In reply to Krillis (msg # 31):

You're able to match pitch, and the bioform rolls over for you as well.

Match Pitch 1@3, I assume, with +@1 for this time for 1@4.

You follow him down the hall until she leads you into a side door on the right.  This is halfway between the two major halls.  Inside, you see two pups.  She goes over to nose them, and looks back at you two with a neutral expression whereas before she was friendly.

The pups are about thirty pounds each, and awkward as if they have not gotten used to their second pair of legs yet.  And in the dim light of the room, you can see glowing green trees and flowers illuminated in the fur of the Kreggors.

Well...that's just adorable. However, I am not foolish enough to think that this wolf is going to be anything but at least cautious about its pups with me, given that we just met. And that's regardless of the octave I speak in.

"What commands are these bioforms programmed to respond to? Can they learn new ones?"

For the most part at the moment, I want to avoid the pups and wolf but walk tall, with confidence around the room. My current objective is ultimately to find out where people are, so I can reach them; however, food is a good secondary resource to find.

"Jeeves, can you please be on the lookout for anything that we can use to help repair you? You might have to walk me through it, but if you recognize any components you need, we should probably pick them up at least."

In reply to Krillis (msg # 33):

"They can be trained, but commands are a different thing.  I recall, 'guard', and 'sleep', and 'out'.  There were not many commands." Jeeves replies, thinking hard.

"I do have a diagnostic, but no self repair functions beyond the most simple.  But if I see a repair niche, I will point it out to you."

You walk out and further down the hall to Main Hall C.  Stepping into it, you see a pallet of 'Food Mix #4' stacked against the far wall.  It occurs to y ou to wonder why its not been taken when a small bot the size of a basketball on one of the small tables begrins to make whirring noises as it points a glass rod in your direction.

"Thank you, Jeeves. Hopefully, we can find some people soon and won't have to rely on starting our own pack."

When I enter Main Hall C, I do wonder why someone would leave food behind, as I'm pretty sure that people have left a long time ago or made a point to make this place look that way.

Then, I hear the sounds that indicate that something is charging up. By the time I notice the glass rod and associate it with the sound, all I have time for is to hope that my reflexes are fast enough as I dive to the ground to avoid behind hit.

If I survive the next few seconds, and it turns out the rod was a weapon, I want to improvise my own weapon in the room and attempt to smash the glass rod.

In reply to Krillis (msg # 35):

You barrel into Jeeves, and are disentangling yourself when you hear a zap.  Falling down, you feel pain on your left arm.

Your shirt is on fire!

Stop, drop and roll is mixed with Jeeves patting at you.  The heavy smacking by Jeeves hurts worse than the fire.  You're now not on fire, and a quick exam shoes a few square inches of fabric loss, and a second degree burn of an inch across on your ribs.

You grab a small stool and hurl it like a grenade at the zapper which is whirring up again, but louder this time.  It crashes near, but misses, you think.  You toss another stool and the bot burns it out of the air so that it falls in flaming pieces on the other side of the room.

Its whirring up again....

"Jeeves, break its weapon!"

I try to find more things around me to throw at it to distract the robot. Hopefully, I can get it to attack a flying object again instead of either of us.

In reply to Krillis (msg # 37):

The defense bot ignores Jeeves, at least this time, and Jeeves does as you command.

"It is done, Mr. Right."

"I'll, I'll kill you, I'll murderize you, you ain't seen nothing yet..."  Another voice from inside the room with Jeeves...

"No need for any murderizing. I was just defending myself and Jeeves had no say in what he did. It was my command. Who is there? Who are you?"

I try to find the source of the noise. Is it so dark that I can't see where it's coming from or is it through some audio system?

Its the defense bot. Or at least the sound is coming from it.

"I'm the Grand Lord of Tejer, the Big Kahuna, the Great Pebble, the ....the....the...Maaaaaan.  You are a thief."

I put my hands in the air immediately and drop my weapons. "Jeeves, stop attacking and step back."

"I completely agree to an extent and I apologize. I thought it was salvage, not theft, but I'm happy to return your property if you can prove that it's actually yours. Can we have this discussion in a setting not at gun-point?"

In reply to Krillis (msg # 41):

"Mmmmm, aaaah, well, sure.  I was left in charge of the Clan Compound, and have waited here since.  Quite...ah, umm, anyways....and since its in here, and was guarded, until your bot...."

"I was a Tejer Clan bot until given to this man."  Jeeves says.

"Right. So clewly, clawly...it's mine.  But y'know."

I nod, feigning understanding for now.

"Jeeves, don't question things for the time being. I need to talk to this person."

Then, to the man over the intercom, "Please, come out so that we can talk face to face. On your terms. I am only looking to understand where I am and how to survive for now. But that doesn't mean that I can't be valuable to you. Once property is appropriately returned, maybe we can talk about how we can help each other."

