In reply to Kyle McGuinness (msg # 623):

Jackie moves to walk next to Kyle.

As Coleman leads the way, he reaches the first door. It's transparent, so it doesn't obstruct the view of what lays beyond. There's another transparent door about 50 feet ahead, and another one beyond that just about the same distance.

To either side, there are transparent walls with a door set into each one. Each of these doors are set up as triple airlocks--a series of three airtight doors with an airtight chamber between them. These provide access to the inner lab. So you can see into those labs... except that the side walls of each lab are opaque, probably not made out of the same material.

From what Coleman can tell, the labs look completely intact.

All told, there are at least six labs, 3 on each side, and possibly another (or more) at the far end.

"Hmmm, so what do we know about the builders of this place? Do they breathe normal air? Time to do as you said; get into the minds of the builders."

"I think they breathed regular air given the entrances to their buildings. These may have been for biological work that could have gotten hazardous," said Kyle, rubbing his nose.

"So the danger is probably coming out, not going in?"

"Remember, the gates were put on worlds where there was a breathable atmosphere by the Ancients and the similar races," Jason pointed out. "There wouldn't have been a gate here if the air wasn't breathable. And we've been here for several days and haven't experienced any adverse effects."

"We've also not seen any indications of breathing masks or other apparatus that would indicate the people here had to protect themselves from the standard atmosphere."

"Here in this research lab, however, I'd say all bets are off."

"These are all containment labs, which probably means that they were working on some sort of biological research. I don't see any desiccated bodies on the floor, so it doesn't seem as if there was any biohazard accident. The facility was just abandoned, probably at the last minutes. They would have taken their research with them, but not necessarily the substance."

Since it appeared that the labs' security was to prevent things gone wrong from escaping, Coleman tries to see if the doors will open; "I'll head into one and check it out. Everyone else wait out here, just in case. And don't worry; I won't touch anything!"

"OK, take care.." said Kyle.

Coleman approaches the door to the first lab, reaches out and touches the control pad. It seemed unlikely that he'd pass whatever security code there might be, but, to his surprise, the door slides open.

Although that seems odd, it does occur to him that when the people left, they simply deactivated all the security... though he can't figure out why they'd do that.

After stepping into the inner room, he see a lot of equipment that is only vaguely familiar to him... a centrifuge, an oven of some sort, what was probably a mass spectrometer... and lots of petri dishes and test tubes.

What he finds odd, in a way, is that there are no computers.

Coleman takes a look around, letting the door close behind him (what he considers the dangerous part, at this point), then he heads back out. Clearly this really is just a lab, but without any computers, he's not sure if it will be of any use. Perhaps the scientists can make some sense of it, but he'll leave that up to them.

"Looks like just a lab to me; a bunch of sciency sort of junk. The only weird part is that there are no computers. You guys want to take a look?"

In reply to Coleman Hendricks (msg # 633):

" Chemistry or Forensics Lab looks like. "


Jackie looks around and smiles as she looks around.

"I guess we should keep heading inward, then."

With that Coleman heads towards the door at the end of the hallway and opens it (hopefully) then takes stock of what is in the next hallway area.

"I don't see anything strange about there not being any computers around," Jason offers.

"We haven't seen anything that looks like a desktop computer, or a mainframe, other than the library... and that was just the interface. We have no idea how big the CPU is."

"And remember, a modern smartphone has, like, 100 times the amount of processing power than what we had and used to send a man to the moon! Anything akin to a cell phone, tablet or even a laptop would have been portable enough to take with them."

"At the moment, we're rather ingrained into the idea of a big computer, even though smartphones have intruded into every aspect of our lives. Anyone remember when a phone was in your house and you couldn't take it with you?"

The three labs on either side were past the first security airlock, but there was another airlock beyond them. This is where Coleman now goes.

This time there is a single door in front of him, about 10 feet past the airlock, but there are tall, narrow, clear windows to either side of the door. Looking through them, Coleman and Kyle can see that the large area beyond is not a lab... at least not in any sense that they recognize. It looks like the power generating station for the base, albeit in much simpler form than anything on Earth.

"Well, that looks promising." Coleman moves aside to give everyone a chance to take a look. "If I had to guess, I'd say that is used to generate power. That's what we want, right?"

Kyle nodded.

"Yes, it does look like a power generation facility, as far as I can tell."

"Yes, this is a power facility," Sarnak responds. "That much I recognize."

"As I said when we approached the facility, though, power was acquired through solar collectors around the perimeter and then sent into the storage area here. There might be naquadah generators as a back-up, though."

"This will just be power distribution and monitoring. There might be defensive capabilities."

"Well, we better get to it then. Everyone keep a sharp eye out, and let me go ahead at least a few yards; that way if I trigger something, hopefully you guys can avoid the same fate."

With that, Coleman tries the door. If it opens like the others did, he'll go ahead and pull out his knife and use it as a mirror to see what kind of security might be right above the door, then put it away and proceed in, just making sure to take it slowly and look for defenses.

"We've already got naquadah generators, though these are likely better than ours," Jason said. "I'm more interested in this energy storage system. That sounds like a battery, to me. I'm having a hard time seeing this place running on 10,000 D cells."

"Also, these people were in a war with the Goa'uld... facing potential extermination. If there was a top secret research facility working on bio-tech, I'd be inclined to think that it'd be something harmful to the Goa'uld."

Hearing this energy storage system described as a battery, Coleman quips; "Great, if we get this thing, then I'll never have to worry about my nogs running low again!" Coleman shoots a grin back at his team, then resumes his attention and progress forward.

Only in TV and the movies has anyone seen a set up like this. Down each side of a central aisle are six banks of power control and distribution panels. The room is dark, getting light only through those two narrow windows, but as soon as Coleman enters the room, lights come on.

Each bank of panels is actually composed of 12 separate panels, though all fastened together. Each individual panel has a screen that comes to life with the panels, showing an electrical diagram of a room.

He has only enough time to examine one such panel before an opening appears in the back wall, and two floating spheres emerge. Some sort of band around the top and bottom has a rotating red light on it.

Coleman can see what appears to be a camera lens, as well as the aperture of some kind of weapon.

"Security globes!" Sarnak suddenly yells out. "Everyone back out of the room!"

"They'll attack anyone that doesn't have authorized clearance to be in there!"

In reply to Sarnak (msg # 645):

Jackie backs out keeping an eye on them.

"How do they tell who's authorised?" Kyle asked Sarnak.

"Presumably through facial recognition," Sarnak replies.

"Either your authorization was encoded into the system, or you were given a visitor's pass that had your picture on it. I honestly didn't believe security would still be active after all this time."

"Of course, I don't really know how much time has passed. The Archives didn't have any external sensors to record the passage of time."