Chapter 9 - The Tutorial (Stage Three).

"Congratulations traveler! Welcome to stage three of the Tutorial. During this stage, you will be required to egress through the door on the opposite wall to advance to the next stage. You have two hours. Good luck!"

Søren peered through the doorway into the next chamber and began looking for anything he might recognize. Unfortunately, most of it was equipment unfamiliar to him or of a design so foreign its function was unknowable. He walked further into the room, pausing here and there to examine an item or turn over something interesting to get a better look.

The workbench near the middle of the room had a number of what looked like thin ducted fan drones with thin guards on the top and bottom of each drone. A series of tiny, evenly spaced holes went around the circumference of the outer side of the duct. Interspersed among these dots were larger lens-like protrusions. Probably cameras, he thought to himself.

The end of the workbench had a series of engravings inset into the top of the surface, a spiral doubling back on itself several times before a line split off from each engraving and met in the center. A lightning bolt was engraved in the center and painted with a pale blue pigment. A small dataslate like the ones he had acquired earlier was partially in one circle. On a whim, Søren nudged the dataslate into the circle fully. The dark lines began to glow a pale light blue, gradually growing stronger.

The dataslate started to glow around the edges and then the entire thing darkened and a pale blue lightning bolt appeared on the dataslate. The brightness of the lightning bolt symbol pulsed from dark to bright with a steady rhythm. Søren tugged on the straps of the satchel and detached it from his jumpsuit. He dug into the satchel and placed the other three dataslates he had recovered onto different circles. Each one mimicked the first, glowing around the edges and then darkening. Two of the three had the pale blue lightning bolt symbol appear while the third had a black lightning bolt with a red slash across it. Søren frowned.

"Guess that one is a dud," he figured. He took the dead dataslate from the workbench and placed it back into his satchel. A quick glance at the chat log revealed that it was one of the dataslates with a white name. Probably a ranking system for quality of the gear. Maybe also a threat system for potential enemies. The Hordeling Spawns were all cyan colored, while the Hordeling I shot had a lime green color to its name. It really would be nice if the Guide explained a little more. I feel like the Tutorial was designed for people already familiar with all this technology or system.

Søren sighed and turned his attention towards the door he was required to pass through in less than two hours. It can't be this easy could it... he thought to himself as he walked up to the door and tried the handle. The handle turned slightly and Søren's eyebrows rose a significant fraction until the handle stopped and rattled. A more forceful attempt yielded a similar result. He turned his gaze to the mechanism to the left of the handle on the right side of the door. An angled protrusion from the door with a crystal screen similar to the composition of the dataslates stuck out slightly. The pad on the door was a few inches wide and several more in height. A little bigger than the dataslates he had already recovered, but just about the right size for hand.

With nothing to lose, he placed his right hand on the pad, but nothing happened. Could be out of power I suppose. Just like the dataslates apparently. Either that or I need to hack into its programming somehow and register myself as an authorized user. He tapped the pad once more and then continued his examination and investigation of the door and the surrounding area. The rest of the door was unremarkable, though he did note the inset hinges, barely visible next to the wall. They had been hidden to prevent them from being removed while the door was closed. The door itself fit into the doorway with a barely discernible gap between itself and the wall it was fitted into.

Søren sighed again and turned his investigation towards the rest of the wall and the floor and ceiling in that area. The featureless wall did have one feature. Something he had ignored previously, or overlooked, stuck out to him in here now. An air vent near the ceiling. It looks almost big enough for me to squeeze through, but I wouldn't want to risk getting stuck. Ah, the drones. At least, that's what I hope they are.

He continued his examination of the wall, just in case there was something else he could identify as a weakness. With a quick shake of his head, Søren turned around to examine the different workbenches again and began tallying up ideas in this dead. Suppose I could always try to brute for my way through. Could look for an access key in all this mess or maybe a computer terminal I could reprogram if they use anything remotely similar. I wonder if an acid would eat through the locking mechanism, not that I would know how to create an acid strong enough, he thought looking at the funnels, beakers, and other glassware on a nearby workbench. Might be useful to get an eye on the other side, he thought as he took in the small circular ducted fan drones on the workbench in front of him.

