Shit. She's some sort of disgusting cyborg. This is the absolute worst. She feels like she ought to feel nauseous but she doesn't have that mechanism anymore (and given the givens, thank goodness for that). At least she's got this nice environment suit so she can't look at her gross horrible neck stump again on accident. Blech.

She tries washing her gloved hands in the sink; the ritual is a little comforting but not much. Now, what's in the break room? It had better not be another horrifying revelation.

The breakroom door is next to the same kind of comm panel from the Tech Depot, this one working and displaying a message "DATA BUFFER AVAILABLE". When she touches it, there's a vague falling sensation and then there's...playback in her head. Two people, one who sounds like a woman, the other who sounds like a man and might be named "Carl" though it's hard to tell with distortion at the start of the message, talk about "perma-sealing the facility" so that some kind of "they" can't get out, and setting it up so the rest of the facility can still draw power hopefully without having to come back. The pair talk about getting to a place called "Theta" safely after they leave.

Yikes, telepathy!

Okay, she's being an idiot; this time period can run brain scans on computer hardware in real time. So if it's not just emulating each of her neurons as a black box then she's a piece of software compatible with the other software around here and the ability to open files is impressive but not separately unexplained. Sweet, telepathy! She wonders if it works for real-time communications too.

She relistens to the message again from the beginning, since she was so distracted the first time, and is thoroughly creeped out about the possibility of having been sealed in here with entities that need to not get out. 

The breakroom holds few answers on entities which need to not get out, unless it's whatever came out of the open science-fiction-looking...refrigerator...thing? There's a large appliance of some kind with a snowflake on it, anyway, and some counters with a small box of curry mix, and another sink. Some people around here needed to eat at some point, anyway, so there's some real humans around, or were. The food appears to come matched with a small appliance labeled as a "Munchprint" which again sounds like Marketing was allowed to have input, but maybe to less of a worrying extent. It's like a Keurig for food printing? The boxes of food mix seem to fit into slots in the Munchprint, anyway. Beside a locker on the wall with the door, there's another one of those cable...things. This one is even larger, a good quarter meter in diameter, and where it reaches the wall it's dripping long, slow, trails of what looks like tar or used oil, which dribbles viscously into a puddle on the floor. The other part of the room holds a four-seat table, where three cups and a water bottle were left, apparently empty. A poster on one wall shows what looks for a moment like a mold stain over a pair of olive branches, before Margaret realizes the stain is just a green geometric print of some kind of complex facility in semi-transparent isometric view. It's not particularly picturesque, so why bother with such graphical fidelity? Another poster is prettier, a shot of some village on a sea coast or lake coast with docks, in a sunset. "Home is a state of mind," apparently. Looking around, she hopes the motivational poster helped with the minds of whoever lived here--it's a small touch in a fairly industrial setting.

Part of her hopes the humans are all escaped to somewhere less trashed and disgusting, but a much bigger part hopes that someone knows she's here. It seems pretty plausible that the facility on the poster is the one she's in; is it detailed enough that she can get her bearings?

The poster's not really intended as a map, it's an exterior view and doesn't really show corridors except where they wind between the various towers of the station or platform or wherever she is. Ironically, it's almost too detailed to be useful.

Well, that's stupid. Presumably everyone who was in here on purpose knew their way around and didn't need a map, but it's very inconvenient for her. 

She picks up the water bottle and cautiously pokes the dripping tentacable with it.

The cable surface gives slightly, in a way that doesn't look like plastic, more like half-cured tar. It might be made of the same stuff that's dripping out of it? It's grown around another panel on the wall, but when pulled away, the stuff that's dripped onto it from the leak doesn't seem to be doing anything. Margaret's having a hard time coming up with it other than gray goo...except it's black.

That's gross! But it didn't throw off electric arcs, or spring to life and attack her, or instantly corrode the water bottle into dust, or whatever, so it could definitely be worse. 

It looks like she's learned everything there is to learn from this room, at least for now; she moves on to the Machine Hangar.

