A light. How useful, unlike the gods.

Yeah, he's just going to get out of here and tell everyone there's no reason to care about the gods anymore, besides their artifacts. They won't be impressed but it's the truth he's found so it's the truth he'll bring home. Maybe he'll bring back this light, too. Once his eyes adjust he can look for how it's attached and see if there's a small enough functional piece to carry back.

The light is pretty thoroughly attached to the wall. Built right into it.

It has words on it, spelled out in colors. And pictures.

That one looks like... Some kind of map? It shows a red dot near the converging end of a long, long tunnel, one of several, all converging on some kind of building under the hill.

Something is terribly wrong.

She knows she should be hearing things. Seeing things. The devices for it are there. But she's blind and deaf, reaching out with the networking equivalent of scrabbling around in the dark.

'Emergency power only'. Oh. That doesn't sound good.

She needs to... Get more power. That might be why she's thinking so slowly, confused and lost.

She starts thinking about how to do that.

Oh, that's actually useful. He looks around for anything he can use to copy the map, since he can't take it home with him. Maybe there's some really old chalk around here and something to mark on?

"I'm not done doubting you, you know, it's just a map. You're still useless. So far."

The map-light beeps and says in a smooth voice, "I'm sorry. Voice commands aren't working right now."

Nothing jumps out at him as writing tools unless he has some in his pack.

It's talking! In the language of the gods! Which he doesn't speak.

"I'm sorry. Voice commands aren't working right now," he echoes very carefully.

It repeats the message with exactly the same tone and inflection.

Maybe it's just supposed to say that one thing over and over. Or maybe it's some kind of instruction that it wants him to follow.

How about if he tries heading for the very center of the underground complex. Along the way he repeats the sample of godly speech to himself so he'll remember it.

The very center of the underground complex is... Up. He could go to the end of this tunnel, though it looks like it gets very steep near the end. He could try to see if the stairs behind that door are intact enough to climb. He could climb the long ladder in that elevator shaft.

She found the controls for the passive geothermal plant in the network she's connected to. All the valves and tanks are closed. She's not sure why. The only reason to do that would be if they were going to sit idle for years or decades...

The power available to her slowly increases as thick, oily synthetic liquids start flowing again. Now she can afford to think a little faster. To turn on some of the cameras and microphones.

She wonders if she should start her reactor. No... Something is terribly wrong. She's afraid and anxious and wants to do things about it. But better not to do anything irreversible, or use the nearly-irreplaceable start-up charge, until she knows what's going on.

Well, the gods could probably fly.

He tries the stairs.

The stairwell is collapsed! The whole room is mostly a pile of rubble. It shifts and dust billows out when he opens the door.

He's not impressed with the gods' architecture, which really doesn't make him want to try the ladder. Maybe he should just leave.

Maybe the ladder will get him out of here faster than backtracking.

Sigh. He climbs. The gods should really have left them something better than ruins, if they were so great.

The tall shaft holding the ladder eventually lets out in another tunnel, but smaller, like a hallway.

Every camera she turns on reveals cold, empty rooms and halls, covered in dust and, in places more exposed to the elements, rust. There are supposed to be people here. She's supposed to make sure they're safe. But nobody's here. Did they all die? Did she fail? Did they never show up in the first place?

She's supposed to fly. But launching without double-checking everything is abhorrent. Part of her controls little robots in her main body, going over old equipment. Cabins, kitchens, space suits, medical bays, control rooms, cleaning robots, engines, the reactor core. It's all been sitting here a long, long time. She wakes up subsystems that know how to do these things and tells them to start checking and fixing it all.

She's desperately afraid, now, that she's failed before she began, there are no people here, they're all dead or gone, there are no people to fly up into the sky safe and sound. Nothing but empty rooms and silence and her own robots and data banks to keep her company.

Sigh. "Another beacon would be nice."

Was that...? It was very faint, but there definitely was a signal from that microphone. It could have been random noise. Something creaking with thermal expansion, or an animal's skittering.

She can't take that chance. She turns on the power to that wing, trying to pay attention to every camera and microphone.

The lights nearest him flicker on.

Oh, no, the gods are paying attention to him. Well, he won't let them see his fear.

"Hi, gods! Ready to show me where to go?"

That's definitely a voice! A person! Alive!!!

She can't understand them. She looks through the language library aggressively and still can't understand them. She pores over the short recording dozens of times.

She finds a translator program. She pokes it until it starts, and nearly growls in frustration when it complains that one sentence is not enough to translate with.

Let's see... Can she figure out where he is on the map, and which devices are the lights down there...

The lights on his right turn off. The ones on the left go off, on, off, on, like the green light before.

Left, huh? He looks for the next chance to make a left turn.

He passes some locked doors. The hallway splits after a few minutes of walking. Forward, left, or right. The forward and right halls are dark, the left is lit.

Oh, boy. They're going to kill him for his insolence, aren't they.

Left he goes.

And quickly, the left hallway is barred by a big, heavy locked door with thick glass and some artifacts near it.

Oh no! He's hurt. She needs to get him up to the med bay as quickly as possible.

She can't understand him and he probably can't understand her, but she puts her face on the screen. "Hello! You're hurt! We can't understand each other, but come in, I have medical stuff."

The security door makes a loud clunking sound as it unlocks and swings inward.