Lucky just shook his head, " Don't there is too much concern for any locals being home, Major. Otherwise at least one of the water treatment units would be in use. I mean even aliens have to go to the bathroom, right?"

"That's true of any organic lifeform we are aware of," Cormac replies, "but there could well be something out there that we aren't aware of that doesn't. Remember, we define 'organic' as being carbon-based. What if it was silicon-based?"

"I admit, the entire structure, what we've seen of it, would seem to favor an organic lifeform, and even one that is reasonably humanoid."

"I'm just not willing to put any money on it."

"I gather, Alynita, that the Tok'ra have not made it out this far... to this globular cluster?" Sannis asks their Tok'ra.

"The Goa'uld have made it out here, as did, apparently, the Ancients, but the Goa'uld presence seems very limited. Might explain why the Tok'ra aren't here... that you know of. Do you think there's any chance that we might run across some Tok'ra?"

"Heck, for that matter, maybe this was a Tok'ra base! Maybe it was built before they discovered the tunneling crystals."

"To be honest I am not sure. But I doubt that this is a Tok'ra base or if there is any presence.  But then again I am with the SGC as I was a failure more then anything so they likely would not of divulged any of that information to me."  She says somewhat flat but more saddened by that then any who know the Tok'ra would recognize.  But still she scans the walls for any sign of the Tok'ra building it.

It's only remotely possible that the Tok'ra built this facility, but even if they did, they certainly never lived here. Not only are there not enough Tok'ra (as far as Alynita knows) to occupy 600-plus levels, but the Tok'ra tend to think linearly, rather than vertically.

Alynita has also never heard of stone technology, though she thinks it would be a clever Tok'ra development.

Examining the walls, Alynita does not see any signs of Tok'ra 'construction'. And the runes are not anything she's ever seen before.



Sarah once again studies the symbols, this time with a bit more knowledge and input. She's familiar with most written languages that used a numbering system... they invariably have some designation for '10' or '12' that repeats... such as with 12, 13, 14, or 27, 28, 29. She sees that here.

She's not quite yet willing to concede that Kylie may have been right... but it looks more like a combination of both systems.

Of course, they may not be numbers at all, but letters, or some ideogram that stands for something.

Lucas turned to look at Cormac when he spoke to, " If they don't require the little boys and girls rooms, they wouldn't put in a reclamation center. In fact, this kinda reminds me of something back...," he trailed off, knowing his previous work was classified information. He looked at Thorne, "Boss, the tanks are topped up, batteries are charged but the place is empty. I don't think aren't looking for someone that left a long time ago. It looks more like this place is set up for someone to move in."

"That's a good point, Lucky. Hadn't thought of that," the Major replies.

"It still doesn't answer the big questions: who built it, and who was it built for? I never did quite understand what the expression 'never look a gift horse in the mouth' came from, since if the Trojans had done that very thing, Troy might never have fallen."

"I'm more inclined to 'check under the hood' myself. Which begs the question here: what's the catch?"


The conversations were taking place while the elevator rose up another level. That upper engineering level had been higher than the others, with no immediate way that he'd been able to spot to access any of the upper equipment, most of which had been ductwork.

The damn elevator was soooo slow. It reminded him of the elevator at the senior living facility where his grandmother lived. If the elevator started or stopped too fast, the old people would get thrown to the floor.

Somehow, though, he didn't get the impression that's what this was meant for. For some reason, it made him think of an old song he'd heard about 'slow walking, slow talking Jones'...

Sarah shakes her head once again, "Still nothing here..."  She shrugs.  She'd given it her best shot but there was so little information she could do no more than guess.

Alynita having little to add at this point too mainly as while her knowledge is vast her specialty is more organic then anything.  "Perhaps instead of doing floor by floor why don't we go to the extreme and work back from there.  We are likely to find what we want in a more immediate manner."  She suggests showing her lack of experience.

Lucky looked at Alynita, "What if we started jumping between sequence groups? If the buttons might be a combination of pictures and numbers, why not skip to the next picture group?" He suggested, then looked at the Major, " Sir, no offense, but I don't want to be here when the locals come home. Not with a small group like this in a place large enough to be used to evacuate China."

The numbers in red are levels you've visited. A, B, C, D and E are the actual levels, repeated for each of the groupings. For instance, A-E are in G1, and G2, and G3, etc.