In reply to Krillis (msg # 43):

A couple minutes later and a man in a powered wheelchair comes rolling in.  He's bald, and covered except for his head in a white integument much too large for just a human body.  Lights and colored fluids in tubes cover the exterior of the armor.

He's crying.

"A human, a real human.  Its been so long." You notice his speech has cleared up.

I start to tear up a little bit too, but fight to keep my composure. My priority now is to secure shelter, fulfill my basic needs, and get information. "Yeah, real human just like you. What's going on in this place? Where is everybody, and how have you survived so long on your own?"

In reply to Krillis (msg # 45):

"They left.  Some wanted to go Deep.  Build a new civ a mile underground.  Others wanted to jump off and find a different asteroid with Precursor gravity engines on it.  I'm not sure what they decided as the two hundred of them were still arguing when they left." He breathes in shakily.  "Someone needed to stay behind, to pass on messages, to guard the place, just in case they had to come back.  And I, I was desperately ill.  Body broken by an accident in the Cataclysm.  So they put me in a cryochamber, had the autodoc work on me, and promised to get news back in a year or two."

I feel like I already know what the answer was be, but I gulp and summon the will to ask - and perhaps be there for him - regardless. "How long ago was that, then? Have you heard back yet?"

"I've slept in cryo many times.  Its been...forty years or so. I think.  I lost track that one time....well, i thought the Precursors were talking to me.  I went mad."

"The Precursors...?" I wait for him to continue, but after time, I say, "Look, I don't know a lot about what has happened or how I even got here, but I am now and I'm here to help. To do that, I need to know what we need, how to get it, and what exactly happened here."

In reply to Krillis (msg # 49):

"There are ancient bits of technology left over from what we call the Precursors.  We found the gravity engines when we came in the Ships to this place, or at least thats the commonly accepted story.  Some say we are the Precursors, we just forgot.  And we shattered a planet in our forgetting.  Anyways, we have all these asteroids, and we can move them some, with tech we learned from the Precursor gravity engines, but not as good.  And the nearby asteroid crashed into ours in an act of war, a cataclysm that we have not recovered from.  I wonder why those idiots on the other asteroid thought to make such war....they had to know that the damage from such a collision would be worse than the harshest tyranny our asteroid could force.  There used to be a hundred thousand people in the city, but now....?"

I've been trying to rely on my understanding of the known world, but that isn't working, so I toss it out while I digest what this stranger says to me. I turn my mind to the area of my life that might have something useful to assist in understanding this insanity: science fiction.

"Two things. First, are there any people still left, here or elsewhere? It sounds like it was similar to a slave revolt, where one planet of workers attacked a planet of aristocracy. Second, have you ever heard of Earth? That's where I am from and I would very much like to get back."

In reply to Krillis (msg # 51):

"Earth?" He blinks.  "Oh, the Lost Home.  That is a legend, from even before the Precursors.  Earth and the Great Empire of Man.  And the rise of the Gods who were the Precursors who broke it, the Empire.  Or came after it.  Or were just in the area.  I mean, we're talking like twenty thousand years ago if the ancient legends are true.  Most scientists and historians say its a fairy tale.  The ancient home of Man is Kulturny Sas is what most people thought.  The Ships came from there to here.  We don't know why."

He gets a trifle huffy when you blame his side for being aristocrats who enslaved others.  It does seem to fit the available evidence.

I start to think that I've gotten all of the information about my situation that I can out of this man, but there was one moment that he said something I still want to press. "You said that you thought that the Precursors were speaking to you one time, as you were awake between your cryo-sleep. Can you tell me more about that?"

After he finishes explaining this moment, I want to change toward something more productive. "There has to be a way for us to try to join up with those who left you here decades ago. I mean, we have an entire planet to scavenge for what we need, right? There must be enough parts to get a ship together so that we can get out and find everyone together."

He laughs shortly, and weakly gestures you to follow him.  He takes you down one corridor, into a room, and down a secret ramp that opens at the back of the room, and into a corridor that runs the opposite way until he gets to a dim part of the corridor.

"Lights."

And with a snap, light appears.  And on the left wall are various bits of highly complicated math, and on the right wall are things that might be math.

"I was writing on the left wall, convinced that they were answering on the right wall, but now I'm sure I was just writing both but I was sleep riding and writing."

"Well, now that there's more than just you here, there's a chance to prove if it's madness or not. How could they write on the wall from off-planet, though?"

While it is probably beyond my capabilities, I want to try to figure out the writing on the right wall first, then the left. Can I make heads or tails of it?

In reply to Krillis (msg # 55):

He explains what he can of the one wall....its Tensor Analysis, Nonlinear Differential Equations, and Topology.  The other wall has some sort of Chaotic Topology he says, but he admits he does not understand it, or this part, or that part.

Basically, you can handle this if you find calculus easy and boring.