Chapter Summary: Adventures in the library
Chapter Word Count:5,493
"What do you think the purpose of this is?" Andy said, sunning herself on a large rock next to Miranda, in the virtual sun. "It can't just be for fun."
"It's an interesting construct," Miranda said. "It has a similar psychic feel to it as the Serpent Clan training pods but I don't believe it would have the same physiological effects."
"Meaning?" Andy said, sitting up.
"In the Clan training pods, if you have the appropriate genetic makeup it has a physical affect. Learn a physical activity and your body retains any physical changes and muscle memory. I do not believe that would happen here. You will certainly remember everything we do or encounter, but you will remain physically unchanged."
"Hmmm," Andy said. "Either older tech before that was invented or discovered or the intent is really something different. Like education. Or recreation."
"Or observation," Miranda said, turning to look at the other side of the lake. Andy turned to see what she was looking at.
"Or... observation..." she echoed. "Think we should go greet them? Clothing optional?"
"Of course," Miranda said. "When in Rome."
Nodding, Andy stood up, and held out a hand to help Miranda to her feet. Together they walked from the rock, around the lake to where the two beings were standing. Up close they appeared to be female, and very close to human, their blonde hair hanging in long braids almost touching the ground.
"Elves?" Andy whispered to Miranda. "How are we meeting with elves?"
The two beings stood silently as they approached.
"Hi!" Andy said nervously.
"Welcome," the woman to the left said. "What brings you here, child, and your heart?"
"We're not actually sure," said Andy. "We went to sleep and woke up here. Where are we?" Squeezing Mirandas hand she thought 'why aren't we speaking English or clan speak?' She received a mental shrug back.
"These are the borderlands of the People of the Lea," she said. "If you are here you must have need."
"Not sure what we need that we can find here," Andy said. "Not unless you know how to defeat the Kraal or are able to translate something for us."
"We are not familiar with the Kraal," she said, "and do not interfere in the lives of those of the outer world."
"Okay," Andy said. "Not your battle. Mira, do you have that thing?"
"The cup?" Miranda asked. "Of course." She held up a hand, and concentrated for a few seconds. The metallic cup Andy's mother kept locked away appeared sitting on her hand.
"May I," the other being said.
"Of course," Miranda said, holding it out to her. The woman took the cup and carefully turned it, running a finger along the writing on the rim.
"Where did you find this?" She asked.
"It's my Mother's," Andy said. "No one is able to read the writing but it's been in the family for many years."
"One of the misplaced," the woman said. She kept the cup but stepped closer to Andy and stared at her face, even reaching out and running a finger along her ears. "Interesting disguise."
"Disguise?" Andy said. "This is how I normally look."
"If that is what you believe," the other woman said, "we will not disabuse you of that notion."
"What does that mean?" Andy said, frowning.
"Some of the misplaced have developed other appearances during their time away," she said. "We are not aware of the mechanism, but a time will come when you will know."
"Okay," Andy said, frowning in confusion. The woman returned the cup.
"You are welcome to return here when you have questions we may answer," she said. "But until then go with our blessing, and a small gift."
There was a flash and Andy sat up in bed, breathing hard. She turned to Miranda who was looking at her with a thoughtful expression. "What was that?"
"Exhausting," Miranda said. "This," she held up the small device, "appears to be some kind of device to communicate with them, not just to create a virtual world."
"Definitely like the pods, but not," Andy said. "But those where elves! Real ones!"
"Possibly," Miranda said. "Or that is just how they appeared."
"The People of Lea? Very cryptic," Andy said. "Should I have understood them? And I don't mean whatever language they had us speaking."
"Unknown," Miranda said, frowning.
"Did we just learn Elvish while sleeping?" Andy said excitedly. "Say something in Elvish!"
"Am man theled?" Miranda said in a musical tone.
"Because I wanted to hear some," Andy said. "You weren't a Tolkien fan were you?"
"The girls were but he wasn't much for fashion," Miranda said. "Victorian ideas of fairy princesses. His mythical lands were very male centric. Even the powerful women had little mobility."
"But there were elves, and hobbits, and warrior women," Andy said. "What's there to not like?"
Miranda shrugged. "It just never attracted me," she said. "I am curious about them saying that is not your original face."
"It's the only one I've ever known," Andy said. "No plans to trade it in."
"I would be disappointed if you did," Miranda said. "I much prefer your current face. It needs no changes."
"That's sweet of you," Andy said, "leaning over to kiss her. "We don't have time for what I'd like to do with you. Maybe later?"
