Kianan-Meredy nods, "Ah, dat is what I was hoping for."

Copying the image to her PDA, she began marking up the image.


20:58, Today: Kianan-Meredy rolled <green>24 using 1d20+10 ((14)).

Was that an electronics skill check? What are trying to do or find out?

In reply to StarMaster (msg # 824):

well crap, yes, it was an electronics check to decipher the data on the monitors.

What should have displayed was:
Kianan-Meredy rolled 24 using 1d20+10 with rolls of 14.
Electronics roll to decipher display.

Kianan can interpret the readings, but she can't translate them. Not even Sarah can do that because it's using an alternate nomenclature for things. For example, she doesn't know what unit of measure they use for blood pressure.

But, she can tell what the normal range is... the graphs show a 'normal' level and a 'dangerous' level.

That's about all Kianan can really tell. The cylinders appear to be monitoring temperature, blood pressure, nutrient level, brain activity, and power levels. And there's a name, age and gender displayed for each cylinder. There appear to be links between some of the cylinders.

   Kianan-Meredy sat down in front of the wall of monitors drawing and erasing lines and notes on the small display. Talking to herself, she spent several minutes before pulling her pack closer and digging out a set of grease pencils.
   Her voice and demeanor seemed more animated, "OK, we dink we have it figured out." Moving to the glass wall, she sketches out a rough copy of the display in multiple colors. "At de moment, we believe dese characters here, " she circles a few of the blocks she sketched in as she talks, "are de occupant's name, gender - we only see 2 symbols repeated, possibly age here."
   Circling another section she continued, "Dis indicator is eider a power level or system status - it's hard to tell since we can't translate de actual text at dis point." Circling another set of blocks, "Dese appear to be de most interesting - dis is clearly brainwave activity, followed by a series of graphs dat appear to be metabolic markers. Note for dese dat dere are clearly marked 'safe' zones and danger zones."
   Marking up the last section, "Dis section here has a few characters dat seem to appear only on certain groups of monitors - dey may show dat de occupants belong to specific duty crews or possibly family ties. It is unfortunate dat we only have de one camera dat can show de IR spectrum as false color, it means we cannot investigate de oder floors to confirm dey are de same while continuing to work out more exact details on dis floor."

Eric was suitably impressed by Sarah and Kianan's joint effort to find the 'hidden' controls and displays.

"But, what does that get us?" he asked. "What we need to determine is whether we should revive these peoples... at least one or two. If we revive one, can we put him back if there's some reason we shouldn't have revived him?"

"For that matter, we don't even know if there's anything harmful in the atmosphere that could hurt or kill them, right? That might have been a reason to go hiber."

"I'm going to make a wild guess here, but, if we explore some of these other levels, we can probably get more information on their culture and language, right?"

"Kianan, Sarah... you've done great work here, but is there anything more to find out? I mean, right now?"

In reply to Eric Brooks (msg # 828):

"Kianan agrees wid you dat at dis time we do not know enough to know if we can safely revive anyone, let alone return dem to suspended animation. Additionally, we are reluctant to test wheder dese monitors are also capable of reviving or adjusting de stasis settings of the pods - it would deeply grieve us to cause unnecessary harm to dese people drough our ignorance. " She pauses to put the chalk and grease pencils in various pockets of her tac vest, "We dink dat our primary goal should be translating dese runes - or at least coming to a greater understanding of dem. If we can find a working terminal to deir network - and deir computer system is based on de Ancients' technology - we may be able to force de terminal back into using de Ancients language and pull the translation matrix from dere."

"There's a computer in there?" Eric replied in amazement.

"I'm not saying there isn't, and I certainly don't know all that much about computers, but is there something we don't know about going on here?"

"Or are you just using the term 'computer' in a more generic sense?"

