Private What Wars Left Buried

[Meri Vale]

Meri leaned in slightly as Novac pointed across the map, her eyes following each corridor he traced with his finger. The more he explained, the easier it became to picture the facility as it had once been. It stopped looking like a collection of disconnected rooms and started resembling a place where people had worked every day, moving from one area to another without ever really thinking about it.

"That actually makes a lot of sense," she admitted. "I was looking at the rooms individually. You're looking at how they all fit together."

She studied the cluster of smaller hallways for another moment before nodding to herself.

"And if people were building droids all day, they'd want the break room close enough that they weren't wasting half their break just walking there and back." A small smile crossed her face. "I never would've thought about that. Archaeology usually teaches you to look at what people left behind. You're looking at how they probably moved while they were still here."

Her flashlight drifted briefly around the dusty room, imagining it full of workers talking over meals, hurrying back to their stations, and complaining about long shifts before returning her attention to Novac.

"It's strange..." she said thoughtfully. "The more we figure out how the station worked, the less abandoned it feels."

Novac Lyrikal

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Meri Vale

"Knowing how a place worked, how the people who lived there went about their day, things like that can make it feel like that yea. The more you know the more you can imagine what it was like back in the day. Full of people going around doing their thing. Machines working almost nonstop."

Novac started to head out toward the production area. it was a few hallways down but they'd get there soon. Novac thought about what htey might find, perhaps old parts still on the conveyor lines. But for some odd reason, novac couldn't geth the thought of that potential sentient killing droid out of his head.

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri followed alongside Novac, her flashlight wandering over the walls as they made their way toward the production area. His description had already given her imagination far too much material to work with. It was easy now to picture workers passing them in both directions, machinery humming somewhere ahead, and carts carrying parts between different sections of the facility. Even the plain corridors became interesting once she stopped seeing them as empty hallways and started wondering why people had needed them in the first place.

"That's probably my favorite part," she admitted, stepping carefully around a piece of debris. "Not just finding out what something was, but getting enough little details that you can almost picture an ordinary day here. Somebody complaining that their shift is too long, somebody sneaking an extra five minutes in the break room..." A small smile crossed her face. "People doing completely normal things without realizing someone might be trying to figure them out hundreds of years later."

The thought made her glance back the way they had come before directing her light ahead again. The abandoned facility didn't feel quite so empty anymore, although Meri wasn't entirely certain that was comforting given what else they suspected might still be wandering its halls.

"Hopefully the production floor gives us lots of boring, ordinary history," she added with a quiet laugh. "I think we've had enough interesting discoveries for a little while."

Novac Lyrikal

 

[Novac Lyrikal]

Meri Vale

As novac walked, well slithered, along side her, his flashlight infront of him he said "Exactly, sometimes when I'm exploring abandoned places it makes me think, one day will someone find my ship, old and in ruins on some planet long after my death and try to piece together the kind of person who lived there? Same as we are doing. Makes me think of what will be left behind, though with my droids i doubt that will be anytime soon after my death." he said the last with a small chuckle.

Finally making their way to the doors to the room Novac slowly opened one and took a peak inside. All seemed normal so he fully opened the door. Inside was a few rows of conveyor belts, nothing but dust on them. Stools to the side of them, a few nocked over.

As he went further in he noticed just how large the room was, that and how the air in here was more clouded with dust then the rest of the place. But what his eyes where locked onto was what concerned him. The dust on the floor had been disturbed, and recently at that.

Using his natural telepathy he got from his ssither mother he spoke to meri in her mind, "Sorry to speak in your head like this, i know some don't like it when i do but..look here," he said pointing to the ground. They wheren't normal boot or shoe prints, the shaping was odd, weirdly square.