"Later, Hiril vuin," Miranda said, smirking.
"A language no one else knows," Andy said, grinning. "That could be useful."
"Lady Shadow doesn't know this one yet," Miranda said. "If it's actually elvish or is very similar to one of Tolkien's made up languages like Sindarin. But she'll probably have learned Sindarin the next time we see her."
"Yeah, she would," Andy said. "She does know Klingon."
"Very intimidating language," Miranda said. "Very useful for scaring minions."
"And sexy," Andy said, grinning at her.
"We won't mention this to anyone," Miranda said.
"Got it. Bedroom secret," Andy said. "So we ended up in someone else's virtual reality and now we speak something like elvish. I wonder what else we'll find in the library?"
"An ancient civilization?" Miranda said. "There are likely many secrets buried in their libraries."
"They didn't sound upset with us appearing there," Andy said. "Think they were expecting us?"
"Possibly," Miranda said. "I suspect hey could answer many of our questions."
"If we know how to ask them," Andy said, "by which time we'll already know the answer. That's how these things usually work. It's all about the journey. The end is just trivia. Maybe it'll stick," she said. "Want to try it out on one of the crystals?" She rolled out of bed, and threw on a wrinkled ship suit, causing Miranda to frown.
"Come on," Andy said. "No time to waste."
Sighing, Miranda stood up, and clothed herself in one of her favorite simple gauzy dresses. Stepping up to Andy, she snapped her fingers, and the wrinkles in Andy's ship suit disappeared.
"Thanks babe," Andy said, dragging her out of their cabin towards the galley. "Think there'll be any bacon this morning?"
"If you want it," Miranda said. "I'm sure the converter can be convinced to make you some."
"Bleh," Andy said, grimacing. "Converter bacon. A gift from the gods, except not remotely."
"Our food situation has not changed since dinner," Miranda said.
"Maybe we can find out what we want quickly, and go to a restaurant. Must be a good one around this sector somewhere," Andy said, give Miranda a hopeful look. "And coffee. The Clan coffee bev is an acquired taste. Some of the real stuff would be nice. I don't understand why a converter can't make a good cup."
"I'm sure it can," Miranda said. "You just need to know how to convince it to do so."
"Not having much luck with that," Andy said, grumbling under her breath. "Maybe talk Elvish at it?"
"Whatever you want to try, darling," Miranda said.
They walked into the galley hand in hand. After grabbing a tray and assorted breakfast pastries, Andy guided Miranda to the table with the book viewer on it.
"It doesn't look any different," Andy said, turning it over. "Notice the glow has stopped."
"It stopped several clicks after you both went to bed," a disgruntled Memo said.
"Huh. So time limit on the view," Andy said. "Good to know. Did you make any progress?"
"All of the crystals are in the same language," Memo said. "All unreadable to us."
"Not surprising," Andy said. "Probably not a lending library, or they all only spoke a single language."
"Or several languages that look the same if you don't speak them," Miranda said.
"Good point," Andy said. "Shall we turn it on again?" She held out her hand for the small comm device. Getting it from Miranda, she tapped it against the book view, which started to glow. One side began to fill with writing.
Andy frowned at the screen. "Does that say what I think it does?" She said, holding it up to Miranda.
"The Journals of the People of Lea, as dictated to Aylin of the Glen, by a Star Traveller," Miranda said. "A bit wordy."
"More than a bit. Hopefully they aren't all like this," Andy said.
"You can read this?" Memo said.
"Now," Andy said. "Yesterday? Not so much."
"How?" Memo said.
"Not sure, actually," Andy said. "Went to sleep, had a strange dream, and woke up speaking some unknown language. And now we can read that."
"It's similar to a fictional language," Miranda said. "Sindarin."
"You have a dream about elves?" Garnes said, "And now you speak their language?"
"Maybe?" Andy said. "How did you recognize it?"
"I've been role playing a Ranger for cycles," Garnes said, shrugging. "Can't speak Sindarin but I recognize it when I hear it, though the language on those crystals doesn't look like the Elvish I've seen." "It's not exactly," Andy said. "I think Tolkien was intentionally trying to make it look like old Norse or some other obscure Scandinavian language. This looks more like Arabic, though the pronunciation is very different."
"But this is good, right?" Ixchel said. "If you can read it, we can train the translators so you don't have to read all of them."
"Yes!" Andy said. "I'd rather be out exploring than sitting here talking to the translator." She put the viewer back down. "How do we do that?"
"It's very simple," Garnes said. "Enable the translator, put it in recorder mode, and read. It uses your comm unit for the recording."