In reply to Eric Brooks (msg # 830):

Kianan-Meredy blinked, "I'm sure dat dere is a computer system in dere, but I would not consider resetting dat system while dere are still people in de suspension chambers except in de most dire of situations. I was hoping for a stand alone system or one tied to de base system dat runs dis whole facility."

Kianan's idea wasn't a bad one.   "We could reset the control of the now empty pod.   But please, don't assume these are family links or duty crews.  You're making assumptions.  This information could as easily be incarceration time."  She shakes her head, "I agree though, Major.  Let's investigate further and see what we can dredge up."

"Okay, so you're saying there's some sort of automated system here, which at least is functioning like a computer," Eric says. "It could very well have integrated circuits, but maybe not necessarily the little chips, right? And I've yet to see any display screens."

"It seems to me as if we are missing something. A piece of information, a piece of technology... something that makes this all work together as a coherent whole."

"We are also missing key data about these people. I'm disinclined to think these are prisoners simply because there are no jailers."

"Here's what I propose: we'll head up one level and take a quick survey of the occupants of two or three dozen cylinders... see if that gives us any more data... genders, ages, horns, etc. In other words, anything that stands out as different, even clothing. They were all dressed, right?"

"Then we go up... what is it? Three levels, to the first non-hibernation level? And see what we can see."

"Lucky, you take point. Sannis, bring up the rear."

The group moves back to the elevator. After everyone is in the elevator, the Major presses the button for the lowest 'E' level, what is designated as level 602 by Kylie.

Since the elevator only has to go up 3 levels, it only takes a few seconds.

Elevator door opens and shows another circular hallway.

The group had been to this level once before, but Kiernan hadn't seen it.

As near as anyone could determine before, this was a 'medical level'. There were windows in the outer walls of the hallway, and the room visible beyond the window had the appearance of a typical examination room. There just wasn't the plethora of modern equipment.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:46, Thu 16 Nov 2017.

Stepping out onto the floor, Kianan-Meredy looked through the glass and nodded. "Interesting, dey do not appear to value privacy for dere medical rooms. If we can find dere equivalent of a termometer and blood pressure cuff, we can use dem as a reference point by comparing them to our readings. See if we can find medical records - dey will help us understand de information on de monitors of de controls downstairs."

"Okay. We didn't find anything like that before, but then I can't remember if we looked," Kylie agrees with Kianan.

"Hey, Lucky! Let's go check out the rooms in this direction," she says to the Marine Sargent, grabbing his arm and pulling him in a counter-clockwise direction around the hallway.

She'd been about to say 'Let's go play doctor', but then realized he might have gotten the wrong meaning from it.

She passes by the first two doors, figuring they could work their way back to the others. Looking through the glass (was it glass?), she didn't see anyone in the room so opened the door and walked in, then began surveying the room.

"I don't mean to be paranoid, but this level is different than the last time we were here," Cormac points out.

"The entire wall here was stone... divided into separate waiting rooms. Through each waiting room, there was a door and a window that led into an office-cum-examination room."

"We'd also gone up one more level, which appeared to be stores or shops."

"I cannot think of anything we've done that might have caused this transformation. Could we have missed a level before? Or did we skip one or more this time?"

"Uh, sure." Lucky said in surprise as Kylie practically being dragged away. He looked at Major Brooks for help, but so sign of being let off the hook, so he turned and walked willingly. "Ms. Nova, I don't know what we're looking for here. All I am down here is security in case..., I don't even know what it's in case of really."

"Exactly!" Kylie replied. "You're my security... for the moment."

"And what we're looking for is doctor stuff. I know you've been to the doctor at least twice--once to join the Marines and once to join the Stargate program."

"I don't see any of the usual things we'd see in a doctor's office, but then I've never been to a public doctor before. This certainly doesn't look like a military doctor's office."

"Uh huh." Lucky shook his head slighty at Kylie's description of their current situation. "Yes, I've been to doctors more times than I care to admit, so I know some of the tools they use." He looked around as well, but remained on his toes in case there was trouble of some sort. "Most offices I've been in  have cabinets and drawers they keep those things in. Maybe that's the case here too." He suggested.

