Sarah shook her head, "Sadly not.  I'm not a scientist... though if you're looking for conspiracy theory - there are two main technologies here... the Dwarven and the original Ancient's.   Maybe the Ancient technology was designed to accommodate those who were using it?
  Maybe given enough time, this place will slowly reconfigure to our needs?"

"That's a great theory, but, frankly, I don't want to stay here long enough for that to happen," Eric said.

"Let's give this level a few more minutes of searching, then we'll head up to the next level."

She nods.  "Yes Major...."  Of course, the knowledge that it was (or indeed wasn't) changing could be a key to understanding this place, but she wasn't going to argue the point as she suspected, given how little time had passed, that they'd notice further changes if the theory was correct.

"I'll take your word for that, Sarah, since trying to figure out what you just said is making my head hurt," Eric replied.

"But, like everything else here, we are handicapped by not know how to look or where to look. Somewhat like Tok'ra tunnel crystals, these people have stone-fusion technology. Yes, it's beyond our capabilities, but we live on a mineral-rich world, so we've never had to develop the ability to manipulate stone they way these people do."

"We've always had the problem of understanding what someone means... not necessarily what they say. It's even harder with the written word. You can read 'cup', for instance, but does the word mean a drinking vessel, or something that's shaped like it? Or, is it a verb?"

"It's a good thing you're along. Most of us are handicapped because we speak English, and American English at that. We have a knack for twisting a word's definition into six ways to Sunday. Take the word 'draft'. It's got, like, 20 separate definitions that have no correlation to each other."

"So, are you up to sorting through that kind of language, if that's what this turns out to be? I wonder if they have homonyms?"

As the others began returning from their searches, he turned his attention to them.

"So what have you found?" he asked them.

"Lucky found the secret compartments!" Kylie gushed as the two of them returned to the Major. She held out the few items she was carrying, and let Lucky show what he had.

"We found a stethoscope, and what I'm guessing is tongue depressor, and one of those little hammers for testing your leg reflexes," she added as she handed each item to Kienan-Meredy, who was the one that wanted to see the medical gear.

Lucky shook his head as he looked at the Major with a shrug, "Dumb luck sir. Just happened to look in the right place is all. Someone would have seen it if I hadn't." He did not want credit for finding the items, and he looked to see if there were any similar cabinets in the room.

Sarah rolls her eyes at Brooks.  Eric could be forgiven as he'd only been working directly with her a short space of time but... "Major... I speak more languages than you've had girlfriends.  I've more than ready."   She continues looking around for clues using the camera to ensure that she's able to spot anything of interest outside of human sight-range.

Then as the others returned, Sarah was not surprised to see the instruments as they'd found similar in their earlier hunt.  The compartment on the other hand suggested that there might be others.  "Any chance you could scan for the magnetic fields emitted by the door magnets?"

She then gave Lucky a circumspect thumbs up.  He had been lucky, possibly, but he was part of the team for a reason and his contribution was as important as any other's!
This message was last edited by the player at 12:01, Wed 13 Dec 2017.

"Oh, sure, no problem," Cormac replied to Sarah. "I'll just whip out my handy-dandy tricorder and scan for those pesky little magnetic fields."

He pulls out an imaginary device and pretends to hold it and wave it around like he would if he was scanning for something.

"Actually, I deduced such a system from the earlier visit. In other words, there had to be some place to store such items because they weren't just lying about. Without the normal construction techniques we use back home to raise and lower the examination platform, all the 'space' underneath is not only wasted but unnecessary. Ergo, it's the perfect place to put storage. We've already seen incredible applications of stone, so it wasn't a big leap to think that the stone drawers would be... 'invisible'. Touch and proximity were the first choices for opening them. From there, we tried sonics and magnetics."

"There could have been other ways, of course, but we were successful with the magnetics."

"And thus we have the following:"

He handed over to Kianan a couple of items.

"This is a bi-metal thermometer, and that is a blood-pressure cuff."

"Was that really called for, McLane?"   She had been in the process of building up Lucky only to have Cormac choose to insult her.   "I'm sure our resident scientists will gladly offer to give you a lesson in science although I'm in two minds whether that or a lesson in manners is more important."