"Aloud?" Andy said.
"No," Garnes said. "The comm takes care of that."
"Sounds easy," Andy said. "How accurate is it?"
"Depends on how well the new language matches one we already know," Garnes said.
"Even a fictional language, since you said this sounds like Sindarin?" Andy said.
"It's a little more time consuming," Garnes said. "Fictional languages don't usually have grammars that work with the translator system."
"It worked very well with that Klingon language," Ixchel said. "Reading one of your Shakespeare plays in Klingon and in the original? It seems to be the same thing, though the Klingon is more warlike."
"Well, that's Klingon," Andy said. "And the translator for that probably works very well because Lady Shadow was fascinated by it at one point."
"Yes," Garnes said, "That was used as a test language."
"So, turn on the translator, read the book, hope it works?" Andy said. "I'm game. But let's pick something simpler." She started looking through the pile of data crystals, inserting them one after another into the viewer, Memo taking note of the titles as she rattled them off.
"This one," Memo said, holding up a data crystal indistinguishable from the others.
"Which one is that?" Andy said.
"It's a history of the city," Memo said. "Interesting, and useful at the same time."
"Hmm," Andy said, taking the crystal and inserting it into the viewer. "'The Founding of the City of Lights'. Isn't that Paris," she mumbled reading the first page. "Oh, Lights as in some holy person. How do I enable the translator in that mode? Oh there it is," she mumbled. Pausing for a minute, she looked up at everyone watching her. "Not going to be very exciting. Might want to find something else to do for the several hours."
Miranda gently took the viewer from her. "If it is going to take that long, you'll want to find somewhere comfortable to read."
"Of course," Andy said, reaching for the viewer, following Miranda down the passageway to their cabin.
"Sit," Miranda said, pushing down on Andy's unoccupied shoulder.
"Right," Andy said, making herself comfortable. Looking up at Miranda, "You don't have to stay and watch me read."
"I can keep myself occupied while you read," Miranda said, leaning against Andy, running her fingers through her hair.
"That was interesting," Andy said, coming up for air, figuratively speaking. "The city was founded by a group of refugees, from somewhere else."
"Somewhere else?" Miranda said.
"It doesn't really say where from, only they ended up here by accident while fleeing some relentless enemy. But I suspect it was another one of those holes in space we keep running into," Andy said.
"So somewhere that was really somewhere else," Miranda said. "Do they say where this place is in relation to this system?"
"Not really. Hopefully one of their data crystals will say. Wouldn't want another enemy to pop up when we haven't dealt with the Kraal yet." Andy sighed. "And I'm not sure about the time frame. It could have been thousands of cycles ago, or just before the last Kraal incursion."
Miranda frowned. "I thought we determined this area was abandoned long before the last Kraal invasion."
"Well, whatever destroyed their civilization happened before the Kraal. This history doesn't mention them at all," Andy said.
"Do you want to read another one?" Miranda said.
Andy got up from their bed and stretched. "Let's see if the translator has enough to work with now." Grabbing the viewer, she pulled Miranda off of bed and out of their cabin, ending up in the galley where the others were still hanging out. "This doesn't look like anything else," Andy said.
"Cards are boring when someone wins all of the time," Ixchel said, poking Romana. "Psychic abilities should not be allowed in games of chance."
"I told you I, I didn't peek," Romana said returning the poking. "I just know you well enough."
"Ready to test the translator?" Garnes said.
"Yes," Andy said. "Let's check this out." She removed the data crystal before handing the viewer to Romana, and grabbed another one from the pile for her to use.
Nodding, Romana inserted the new data crystal into the reader. "'The Tale of Jorgen'" She started reading, pausing several times while the translator did its job. "So far it appears to be working," she said. "Not an exciting story. More like a dry bureaucratic report." She read for several more minutes. "Flowery language does not do very well to disguises some bureaucrat's report on a diplomatic mission."
"So, the titles aren't really going to help?" Andy said.
"No," Memo said. "What did you learn from your book?"
"The city was established as a refuge," Andy said. "So it does contain all of their history in those crystals."
"So we may find what we are looking for?" Miranda said.
"If they encountered the Furlings, or Kraal or anything else in their travels to this system, it's bound to be recorded here somewhere." Andy said, poking the pile of data crystals.
"We need to find additional viewers," Ixchel said. "It will take too long otherwise."
"And a way to import the information into the ship's databanks," Garnes said. "Faster than one at a time. And a way for Lady Memo to use the translator."