He slid one of the drones into the last empty charging pad. A glance at other workbenches showed similar circles. Søren removed the depleted plasma pack from the satchel and set it on one of the circles, as well as the pulse plasma pistol. As before, the engravings on the workbench lit up with a pale blue light. The charge gauge on the battery packs began pulsing in time with the lightning bolts on the charging dataslates on the other workbench.

Søren left the rest of the gear to charge and took one of the camera drones in hand, turning it over a few times to examine it closer. A glance at his satchel and a questioning look on his face led him to place the drone inside the satchel and then check the chat log.

09:14 > Congratulations traveler! Welcome to stage three of the Tutorial. During this stage, you will be required to egress through the door on the opposite wall to advance to the next stage. You have two hours. Good luck!

09:22 > You have acquired a [Camera Drone (0%)].

Interesting. Søren grabbed a few more things from the workbench and put them into his satchel, identifying them through the interface and his chat log. Unfortunately for Søren, most of the parts were depleted or broken and of little use to him without a means to repair them. The charge circles were still going strong however, at least he could recharge the depleted equipment. Buried in a pile of tools and manipulators was a drone repair kit of green quality. I should come up with some names for the colors... or have I already with my subconscious mind and the system that controls all this just hasn't seen fit to reveal that information yet.

Regardless, if I want to see what's on the other side, I need to charge a drone, figure out how to control it, and somehow transmit the information from the drone to a screen in here. Søren glanced at the dataslates charging on the workbench in the middle of the room. If whoever designed the drones and dataslates is anything like us back home, those dataslates are like smartphones and capable of more than just holding data.

Søren finished exploring the rest of the chamber and placing different gadgets and other small objects into his satchel to claim them as loot in order to identify them, but nothing else seemed useful enough within the time limit. If I had a few days, maybe I could learn more about this technology and have a better idea of what I could or can't do, he thought with an aggravated look upon his face. His eyes were narrowed and brow furrowed. I really need to figure out what's going on. Where I am. When I am. The complexity of this world is far too advanced for a mere simulation. Søren felt a tension behind his eyes as he pushed his thoughts towards unraveling the mystery of his situation. Guess I'm not ready to learn that just yet, he thought with a heavy sigh escaping his lips.

The pale blue lightning bolts on dataslates stopped pulsing and glowed steadily as the engravings on the workbench faded back to a dark grey to show inactivity. I presume that indicates they're done charging. The engravings around the drone and the previously depleted battery pack were still glowing brightly. Let's see if I can activate one of these.

Søren picked up the nearest dataslate and tried swiping a finger across the surface in different directions while focusing his intent on activating the dataslate. With no change to the item, he started pressing near the edges of the screen and then closed his eyes and imagined himself face palming. Dumbass... He turned the dataslate over and tried swiping his finger across the surface and was rewarded with an active screen.

"Woot!" he shouted, jumping up a little from his chair and looking around excitedly to share the good news with someone. His eyes took on a faraway look for a moment as his features dropped. The moment of dismay passed and the dark cloud that altered his features fled. The dataslate darkened and lines of symbols and signs marched downwards to the bottom, forcing the previous lines to scroll upwards out of sight. He sighed again.

"I don't recognize a damn thing here," he muttered. Søren glanced at the time in the corner of his interface and noted that he had just over ninety minutes left to figure out a solution to this stage of the Tutorial. After a moment, the dataslate flashed brightly, and then darkened again. The lines of what Søren presumed to be code had been replaced by a white background with a circular stone ring with symbols carved into the surface all the way around the edges. Superimposed over the symbol was a single word in the untranslatable language he had come across previously.

Søren reached out to the symbol on the dataslate and tapped it. The word faded away and the symbols on the stone ring started to glow. A bright magenta glow filled the interior of the ring, rippling like water. The symbol suddenly spun free of the dataslate and floated in the air above the device. Two symbols appeared adjacent; one cyan and one red. Both were unknown, unrecognizable to Søren. The color cyan has been associated with positive events or interpretations so far, he thought to himself with a mental shrug and with nothing better to go on, Søren reached into the hologram and tapped on the cyan icon.