[Out of interest...  It's well within our current technology.  I also made one years ago in high school.  Nothing out of this world.
* https://play.google.com/store/...ssmeter&hl=en_GB
* https://play.google.com/store/...etector&hl=en_GB]

"Sarcasm... yet another service I provide," Cormac replied.

"I was being sarcastic so as not to insult you, my dear Sarah. I apologize if it didn't work. However, I was trying to make the point that I didn't bring such a device with me. Did you?"

"Did any of us?"

"Such a device is not part of our standard team bundles, nor is there anything in those bundles that could be scrounged into making one. Not that I know of, of course. I'm an archaeologist and linguist, though my focus is on translating ancient written languages. On Earth. Out here, they may not be so ancient."

"As long as the Ancients and the Goa'uld are involved in seeding the galaxies with humanoid life, that training may still be valid. As soon as we encounter an alien language, all bets are off. An alien thought process will undoubtedly produce a language that doesn't correspond to any syntactic pattern we are likely to be familiar with."

"As I understand it, your linguistic focus is on the spoken language. Am I correct?"

"The only practical scientist on our team would seem to be Kianan-Meredy. Perhaps she has or can construct a magnetic detector?" His last words were directed to the Tok'ra.

"There's a difference between sarcasm and being an ... ." Lucky said flatly in  Sarah's defense, but cut himself off without making any references. He was certain she did not need his help, but he could not simply stand by in this case. "And honestly, we know the stuff is here, we know it's on par with what we have back home, so can't we move on?" He looked at the others.

"Yes, that's exactly what we're doing," the Major replied.

"Kianan requested some of these items so we'd have a way to gauge what their markings and meters meant. It's all well and good to determine a type of measurement, but is that a foot, or a meter or mile?"

In reply to Eric Brooks (msg # 859):
"Ahh, dat's easy. It doesn't matter." Picking up the blood pressure cuff, she patted the table, she pointed at Cormak, "Hop up here and relax. If I take your blood pressure wid deir cuff, I can compare it to my readings. I get you to do some jumping jacks & take a second reading. By comparing de 2 we can get a baseline for deir scale. Also, if you check the gauge, dis sequence of symbols repeats and dis set matches the increment. This gives Sarah a base to work with their numbering system - which appears to be base 10 with the least significant digit on the left."
This message was lightly edited by the GM at 02:35, Sat 16 Dec 2017.

Cormac's droll 'humour' simply receives the briefest of shakes of the head though she does give Lucky a smile as she comes to her defence.   Unlike some women, she has no problem with a man standing up for a woman!

"It certainly is..."  This in response to Cormac's question even as she reaches into her jacket and seemingly out of nowhere produces a tablet the likes of which folk has no doubt have seen her use on many occasions.  She thumbs the screen to life, taps a couple of buttons and opens the toolkit she was looking for.   She then offers the tablet to Lucky.  "Maybe with a little bit of tech you can find something else useful while Kianan continues trying to give our numbers a frame of reference."
This message was last edited by the player at 22:41, Sat 16 Dec 2017.

Putting on the visor and over-glove again, Kianan said, "Since MM of Hg is the American standard for blood pressure, I'll use that and then you can convert to whatever unit of pressure you want."

Pumping up the cuff on Cormak's arm she held her covered hand over his elbow and then released the pressure & removed the cuff. "125 over 93, not bad for the conditions. Do some exercise to get your PB & heart rate up and we'll do it again."

"OK, from here to here is 32mm Hg, that makes each symbol about 11mm Hg or .. about .. just under 1.5Kpa. We'll do another reading & double check, but that's as accurate as I think we can be given the scale on this equipment. As for the thermometer, each mark seems to represent about 1.25deg C and this mark should be close to 30deg C. Given the centering of the mark, their normal body temperature is fairly close to Tau'Ri standard."
This message was lightly edited by the player at 02:10, Fri 29 Dec 2017.

With the current equipment, Kianan easily verifies what she already had guessed... that these people did use a base 10 numbering system.

Overall, their blood pressure and core body temperature were slightly lower than Tau'ri average, no doubt attributable to their short stature--their hearts didn't have to pump the blood up so high.

