- I get it's considered a full day here, but it's friggin' two Earth days - Martin was complaining about the day's length on the New Gaia - Sure, I get the task we have is important, but overall we've been working in full day system of this planet for some time, even though it's not like our bodies can adjust to this rhythm just like that. John, can't we just have a proper break?
Marlow, who was sitting next to Johnson, had a dead look in his eyes due to long time spent on data analysis without a proper rest.
- I'm not forcing anyone here to sit with me all the time - major told his friend, his tone showing signs of irritation - You are right about this being too much, so if you need a break, just take a break.
- You should know it doesn't work that way, John - Rashid jumped in here, also looking really exhausted - If we leave you like that, in case of anything, we would be blamed for not giving a support to our supervisor. And yes, whatever you may think of it, the truth is you are our boss here, like it or not.
John sighed.
- Ok, so I get it needs to be me who says we are taking a moment to rest, and I should rest myself? I don't like leaving things like this given we are not doing any progress...
- Well, thank you - Keira showed her discontent with his words - Me coming up with some better interpretations means no progress to you.
Marlow shook his head, looking even more tired.
- That's not what I meant. It's about the investigation task which we should have started already and we are still here, thinking of how to adjust the entrance to our needs.
- Maybe it's actually time to seriously consider Martin's suggestion then? Sometimes a moment of rest to recollect your thoughts may be pretty useful.
- Yeah, I guess it's a perfect moment indeed. I feel as if we all are going to get crazy unless we take a break.
With that, major Marlow officially put all the work on hold for the next six hours, which he considered to be enough time for everyone to rest and refresh their minds. Obviously, colonel McRae was not really pleased by this decision, but ultimately did not complain with how John explained the situation to him.
Following the team being granted off duty time to get some rest and recharge as much as possible, John himself made an attempt to sleep. However, this proved to be much harder task than he expected - continuously having either complete lack of it, or irregular sleep, it seemed Marlow developed a peculiar state of insomnia, where he could not sleep despite all of the exhaustion his organism went through. In the end, after spending nearly one hour on attempts to fall asleep, he finally gave up on natural sleep and decided to go with taking a medicine forcefully making a person sleep for a given amount of time, based on the dosage.
For John, it was last resort decision he did not want to make due to variety of reasons, among which the most prevalent one was unwanted side effect a certain percentage of population would experience, Marlow included - in specific cases, people could enter a state of realistic dreaming, making it extremely hard to tell the reality from a dream.
Many people would just underestimate this side effect, making fun of it by saying people should not be kids, being afraid of their own dreams, that nightmares are nothing to be worried about. However, John could only disagree, remembering the kinds of dreams he had through his whole life, which at some point caused him to take prescribed pills to grant him calm sleep - still, it was long ago, and even if he had the same pills right now, the medicine he took would either way force realistic dreams on him.
Right now, there was no turning back, and Marlow finally fell asleep. He saw series of unusual symbols in a huge room, where he was walking in circles, trying to find a way out, but to no avail, despite multiple attempts.
He tried to move some of the symbols, while the others he was just touching or simply pushing to see if they are maybe some kind of more traditional button - obviously, nothing he did caused a reaction. Many would probably just give up, though they would need to lack stubbornnes John had - he might have not been aware of this being only a dream, but he continued trying.
With time, some of the symbols started making sense to him for no apparent reason - somehow, instinctively, major knew which ones are matching and should be used together, when specific combinations would cause results. It was hard to say how this worked, but some of these signs were taking physical forms, often reminding him of living creatures, elements, and not as specific ones he knew - rather than that, he was often seeing more general shapes, having more general context than specific species he remembered back from Earth.
His quest for finding the way seemed to be close to conclusion with all the progress John was making - it looked well until the moment he was about to pick a symbol that felt to be the last one needed for completing this puzzle. Only one more push, and then - a big, gold-skinned hand emerged from the path he was trying to open and pushed him back. John started falling, and - just before he hit the ground - he woke up, sweating a lot and breathing heavily.
