Tetsonot

I seem to make it into the Cavern about once a week, usually with the rest of my 'hood, but last night, everybody else was busy, so I went alone.

I'd forgotten just what it was like to go looking at things without anyone to talk to about them. About how it was to be walking around alone in the City or in Ages, how it was lonely and a little scary and a great deal more awe inspiring. The bonds of community can be very frustrating at times (two people in a room = politics) but they also provide a stability and a framework that make the rest of the world a lot less terrifying because, hey, you've got backup!

Tetsonot is under water. Even on the map, once you know it's Pod 11, you can tell that it's under water. It's probably supposed to be.

But when I linked in, for one, it was dark, and two, it was wet to the knees, and I could hear running water, and three, after a second there was one pulse of red behind me from the emergency lighting, and I could see I was in the wrong place - I was a floor down from where I was supposed to be!

I fumbled around in the dark for the lights for a bit, discovered that the water would glow around my knees if I moved quickly, turned the lights on long enough to read the symbol on the floor, turned them off again, and then linked back out again. I wasn't staying in there without some extra precautions. Like a waterproof flashlight to figure out how big that crack in the ceiling was, because the emergency lighting wasn't working right either!

It turns out that the Tetsonot portal was going to open shortly - once I got back to Ae'gura and checked the map, that was fairly obvious - so I grabbed a couple of sheets of the plastic I used for an art project a couple of years ago, and a grease pencil, and linked back down there.

This is what I wrote.

Dark here and wet. Writing in grease pencil by flashlight is pretty cool, in a scary kind of way, but don't want to drop it. Very dark. Should be shiny soon, if the math's right. Very wet too.

Must've had an earth rise here -- linked in the wrong place, level down from normal. If pod got shoved up, would account for it. Also for leaks and busted power. Backup battery. Sitting next to light switch. Gonna flip it in a sec in case the portal needs power somehow.

Dark. Wet. Noisy. Scary.

What was the DRC thinking?

...

That was the sea of Stars again, not Ae'gura. WHAT?


The last bit's a reference to the fact that when I went through the hole in the Bahro cave, I was back in the Sea of Stars again - not falling through the ceiling of the Cavern the way I have every other time I've jumped through a hole like that since the end of the beginning of my Journey.

That last bit makes me wonder.

Anyway, after that, I wasn't sure I was really up for much else in the way of exploring. Tetsonot was COLD. I planted the little rosemary in a pot next to the door of my Relto, and wrote Dr. Watson's name on the pot, and then I linked back to the surface. I only have Payiferan left to snag for this Journey, so to speak, and it's a beautiful place, but just as deadly as all the other environments outside the Pods - but I'm still not entirely clear as to what I'm supposed to be learning here.

(I'm learning any number of things, some of which may be right, but I don't know what the question is.)

Whatever the World of the Pod Ages is Named, it's a dangerous place. Nobody's tamed it. (I'm not sure that we could unless we did a seriously concerted community effort.) And yet it is highly beautiful. Perhaps that's what we're supposed to take away from it.