Chapter Four

Brave New Worlds

...

Elysium

Console Room

...

"Instead of weeks spent doing maths why not choose that one?" Owen's voice was at its snarkiest as he pointed at the screen.

"Yes, why don't we just check out the one that is all bolted together?" Added Diana.

Taydin and Aislynn both looked up from the console at the same time.

"What?" They said simultaneously.

Diana put her hands on her hips.

"Lady-A!" she said. "Do you ever look at the actual picture on the screen, or do you just watch that number feed on the bottom?" She turned to the screen. "Wait, it's behind that big asteroid, I just saw it, wait for it to pass… there!" She pointed, then scowled as her finger went right through the image. "And these holographic screens are all well and good, but you cannot poke them!"

The Time Lords leaned forwards to look. Aislynn zoomed in to get a better picture.

'Bolted together' was perhaps an inaccurate description; but there was no question that the grouping of asteroids had been placed into an artificial shape. There were several of them forming the corners of a perfect cube, surrounding what was either an extremely large asteroid, or an exceptionally small moon. The moon was in the exact center of the geometric shape. Between the asteroids pulsed spherical blobs of energy, set into perfect lines.

"That looks bad," Jake frowned.

"I was going to say it looked remarkable," said Aislynn.

"No, I mean, this asteroid is going to hit it." Jake said grimly.

"Oh, you're right!" Aislynn agreed.

"It is a collision course," Taydin scowled. "I don't think it is going to hit, though… watch!"

It was a fascinating thing to see. When the asteroid drifted too close, one of the lines of energy split apart, striking it solidly. In moments it had been pulled into alignment, along with a second, smaller asteroid. The addition shifted the shape of the configuration from a cube into a flawless octahedron. Although all the other asteroids had changed positions, they remained equidistant from the moon, which never moved from the exact center of the formation.

"It must shift shape according to whatever asteroids are in the area," mused Aislynn.

"Do you think it only adds asteroids? Or does it lose them also?" asked Jake.

"Oh it must lose asteroids too, otherwise it would be well past a chiliagon by now," Taydin said, returning to the controls. "Let's do a scan of that moon…"

"What's a chiliagon?" wondered Diana.

"A thousand-sided, mathematical shape," Aislynn said absent-mindedly.

"Oh?" said Jake, rubbing his chin while his eyes sparkled mischievously. "What would a hundred sided shape be?"

"A hectagon," said Taydin.

"A million-sided shape?" prompted Owen.

"Megagon," Aislynn was also momentarily involved in the controls.

Diana elbowed Jake in the ribs while Katie scowled at Owen.

"Quit teasing the Time Lords!" she scolded.

"Ha, as I thought," Taydin beamed, "That moon is hollow."

"No atmosphere, we'll have to wear suits." Aislynn was frowning.

"Don't worry," Diana beamed. "Suits are all part of the adventure, right?"

"Quite correct," confirmed Taydin, and thumbed the materialization controls.

...

Unexplored Moon

...

"It's doing the sphere thing again," commented Diana as she followed the others outside, pointing to the Elysium, which was once again a floating ball of silver.

Taydin sighed as Aislynn pointed her tuning sonic at the entrance, closing it up.

"It's not as obvious in a zero-g environment, I suppose," he said regretfully. "I really will have to take the time to trace down that fault at some point."

Aislynn put away the tuning sonic, and directed her light around. The humans were all doing the same thing.

The suits on the Elysium, like everything else, could have come from the height of the 60's on Earth. The suits were silver, with sleek, graceful lines and bubble helmets. All of them were floating, using the embedded micro-jets to keep together, for there was no gravity and nothing besides the jets to keep them from floating away. Dust and pebbles drifted past their helmets. It was dark and cold, and the place gave the impression that no one had been there for eons.

"How does that even work?" Diana scowled at the Elysium as the door vanished, and it resumed its spherical shape. It had taken on the grayish color of the walls and might have been another floating boulder except for its pristine and perfect shape. "I thought sound waves didn't carry through a vacuum."