All he could ask himself at the very moment was "What the hell was that?" Afterwards, he cleaned his body off sweat, and headed back to the building where his group was working on finding the proper setting for making the interface open a proper way for them to go underground.
As Marlow approached the wall, he had some flashbacks from his unusual dream John woke up from just moments before. When watching symbols, he started remembering positions at which they were set.
Since major never considered himself being superstitious, he was not really thinking this dream to be a sign or anything worth further investigation, and - in normal circumstances - would never seriously try repeating actions he saw in a dream. Still, the problem was that they really were in quite a bind in terms of finding a solution, and since John did not want to take a risky way of taking the route that changed, he actually decided to check the setting from his dream before others are back.
Silly as it sounded, from what he recalled from his dream, the way they approached meaning behind some of the symbols was overcomplicated, and did not make use of compound signs properly. So, the approach he saw in his dream was treating a number of symbols as more general in meaning than really specific terms Keira assigned to them - among the examples in this approach, "bird" was changed to "flying creature", "flying animal", or overall "living being with ability to fly".
By applying this way of thinking, Marlow set the signs as in his dream, and was now waiting whether he is going to be caught by some kind of monster or creature, but nothing like this happened.
Seeing no reaction, the only thing left for him was to check the entrance.
Moments later, he was by the entry point, for which the setup changed surprisingly, matching what John saw the very first time he entered the underground facility back when they were looking for Jackie.
Noticing this actually worked, Marlow sat down, completely speechless, because how could this be? After all, it turned out his dream provided a solution to the biggest problem they had in front of them at the moment. He was so bewildered, he started to think that he may be actually dreaming, trying several known ways of checking whether this was a dream - only confirming all of them would usually mean the test was passed and the person doing it was not dreaming, and John passed all of the prerequisites for confirming it.
Having proved this was not a dream did not put him at ease though - quite contrary, to Marlow's analytical mind everything needed to have scientific explanation, and the way he discovered this setting to be working was a mystery even to himself.
Sure, it was a great news he managed to bring the proper layout back, and could now better analyze as to what exactly changed that made it so hard to apply the original setup back again - after all, symbols were no longer in the same alignment as before, yet the path's layout was back to the initial state. When others are back, how is he going to explain this to them? If he was to say what really happened, the rest of the team would most likely start questioning his sanity. So, what exactly could he do now?
Being quite on the verge, trying to figure out a proper way of communicating this situation to others, John started running his actions step-by-step with usage of personalized AI, while also trying to come up with explanation that would not be questioned by his colleagues.
However, with aforementioned being the case, it turned out there was not enough time for that as Keira arrived unexpectedly soon.
- Oh, you already here, John? - she asked him and immediately yawned, so it took her a moment to notice the wall - So you couldn't help yourself and just came here to work on your own? Anything interesting happened out of this setup you did here?
For a moment, major actually considered lying and denying the fact he managed to bring back the original layout, but then he backed from the idea, remembering what kind of person miss Evergate is - maybe someone else would buy a half-assed lie he was about to tell, but that person would surely be not Keira.
- Strange as it may sound, this one allowed me to bring back the previous setting for the entrance - John finally said it, expecting an outburst of questions.
Even though this was his expectation, Keira did not start with questioning - instead, she approached the wall and started looking through the symbols carefully, murmuring:
- "Bird", but since they don't have animals of that kind, maybe something closer to "flying creature"? If so, this one similar to "ox" would be a kind of "ground animal", and here, this would be a "water creature" and this one would be simply something like an "air". Now, for these, these may be a "container" or maybe even a "room", and this here "weapon" or "tool". With that, should I consider "life" to be equivalent to "star" symbol?
She continued like that for couple of minutes before she actually turned back to Marlow and asked:
- How did you get to this specific setup? Was it just a pure luck?
Major was still worried about how would others react if he said the truth, and with AI still going through the data, while not having a better idea, he decided to turn this into a joke:
- What would you say if I told you that I had a dream in which I saw this exact setting? - he asked with a smile.