"Her Wind Clan comm is almost compatible with our comm channels," Dart said. "I've been working on a way to integrate them into our ship comm as more than basic audio, but don't quite have it working yet.
"Of course," Andy said. "But now that we can translate them we can at least make some progress. Where's that map?"
"The history included information on the actual buildings?" Miranda asked.
"Some of them anyway," Andy said. "It really depends on how much of a time gap there is between the book and the city being destroyed or abandoned. We'll have to do some exploring to determine that."
"Or find a more current history," Ixchel said.
"If there is one," Andy said. "They aren't likely to have one that covers why it's abandoned. They would have been too busy trying to survive."
"We should be looking for information on that locked room in the library," Miranda said. "There must be a reason for it being locked and heavily protected."
"So, a document about the library," Andy said. "Well, none of these seem to be that. We'll have to go back tomorrow and look through the data crystals."
"While you do that we can start exploring the rest of the city," Ixchel said. "You don't need all of us when we only have the single viewer."
"So, that's a plan then," Andy said. "Garnes and Dart can stay with the ship, doing ship things. The rest of us will head for the city in the morning. Ixchel and Romana can explore the city and the three of us will dig through the data in the library."
"We can meet up for lunch," Ixchel said, "and share what we've found."
"Okay," Andy said. "Did you want to join us in the library for lunch?" she asked Garnes and Dart.
"Maybe tomorrow," Dart said. "Too many things to double check if we're going to be here for months."
"Unfortunately, I have paperwork that needs to get done," Garnes said. "But I'll definitely come with Dart tomorrow."
"Where do you want to start?" Miranda said, standing in the first large data crystal room in the library basement.
"There doesn't appear to be any organization, or if there is it isn't clear," Andy said. "So, let's see if we can find another couple readers and something that tells us how they are organized. It doesn't seem to make sense for it all to be random."
"Or they used some device or method we haven't discovered yet," Memo said.
"That's most likely," Andy said. "They're aliens. They probably don't think the way we do and the organization was obvious to them and we're just not seeing it. I'll see what I can find in this storeroom."
"I'll look in the other storeroom," Miranda said, nodding. "We've already checked the upstairs offices."
"Memo, if you could check the ground floor?" Andy said. "I know we've checked it but maybe we missed something."
Memo nodded in agreement, and left the room.
Nodding to herself, Andy headed to the far corner of the storage room, looking for anything obviously out of place. As far as she could see, it was all glassed in shelves containing the data crystals. All faintly glowing and providing a minimum amount of light for seeing their contents. Fortunately, she has a small pocket flashlight.
It was not a very exciting task, she decided. Occasionally she would open a door, take out a crystal, and insert it into the viewer. Most of the crystals seemed to contain boring bureaucratic documents. Or entries of the possessions of different families. Certainly nothing about the library itself or additional history. She was beginning to suspect that they'd already found the interesting data crystals.
She was almost ready to throw in the towel and look for Miranda when she found a small depression in one wall not covered with shelves. Frowning, she focused her flash lite on it. Other than not being level with the rest of the wall, there didn't seem to be anything special about it.
Putting down the flashlight, Andy placed her hand over the depression. It felt warm for several seconds and then she felt a brief vibration through her hand. Turning, she looked around the part of the room she was in, far from the entrance, searching for any changes.
A faint shadow further down the wall attracted her attention. A straight vertical line had appeared running down the wall. "Hidden door?" she mumbled to herself, She carefully moved over several steps until the shadow was directly in front of her. It didn't seem large enough to be a door but she reached out and pressed on it anyway.
There was a subtle vibration and a slim section of the wall moved inward and then there was another set of shelves in front of her. Shelves with other things on them, not the expected data crystals, Andy shone her flashlight into the area. One shelf contained a row of viewers. The other shelves contained unfamiliar objects though some looked like bracelets, and at least one looked like the small communication device Miranda had found in one of the offices.
"Interesting," Miranda said.
"Hey!" Andy said, jumping in surprise. "Done looking? Find anything?"
"Just more crystals that I couldn't read," Miranda said. "Nothing like this."
"I'm not sure what this is," Andy said. "It was hidden, so not something everyone would know about. The viewers will be helpful."
"If the communicators require the same amount of energy to activate the one we found in the offices, we won't get much use out of them," Miranda said.
"At least not until Dart can figure out how to wire them up to ships power," Andy said. "If that's even possible."
"Nothing new upstairs," Memo said, joining them. "I see you've found more viewers. That should be useful."
