, I slow my breathing and I like visualize detaching from the digital ocean
roll programming wisdom. Eight. Nice. You force your consciousness out of the digital ocean.
You find yourself submerged in the goo. Once again, the rope tied around your waist. I
kind of swim up through the goo, make my way to the side, and pull myself up as close as I can and [00:37:00] grab Dr.
Vos. Outta the, the hole. Yeah. We all help Felix up out of the pool when we see him start moving. How long was he down there like real time or did it seem longer or shorter
to us?
So Felix, that's a great question, Felix, you felt like you were down there for about three hours. Okay. Out here waiting around the pool. Pool, it was closer to three minutes.
Okay.
So he definitely held his breath for an incredibly long time.
He didn't pull on the rope three times. So how many Yanks. Them tugs.
Excuse me. How many tugs in the three tug system did he utilize? Zero tugs? Utilize
zero. Yeah. That's how I knew he'd be fine.
Voss, as you pull her out of the socket, she says, something's down there. Something was coming from me. You pulled me out. Just a time Felix, something was coming.
There's another consciousness in there.
Virtual or not, I don't know, but. Hell grounded everybody. We're not alone in here.
Well, you you mean there's something in the pool and I like look in the pool to see if I can see some kind of monster.
No, the pool is [00:38:00] just, it's just a port to a, a larger digital network. Ah, you wouldn't understand. There's just, there's some kind of intelligence in there.
We just need to be careful. There might be something else controlling the systems in here.
Vera moves forward and says, fascinating, and she goes and puts her hand in the pool and kind of traces her finger around in the goo. Get outta there. What did I just say? She snatches her hand back. Well. I'm getting in that pool sooner or later, but I suppose it can wait.
Sounds like it's some kind of alien
security system.
It's probably more than that. Captain Thorn. Is it? It is Felix. Tell tell me, what was it like, what, what was the pool like? Not,
listen, I can't even describe it to you. You wouldn't understand. Let's just
go, I am a middling xeno archeologist in my field. I would understand.
I said let's just go and it's, it's very obvious to everybody else that feels as much crowds, cheerer. Then when he went in, I'm not happier to be back in a body. He's [00:39:00] grouchy than usual. I would do it better way. Leah just opened
up about stories to you guys having a great time. Froggy looks at Vera and just shakes his head.
No. And so she, she just kind of like shrugs. And, and fall silent and I, I just kind of heavily like limp and make my way towards the open door. Okay. Felix is now leading the way.
You all heard the man, do I have any goo on me or does it like smoothly come off when I get outta the pool?
It's, yeah, it's smoothly comes off.
It's just like Hailey experienced as you come out of the pool. The nano fluid just runs off of you, hits the ground, and then like a magnet just poof, flows right back into the pool.
Okay, cool. So it's not like Nickelodeon, gak all over me.
No, you're completely dry. Cool, cool, cool. So this hallway that you move up to, Felix, you, you walk up and you put your hand on the wall feeling the weight of your organic body on your mangled.
Robotic legs. It's almost like you have to catch your breath every step. Now down this hallway, you see [00:40:00] glass vats of some sort. You can't quite make them out in the dim light from where you are here.
I kinda lean on the wall and catch my breath, as you said. Everybody's gonna catch up to me. Looking ahead.
Well, what do y'all wanna do? Keep going. Go back.
Well, of course we're gonna keep going. What are you talking about? You have to
keep moving forward.
Froggy says, guys, I don't think we can go back. The door closed. It like melted. He's at the wall, like running his hands over where the door used to be, and he's like, unless you can get back in that goo and open this door, I don't think, I don't think we can go back guys.
I, and he sounds, he sounds scared. He's just, I don't think we can go back. I, I think we're in here now. Relax,
Rocky. We always knew this was part of the plan. This is what you brought the adventures for. Vera. Would you help Reggie
with his episode? Vera goes over and kind of pats his back. She's like, it's okay.
Froggy. That's what they call you, right? Froggy. It's okay. Voice of the waist. Yeah. You're the, you did the radio thing. That was great. Listen, I've been in this situation a couple [00:41:00] times. Sometimes you go into an area and you don't know how you're gonna get out. It's just a part of spelunking. Okay, froggy.
This is all normal, and as she's comforting him, the four of you plus boss turned towards this now exposed in lighted hallway. In here you find row after row of large glass vats. Each vat is filled with that strange goo, and each contains a few fragments of some hard bone like substance at the bottom of the vat.
Each vat also has a single light built into it, but. Besides these little fragments of bone, there's nothing in the vat to really put a light on at the end of this hallway, which stretches for quite a ways. Robert Ross, using your military training, you're like, that's gotta be at least a hundred yards away.
There's just three, four rows deep on either side of you going for a hundred yards long on this hallway, and then you see that the hallway simply ends [00:42:00] to the keen eye of Hailey. She sees what might be. An an indentation or a hole in the floor at the end of this hallway, I said,
everybody alright, listen, I have a feeling I know what was in these pods.
Oh. Or figured out. This place used to be some kind of medical quarantine center, so it's likely that these were the creatures, the aliens, the beans were in these pods until they died. So be very careful because if any of these become breached, there's no telling on what kind of pathogens might be released.
So don't touch anything
that'll be. Easy, easy. Don't touch the stuff that my hand has already been in.
