An invitation for a party put on by the Kappa Alpha frat house appears on various university bulletin boards. It's slated to start at 6pm on Saturday with a different address in each city. Each leading to a recently or not-officially opened building.
"That's true. I don't think I could pick something just because it would have a lot of impact, I'm not that selfless."
"Who said I was selfless? I want to make breakthroughs. That's why I'm willing to take chances like coming here. Better to fail a hundred times at trying something big than to just quietly creep forwards on little things."
"Ambitious is a description I'll accept gladly. I can respect people whose passions draw them in other directions though. Not everyone is suited to solving big problems."
"The most I considered was photojournalism, and it's a hard thing to get into. I was probably going to end up in web design."
"I'd be happy spending weeks just pouring over the encyclopedia and fiddling with the clinic. If you want to explore I'm not opposed though."
"Alright." Riley turned to dig into the encyclopedia.
There's a lot of information in the encyclopedia, most of it is pretty obscure trivia leaving aside some bits about the complex. The bookshelves have a selection of fiction and non-fiction most of it's straight from Earth, some of the textbooks seem like they might not be though.
The encyclopedia is distressingly short on anything resembling a map of the whole complex. It will consent to show a map of the mall. That puts the size of the complex into perspective, though there's no way to know if the surface facilities are as extensive as the underground. If they are though it looks like the facility is over fifty kilometers in diameter. The articles on the complex talk about how it's maintained by small robots called servos which avoid being directly observed. They explain the types of buildings that are present including museums, apartment complexes and warehouses. There are bits of detail about how the doors work, including the fact that they're almost soundproof when locked but that tapping the doorknob will chime inside the room. There are a lot of little touches like that.
Maddie relays most of this to Riley, in case she doesn't know.
Any mention of what might be in the museums or warehouses?
Not in a great deal of specificity, though some museums are referred to as presenting builder knowledge while others are referenced as reformatted facilities from the resident's world. The warehouses are listed as storing technical equipment and raw materials that are unsuitable for the mall and things in quantities higher than there is room for in the mall.
If she doesn't have background in the topics they'll seem pretty like textbooks from Earth in the intro sections. What topic would she like to read about?
There are textbooks for biology, genetics, anatomy, chemistry, physics and a lot more. The tables of contents don't point towards anything alien.
Kind of a shame. She wanted more alien stuff.
None of this is exactly redundant with her education. She collects anything biology, genetics and anatomy in one pile, and leaves that alone. She looks for an introductory physics book.
Her pile will be pretty high, there's a lot of biology type textbooks. The intro physics book will yield more alien stuff upon closer investigation. While the chapter headings sound like normal physics stuff the index will have a lot more references to temporal mechanics, unified field theories and spatial manipulation than you would expect of a physics book on Earth.
"It's really not my specialty but I can take a look." She looks at the indicated sections. Her eyes get a little wide. "Well, I guess that makes sense given they've figured out how to make interstellar teleporters. Still from my initial reading it looks like they have time manipulation of some kind. I don't think it's time travel just dilation but like I said this really isn't my specialty."
"Whatever it is, they're way more advanced than us. I need to catch up. You stick to bio, I'll see where I can get with physics. We can probably split up the important stuff between the two of us."
So they read. Maddie hasn't actually taken physics before, but she manages to figure out the basics.
Eventually, she suggests they explore further.