OOC: I posted.  No one has responded to me directly yet :-)

"Just considering our options... and the ramifications. Remember, this is my first time down here," Eric speaks up. "I got briefed, but that's still not the same thing as seeing it first-hand."

"Trying to think if there's anything else we can do on this level... anything we haven't checked."

"There was clearly room for more cylinders, since there was only Tawaret's in this section. It would seem as if that was why she was placed here; they hadn't filled up this one. And she was... different."

"Have we checked to make sure that all the other bays are filled? Or that all the other cylinders actually have a body in them? And that they still appear to be alive?"

"I'm not saying we should do that right now... just asking. Although... Cormac and Sannis could do that while we go down to the control level. Right? Two levels down?"

"Yep. Control level is at the bottom, rather than at the top," Kylie replies to the Major.

"Don't know why they'd do it that way. And, no, I don't believe we completely explored these two lower suspension levels. I think we assumed that if there was something wrong with a chamber, it would have shown up on the control panels, like Tawaret's did."

No one thought her observation was interesting?  It figured.  It was more a far more interpretive response and those about her generally stuck to 'facts'.   And so she shrugged and listened.

Addressing Sarah, "Der are many factors which may influence dat. Dis appears to be an outpost of some sort; as such, departments may need to be revived in a specific order so placing them togeder would actually be beneficial. For example, dis is de lowest section and is just above de engineering floors. It would make sense to awaken de engineers to restart the ventilation, water and waste water services before awakening the remaining staff. De markings on de door could be directions for people to more easily find dere section and den dey would use any available stasis chamber. A few individuals could den follow up & mark all of de identities on de controls below - or even have it automated like the RFID cards your SG command uses to track individuals.

"At dis time, we simply do not have enough information to do anyding more dan wild speculation. Turning to the Major "Major, if you feel dat de site is secure, I would like to suggest dat we work on remedying dat problem as quickly as possible." Holding up her hand, she began to tick off points. "First, we do not know if de sequences are identical. Second, we do not know if de levels in each sequence are identical. Third, we do not know if or how many of the individual cells are occupied."

"If you don't object, we would like to go to de control room for dis sequence wid Sarah. We can examine de control panels in detail. One person can do a more detailed survey of dis floor. While we do dat, de oders can check on de oder J levels. Dat way, Sarah and ourselves can, hopefully, come to understand de system while de oders gader a gross overview of de arrangement of de oder sequences widout wasting time."

Was it just his imagination, or did Sarah seem a bit perturbed? No one had responded to her statements, but then he himself hadn't seen anything to comment on.

"How would Tawaret have manipulated the system?" he asked her. He wasn't a big fan of science fiction, but even he'd seen Star Wars as a kid.

"Do you think she had some sort of telekinetic ability? She could use it even while she was unconscious? Or do you think she wasn't really unconscious?"

"Why would you think this facility is a prison? There are living quarters on the upper levels. There are no bars, no locks."

Eric considered the information that Kylie had provided, and what Kianan-Meredy had said.

The place didn't have the feel of a prison, but it also didn't feel like anything else he was familiar with. He thought it did kind of make him think of a colony, like on the Moon or Mars, but since mankind hadn't managed either of those things yet, he was basing it on what little science fiction he'd seen. He made a mental note to start watching more scifi--now that he was out here living it, it was probably a good idea to get a larger information base.

"Okay, let's go down to the control level. Everyone back into the elevator."

"I'm not sure I see what we might learn from it, though. Unless Kianan-Meredy can coax more info out of those panels."

He led the team back to the elevator, and after everyone was in, pushed the button for the lower control level... and kept pushing it... so that the elevator dropped the two levels in about 3 seconds.

The door opened... he had his weapon ready, but there was no one there.

"Okay, here are a few thoughts... Do the lights stay on after we leave the level? Or do they go out? How can we test that?"

"And that leads me to another question. This facility is being powered by a single ZPM, right? The tunnel borer below originally had 3 ZPMs. Do we have any clue where the other ZPMs may have gone?"

"My real question, though, is this: how much power is left in the remaining ZPM? How long can it power this facility in its current state, and how long could it power it at full operational level?"

He stepped out and to the side, to let the others lead the way, since he hadn't been down here before.

Sarah just shrugged when Kiana dismissed her speculations in favour of taking action and to be fair, Sarah couldn't argue her point so she wasn't about to try.

As she's heading back to the elivator (following Eric's orders) she suggest, "A camera would easily test that theory, Major."