The "pneumatic seal" on the hangar door is relatively easy to remove by twisting the handle, and once loose it falls right off the door--actually, given how easily it falls off when loose, she wonders how hard it was to hang properly? Anyway, once off, the access panel switches from red to green, and she's able to get into the hangar. It's disquieting almost immediately, though for not any reason she can put her finger on. Is it a gut feeling if it's not even your guts, and they might not even be guts anymore anyway? Anyway, just inside a doorway is a spot where more of the tentacables have burst out of a computer case and wormed into a wall. Some portions it are even glowing, little white-blue nodules of light on the dark cables. It'd almost be pretty, like Christmas lights, if they weren't so creepy, lighting up a poster of a large robot of some kind, apparently a "A-95 Worker" from Haimatsu. The name is vaguely familiar, Margaret recalls hearing it mentioned at robotics conferences back before the scan when she wasn't in this simulation, or this future, or whatever she's in. In the distance, there's a few dripping sounds, and the occasional minor groan of protesting metal, like a skyscraper in a hard storm.

Ahead are tables, with what look like fancy Remote Operated Vehicles opened up on them, surrounded by shelves, toolboxes, and diagnostic equipment. Another pair of the same type hang on the wall. The far one's camera-pod "head" has swung forward and up and it looks like it's covered with the same goo as the leaks in the walls, the tentacables wound like muscle, but looking too hard at it makes Margaret's vision--and everything else--staticky. A wall divides off the other half of the space, where the overhead rail spirals up to a high ceiling to hold another several robots, including two that look more like the A-95 poster. A large wall poster has another copy of the same logo from the breakroom, this time with more text: "Pathos II: Upsilon". One of the robots looks to be connected to the wall by a solidified mass of the black gunk, with a few small lights embedded in it, but it's not wound over with tentacables. If anything, it almost looks like it's passed out, it's head and arms sprawled out and down from the boxy main chassis. It doesn't make her vision go static. In fact, she almost feels something in the back of her brain that says she wants to touch it, pulling her in?

She stays well away from the area that makes everything go staticky even though she wants to know what's doing it--she has no idea what things can injure this body and there's no sign of anyone who might be able to help repair it, so she had better just avoid anything that does the cyborg equivalent of hurt.

Ooh, what's that collapsed robot with the lights on it, she wants to touch it--wait no why would she want to touch it, that cannot possibly be a good idea--aaaaaaa shit she's already touching it.

There's a voice, in her brain. No, not a voice, some kind of playback, the machine telepathy thing again? She can read the minds of some of the robots, apparently? There's a rattling speaker grill noise, then a human voice, which sounds like the same woman from the comms panel. She's asking the robot if it can talk "like the others". She gets no answer aside from the same rasping speaking static. Asking it "why are you like this?" brings the same answer. She offers it some "structure gel" and then tells the robot it's "creepy as hell" and that she's going to shut it down. The message goes dead halfway through her second time assuring it she's shutting it down. Margaret barely has time to wonder about why she did that before there's a loud banging sound from around the corner.

Oh cool more telepathy aaaaaaaaa she's hearing the memories of someone maybe dying OH FUCK what is that noise time to run the other way really fast and then hide in a corner and see if it happens again.

Margaret shelters in the corner further from the entrance to the spiral hangar area, and then there's an ominous crash from what sounds like the hallway outside, and then silence reigns again.

After a minute or two of waiting, Margaret goes back to see what the noise was. She's hoping for people, or at least for "not the roof caving in".

The noise appears to have been the second robot, the static one, waking up and walking out, and then slamming a hole through the door at the end of the atrium which was previously closed, and which is now cratered outwards revealing another section of the facility. Down the new hallway a short distance is visible, ending in a turn to the right. On the end wall, some kind of duct or maintenance tunnel gapes open, with tentacables trailing into it. The robot is nowhere to be seen.

Huh, the robots of the future are buggy too--plus ça change. She wonders if robotics programming has drawn on anything learned from brain scans. Hard to say, since that one wasn't acting particularly humanlike.

Also, what kind of bizzare constraints were the people who made this place operating under when they decided to have all the hallways folded up on themselves like this? 

She tries to get into the ductwork, because it's always so tempting to go into the ductwork and this time it really looks like she can get away with it, but with the diving suit on and the way the hatch is stuck shut she can't quite fit, so after taking a look around she backs out and goes around the turn into the new hallway.

