Irena - Part 6

Disclaimers may be viewed in the previous posts or accessed here: Disclaimers.

She faded into a round chamber with a strange pillar shaped device directly across the center of the room from her. It reached floor to ceiling and connected with a spinning toothed ring that made up a band just above the floor. Low mechanical rumbling accompanied the spinning gears. She turned, searching for a door. There was no door, only two unadorned pillars with the same spinning gear as the strange device.



Her hand reached for her book and she faded back to her cloud island without a conscious thought. The open airiness did wonders for her nerves. Outside her hut she walked to an edge of her island, sat, and tried to make sense of what she had seen. Her sister's instructions about numbers slowly came back to her. She raised the strange KI on her wrist, stared at the various buttons and items on it, then remembered the purple book she had seen in the neighborhood. She rose and hurried back inside to teleport back to where the classroom was.

She ran through the empty sections and to the classroom. Grabbing the notebook, she scanned through it until she found the section on adding buddies using KI numbers. She fished the scrap of paper with the various numbers from her pocket and stared at it for a few minutes. The first number registered as Shandi, the second as her sister Katya, and the third as Katya's roommate Tatyana. With each entry the name returned an offline message. She hesitated before entering the last number. When she did, the name Kreel appeared with a note of "Shandi's Bevin" next to his name.

Not sure what to expect next, she waited in the classroom. When nothing happened she scanned the notes again and realized she needed to send the first message. She started several times before deciding on, "Hi, I'm Irena and my sister Katyarina said I should talk to you?"

A few seconds later a message appeared on her KI, "Hi! I'm Kreel, shandi and Katyarina said you might be coming down tonight. Where are you now?"

"I'm not sure? In a classroom somewhere, looking at a KI manual."

"I'm going to send you an invite to Shandi' Bevin, that's Shandi's Neighborhood. That way we can talk face to face without having to type everything. Sound ok?"

"Sure, uh, where will it show up and how do I use it?"

"It will appear in your KI screen. To use it, go to the Nexus. It should be pretty clear, however, you might want to read the section on the Nexus in the KI manual. You remember the room you went to to link to where you got your KI? On the pedestal in the center of that room is the linking book for the nexus." Within moments the invitation arrived. She followed the instructions back to the circular room with the strange device. The mechanical sounds increased once she had selected the invite from Kreel. After several moments a book slide out and flopped open. She touched it and faded out of the Nexus.

Irena - Part 5

Disclaimers may be viewed in the previous posts or accessed here: Disclaimers.

She faded into a large stone area. At first she thought it was a room, but the sounds of birds made her look up. She was at the bottom of a well-like courtyard with a patch of blue sky overhead. The air was warm and almost too humid, with scents of flowers and water. A small window showed clouds rotating by. Under her feet the rock vibrated and shuddered slightly, most likely the cause of the rotating sky. The open book with a circle above symbol from the pillar on her cloud island was everywhere. It was inlaid in the center of the well and it was the covering for the lights set into the walls.



A single open doorway led out of the courtyard. Slowly she approached it and looked into the next area. Even the open door had the symbol embossed into the rock, positioned so it would be a single image across the door if the door were closed. Right now it was separated into two halves. She shook her head and walked through into the next room. The doors were massive slabs of rock hung from an overhead track and resting on the floor. For each side of the door one slab hung facing the entry yard and a second one hung facing the next room. Each slab was three feet thick at the widest and over a foot thick at the narrowest. For a few moments she wondered what would require such heavy security, then she eased her way into the next room.

The DRC easel with its white paper notice was jarring and reassuring at the same time. Something about this place was entirely too creepy with the massive stones and the quiet rumbling. Two grilled windows faced each other across the corridor, guard posts or check points of some kind. The DRC sign pointed to the open door across the way and indicated she should go deeper into the building for the KI device.

Beyond the door a corridor went to her left and to her right. To the left a small grouping of cones and a barricade blocked most of the passage before a closed door. To the right the passage ended in an open door. Directly across from her was another closed door. It did not respond to her touch. She slipped around the barriers and tried the other closed door with the same results. Beyond the open door was another stretch of hallway with a barricade set just beyond an open side door. Beyond the barricade was another closed door at the end of the passage. This time she didn't bother to try the closed door.

The open door led into another rock chamber, slightly larger than the corridor. For a moment she considered investigating the strange items on the floor, but the unease that had been building the deeper into this place she ventured drove her to scan the room quickly for anything with the symbol from the DRC notes on it. Not finding it, she almost ran to the next door. On one wall was a strange round thing with cables and wires attached. In the center of it a symbol glowed, close enough to the DRC notes for her to approach it slowly.



She was examining it when a brief change in sound startled her. Her left hand shot out and slipped into the machine. Before she could yank it back out a cold blue beam snapped on and pinned her hand in place. The machine made a noise, another symbol lit for a few seconds, then everything turned off allowing her to pull her hand free. On her wrist was a strange watch-like device, held in place by a wide band. Panicked, she forgot about the book on her hip and ran to the book, on the pedestal, near the strange machine. She slammed her hand down on the image and sighed with relief as the creepy rock building faded from her view.