A Russian, a Rabbit, and a Pilot Walk into a Bar... [Group One]
Posted on 30 Jan 2021 @ 2:24pm by The Narrator & Commander Kristiana Petrova & Commander Marcus Wilcox & Lieutenant Callisi Veera
652 words; about a 3 minute read
Mission:
The Quagmire
Location: Unknown
Timeline: Unknown
As the groups began to spread out through this cavern and down the seemingly empty tunnels leading off in various directions, the ship's executive officer led the way for one such group. They took the eastmost tunnel, which seemingly led them before long at all to a dead end. Before, however, they turned back, the dim light (coming from nowhere obviously) lit up words there on the rockface. Words in a language they could understand, surprisingly enough.
I have deserts without sand, and mountains without height.
Tell me what I am.
Would they turn around to bring this to the others? Maybe, but they couldn't. Suddenly, there was a rockface behind them as well. All they had were the glowing, almost pulsing directive of, "Tell me what I am."
Callisi was at first impressed by the cavern, until it ended in a dead end. Escaping this prison wouldn't be as easy as it seemed, it seemed. Then the dim light of the words lit up the dark region they were in. She read the words, and then read them again. "A riddle. Fantastic." a pause, "I hate riddles."
"Okay, so I can see the letters, in both eyes, which would seem to indicate that the riddle is real. Not that my prosthetic has super powers or anything." she mentioned grimly. "Seas without water.... okay, so moons have seas, but not the rest. Forests without wood." a pause, "Deserts without sand might be a play on dessert." she guessed, "Mountains without height, molehills maybe. So, seeing things that aren't there, no wood in the forest means missing the obvious. Dessert obviously, so stress eating, and molehills... maybe it's Anxiety?" she guessed, but more towards her companions rather than actually making an official guess.
“A riddle in which we can read. Whatever brought us here did their homework,” Marcus replied, pondering the words on the wall.
"If they have the capacity to pluck us up from the Odin and drop us all off here, a feat like this seems simple enough." a pause, "You know, let's be certain. What language did you read it in?" the cyclopean rabbit asked. Then shook her head, "You know what, later. We can pat the puzzlemaster on the back later."
"Any thoughts on the current dilemma? The seas, forest, desert, mountain.... thing."
"A map. It's a map." Kristiana replied, furrowing her brows. "My dad used to have a book of riddles, this was one of them," she added, rubbing the back of her neck a bit. "Callisi, what language are you seeing? I'm wondering whether it's just Federation Standard for all of us or we're all reading our own languages. Whoever put us here could easily pull off the latter."
"A map?" Callisi paused, and thought about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah... yeah that made sense. "Clever." she complimented with a nod. "It's in my language. Ts'usubito. I can read Federation standard, but maybe whoever is putting up the riddle didn't know that." she offered. "Maybe it's a language of comfort, the path of least resistance? Great, even the way the riddle is revealed is a riddle."
"I have half a mind to give whoever designed this a riddle of my own." she grumbled.
"A map would make sense. How do we tell," Marcus paused, "Whoever or whatever the answer though?"
"The direct way." and Callisi turned to directly face the glowing riddle text. "Anata wa chizudesu!" she paused, "You are a map!"
After a moment, the words of the riddle faded out and a single word replaced them, large and bright white: Correct and after being there for a moment, the brightness of the word grew so white as to be blinding as it flashed. For several moments, none could see anything but white...
=/\= To Be Continued...
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