Part VI
(Geeks in space or Greeks in Space or 2001?: A Greek, Geek, Space Odyssey)
From our last adventure in the land of the talking animals, we again entered our "waystation", which appeared to be a long hallway with doors spaced out all along its length, curving away at the ends. As usual, the members of our party who were not with us the last time were present, with Brian Young still unconscious. Our elf guide gave us the usual warning about not touching things, and opening doors and stuff. He left us to go look for the right door, and told us to eat and drink if we had anything. We had some berries left over from last time, and while we were waiting, we looked at some of the doors, and saw that they were of different sizes, and colors, and decoration.
Our guide returned, approaching from the opposite direction that he left us. He asked us to follow, as he had found the right door, and we were ready to go. He showed us what to do at this door, which had a large set of knockers, no wait, that's something else. This door had a brass knocker, and a medusa's head, which we were supposed to knock three times, say words, something like "Ashk, atae, enta" open the door and step through. Still feeling suicidal, I went first, and went through the door into a similar hall, with more doors. The others joined me in short order, and they said that after each person stepped through, the door instantaneously went from open to closed, ooooh spooky.
So anyway, we're in this big hall, right? With all these doors right? The doors had this funky type writing to indicate room numbers or names, or something, which naturally we couldn't read. So, I was all like, "Hey, let me take a look, I think I can figure out it's origin." And everyone else was all like, "Don't waste your time." And I was all like, "Hey, give me a chance, I think it looks vaguely like Greek." And everyone else was all so jealous, and they were all like, "Ooooh, big whoop, you wasted our time to tell us that? Like, Yah."
Anyhoo, Chappell told us that he didn't know where we were in relation to where we needed to be, but that we were looking to acquire COURAGE and BRAVERY, like he mentioned in the previous adventure, but that we never got. So we just started guessing directions, and following the more major hallways when we ran into them. We ran into a few groups of people, and asked them if they could give us directions to whatever passed for a school around there. They weren't entirely clear on where it was, although one person indicated a vague direction that we tried to go toward. It was also pretty clear that they thought we were completely nuts, as we were dressed funny, carrying all our weapons, and talking about being on earth, and visiting Gordium.
We finally ran into a person who could lead us to the school. When asked if he was going to school, he said no, he was walking to school, and once he got there, then he would be going to school. We followed him along, and found out that we shouldn't talk to him, as he was easily distracted, and then we had to remind him that he was walking to school to get him started again.
He reached the school, where we met some elder teacher types who looked like typical Greek philosophers (at least like Socrates in Bill and Ted.) (I should also mention that all these folks were dressed in Greek type clothing, with the little shorts/skirts, and the loose, flowing style of thing. I recalled that nudity was very common in ancient Greece, and that women rarely wore any kind of tops, but that did not seem to be the rule here.) (Speaking of appearances, I should mention that elf-boy had now morphed into a typical Greek looking guy, the swarthy complexion, the curly dark hair, the effeminate looks, the whole thing. We asked if there was anything in particular we should be calling him here, and he said we should call him Anadies.)
Where was I? Oh, yes, the teachers at the school. Without being too suspicious, they readily accepted our strange appearance (both in looks, and in being there, which we would discover was a bit odd.) We said that we wanted to learn about courage and bravery, and they said that they could get us into classes that dealt with that kind of thing, as well as other classes depending on our interests. At this point we introduced ourselves to them, and told a little about our backgrounds. And, since I have yet to say who was along on this little jaunt, I will do that now. There was Jon, who told of his interest in chemistry, particularly explosives (which worried them), Sakell, with his background in physics and computers, Jay, and his chemical training, and me, Bruce (I was lying about my name for several adventures, this time was Bruce), and my biology, math, genetics, and biochemistry background, as well as being something of a musician, artist and ladies man. It was also at this point that I made common knowledge my suicidal impulses due to the fish (I understand that Isaac Asimov was racked with guilt throughout his life over a cat he had to etherize in college Anatomy, so I'm in good company.) They promised to do what they could to help me out, and keep me away from sharp objects and high places.