Saying these words, John was expecting Keira to burst into laughter or just straightforwardly call him crazy, so he did not see her reaction coming.
Miss Evergate, after hearing his words, did not approach this as a laughing matter. Quite contrary, she became serious all of a sudden.
- This is something you shouldn't joke about, not with anyone in my field of study - she said to him, standing really close to him, and looking in his eyes - There were numerous past cases of specialists investigating ancient ruins having visions that led them into huge discoveries, though eventually this truth was always hidden from public. If what you said is really true, John, I understand your hesitance and I agree you should not share this with everyone, but I would rather have you be honest with me so we can properly look into it.
For a moment, Marlow hesitated. It really seemed that miss Evergate was serious and completely honest with him, yet he also knew how easy it is to be betrayed by other people nowadays, therefore he needed a longer while to consider possible scenarios.
As he continued to think, Keira took his hand.
- John, I get it is hard, because others tend to call people crazy for visioning something, but please, do be honest with me - if her seriousness was an act, she would have been better at being an actress than she was at her current job - I once knew a person, who mentioned something similar, and I underestimated this case back then.
- I don't get how is it connected, Keira.
After he said that, she had a mix of seriousness and fury appearing in her look.
- That person died, John, and most likely died because of the dream, or a vision, whatever you call it. Back then, I told to myself to not ignore such a thing yet again.
Hearing that, Marlow sighed.
- Okay, I get it, I will tell you.
With that, he explained to her what he saw and how he managed to transfer it to the setup on this wall, and miss Evergate was listening to it carefully, following with questions only after he finished. Whenever she asked a question, Keira was taking notes and running some actions through her PEC.
Around the moment miss Evergate focused more on analysis of the data she gathered from Marlow, his own AI finished running the information he entered previously, identifying some patterns among the symbols they were investigating. Since he already involved Keira in all of this he considered a total nonsense for using dreams as a basis for solving a technology puzzle, John shared the results with her. Once he did, she smiled slightly.
- It aligns with my current progress on the topic - miss Evergate said - I regret to say it, but I was going the wrong way, because of misconception I had, looking at this language through the scope of what we know from Earth. Right now, I know this one is nothing like any of the languages I worked on, and - to much of my surprise - it seems this is actually a hybrid created out of more than one language, hence the usage of variety of symbols. However, with what you told me, I have way more clarity now, and understand this is not only a spoken language, but also a type of programming language this civilization used. It's truly fascinating, and gets me more interested with every moment like that.
- I'd rather be done with this task than get excited - it was Martin who said that, followed by several other people from their current operational group, including Rashid.
- Did you happen to find anything useful that would bring us closer to solving this mystery, and allow us to get things done? - Moussa asked, looking at the wall - Do these changes you did brought us closer to opening a proper path?
John and Keira explained the situation to the others, intentionally leaving out the part about Marlow seeing order of symbols in his dreams. Either way, the information about original path layout being brought back made most of people in their group relieved.
- So, what's the plan now, boss? - Martin asked John.
- We are going to try some settings using patterns Keira uncovered with her AI to see if we can modify the layout of the undeground, and to what extent could it help us.
- Shouldn't we just try with what we have now, though? - Rashid seemed to not be convinced by tge idea - What are we going to do if we cannot go back to the current layout?
- Oh, about this - Keira did some tinkering with the symbols - As you can see, moving them around does not cause any problems, and once we move them back, path remains open the same way it was.
Moussa nodded, but still had more to ask:
- Ok, so now it works, but then, why did it not work that way previously? As I recall, the setting we had for the same layout was different before.
- That's true - miss Evergate confirmed - It seems that one of the reasons why we had so much trouble until now is because the system is malfunctioning. It's what John suggested based on the tests we did before you guys arrived.
- So, it means the system is unstable? Now, that's reassuring - Martin jumped in with this remark, smirking - Better get things moving before when we are still considering this to be a good idea.