Monday, 21 August 2023

At the site

A shuttle brought me from the FDU station to the excavation site on Umai. The archeological expedition complex consists of a few buildings on the surface, and a landing pad. Gravity is so weak here that walking gets difficult, you need to shuffle rather than step if you don't want to end up doing aerial acrobatics. It takes a bit to get used to.

There are three shafts leading down to the site. Two small personnel ones, and a larger one to bring down equipment. The tomb complex itself was discovered by high-precision gravimetric scans, and it is about one kilometer deep down below the surface. It's pressurized but has a rather low oxygen content so that breathing masks are required.

Mitsiro Nakubara is now running the site - I had wrongly taken him for a student, he is assitant professor. He was working together with his former thesis promotor. Mitsiro strikes me as an ambitious person, eager to make a mark and publish in archeology's most prestigious journals. 

He's trying to force the workers to continue the exploration of the site, but they have gone on strike. That's a strange Gallentean thing, where workers just refuse to do their work and no-one can force them to do it. I have no idea how they then get fed, but I am not here to figure that out. Mitsiro wants me to soothe them, by going down there on my own to confront the ghost in the tomb.

First, I'll make a clone I can revert to. Not that I believe in ghosts, but what little we know about the Yan Jung tells us they were technologically very advanced, so there could be defensive systems preventing intrusion in the tomb. That is the most logical explanation about this so-called curse.

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