The new hallways turns out to open into some large chamber--what a sign on the wall refers to as the "Robot Dock," apparently for the large airlock-looking hatch that the overhead rail leads to, though it also plays host to various other equipment in alcoves. A door on the far wall leads to the "Service Station". A fence with a locked gate almost divides the room in half, though it looks like there's an open portion at the far end by the door to the Service Station. 

What sort of equipment is it? Is any of it omnitools, or otherwise potentially useful? If nothing else it could be a useful clue to how much technology has changed since her previous set of memories.

None of the equipment looks like the hand-held Omnitool picture from the Service Console in the Tech Depot. The first pair seem like some kind of generator or material processing equipment, their function unlabeled and indistinct behind proper guarding and signage about high-voltage equipment. As she wanders around the corner, there's a loud banging, and the overhead flood lights in the Robot Dock shut off. Suddenly, from the Service Station door, there's a rattle and several crashes. The door, secured behind one of the four-armed pneumatic seals, slams several times with white glow visible where whatever it was is almost breaking through. After a few moments, whatever it was (presumably the robot?) gives up and moves on--there's another noise like it climbing back into the ducts.

Whoever programmed that robot (or whatever uploaded human is currently being it, she supposes) should reconsider their life choices. She heads into the Service Station once the coast seems to be clear.

Whatever damage the robot's failed attempt to get out of the Service Station did doesn't seem to have done the pneumatic seal any harm, it falls away just like the last one, and then the door slides open smoothly. The room beyond is a mess. One the back wall, there's some overgrowth of the black goo (structure gel?) complete with glowing bits. Shelves full of equipment have been knocked over and scattered as the robot made its way from the tunnel entrance on the left to the one on the right, both closed now and sealed over with some more of the gel that almost appears to be setting like a scab. In the center of the room, there's another leak of gel from the ceiling, this one apparently fresh as the puddle is small. Navigating carefully around it, Margaret strikes gold--some kind of maintenance workbench for Omnitools. There's a scattering of tools (apparently screwdrivers, torx screw sets, Allen wrenches, and battery drill/drivers haven't changed much), a poster of an Omnitool's internals, and a cabinet labeled OMNITOOL In the center of the work surface, apparently freshly repaired, is an Omnitool, a glossy trifold pamphlet introduction to the "Omnitool v2.5 Smart Access Computer", and a service manual. Apparently, they can use some kind of short-range signal to activate various doors and devices, or be jacked into various physical sockets both for extra processing power of an onboard "A.I." assistant loaded in an external Cortex Chip module this one currently lacks, or as a physical security token for accessing advanced functions. The controls are a little rudimentary, probably because according to the service manual the device is sealed for use in environments ranging from vacuum to a rather terrifying 400 atmospheres of pressure.

Finally, some good news! Margaret thinks when she gets to the omnitool bench. She immediately pockets an omnitool, and also a couple screwdrivers and an allen wrench just in case, then reads the manual cover to cover. The mention of the range of environments gets her wondering where exactly this facility is. Probably not in space, regardless of the suits and the mention of vacuum--the gravity is earthlike and the corridors don't curve the way you'd expect them to for spin gravity, and more importantly, who would build a space station with no windows? No, more likely she's underground somewhere. Or underwater, which would explain the airtight suits. And of course there's still the simulation option.

Once she's done with the manual, Margaret explores the rest of the room some more, looking for a toolbox or something she can use to carry the rest of the tools in, and also checks out the far wall. The structure gel or whatever it is reminds Margaret of early 21st century speculations about nanotechnology, both the rhapsodies about it's amazing potential and the mutterings about why it might be a bad idea.

Margaret hits paydirt early in her search for a carrying case--a cargo tote labeled with a "Carthage Industries" logo and several barcodes, apparently intended for shipping to PTH2UP. It turns out to be large enough to hold most of the tools from the desk, with some tetris work, though the spare battery for the drill driver doesn't fit, nor does the large grinder/sawz-all. With that loaded (and she'll have to find someplace to scrounge up a carry strap), she investigates the gel. She's apparently not the only person to have cause to regret the gel--deep within the mass is what looks like another suit like hers, headless and full of something that glistens unsettlingly and might be either more of the gel, or blood--it's hard to tell in the light.

NOPE nope nope nope nope she is taking her stolen tools legitimate salvage and going Somewhere Else. Like back to the room with the terminal that wanted an omnitool inserted into it, maybe.