We were taken to a lounge area where food and drink was available, and as we were all quite hungry, it was much appreciated. The food and drink was delivered by what we took to calling "bumbleballs", greyish-white balls with knobs all over them, about 3 feet in diameter. From here, we were taken into separate rooms for our placement tests, with questions about integration, differential equations, and a few ESP tests, about picking numbers, and receiving a transmitted picture.
After this, we went to the gym, where we were invited to partake in various contests of strength and skill. I opted to wrestle, as my weapons did not lend themselves well to that sort of thing, and the others fought with rapiers and broad- swords. I lost badly, mostly because I didn't cheat, ending up very unconscious. I believe that Jay also lost, but Jon and Sakell won. Afterwards, Sakell went to talk to some girls that were watching, one of whom was extremely attractive, named Dodecia, and he got along very well with her. I was told later that one of the girls seemed to take an interest in me, but I was in the fetal position and not very responsive at the time.
As per his S.O.P., elf boy Anadies had vanished somewhere in this time, leaving us to fend for ourselves, which was rather easy for once. We went to our classes, had our philosophical discussions, talked with people in the cafeteria, and went to the gym in the evening. After the first night, our old, and rather beaten up clothes were removed, and we were given the sissy outfits everyone else had. All our other possessions remained, including the Spear of Destiny, which Chappell had warned us not to let get away from us, after the Alexander the Great episode.
We keep up this aimless meandering for several days, but it turned out through Sakell's work with his lady, pumping her for information, that we were on a very large space craft, heading to a faraway star for some unknown purpose (I suspect that they got kicked off earth for being pains in the collective ass, although there were also hints that they were escaping some kind of war or disaster.) We got to go to the gardens, which had a transparent bubble, allowing us to see the stars. The stars that weren't blue or red shifted to invisibility, due to the near relativistic velocity, that is. At this point though, we still didn't know that we were on a starship, and we were trying to recognize constellations, which we couldn't.
It was also during some of the free time that we had that I was able to catch up on my writing, and put together the accounts for this adventure and the previous.
Well, I had to take a break from writing this, as the shit really hit the fan, and we had to make a break for it, but as usual, everything turned out just fine.
Along the way, we were told how to get access to the ship's computer system, and it was shortly after this, that the elf returned. He told us the real access codes for the computer, as what we had was actually very limited (the access for the children.) This, along with the knowledge that we were on a spaceship, and there were mostly scientists on board sparked our curiosity to find out what we could. We all hacked in the computer looking for things of interest, I couldn't find anything that great on genetics or biochemistry, they were just at the stage of starting to engineer themselves. However, Jon, Sakell, and Jay seemed to find interesting things, which they downloaded directly into their minds.
We also got tours set up for various of the labs on ship, looking for things to swipe. I visited a biochemistry lab, but couldn't find anything of interest, and the others didn't meet with too much success either. It was pretty clear that they were keeping close tabs on us, as they didn't really trust us much, as evidenced by the restricted computer access. Along with that statement, let me throw in that one of the things elf-boy told us confirmed my suspicion that the tests they gave us were to see if we were worth keeping, or if we should be thrown out the airlock. He said they were impressed with us, and wanted to keep us around for breeding purposes. (No, not breeding with porpoises, boy you people are sick.)
Once we learned some of this, we chose to stick around one more day, to try to get as much as we could (from hacking and outright theft). Then came the evening that we were set to leave. We were escorted to our quarters, and told that we would be fed there, as the regular cafeteria would be closed, and it would just be lousy rations that night. Their wanting us to all get into our quarters, locked away safely, kicked our paranoia into high gear, and we started freaking out. As a result, only Jon stayed in the quarters, and the rest of us insisted on going along to dinner.
We went up in an elevator, and at that point things got really confused. The bumbleballs were getting in our way, blocking us from getting back, people were getting upset, and then, in a flash of light, Fabio and Jon appeared, with Jon heavily weighted down with all our stuff, and all the people and guards were now unconscious. The bumbleballs had dropped some of their knobs, which Fabio said were useful, so we grabbed them. Then at our fearless leader's urging, we quickly got together in our circle, and went poof.