"An index or catalog would be even more useful," Andy said. "Especially since I don't think we have room on the Lucia for the whole thing, so we'd have to take a few months and load them into the ship's data storage"
"What are those?" Memo said, pointing at the bracelets.
"No idea," Andy said, reaching over and picking one up. Examining it with her flashlight, she frowned. "No writing, just these marks. And the glow."
"I would suspect it had something to do with this place," Miranda said. "Some kind of data viewer or access tool."
"Do I try it on?" Andy said. "Nothing we've seen so far has been deadly."
"It's glowing like the viewer does," Memo said. "It probably only works for you or only turns on for you."
"I'd really like to know why," Andy grumbled. "Here goes nothing." She slid the the bracelet on her left arm. As soon as it reached her wrist there was a bright glow and it shrunk to fit her wrist. "Well, that was surprising. But what does it do?" She waved her arm but nothing happened. "Nothing?"
"it probably requires proximity to something," Miranda said.
"Like that door upstairs?" Andy said. "Grab a couple of the viewers," she said. "We can leave everything else here. It isn't going to disappear, I hope."
"Do we want any of the crystals here?" Memo said.
"Not until we can figure out how to access the catalog," Andy said. "This one is full of boring business and inventory documents. So far anyway."
"Want to see what happens with this?" Andy said, waving her arm with the bracelet on it. "Maybe it'll open that door?"
"We don't know that," Miranda said, frowning. The bracelet had resist any attempt to remove it and she'd been unable to even determine what it was made from. "Please be careful."
"Me?" Andy grinned. "I'm always careful. Do you want to wait until tomorrow? Or do it now?"
"Let's wait until the others get here," Miranda said. "Until then we can continue looking through the data crystals."
"So, down to the lower storeroom with Memo?" Andy said. "I don't think we'll get much out of the upper one, unless we want to study the economics and government of the city. I didn't find any history or cultural information when I was looking around."
"You can tell a lot about a society from their economics but it doesn't really tell you anything about the people themselves," Miranda said, as they walked down the stairs to the lower storage room.
"We really need an index or search ability," Andy said, grumbled again as she entered the room. "This could take years doing it like this."
"Just find several handfuls of crystals and we can take them back to the ship," Miranda said. "Assuming the translator circuits can handle all of us reading to it."
"We have some powerful systems," Andy said, "But they aren't really designed for that kind of thing. Something is going to break eventually. Or it'll be so slow that we'll still be here long after the Kraal are gone. Where's Memo?"
"Over there," Miranda said, pointing towards the back.
"Do we know how many of these there are?" Andy said, grabbing a data crystal that seemed to be singled out, separate from the others, as they headed towards the back.
"Approximately a hundred thousand for both floors," Miranda said.
"That's... quite a bit," Andy murmured. "Even with the five viewers we now have, that is years to get it all scanned in, assuming we even have room in ship memory for them."
"They are not all the same capacity," Miranda said, picking up another data crystal and inserting it into a viewer. "The ones we ran into in Ixchel's cabinet ranged from several gigabytes to thousands of terabytes, enough capacity to store everything in Lucia's core and have room left over."
"So, we shouldn't bother trying to upload them?" Andy asked. "Just focus on finding what we want?"
"Correct," Miranda said. "We don't have enough storage available on the Lucia to even generate an index, if these hold similar amounts of data."
"Hmph. They must have had some kind of index already," Andy said. "Advanced civilization? All this knowledge? How'd they find anything?"
"We don't know how they think," Miranda said, leaning against the shelf Memo was currently looking through. "It's possible they didn't need an index."
"So smart they had things memorized, on a vast scale? That's seems like overkill." Andy stuck the data crystal she was holding into her viewer. "Ugh! Another romance," she said. "Why should I care about the maid and the scientist?"
"Because it tells us something about these people?" Miranda said. "If they value scientists it tells us important things about their society."
"That they liked cliches?" Andy said. "That sounds like some bad romance novel. Girl gets lost in the woods. Finds the mad scientist's castle, they eventual fall in love with lots of angst and monsters in between."
"You appear to have already read it," Miranda said dryly. "Or written it."
"I'm just familiar with the trope," Andy said, blushing.
"I hadn't realized you'd become a romance writer while I was gone," Miranda said, smirking.
"Stress relief," Andy said. "And spare pocket change. Haven't written anything like that in years."
"You'll have to read some of it to me," Miranda said in a low voice.
"Um, sure," Andy said. "When we get home." She coughed, and turned to Memo. "Anything interesting?"
