"<Getting some scans in first would be good, since it will let us establish a baseline and given Wrinkle a better idea of what to look for during and after the process.>"

And indeed, Wrinkle will begin the casting for the various analysis spells he's developed, waving crystal dowels and incanting in a strange language (different from the other strange language that Sandy has been speaking underneath the translation effect). He will try and be not too disruptive about it, though.

"<Would it be alright if Ounu investigated the memory statue here as well?>"

"That should be alright as long as you're not going to maybe break it."

"<Well, nothing seemed to break with the memory statue back in the museum...>"

They will go ahead and reach out to it in the same way as before, looking for information, what shape it takes, what texture. Is it most visuals and text, or something else?

This statue is talking with something remote in the same way but it is otherwise empty.

Not terribly informative, but better than nothing.

Indeed. He sighs as he replies, "<Not much to see on that front. Oh well. If they turn out to be important, hopefully the workshop will have more for us to find.>"

<Wrinkle, how is it progressing?>

At the usual pace: fast enough that it's not going to take forever, but slow enough that they'll still be waiting for a bit.

Eventually, though, he does finish with his preliminary scans, and does what preparations he can for the spells he intends to cast in the middle of the process. "<Alright, if you're all ready then we're good to go?>"

"Let's get started then." Cherry looks over at a vaguely hourglass shaped fixture on the wall and a ball in it lights up and hovers into the downward slot of the track it's in. There's a faint shudder in the floor as they start to move down towards the black hole.

"It'll be a couple minutes 'fore we get to the bottom any questions I can answer while we're waiting?"

There's a brief moment of further psychic deliberation between the group, just a few seconds, before Sandy replies, "<If it's not too much to try and reduce down into a couple minutes, what's your general understanding of the physics of this process? Wrinkle has some idea just from the geometry and material character of the equipment, but having an idea of your theory on it would help him better understand what he's looking at as the machinery works.>"

"Well just from watching with our eyes it looks like it's using the big black hole as a catalyst rather than harvesting anything from it directly. Some of the documentation suggests that's not quite right though, that somehow it's getting the power or material through a sorta indirect process. Seems like it's probably related to the way the big one bends light around it a bit. We're not really sure why that is either. It's not heavy enough that it seems like it should with the understanding of gravity we've got but we know our understanding is mighty incomplete since it can't really explain a lot of the weirdness we see."

Sandy and Wrinkle both nod along. "<Fair enough. If we're lucky then everyone might be learning something valuable from Wrinkle's analysis afterwards.>"

That's the only question they think to ask before the forge finishes its ascent/descent.

Well once they're down Chert goes over to a console, inserts a chunk of something into a couple slots and then types in some commands. "We're ready to go if you wanna start your scans before I turn hit start."

Wrinkle does one final, fortunately quite brief bit of gesturing with the crystal dowel he's currently wielding before Sandy affirms, "<We're ready.>"

Chert presses a final button and things start to happen. First the systems forge the casings for the core from a bit of the same material as the gravity crystals some glass and some ceramic. Then it moves those cores to a more complex apparatus that performs the actual critical step of teasing the fabric of space into the anomalous structure of the black hole white hole pairs. Looking closely it's apparent that you can't really create one without the other and they're intrinsically linked to each other on a fundamental level.

Wrinkle watches (through the augmented sensoria of his scanning spells) the entire process, possessed by a fascination that is almost frightening in its intensity.

The forging process is informative to see how the substance of the gravity crystals can be transformed, but that's really just an appetizer to the pair-production process.

The way the ether of this world vibrates, almost like soundwaves through air, loud enough to bend light, to punch a hole through space, is fascinating, and reminds him of...something. Something he's not able to imagine. Something he's not allowed to.

Regardless, it becomes clear upon inspection that the mechanism here is using the etheric particularities of the gravity crystals to capture and redirect the vibrations, focusing them to such a fine point that the etheric pressure rises to the point of breaking through one metric to another, increasing the genus of the local spatial topology, then stretching the newly created topological deformity out to a useful scale and into a useful shape.

It's a fascinating process, and gives him ideas for how to upgrade the teleportation infrastructure back home, maybe even how to innovate a way to get teleportation-like speeds without needing to establish any infrastructure between the endpoints first...but it is isn't what they're looking for, not unless they conveniently stumble across an extant pair whose white hole leads back to where they came from at least.

Sandy sighs when Wrinkle wilts a bit.

After the process is complete, and Wrinkle's does his final post-forging scans (mostly perfunctory, as it turns out), he'll mention to those present, "<While there was quite a bit of valuable information, it was, as we feared, not enough for us to figure out a way home on its own. Wrinkle does think he's be able to make some potentially valuable observations about the process, which-- Hm.>"

He considers whether he and Ounu have enough of an understanding of how the memory statues work to potentially use the one here as a more convenient way of conveying Wrinkle's observations and proposals than verbalizing them all himself through the translation appendage.

Well, they have a pretty good idea of how to replicate the heartbeats that the statues have been sending off, and of the texture of the information storage media inside the statues. It should be possible?

Sandy nods, perhaps inexplicably to those unfamiliar with Ounu's existential mode, then continues. "<We think we might be able to store them in the memory statue, if that would be more convenient than trying to convey everything he's thought of so far verbally?>"

"I'm uh not sure why you'd think that would be convenient. We haven't managed to turn them on and even if we could we think they're designed to give someone back their own memories. I'm not sure if it would be safe to have them try to give you someone else's memories."

Huh. "<Fair enough, I suppose the fact that the one back in the museum had somehow ended up with photos seemingly from the space program had given me the impression that accessing one that actually had memories in it wouldn't be an issue. In that case, I suppose we'll need to just convey the observations by mouth. Maybe later, somewhere where people can take notes.>"

They don't have much more to do here, so unless there's more questions for them  they'll just watch for the forge to retract back from the surface of the black hole, make their way back to the teleporter hub, and consider where they should head to next.

"I'll leave the return trip to Chert if that's alright with you?"

"I can walk them back, yeah. I could take notes here if it works for you but I can also just repeat what you tell me and record it as we walk. What're you thinking of next? If you're looking to go to the Bramble it's one of the places the Nomai teleporters don't go. Best way there is to catch a ride. If you're trying to think about options I can talk things through with you. The one you might not have heard of, though it is a long shot, is to wait for the shadow trackers to finish. They say they're getting close and nobody really knows what we'll find there."

"<Ah, if you have a recorder on you then that works, and I suppose any engineers can field questions to Wrinkle at a later date. As for where to next, Dark Bramble seems like the main target, but we were considering where we'd want to gather information from first. It sounds like a dangerous enough place that we should try and properly prepare, rather than just running in as we are. And, that does sound interesting. What shadow are these trackers tracking?>"