Alice glances around the room, her eyes take in the various people milling around. Everyone seems to be settling in to some extent in bigger or smaller groups. Zahn, of course, was pretty close to her. Her eyes stop when she notices two new students walking in the door, one with a backpack on. Something about them reminds her a bit of Zahn, not in his melancholy moods but when he was excited about some project or another. "Hi there," she says walking over. "Welcome to the Interdisciplinary Meetup group. I'm one of the organizers Alice and this is my friend Zahn."
"I think I saw some on the desks in the bedrooms, and maybe also a couple on the kitchen counters upstairs, but yeah, there's a lot less than I would expect from a building this high-tech."
"This room is kinda heavy on the art supplies, isn't it? Like a preschool."
"It also has a lot of games, and I don't think Settlers of Catan or Betrayal at House on the Hill are really aimed at that age group. Also, some of those art supplies look pretty high-quality."
"If there are power outlets I wonder if it's just there to recharge what we've brought with us or if there's somewhere we can find more devices that need it."
"...Why didn't we try the elevator again. Just back out, go home. Not that likely it'd work, I suppose."
"If you remember, there was no ground floor button in the elevator. We could try the codes for the other colors, but we have no guarantee that they'd lead somewhere as nice as this, and I wouldn't bet on any of them taking us back to the lobby we left from. I suppose if we're ridiculously lucky reentering the same code from where we arrived at might reverse the journey but that doesn't seem very likely to me."
She shakes her head. "Let's check the last three rooms and then go see that computer again."
"That sounds like a reasonable plan." Alice leads them out of the art room and into the next door. This one has mirrors on all the walls and a slightly springy floor. There are gymnastics and Yoga mats piled in of the corners and there's a few weights and resistance bands along one of the walls. "Well here's the gym you predicted Walta, though it has less equipment that I'd have expected and in some ways it more closely resembles a dance studio."
"The big lifting machines can be kind of dangerous, I suppose."
This room isn't really very interesting.
"No, not really. Onto the next." The final door leads to what's either a small movie theater or a large home entertainment complex. There's shelves of DVDs along one wall and a touchscreen remote on a table near the front. The table also has what appears to be a slot for inserting those DVDs in its front edge. "Huh, I wasn't sure what would close out this level but this is definitely not what I would have expected."
"I think I'd like to peek at the last two levels but if it's another set of six rooms like this I'd like to see if the computer has some sort of map before moving further."
The next level down is all one room there are a variety of empty storage containers, a bike rack, and doors leading to the outside in six different directions. The whole level is more window than wall. In every direction they look, they can see the tall white barrier that first suggested something was wrong. If one of them has really good eyes they might see small doors in the wall at a distance. Alice's eyes aren't quite that good. "Well, we're at least not trapped in this building. I think the outside is a bit bigger than the six rooms would have been. Do you want to try exploring outdoors anyway or stick to our plan?"
"That works for me." Zahn walks towards one of the doors. He opens it then scrutinizes it. "It looks like this will open from the outside. I wonder if one of us should stay inside just in case though. It'd be a shame to be trapped outside."
"We just have to check that it does open from the outside real quick. Takes all of ten seconds, go on."
Zahn goes outside and lets the door close. It opens for him easily enough. "That seems safe enough then."
Their immediate surroundings are a nicely manicured garden, there are some benches and some fairly tall trees, "Those look like they'd be fun to climb," Zahn comments. There are nicely textured paths one of them seems to lead to a pool visible in the distance.
Nick finally sets the drone down. It's big, for a quadcopter like this, and seems to be made of metal despite being very light. With a little bit of fussing on his laptop it soars into the air as he presses 'R', streaming a somewhat low-quality video to the laptop screen.