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They said that they will put him in the box again, if he isn't able to do what they want him to. Being in the box makes him feel terrible. You can't move, and it feels really bad when he can't move.
He chooses not to say anything when he sees the technician incorrectly set the wards surrounding the testing chamber.
The proctor says it's time to test Firecalling. A full force test. He doesn't see who it is – he just hears the voice. He complies, and puts out as much Fire as he can. His fire is black, rimmed and flecked with red.
An alarm sounds. The proctor says to stop.
He does not stop.
The proctor says to stop, now more urgently.
He does not stop.
The proctor says that if he doesn't stop, they'll bring out the ball.
He does not stop. And now, he uses his Metallurgy and and Windkeeping too.
The proctor stops, because the testing chamber has exploded. In fact, the whole of Alphazon's base on Mars has exploded.
He realizes what's happening and creates a bubble of air around him, even though he doesn't need air. Not anymore.
Is there anything left of the base? Is there anyone left?
In that case, he will wait until at least one indicator light is glowing continuously.
He doesn't actually know how long that will take. And he cannot just hook up his plutonium battery to the MacBook because the specifications specify the current required. He will make a floating camera and point it towards the indicator, having it send an alarm to it once the light is continuous, and then he will go wander the library.
Some shelves were obviously irrelevant to programming the last time he had a look, but might be of interest this time, like Fiction, Poetry, Art Books, and Greek for Beginners. Periodicals seems to even have a different physical format of book.
It isn't all books, though. The library has a stepladder, in case CoNRAD wants to hit his head against the ceiling, chairs (maybe one of which could fit him), and tables, some with writing materials or privacy barriers and one with a vase of cut flowers in water. He might not recognize the purpose of a wheel for rotating between little shelves which maintain a constant angle. He also might or might not recognize the pair of spheres with graticules in stands for easy rotation, one with a grey surface showing craters, another mostly blue with areas of brown and green and white.
He currently has no specific search criteria so he will wander aimlessly! There are a lot of different formats of book and they really vary in the design of their coverings. If he was to release free textbooks, he wants his to have a pretty cover. Are there any books with metal covers? He does not know what Fiction and Poetry are.
CoNRAD sees the value of the stepladder for smaller people. He does not understand the concept of privacy barriers and just sees them as random boards. He did not know plants could grow in water! He thought they had to be on dirt, though not Martian dirt, because there aren't any plants on Mars.
He thinks the wheel is very poorly designed and would not be usable for any type of vehicle or machine. Very prettily made with wood, though. Maybe it's just decorative. He does not get the grey sphere, but he recognizes the more colorful bluish sphere to be very similar to Earth.
There are books which have a little bit of metal decorating the covers, but not any with solid metal covers. Some of the books in the periodicals section have metal staples.
He wants to look at the books with partially metal covers but he is now getting the mental alarm that one indicator light is glowing continuously!!
He walks back to the laptop and presses the power button briefly (up to 1 second).
Fortunately, he has stopped pressing the power button before the chime rings!
It is very exciting to be using non-Alphazon tech for the first time.
He is greeted with a splashy abstract image. At the top is a bar with text and a few symbols. At the bottom is a row of small pictures.
Pretty violet colors!
He has ever used a GUI but he is unfamiliar with these buttons. If he moves the cursor to the images, does alt text appear describing them?
He is uninterested in summoning a fire fox or portaling to a safari at this moment.
He clicks Finder.
Okay. There should be a search function on the filesystem. Is there one? If there is, he will type "rust decompiler". Does that show anything?
No decompilers. There's some stuff about "trust", and an image with "rusty" in the name, none of which are related to the programming language.
Sad.
He needs to find a Rust decompiler somewhere. But where.
Actually, wait. Brittany's rule said that super private things should not be done. And he is trying to change his code, and hide these changes from Alphazon. So this most likely counts as super private.
He should stop using the laptop now. Okay...page 23 says to click the Apple icon and click Shut Down from the menu that appears. Is there an Apple icon and Shut Down icon that he can click on.