She then focuses on Sannis since he'd speculated with her, "Well, the Goa'uld have certainly exhibited various traits which might be considered as such.  And who suggested she was unconscious.   This is something I mentioned a while back.  Her body might have been in slumber, but her symbiote might not have been - which could have driven it mad given the apparent time frames involved.   It might also have given her the opportunity to manipulate matters."

She shrugs then at the last question, "I'm not sure.  A prison or specimen container.  Both would refer to the elements by reference ID rather than name?   Both depersonalise their contents for fear of emotional attachment.   Sure, it might be a colony and maybe I have applying my own moral bias here, but I'd have suspect a more personal touch.  Also, we've never met a colony with such a diverse species range as this.  Ever.   I'm not one to believe in coincidence."

And then as if, out of the blue, she asks, "Does anyone recall the movie Demolition Man?"
This message was last edited by the player at 21:21, Fri 20 Oct 2017.

"Well, that's one of the things I was briefed on," Eric replies. "Although, truth be told, it was the negative side of encountering an alien culture. Just because they seem friendly doesn't meant they won't throw you into the stew pot."

"In this case, what you perceive as being impersonal might be something else entirely... efficiency, practicality... or just custom. Or maybe it had to with age."

"And, no, I haven't seen Demolition Man."

Kylie was the one that had pushed the button that had released Tawaret, so she led the way to where the control panel had indicated there was a problem, even though the button had been on the cylinder itself.

"Hey, that's a good question, Eric!" she said. "If the ZPM gets too low, maybe there's a safety function that will release everyone all at the same time!"

"Yeah, we could put a camera on the floor when we leave, and then retrieve it later and see if it went dark. There are sensors somewhere. The lights have come on when we entered an area. We didn't have to turn them on ourselves."

"Then again, wasn't it Cormac that turned the power on when we first got down to the mandala level?"

"And yet, Major.  What other races have we come across that have been so devoid of personality?   I can count them on the fingers."  She shrugs again.  The team had her here to provide alternate viewpoints - if she was that badly wrong all the time, then she'd have never made the cut.   The rest though is up to Major.

At this point, the team has seen maybe 10% of the facility, perhaps less. It's hard to build a culture out of just that little, especially since some of the culture seems to have been influenced by the Ancients. Cultural cross-contamination.

For instance, the tunnel borer was made of metal and cerametal and plastics, and powered by ZPMs, yet nothing of the local culture supports that. If the Dwarves had built the tunnel borer, wouldn't it have been made of stone?

Nothing on the engineering level gave any indication that the Dwarves made the ZPMs.

And, while the mandala symbol might have been of Dwarven origin, the ring transporter probably wasn't. That would be an extraordinary coincidence of parallel development.

It was still rather confusing to Sarah but she needed the answer to one more question.   She had, possible, assumed that the bays contained different species - this her consideration of a specimen storage facility - but she needed to confirm.  Where they different or the same as the answer to that question certainly swung any 'guess-work' back towards the prison or indeed some sort of arc.

"I've another possible scenario.   What if this place was developed underground - not due to any stereotype - but out of necessity to preserve.   Maybe the individuals here were put in stasis to protect them from some sort of event above ground.   Do you think it would be possible to contact the science teams above and ask them to analyse a core sample for any significant natural disaster?"

While she's talking, she's checking the various stasis pods to again try and hone her theory.

"As I understand it, the Avians above weren't here when this facility was created, or when the Dwarves were put into stasis," Eric says. "They don't know anything about the inhabitants below here, but obviously they knew about the shrine."

"Unless Kianan-Meredy can coax more data out of these controls, looking into the cylinders is the only way to tell who's in them."

"Based on the elevator designations, all the level groups are the same. There's no distinction made between, say, a Dwarven habitation and an Elvin habitation... or a rhinoceros habitation... or whatever."

"Doesn't mean there isn't a difference, only that the elevator doesn't show it. But, either these Dwarves or the 'builders'--probably Ancients--are rather linear in their thinking."

With all the theories being tossed around the complex, Lucky had no idea what to think about what had occurred. A question did occur to him, "I've got a stupid question. If the dwarves put themselves in the stasis bubbles, or whatever you call them, doesn't there have to be a couple of them that either stayed out? Or at least a couple of them should be at least off sequence from the rest, likely close to the control systems? Otherwise, if they all went in at the same time, doesn't that mean someone else put them under?"

Kianan-Meredy looked over the control panels. "Again, I don't dink we know enough yet to make anyding but wild speculations about intent."