"Biographies, and histories," Memo said. "The titles are often a little deceiving."
"Such as?" Miranda said.
"That one called 'The Maid And the Scientist' would seem to be one of those cliched romances but is actually a biography of the discoverers of this planet. Maid is apparently the title of a famous explorer and the scientist is her assistant or second in command. The title seems to have a connotation that only makes sense in their culture."
"Did you read it?" Andy said, holding it up.
"Just quickly scanned it. We'll want to take it with us, the data crystal contains a large amount of data about the system," Memo said.
"Good," Andy said. "Anything else interesting?"
"There are other data crystals with similar contents," Memo said. "But I suspect taking them with us will not be possible."
"No," Andy said. "There are just too many, and the amount of storage required to copy them is beyond the capacity of the Lucia's data core. Any hints at a catalog or index?"
"Yes," Memo said, "but the references make no sense to me."
"For example?" Miranda said.
"If you load the crystal into the viewer, you see that symbol in the corner," Memo said. "That's it," she said, point at it on the screen once Miranda had loaded the crystal. "Selecting that will give you an index and table of contents. But the index is worthless without knowing what the terms mean."
"And our translator won't be able to know that unless we teach it," Miranda said, nodding. "A chicken and egg problem."
"I hate those," Andy said. "Always give me a headache."
"Chicken and egg?" Memo said, puzzled.
"Native creature of our home planet," Andy said. "It could best be summed up as 'what came first' when two things need each other to happen. Chickens lay eggs. Chickens hatch from eggs. So you need an egg before you can get a chicken, but you can't get the egg without a chicken. You end up going in logical circles."
"So, I'd need to know a concept in order to understand another concept but I can't understand the first concept if I don't understand the second. Yes, I can see how that would cause problems," Memo said. "We have a different phrase for that philosophical conundrum in the Wind Clan, but it essentially means the same thing."
"So, there is some useful information here, but we don't need to know all of it, but just enough to find what we really want," Miranda said.
"Sounds like it," Andy said, sighing. "Any other data crystals that we would find useful right now?"
"Not yet," Memo said. "Searching is going to be long and arduous."
"I think we should take a break and find out what is behind that door," Andy said.
"We've been taking a break," Miranda said. "Though I'm sure Memo could use one."
"That's what I said," Andy grumbled. "Shall we?"
"Not waiting for the others?" Miranda said.
"They can check it out later," And said. "I'm sure they're having a lot of fun exploring the city."
"I suspect they would like to be here," Miranda said.
"Safer if it's just us," Andy said. "No need to risk all of us just to check out a door that may go nowhere."
"Then we should stay down here while you try to open it," Miranda said.
"I'd like to see this door," Memo said. "Maybe there's something behind it that will help us with these data crystals."
"Haven't we been here before?" Andy asked, frowning, looking at them.
"No," Miranda said.
"I didn't mean it that way, exactly, but I'm sure there was a similar situation. It just escapes me right now." She shrugged and headed towards the steps, Memo and Miranda following close behind.
It took several minutes of brisk walking to climb to the top of the stairs and reach the door.
"It does not look very imposing," Memo said, unimpressed.
"That would be because this is just the outer entrance," Andy said. Stepping up to the door, she pressed on it, causing it to move to the side. "Once we're past that, we have this short hallway." Light came from somewhere once she was through the door. "And that's new." Andy said. "There was no light before."
They quickly walked down the hallway until they reached the door at the end. "And the door was bare earlier," she added. "No decorations or writing on it." She frowned at the large symbol now covering the door, centered at eye level. "I suspect this is more important than we originally thought."
"We still need to open it," Miranda said, peering at the large symbol. "I'm not familiar with that symbol."
"I've seen it before," Andy said grimacing. "Maybe. But that can wait." She touched the door with the bracelet. The bracelet began to glow, and there was a faint clicking from the door. "Hasn't opened in a long time," Andy said. She pushed on it. There was a faint grinding sound but nothing happened. "Maybe it's just old?"
"Very likely," Miranda said.
"I left the WD40 in a different suit," Andy said. "Maybe if we all push it will open?"
Memo nodded, going to stand next to Miranda, putting her hands on the door and leaning forward.
"Ready?" Andy said, pressing her own hands on the door. "1... 2... 3... Push!"
With a large grinding sound, the door fell inward, and they went with it, falling in a heap.
"Ouch! Andy said, sitting up. Helping Miranda and Memo up off of the floor, she noticed a faint glow but not enough light to see anything distinctly. "We're inside, now what?" she said, in a whisper.