When the elevator went down from F (you so designated it because it was the First level), G1 lit up, along with "A", and then you went through B1-B3, C, B4-B6, D and E, each lighting up in sequence but going out when the next one lit up. After G1 went out, G2 lit up and you went through the A-E sequence again.

There was no A-E on the H levels, or the J levels.

The designations that were used were because there was a common symbol. When that symbol changed, a different letter/number was assigned.


           F
A       G1    G2    G3    G4    H1    H2
B1      G5    G6    G7    G8    H3    H4
B2      G9    G10   G11   G12   H5    H6   J1
B3      G13   G14   G15   G16   H7    H8
C       G17   G18   G19   G20   H9    H10
B4      G21   G22   G23   G24   H11   H12  J2
B5      G25   G26   G27   G28   H13   H14
B6      G29   G30   G31   G32   H15   H16
D1      G33   G34   G35   G36   H17   H18  J3
D2      G37   G38   G39   G40   H19   H20
D3      G41   G42   G43   G44   H21   H22
E       G45   G46   G47   G48   H23   H24  J4
           K1    K2    K3    K4    K5


So on the first visit, some of the team went down to G1-A. As near as they could tell, this was some sort of living quarters... 4 'apartments' on this level. They encountered an active 'janitor' robot that attacked them.

On the second visit--this one, you went straight down to K5 and checked out each level in the K series. You've now gone up one more level. The only elevator 'button' that lights up is J4.

While you are discussing this, you reach J4 and the elevator doors open. What you see at first seems completely different from any other level. First of all, this level is lit. Secondly, while there is the usual hallway that circles around the elevator shaft, the outer wall of the hallway is glass! The glass is curved to match the curve of the hallway, and it's separated by stone dividers every 12 feet or so.

What's beyond the glass is almost as strange, but looks a bit more familiar. It's all one large circular room that also wraps around the central elevator shaft. The back wall of the room appears to be one continuous stone 'machine', as it doesn't quite go up to the ceiling and has an array of lights on it. The lights appear to be a pattern that is repeated 12 times in blocks of 4.

Alynita takes a moment to look at what is before her, "You know if I did not know better I would hazard a guess that this was used for specimens or jail.  Although that is still a guess."  She says unsure what they are looking at but mostly just looking at the technology.

"Could be," Randall says. "Those look like control panels, though. Would you place them inside the cell with the specimens or prisoners?"

"I don't know if we can do anything if we get inside there, but look around for an entrance. There may be something we're missing."

He steps out of the elevator and looks around, then turns to the left.

You know, Alynita's comment seemed to make a whole lot of sense... samples or cells... both options were... rather concerning and Sarah kept her eyes out for any signs to confirm that theory.

"It's all one big room! What kind of specimens would you put in there?" Kylie wonders.

"This type of level repeats several times." she points out, though she has no idea what the significance of that would be.

Hearing the order Alynita starts to fan out to see if she can find a door.

20:36, Today: Alynita rolled 13 using 1d20+9. Search.

"Boss, you ever watch the Star Wars number two?" Lucky said as he tried to avoid a body shiver at his own suggestion. "If the tech is out there, and I'd be surprised if it's not, the fastest way for a Ghoul or worse to raise an army without being noticed is grow it's own. We might have stumbled onto something a lot bigger than we thought" He had his rifle at a ready state, hoping he was wrong as he looked at Kylie and Sarah, wondering which one would shoot his idea down first.

As Alynita walks around the perimeter, she has no problem finding the door. Actually, there are two of them, each about 1/4 of the way around. As clear as the walls, the doors have a stone plate set in the wall next to them. Touching the plate causes the door to slide aside.

Why one of the doors isn't in front of the elevator seems odd, but nothing you see offers an explanation for that.

"Hmmmm. Interesting idea, Lucky. This could be a facility that was set up to house the clones when they are... done. What would call that... when they are full grown? Born? Hatched?" Randall replies to Lucky.

He'd walked around one side of the circular hallway while Alynita had gone the other way. He'd found the second door, and, experimentally, touched the stone plate, not really expecting to get a result, so was surprised when the door opened.

Before walking in, he tapped his gun butt against the 'glass' to make sure that it was, in fact, glass. It sounded like glass (as opposed to transparent aluminum) or plastic. At least that was consistent. Plastic would have indicated chemical processing that they had yet to see any signs of, while aluminum would have indicated metalworking that was also--mostly--absent. Glass, made from silicates or sand, was consistent with rock-working.

