Made it to our supply cache at the edge of the ashlands today. We left yellowstone early due to earthquakes and more magma belching up out of the pools. The ecologist is still giddy and wants to contact us out again in a few months once he's gone over the data he collected. I don't see why not, it's not like the place could get much more dangerous than it already is. It's just lava, sharp as glass ash and noxious gases, and the potential goring hazard from the flaming bison out there. No they aren't actually flaming but their skin is surprisingly flame and heat resistant. In the name of science, and also because fresh meat sounded like a good idea, we slaughtered one out of a small herd we found. Tasted great with a little salt, kinda smoky though. Anyway theory is that one could make a raft out of the hide and use it to float out over some of the runnier lava, but we wisely managed to get that idea out of the ecologist's head. Also that weird tree thing I saw, still no clue what it actually was and didn't see it again. Most of the trip out was rather uneventful. Should be able to see all the stars in a day or two, it'll be nice to be back in civilization for a while.
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Fifth and Sixth floors have plates of metal welded up against all the windows. Even a cutting laser from the institute didn't scratch it, more and more of the AI's have come to watch my attempts to discover the secrets of the building though. It's pretty interesting to have an audience. Speaking of which, I did find the manager on the eighth floor. Pleasant fellow, if a bit distant, he and ID-9 had a staring contest for an hour that ended in a draw (I did not know the AI's could blink but ID-9 did). I did some exploration of the seventh floor, it is the strangest of them all, it seems to be configured in a maze-like shape, and time... has no meaning there, also space since it seems to cover more area than the footprint of the building itself. I thought I was only inside for a couple hours but it was in fact a day and a half according to ID-9. I did manage to use rope that one of the AI's made for me, glows on it's own, to sort of guide myself around the maze some. I'm wondering if I'm going to find a Minotaur in it... considering the dragons off in the ashlands I would not be surprised. Whelp a couple of the ai's just wandered up saying their calculations say they may have increased output of the cutting laser by 120% at an increase of energy use by 300%.... so instead of an hours worth of cutting time It should only have 20 minutes... well if I did the conversion right anyway. First gotta find my welding goggles.
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