"Yeah, that's what I expected, too," Kylie answers. "Didn't really expect to see the stuff laying out on a counter. We haven't really seen any signs of panic... it would have taken a long time to get all those people into the cylinders, so they should have had time to put everything away neatly. Right?"

"So let's look for cabinets and drawers and whatever they might have used."

He'd already gotten used to Kylie's... impulsiveness. Give her an idea and she was off and running with it. It's not she was careless, but it did seem as if didn't bother thinking about consequences, leaving it to chance that everything would work out in her favor.

"God protects fools and little children," he muttered.

"Okay, Kianan, and everyone else... spread out and see what we can find."

"Yeah, I guess." Lucky replied, not knowing otherwise. He began to look for storage compartments. "Why exactly are we searching for this stuff anyways? Shouldn't we be looking for an armory or something like that? Tech that we can use back on Earth. We already have stethoscopes and tongue depressors back home."


Today: Lucas Wheeler rolled 14 using 1d20+4 with rolls of 10.  Search.

There was a central 'examination' platform/bed in the room. This would seem to indicate the this species' internal structure was similar to humans, at least to the point where laying down might facilitate an examination.

Along the back wall next to the platform was a solid block of stone that could clearly be used as a counter or table or desk. There was nothing on it, however, and there were no drawers or doors in the bottom part.

As Lucky searched around, he saw that the platform was also a solid stone... or at least appeared to be one... with a cushion across the top. The top part was inclined upward a bit, but there did not appear to be any mechanisms for changing the angle, or even lowering or raising the platform. As it was, it was a bit low for humans.

There were no drawers or doors on the bottom of the platform, either, but there was a chance that it was a bench-like item and the top flipped up, so Lucky was checking to see if that was a possibility... looking for a release button or edge to grip... when his hand brushed across the side... and a drawer suddenly popped out!

It wasn't a slide-out drawer, but one of those compartments that flipped open with an angled tray attached to it. It was in this tray that familiar medical apparatus lay.

The compartment was a lot like those doors held closed by magnets--you just had to push at the right spot to get the magnet to release. This compartment seemed to work the same way, though there was no obvious magnet visible.

Lucky quickly discovered two more such compartments below this one, and then another three beside those three. This was repeated on the other side of the platform, and there were two smaller ones at the foot of the bed.

"Hey...," Lucky looked in suprise as the drawer opened, "HEY, check it out, I found something." As he found and opened the other compartments, he added, "I think I found what you're looking for."

Sarah was still pondering Cormac's words... "Are you sure... maybe we just got off on a different floor?"  If it had changed... this was a whole other experience!

"Of course I'm not sure," Cormac replies to Sarah.

"That's exactly what I thought: did we miss a floor before, or miss it this time?"

"I can't think of anything that we've done since we visited this level. We were down in the engineering levels, went up to the hibernation control room, went up to the hibernation level... that's when we released Tawaret. We went up another hibernation level, and another... just confirmed that there were people in cylinders on those levels, then went up to this level, and went up one more level."

"That's when Thorne took Tawaret up to the surface, and we got the Major here as Thorne's replacement. And we got Kianan, and went back down to the hibernation level."

"So, a couple more activations of the ring-gate. And Kianan's presence. That's all I can think is different."

"Alternate Theory Number One: the Dwarves or their partners figured out a way to make stone transparent as glass."

"Alternate Theory Number Two: the Dwarves figured out a way to transform glass into looking like stone when they want it to. We didn't really try to break any of the glass, so we can't say for certain that it is glass. We did tap it; it sounded like glass."

"Alternate Theory Number Three: possibly using similar technology to the Tok'ra crystals, they can make stone and glass walls appear and disappear as needed."

"Any thoughts on these? Interesting as they are, do any of them really give us the advanced technology we are looking for to stop the Goa'uld?"