No, no, no. The the things with the bones in them, Hailey. Okay. Okay.
Okay. Thanks.
The things with the bones in them. Oh,
I get it. Yep.
I very pointedly was looking to Vera the whole time I'm saying this 'cause I know she's gonna want to get at those bones.
So, Hailey, like you're saying, each one of these vats is like some kind terminal to some kind of VR chamber or something like that. Am I following you? It, it's not even like a VR [00:43:00] chamber. It's, it's, it's like a
different universe. The, yeah, like a virtual reality. No, I need to collect my thoughts on it more before I can talk about it.
Okay man. Alright. We'll
talk about it later. All right. If
it's enough to get you this weirded out, it must be weird. I need some moon rocks. Thorn needs to know so badly. He just cannonballs into the goo.
I'm just saying, can we, can we market this technology? Like what do the patents look like? I have to say
that is very astute between the two of you being like, oh, this is where the diseased beings were held.
And then Thorn being like, oh, these are like vr. Terminals to like the digital ocean, they can like not be in pain. Yeah. Yeah. Very astute. Yep.
Yeah, we're sci-fi characters. We know what's going on.
Well, I'm moving down this hallway.
Yeah. What do you see down there, Hailey?
As the intrepid explorer? I am.
There's another indentation in the floor up ahead, down towards the end of the hallway past these vats, but
probably the only way forward.
Yep.
And definitely as Felix said, keep [00:44:00] your masks on because we don't know what these people were sick with.
Uh, move forward. To the end of the hallway.
Okay. Hailey, are you like a reconnaissance mission on your own, or is everyone moving with you?
I felt like I was moving with her.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm behind her. Yeah. I
figure you're just
in front. Yeah. Yeah. Like she's pointing and we're all going together.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Uh, if she's point, I'm behind everybody, including, and especially Froggy.
So Froggy and Vera are like fourth and fifth. Robert's, sixth Haley's first, and then.
Thorn and Felix are second and third. So we got Haley Thorn, Felix Froggy Farra.
Oh, great. You're doing the order that we're standing in.
Awesome.
Fantastic. Yeah.
Marching order always means something good is about
to happen.
Yep.
Well, it's just a narrow hallway and I just wanna know what's happening
and so that he can know who is the hundredth visitor so they can get a prize.
And it was froggy.
Aw. Lucky him.
Hey, marching [00:45:00] order is important, but unfortunately we're gonna have to wait till next time to figure out why I was writing the. That down because we're out of time for tonight, so let's go to logs.
Everybody's losing their damn minds over this alien tech. I can like a bunch of sips. This right here is when I gotta lock in. I mean, if you don't, that's how you just stumble into some of these traps. Hailey, taking point, jello, mold, breach force, I'm on salt, always got a bag. The rest of the crew basically cheerleaders.
I'm setting up a base of fire for Overwatch while Felix and Voss playing Grab ass in the Goop pool. When in the hell did I become the babysitter? Weird day.
Oh boy. I have never been so excited to find a bunch of goo. [00:46:00] The site is basically fully active. We have access to their network loss is the key. Her technology gives us the ability to access information and infrastructure that scientists have been scratching their heads about for years.
We gotta play this cool though. We can't just sell off Dr. Voss. So unless we find something that's functioning independently, the value of this whole endeavor might not end up being what I'd hoped for. It's too bad Felix couldn't access something tangible while he was in that goo network. Hopefully whatever they bumped into in there doesn't jeopardize this expedition if it really was some kind of security system.
We better be careful. I can tell everyone is on edge. Alien technology will do that to a person, but even Haley and Robert seem affected not as gung-ho when things get weird. Felix too. What did he experience in there? I actually think Froggy and Vera being here is keeping the tension down. As long as we can keep them safe, their company is actually working out in our.
Favor, can't say I [00:47:00] love the whole medical vibe of this site. It's a bit concerning. I don't wanna end up wiped out like whoever built this place, but we're stuck in here now, so all we can do is press on until we find another way out.
And just as I said, I was hoping to avoid a scrap track situation. I'm reaching my hand into some goo, at least it was just a goo, no tendrils, no hallucinations.
And I'll take that as a win for now. I'm glad that Felix got outta that nano food awake though, 'cause I think we're gonna need all the help we can get and mostly to keep froggy safe. I am expecting this situation to get a little worse before it gets better and keeping everyone on their own two feet gonna be a priority here.
This place is amazing. I mean, the level of technology these people reached is, is just astonishing. [00:48:00] The ability to form a neural connection with some kind of massive computer network through just a whole body connection and a nano fluid is next level shit. And, and I mean, I'm not even sure if that's what is actually happening.
Oh, I felt like I was in that ocean for hours, but I could spend days, no years exploring this. There is something else that's making me feel a bit uneasy, not just that presence. Boston. And I noticed in the ocean though, that was definitely unsettling. Now it's the fact that something could take out these people as advanced as they were, and that is truly scary.
I just hope we don't. Accidentally unlock something we shouldn't, but fuck me. I was blissed to be out of this body for a while and I know I was being hopeful, but this feels like an [00:49:00] important step to understanding what happened to PD and maybe just maybe fixing it. And if that's the case, I will do whatever it takes.
Consequences be damned.