Welcome to the Zoo [Group Two]
Posted on 06 Feb 2021 @ 4:24am by Commander Indi Hawk & Ensign Ceaser Wolf & Lieutenant Commander Amelia Warner & The Narrator
830 words; about a 4 minute read
Mission:
The Quagmire
Location: Unknown
Timeline: Unknown
Led by the chief of security, the second group made its way down the western tunnel they had found leading off this large, cavernous chamber they'd all ended up in by means still unknown. Knowledge was power, as it was said, and since there was little to be found where they were, they had to try to find it elsewhere. The tunnel was long and a bit winding, and when they reached the end, they found a single room. The door was like the one into the tunnel, which was simply a door-shaped hole in the rock wall.
Inside the room was...more rock. Nothing else but words. Glowing words seemingly embedded in the rock. And written in, strangely, a language the Odin crew could understand.
Our second is of no value.
Our third is a step ahead of our first.
While our last is the same as our third and two firsts.
To know our first, you must know the measure of you and I.
Tell us what we are.
Unfortunately for whatever other plans they may have had, the door that had been behind them was now in the past tense. It was gone. All that was left was the riddle, and its gently-flashing question. Demanding an answer.
Amelia frowned as she took in their newly-enclosed surroundings. She had no clue what was going on, but she did know that she did not like it at all. (She couldn't imagine how anyone did.) She stared at the glowing words for a few moments with the sinking feeling that this was the key...
She read it several times. "I guess we need to figure this out and then maybe we can get out of here?"
Indi was still alarmed by the door that had vanished behind them. Since she'd been in the lead of the group, she'd been too late to actually do anything about it. Then again, she doubted she'd have been able to stop it from vanishing even had she been closer to it. Nothing else seemed to offer a way out, so instead, she focused on what Amelia was saying.
"It might lead us ahead, yes. Then again, I'd rather think that someone is toying with us, and I don't like being anyone's toy," she spoke with some vehemence. It took her a moment to realise that she was in charge of this small group, so she should've thought before she spoke. Well. That cat was out of the bag.
Amelia didn't think too much about what the commander said. She didn't know the woman at all, but as a doctor, she was used to hearing all sorts of things. "I'm not much of a fan myself but neither do I like the idea of being stuck here forever either."
Indi couldn't argue with that, and read the words a couple of times. "We need to figure out the four numbers they mean?" she wondered out loud, looking around at nobody in particular. Thinking to yourself was always awkward when others were around to hear it.
"Yeah," Amelia agreed. "There are a lot of references to numbers so I think we need to figure out four numbers... To know our first..." She gestured vaguely at that part of the riddle. "So, to figure out of the first of the four, I think?"
"Obviously," Indi replied with a shrug. She could read after all. Then again, perhaps not as well as she thought since she didn't get further than Amelia's statement.
If the good doctor was bothered by the laconic reply, she didn't show. Give her a disease any day and she could diagnose it. This was something else all together and she stood staring at it for a while. "The measure of you...and I..." she repeated, brows knitting. "Maybe it's asking for a simpler approach than it seems."
Indi shrugged again, as she'd been down that road. "'You' can be anything between one and infinity. Add that with 'I', and you have anything between two and infinity."
"Right, but that's what I mean by simple... Just one and one. Two. What if we work the riddle with the idea that the first number is two?" Amelia said.
"If we make that assumption, it's easy. Two times n plus n plus one gives us 2037," Indi spoke as she continued to look around. "But if we're wrong in that assumption, we have no idea what will happen. Either way, it's a big risk."
The world "risk" had barely left the commander's mouth before the words before them began to flash and swirl. They lost their form and the spun back together in a bright white set of numbers:
The numbers--or number, when taken together--floated there for several moments before vanishing again. Although their method of vanishing was to seemingly explode outward, washing the whole room in white.
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