"They don't," said Taydin absent-mindedly. "The signal sent by the Tuning sonic to close the Elysium isn't sound based. It's a single photon charged to alter the alignment of the electrons in the closure mechanism."

"Ask a stupid question..." Owen chuckled and Diana snorted her amusement in reply.

"This place has been abandoned for a long time," Aislynn mused. "But, look how well it is preserved! The architecture is magnificent," she said, as the beams of light caught shapes in the darkness, of tall graceful pillars and high intricate ceilings.

The walls appeared to be of the same grayish material. It wasn't black, precisely, and yet the light refused to reflect off of it properly. Even when looking closely at the walls, it was very difficult to perceive details. The entire structure appeared to be made from narrow, parallel lines, running very close together. It seemed to be very hard; although there was dust in the air, no dust appeared when running one's glove over the surface of the walls. If only there had been an atmosphere, it would have been echoing; the tall buttresses and impossibly high ceilings gave it the air of an old gothic church, done all in black.

"I'll take your word for it, since I have no idea what it would look like brand new," joked Owen, flashing his own light around , trying to get a better idea of the size. The passageways were enormous, Owen's light fading into gloom without illuminating the ceiling above them.

"Looks like there are two passageways," said Jake, "One going this way, the other going that way. You want to take the nearer, or the further first?"

"I don't think it matters, the hallway scanned as circular, and there were no life-forms detected…" mused Aislynn.

"The direction doesn't matter, but splitting up the group does," Diana said. "Do not split up the group!"

From his belt pouch, Jake fished out a coin.

"Call it," he said to Diana.

"Heads," she said.

Owen looked surprised.

"Can you even flip a coin in…" but his voice trailed away as Jake tossed the coin up. It seemed to go very slowly, spinning gently, before he snatched it again, slapped it onto the back of his hand, and looked at it.

"Tails," he informed them. "That way."

"That way it is," Diana said.

Jake, Diana, and the Time Lords were accustomed to working in zero-G. Owen and Katie were not. There was a lot of laughter as they joyfully propelled themselves from place to place by pushing off of walls, at least until Owen missed a jump, and would have gone sailing away unhindered until Jake caught his ankle and pulled him back.

Almost exactly halfway around the circular corridor was a single, large room, with a square doorway. There was no door in the doorway. Above the doorway was a small, square plaque with more symbols on them. Diana floated up to the plaque and examined it.

"I thought the Elysium would translate all this stuff!" she protested.

"Give her a moment," said Aislynn, bouncing herself up as well. "There are hardly any known examples of Aedok in existence, it's bound to take a bit."

Katie, in the meantime, was shining her light into the room, which none of them had yet entered.

"It's full of sugar cubes!" she said in surprise.

"Sugar cubes?" Owen came to the doorway and looked also.

The square room was large, so large that their lights didn't illuminate the far end of it. It appeared to be perfectly cubical in shape, and there was a thin haze of dust, as there had been in all of the other rooms. In the dust, however, floated small, white shapes. They did indeed look like sugar cubes. They cast long thin shadows behind them, in the dust, as the illumination from the flashlights caught them.

"I doubt they're made of sugar," Taydin mused, pulling his sonic thoughtfully.

"Wait," said Diana. "I think the translation is coming through… " She scowled as the symbols seemed to shift into letters she could read.

"'Receptacle of Delay'?" She repeated in a tone of disbelief. "What the hell is a 'Receptacle of Delay'?"

"Apparently the closest match to the concepts portrayed by the symbols," Aislynn floated back down and looked into the room. Once Diana joined her, the entire group had their lights all shining into the room. With the additional illumination, it was possible to see further details.

The room didn't seem to be made of the same material as the outer corridors. It was whitish, apparently made of the same material as the cubes. Perhaps it was its perfectly square proportions, without furniture or fixture, that gave it the air of a mechanical place, or perhaps it was the perfect parallel lines, twisting all around, of the channels in the walls. Whatever the cause, it seemed to be a room meant for some kind of purpose.