"Well, that's a relief," Eric says with a grin. "I was beginning to think they might have two heads or something."

"We'll take this equipment with us... for now. I don't think they'll miss it, even when they wake up."

"I still feel like we're just spinning our wheels. Unfortunately, we're also dancing in the dark. I can't even make an intelligent guess as to how many levels we'd need to explore to get an answer to our question."

"At least we got the elevator to move faster. Even so, I can't see that we can explore more than 3-4 levels per day. Let's say 5 for the sake of argument. That's still 120 days to cover the 600+ levels. We certainly don't have the rations to do that, even if we had some reason to justify doing so to Command."

"So, as I said, let's hit the next 10 levels... a quick search. We can change that if we find something to warrant doing so. Otherwise, we head back and let an anthro team come back."

"Anyone disagree with that?"

OOC: Was I able to discover anything?

Not really sure what Sarah was trying to discover...


Sarah was slowly building up a dictionary of this language, though it wasn't a 'carved in stone' one. She had multiple definitions for most words, and she was severely lacking in verbs and adjectives. Those just weren't things that showed up on consoles.

She had a few colors defined. These Dwarves made a clear distinction between crimson, scarlet, vermilion, brick, etc. Those were easy, since they clearly had a different name for each shade.

The advantage she had was that this was an active culture, even if there were currently no speakers available for her to talk to.

The flip side was that she also had a dozen words that could mean 'good' or 'positive' or some other designation.

Going up to another level would probably help, as, hopefully, she'd find less technical indicators.

If she had to guess, she'd say she was about 25% there to being able to read 'most' of the language.

"Sounds good to me." Lucky replied as he took the tablet from Sarah."Even though their in stasis or whatever, it still feels creepy down here so a little distance would be nice." He was not even sure he was using the tablet correctly, but at least he felt like he was doing something productive

Today: Lucas Wheeler rolled 18 using 1d20+4 with rolls of 14.  Search with tablet.

While the tablet doesn't have sensor capability, it is able to detect wifi signals so that it can connect to the internet. Sarah had an app on it that interpreted the fluctuations to the wifi signal as magnetic fields. Lucky can now use the tablet to locate other magnetically sealed drawers or compartments.

He quickly finds that it's not sensitive enough to trace circuits, though, as the magnetic field of the electric current is too weak.

Once everyone is back in the elevator, Eric holds his finger over the buttons for a minute.

"Do we want to return to a level we've already been to... well, you have... I wasn't with you the first time... or do we want to try a different level?" he asks the others.

He was trained in tactics and strategy, but he couldn't quite see either of them applying to the current situation. It was the eggheads that should have the inside track on what to do next. Of course, he couldn't let them know that. That way led to madness!

Sarah shrugged, "More levels will provide more information and it would certainly help me flesh out my linguistic database.  Heading back to one of the ones we've been to may give us some insight into our theory of this place changing.   We could possibly do that before heading onto the next - as yet unexplored - level, if you like."

Lucky spoke up again as he toyed with the tablet more, looking for more storage, "Can I just point out it might be nice to head up a ways to put some distance between us and residents of Erebor wake up and find us here, get pissed and send Smaug to kill us all." He smirked as he was being facetious, but the idea of distancing himself from the dwarves in stasis did appeal to him.

"I was just crunching some of the numbers," Kylie said, "based on the control panel for the hibernation cylinders... and comparing it to the elevator indicators... There are groups of 4 G levels; each one of those groups has 2 of the hibernation levels. But... there's only one control level for 6 of those hibernation levels!"

"I thought there looked like a few too many indicators down there on those control panels. It's kind of due to the sideways thinking of the control panel. Of course, now that I think about it, it makes sense because otherwise the control panel in the elevator would have over 600 buttons!"

"But Sarah and Lucky have the right idea, I think. We should try G48-C. We're pretty sure all the H levels are hibernation levels and the J levels are the control levels for that. When we first came down, we started at the top. I think we went to a B level, which we guessed was a habitat level... living quarters."

"To get some space. Just so you know, Lucky, I brought my magic arrow just in case Smaug does show up."