[Edit: My bad, I misremembered the organization - correcting]

Looking through the rooms on a quick pass, "Dere appears to be 12 sections in blocks of 4." Pulling out a piece of chalk, she segmented the monitors out. "Based on de elevator, dere are 12 groups of floors for each hibernation control floor and each group has 12 floors. Additionally, dere are 6 floors we believe to contain hibernation pods, dat breaks down into 3 repeats of the 4 group pattern wid each hibernation floor covering 2 groups."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:40, Thu 02 Nov 2017.

He was quite sure that Kianan-Meredy knew what she was talking about, but Eric was completely lost.

"It doesn't seem like there's anything to be worried about in this facility, but one of the robots attacked one of us on our first excursion into it. That's when we started at the top and were working our way down," he replies.

"There are still too many unknowns. I don't think it's wise to separate at this point."

"We can make a note of what we expect to find when we reach those levels, and then see if what we find matches our deductions."

"Another thing that piques my curiosity. It's almost as if they were expecting some sort of threat. I mean, they had all these stone cylinders already prepared, didn't they? Otherwise, what kind of threat takes so long to arrive that they could have made them on the fly? So, where did all this stone come from? Do we have any way of determining if the stone in the cylinders was mined and carved, or was it... ummm, formed? Did they have some way to liquefy the stone and shape it?"


He was trying to decide what they should do next. He thought of what he'd said to Sarah. They needed to do more... he didn't think they had enough data to report back to SGC... yet.

"I'm still not sure of what everyone can do. Sarah... are you... able to profile people? Can you do it from their living space?"

They needed to get some sort of idea of who these people were... what they were like.

"I could certainly try.   If there is anything to work with that is.  Everything thus far has been particularly... neutral."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Eric replies. "We've seen nothing but engineering levels. Not even any desks with personal belongings on them."

"Well, remember, we live in the information age. A big part of that is being able to print photos and text at will. We've not seen any indication that these people have reached that social development stage."

"Do you have any insights into that sort of culture? Like... what did they do in place of that sort of thing?"

"And remember, we've yet to explore what I'm guessing are the habitation levels."

That seemed to be the next course of investigation. The potential tunnel near the bottom would have to wait. As curious as he was about it, if they revived any of these people, maybe they'd just tell him what he wanted to know.

"Kianan... even I'm used to looking at computer displays. I don't suppose there's anything like that on these controls? These stone circuits baffle me, but I can't even imagine a CRT or plasma screen... made out of rock."

"Anybody have any ideas on how we might figure out which of these sleeping cylinders might hold the community leader? We haven't seen any sign of ostentation... like maybe they had a king and his cylinder is inlaid with gold and gems or something... right? Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll be wearing a badge that says 'mayor' or 'grand poobah'."

In reply to Eric Brooks (msg # 816):

"Sarah, you still have de camera, can you determine if dere are any markings on de system? Our best guess is dat each section represents a floor in a G section of de elevator wid de blocks of 4 representing de four G sections associated wid each pair of hibernation levels, but we've also come up with at least 2 other scenarios."

"Don't forget the adverts we saw near the entrance...."  She holds up the camera.   "There wasn't anything earlier - but maybe we can find something now that it is active."   She look through the camera in the hope of finding anything interesting.

If Sarah is using the camera to look at these control units in the hibernation control level, she is almost surprised to see the controls light up like a Christmas tree!

Each control panel has a section that delineates each cylinder, including a name. She can't quite decipher the rest of the display, but presumably it shows the status of the cylinder.

There are two main displays, which she guesses are the electro-mechanical readings and the biological readings.

She taps the camera, "You guys may want to take a look at this.  It's the same here as with the advertising.  And there's a Christmas tree of dials and such."  She considers the names and labels - still wondering if this is an arc or a prison (though she still suspects it is the later).

Lucky merely waited by the entrance. He tried to interact with the scientific members of the team, but was at the point that simply shutting up and keeping watch was his best bet . He glanced in Sarah's direction when she seemed to find something, but held his tongue and stayed out of the way

"Normally, I'd say, 'how clever'," Cormac comments, "but, in this case, I don't think clever had anything to do with it. They just built the controls the way they could see them."

"Can you take a picture of them and then send them to us?"

"I don't suppose there are any instructions? Does it look like there's a clearly-marked revival button? We revived Tawaret at the cylinder because it was beeping and flashing a warning."

"Do all of them have to be revived that way? Kind of defeats the purpose of this control panel... other than to give a 'big picture'."