It still wasn't a guarantee that weapons fire would shatter it, but that was a chance he'd have to take. He stepped into the donut-shaped room, and the door shut behind him. He half expected to be engulfed with gas, but it didn't happen.

As he walked around the room to rejoin the others, he came across a panel that was all black, except one light in the middle that was blinking.

He pointed it out to the others.

"Any idea what that might mean?"

"Yeah, it means they've figured out to make a light out of stone!" Kylie quips.

"Unless the people that lived here... or were supposed to live here.. have completely different senses, then a flashing light should mean something that needs attention. The flash grabs your attention via sight."

"Sound would need to be generated via a speaker of some sort, wouldn't it? We haven't seen any indication of such."

"So the real question is: what needs attention?"

She glances around the one large room again. Unless there was some sort of secret door, there was no way to get behind these 'control panels'. In fact, as near as she could tell, they formed the wall of the room.

"On the other hand, this could be some sort of art gallery, and each of these panels is some sort of artistic expression."

"If these are control panels, then there has to be some sort of connection to what they control. If these are built into the wall, then those connections have to be in the wall itself... or... going up through the ceiling."

"Or down through the floor, but we've been down below. There's nothing there that we saw. So that leaves up."

She looked rather pleased with herself at having deduced that. She skipped mentioning that it could be the controls for cells.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:34, Mon 12 Sept 2016.

Alynita herself on the other side save for whomever followed her takes a look fully trying to figure out what is going on.  After taking a moment or two to look on her side she checks to see if there is a way to go straight through or if there is anything that would bar one's way.

The room is just one large circular room that wraps around the hallway that wraps around the central elevator shaft, so Alynita has no problem walking all the way through to the other door. There are no other doorways or passages out of the room. Even the control panels do not seem to be components, but are just part of the wall, not even 'built in', but 'carved' out of the wall itself.

On the other hand, you quickly realize that this room isn't nearly as large as the shaft that was carved by the tunnel borer. It's not that there are 'hidden' passages or rooms beyond the control panels, but it suggests that control mechanisms might be back there. It also suggests that the 'wall' of control panels might not be completely natural. Although it appears to be just stone, it might actually be something more like concrete that was formed in place.

"Well, unless anyone has any other options, I guess we go up... to find out what these panels control, right?" Randall says.

"Back to the elevator."

"You know, I still can't get over the fact that a facility this big has only one elevator... and one that goes so slow..."

"I think a light bulb just went off. Can you see it?" he asks, point above his head.

"What if the elevator can move faster? Maybe it's only on 'slow' because it's conserving energy. Isn't that the premise behind a beanstalk elevator to space? It requires less energy than a rocket?"

He leads the way back to the elevator, and as they all step in again, he looks at the console again. There are no additional buttons... none that aren't accounted for.

"I guess there is something to be said for being the only ones here--we don't have to wait for the elevator."

Once everyone is in, he presses the button for the next floor up.

Not for the first time, he wonders if the elevator will continue to work in the same way. He remembered a discussion with an instructor... about the acceptance of society. People go to a store and buy groceries... they almost never have any suspicious thoughts that they are getting cheated or that the groceries they buy might be defective or contaminated. The same applied to locking the door of one's house... it stopped anyone from just wondering in, but there was no real security there. A glass window was hardly a deterrent to someone that wanted to do you harm.

The elevator takes its good old time going up to the next level, and when the elevator door opens, you can once again see a glass wall encircling the central shaft. Only what's beyond the wall is different.

There are rows of ... something... Each row has 7 block-like rectangles standing on end side by side, with an aisle separating each group of 7 blocks.

You can also see down the aisle, and can see that each row appears to be repeated 5 deep.

The most startling feature is that each of these blocks has a glass window in it, and even from the elevator, you can that there is apparently a person inside each of the blocks.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:44, Fri 30 Sept 2016.

For an army ranger, the Major seems to 'know' an awful lot.  I guess that's what happens when you get stuck in the Stargate programme!  She smiles to herself though the smile stops as the elevator does, revealing the scene before her.  "Well... Prison... holding cells... quarantine... experiments... zoo?"  She brainstorms some ideas, "I'd suggest we don't open any of the cells 'just yet'."  She'll leave the elevator with the others.