One of the cubes was drifting near the door frame; and Owen reached out and snagged one.

"Oh, be careful," said Katie.

"Hey!" Owen said as he examined his prize. "These are dice!"

"No way," said Jake, and they all leaned closer to look.

It did look uncommonly like a dice cube. It was made of that strange whitish material, and each of its six sides had a symbol inscribed in it; the same symbol on each side. They waited, but the symbol did not change: it seemed that this symbol also was one that would not translate. It was not one of the symbols that had been left on the note from the Lady Professor. Those symbols hadn't translated either.

"I think they're all like that," Diana said, catching another one. "This one has a symbol on it too, see?" She pushed off into the room.

"Be careful, Angel," said Jake.

"Healing factor'll deal with any problems," said Diana absent-mindedly, but it became apparent, after a moment, that nothing was going to happen, and the rest of the group slowly followed.

"There are hundreds of these," Katie said, drifting about the room, plucking cubes out of the air, looking at them, and then letting them go again. "They all appear to be unique… none of them seem to have the same symbols as any of the others."

Jake had drifted over to one of the walls.

"These lines are different from the ones in the corridor," he said. "It looks like they all lead to the door."

"Or from the door to the back wall," said Diana, who had pushed herself all the way to the ceiling. "The ceiling has these same lines."

"So does the floor," added Owen.

"Hello," said Taydin, and they all came to look.

The entire back wall was covered in a complicated grid. In each of the grid squares, a symbol appeared. Each square of the grid was indented, as if the countless thousands of floating cubes had once filled the tiny alcoves in the wall.

In the middle of the wall were a series of seven indentations that were recessed much farther than the others. Two were filled with cubes and the cubes in them were lit: the rest were darkened. It was clear that this was a panel of some sort, but there was no way to tell what it did. The remaining spaces remained grouped by themselves in a neat little lines, carefully framed, looking almost lonely in their emptiness, and book-ended by the two filled slots. The panel was in the exact center of the wall, surrounded by symbols running several feet deep on every side.

"This is obviously meant to be filled," Owen mused.

"With what?" Jake gestured to the room with the cubes floating everywhere. "There's only five spaces. There's zillions of these things!"

Katie had caught one of the cubes and was floating along, looking for the matching symbol among those engraved into the back wall. Eventually finding it, she tapped the cube to its match, but nothing happened.

Aislynn, meanwhile, was scanning the wall with her sonic.

"This is obviously a device," she said almost unnecessarily. "But I can't tell what it does."

Taydin came and looked.

"It might be in working condition," he mused. "But there doesn't appear to be a way to…"

"Hey! Hey!" Called Diana excitedly from the center of the room. "Check it out! I found the reindeer guy!"

"Wait, what?" said Owen.

She was holding up a cube with an enormous grin. In a moment she had pushed herself across the room to the back wall, a cube triumphantly between her fingers.

With a thrill of alarm, Aislynn saw her intent.

"Diana! Don't…"

But it was too late. Diana had reached the back wall, and without hesitation, she put her cube in the third slot out of the empty five.

"Diana!" Scolded Aisynn. "We don't even know what this thing does…"

"Angel, be careful," added Jake.

Nothing seemed to happen for a moment. Then the cube, loosely floating in its slot, suddenly clicked as it seemed to lock into place. Seconds later it had been withdrawn until its face was even to the level of all the other squares, all over the wall.

On the far side of the wall, near Katie, one of the symbols lit up. She jumped, but then peered at it.

"Oh!" She said. "This is the same symbol!"

"Diana!" Scolded Aislynn. "Don't put strange cubes into strange machines, when we don't know what they do!"

"Don't give me that!" she countered. "In five minutes you would have done the same thing, but you would have given a speech first about the value of Pi or something."

Aislynn looked wounded.

"It would have been about probability vectors," she pouted in an undertone.