Excavation Mission Part 2: Calculations, Cutting, and Books

Calculations

"Professor, you missed dinner with the crew. Gagh Taco Tuesday, a crew favorite. We raise them ourselves. In actual targ’s blood. I obtained a breeding pair of wild targ some years back."

"Oh Yum, sorry about that. I got involved in my calculations. Did you save me desert?"

"That’s all gone, but I did save you some popped ant eggs, the kids love it. You might like that wild buttery taste."

"Thanks, maybe later I might be feeling a bit peckish. I am still trying to gather heads and tails of these numbers."

"You brought your own computer."

"Mechanical differential analytical engine."

"I am sure our onboard computing power would be sufficient….and quieter."

"Maybe so, maybe so. But I don’t like how most computers make floating point overflow calculation. Some calculations require more accuracy, so I trot out ol’ Ada here. I have made some modifications over the years. The original worked off punch cards, which I changed to player piano sheets, then to punch tape, then to the vinyl phonograph record."

"Vinyl phonograph record?”

"In 1983, 15% of all recorded data on Telestia was on vinyl, another 15% on reel and cassette tape. I like things I can fix myself."

"By the way….Pish, we can handle floating point calculations up to 2^256-1 without overflow."

"Haven’t you grown up all fancy and slick? Fascinating, could have saved me from going over my luggage allotment, but I am almost done here. Plus, Ada’s so pretty. Without some use, she will just be gathering dust in some museum somewhere."

"I also occasionally get teased and chided for liking simpler technology which I can be more hands on. What’d you find?"

"Couple things. One is I was able to figure out the vector of those Centauro particles."

"Anyone I know?"

"Sort of, as near as I can tell it is originating from the Tamor Wormhole."

"No relation. That is not good news."

"So noted. I also got enough data about the internal structure of that doorway that I was able to divine some of its function."

"Do tell."

"The KBH Doorway, which is stylistically similar to this one and has some similar internal structures, has a fundamentally different function. The KBH Doorway is designed to act like a stargate or the Eye of Hastur, providing enough negative energy to be able to hold open a traversable wormhole mouth. In the case of the Eye of Hastur, the wormhole was to a nearest convenient parallel dimension namely Nyog Sothep, a post peak expansion universe where the arrow of time is reversed. This one instead functions more similarly to jump-drive. It pushes particles into the direction of hyperspace, the net result is it pushes the brane about 1.5 millimeters into the ‘brane’ and you can access the hyperspace between branes."

"It’s a jump drive."

"Kinda, sorta, but not really, no. The doorway does not travel, it is a fixed location. The net effect is once you enter, you can’t leave, because it doesn’t go anywhere."

"A hyperspace prison?"

"Or vault or a safe deposit box, but yes, it could act like a prison. Anything that goes in stays there until it is opened from the inside."

"And you think the people with the dolls or the Centauro are trying to open it?"

"I can think of no way to tell. They could just be trying to locate it."

"Except for the corpse and other paraphernalia."

"I am not in charge of trying to understand crazy cultists."

"You’ve authored several books on the topic."

"My considered opinion is that the nihilist crazy thing cultists do are to craft the psyche of the cultists."

"Thank you, Professor."

Cutting

"Bonjour, Docteur Aristides, Linus."

"Bonjour Yazira."

"Greetings, Khwairif."

"How did evidence collection go?"

"Messy, ma’am."

"Elle veut que nous restions professionnel, Linus."

"Very well."

"La victime a été exsangue."

"Was she, I think the victim was female, was the victim killed elsewhere?"

"Non, nous avons trouvé des éclaboussures à l'intérieur de la porte, elle a été tuée, éviscérée et exsangue sur place. Tout le sang et les éviscères ne se trouvaient pas sur le site."

"Messy."

"So it’s okay when she says it?"

"Oui. C'est une réaction."

"Was it a ritual killing?"

"Oui, très probablement."

"Tell her about the dolls."

"Il y avait des éclaboussures de sang sur les poupées."

"That’s weird."

"Ensuite, je vais examiner les poupées plus en détail."

"Merci, Docteur Aristides, Linus."

Books

"Kumari?"

"I don’t go by that title anymore."

"Procurator?"

"You can call me Mirra."

"That doesn’t feel right to me. Are you really comfortable with informality?"

"I have learned that most people were falsely polite to begin with. Honorifics are useless. It was all lies."

"I know how you feel."

"It was partially my fault. My mother told me I was not ready for pets, and certainly not ones as troublesome and high maintenance as Telestians. No offense. Not good eating, and not good pets. I certainly wasn’t ready for ten million pets."

"I have been to Telestia, over 600 years ago. They are strange, but they do make good coffee. All that is past us now, what we have now is the eternal conflict. Did you find anything which links what we found to nefarious Sothothery?"

"Perhaps. I think the dolls are a clue. Not a lot written by them, mostly because they are asinine and silly, no one wants to write about them."

Tosses a few books at Tamaris.

"Easy there. I am glad you are making yourself comfortable. You are not the only one over your luggage allotment."

"I like this corridor, and I like this settee. As usual, mostly unreliable self-congratulatory misinformation, or maybe as flattery. Puerile to satisfy some weak ego, but I am unsure exactly whose. The Misinformation Industrial Network is as strong as ever. Supposedly, a proto-dimension known as Almindtosadle, the dolls created by someone known as the Collector."

"The collector started to destroy the Almindtosadles, but some of them escaped. They exploit modest sized technologically primitive planets for their own purpose. They are puerile and insipid, which is possibly a disguise for how dangerous they are. Bottom line, they are slavers."

"Almindtosadles are not indestructible even though there is no record of one being destroyed but their destruction, but like many denizens of proto-dimensions, is usually through unconventional means. It is theorized that in order to destroy a Almindtosadles, you have to remove the lifeforce(s) that are placed in them. Whatever that means. Almindtosadles can be resewn or restitched if they are damaged though it is possible they may have regenerative abilities."

"Do you think the dolls at the site are Almindtosadles?"

"No way to know. It is like a boomerang that doesn’t come back to you, it is merely a stick. They could just be offerings by their cultists. If they are Almindtosadles, the contents of that containment is capable of removing their lifeforce killing them. It could be the Almindtosadles trying to unlock the containment or some enemy looking for a tool to wipe them out. Or just dolls left by idiot cultists. Sympathetic Magic is a doorway to delusional thinking."

"Dr. Aristides has not begun studying the dolls yet. She did say they were covered in blood spatter and viscera."

"I will continue my researches. If I find something she might find useful, I will let her know."

"Thank you, Madame Mirra."