The five of them stood around the door, hesitating outside, no one wanting to be the one to open it, to look inside. And then the girl stepped forward and pushed, the door swung open and they all saw the impossible machine inside.
"What is that?"
"How can this be?"
"This is impossible."
"What is that thing?"
They each said, looking at the giant room inside, bigger by far than the box's exterior.
"It's real," Jin said after stepping into the room.
"It can't be," Gage said, going around the box's exterior, trying to figure out what the trick was.
"It's bigger on the inside!" Peter exclaimed.
"Or smaller on the outside," Will added. "I guess it depends on how you look at it."
They all walked in, Will carrying the unconscious woman, and they found themselves in a large, high-tech chamber, with a tall, cylindrical device in the middle that vaguely resembled some sort of control panel.
"There are more rooms!" Jin exclaimed, standing in a doorway, looking out at the hallway beyond.
"Be careful," Gage warned, "We don't know how big this thing is, or if there are any booby-traps."
Jin took one last look into the long hallway and turned back, returning to the group huddled around the control panel in the oddly large room.
"So, now that we've found the thing the aliens want, what do we do with it?" Peter asked.
"Don't let them take it," Gage replied. "And try to find out what it does."
"I bet this woman knows," Will added, motioning towards the unconscious woman.
"Well…" the girl began. "Maybe, maybe not, but definitely not anymore."
"The memory gas," Jin said in realization.
"Maybe there's something in here that can help her," Peter suggested.
"I don't like the idea of leaving this room and exploring this…." Gage began, but couldn't find the right noun.
"Ship…?" the girl said, filling in the blanks.
"You think that's what it is?" Gage asked, sounding weary, he took off his glasses and started wiping the lenses with a cloth from his pocket.
"Mmhmm," she replied, smiling happily. "And I'm going to check it out," she said, leaving the boys and walking through one of the doors. None of them followed her.
The girl walked down the hallways, passing doors and rooms, only occasionally looking inside. Whenever she did, oddly, she always found it was the same room: a luxurious bathroom dominated by one large bathtub at its center. Which wasn't at all what she needed, unless somehow the bathtub would help bring back the unconscious woman's memories; the girl seriously doubted this though. And the girl did wonder how she kept coming back to the same room, and hadn't even seen a single different one. She shrugged her shoulders and kept walking.
After her 22nd visit to the same room, the girl finally decided to go along with it. She walked into the tiled bathroom, and went up to the bathtub, finding that it was already filled with steaming water. She poked the surface of the water with one finger, curiously. Finding that it was just hot water, she decided it was safe to get in.
She continued her walk through the labyrinth of hallways, scrubbed clean, but back in her filthy nightgown. And this time, every door she opened led to the same room: an enormous wardrobe that seemed to go up forever, each level accessible via a spiraled staircase. She knew the game by now: go where the box wanted her to go, do whatever it wanted her to do, and she may just progress to her goal. So, she entered the enormous closet.
There were all kinds of clothes in the room, and all kinds of sizes. She saw a ridiculously long scarf, a question mark patterned vest, what looked like a clown outfit, some bowties, and even a fez. It was a bit overwhelming, and it would be impossible to choose anything, so she closed her eyes and threw her hands into a clothing rack, pulling things out at random. She looked down at the clothes in her hand, but before she could see what she had gotten, her hair fell in her face, blocking her vision. Now that her hair was washed, and wasn't stuck together in a mass of tangles and dirt, it kept falling into her eyes. And it was quite annoying. She couldn't see what was going on. So she reached into her pocket, found one of the woman's hairpins, and secured her bangs with the small metal piece. She figured that the woman wouldn't mind, especially if she didn't remember it.
Then she picked up the clothes from the floor where she had dropped them and held them up in front of her. Somehow she had managed to get all the right items and not leave anything out, so she tried them on. One shirt was a bright yellow button up, she threw it aside. The other shirt was tie-dyed with a mixture of pink, light yellow, beige, and lavender, with beige sleeves that were fitted near the top of the arm, but flared out near the cuffs. She tried this one on, finding that it had a very shallow scooped neck, so that it exposed the top of her shoulders, but went no lower than her collarbone. She decided to keep it. She also decided to keep the pair of tan-colored pants, which were very soft, and also flared out at the bottom.
When she went to leave the room, she found that the door was locked. She put her foot on the frame beside the door and pulled on the knob, but it didn't budge. Then she noticed the one part of her wardrobe that was missing, and picked up the nearest pair of shoes, a blue pair of flip-flops. When she tried the door again, it opened, and as she exited the room, she put on the sandals.
The next door she tried led her to an enormous library. She walked inside and started looking around for books on memory, toxins, and amnesia; preferably a book with all three. It wasn't long before she found one, and as she flipped through the pages, she located the toxin she was looking for, Violet Mnemos. She skimmed past symptoms, ingredients, and uses, until she found the recipe for an antitoxin. She committed the words to memory and closed the book, but just as she did so, something caught her eye. She reopened the book and read the list just below the antitoxin recipe; it was an abbreviated record of the aliens most likely to use the substance. She read the list of names, until one caught her eye Svinge'vat and just below that, the Asudine. She read over the list again, but it was still those two names that interested her, and she really didn't know why. So she shrugged, put the book back, and left the library.
The next room she entered had endless shelves filled with jars, containers, and cabinets. Now she was sure that the ship had a mind of its own, and that it was leading her by the hand; and she was sure that there was nothing she could do about it. So she picked up a multiply partitioned bowl near the front of the room and walked along the isles, opening cabinets, checking labels, and occasionally scooping out ingredients with the conveniently placed ladles sitting beside the various jars. When all of the ingredients had been collected, she walked to one corner of the room, where she had noticed a collection of laboratory equipment, and set to work making the antitoxin.
Some time later she left the room, stuffing seven separate vials filled with a strange, bright, orange liquid, into a brown messenger bag/purse she had picked up which seemed to be a lot bigger on the inside. Then she started walking down the hallways again, hoping that the ship knew what it was doing and led her back to the control room.