[A]It was clear that Moose had used a lot of magic here.

  The trapped water seemed to be doing a lot of things. It held a lot of colors she didn’t normally see as well. At first, she had thought the small creatures in the water were baby monsters. As she watched them on and off the whole time, she now thought they were simply creatures. She didn’t recognize any of them from the Pages, so they must be minor creatures that weren’t worth mentioning.

  At least that was what she assumed before Moose spent quite a while staring at them.

  She still didn’t understand why Moose had come here. There was certainly a lot of water around, but Moose never entered any of it, staying dry the entire time. There were no wall words, though Moose found one spot on the wall to be very interesting and had used magic to make words appear. Everything she knew about Moose said that this wasn’t what it should be doing. The only time she had seen it sitting for long periods of time before was at the wall words. It was clear this was something new.

  The Pages had mentioned a ‘garden’ several times, but when she tried to discover what it was, she had been disappointed. All she could find was that a ‘garden’ was a pce that was cultivated ‘for food, ornament or rexation’. She understood each of those words individually, but that expnation made no sense.

  What was cultivating?

  Why did you need a specific space for pretty things or rexing?

  How did the treats or powder fit into a garden?

  Did that mean the food pce was a garden?

  She had so many questions that she had given up on understanding what a garden was. As she crouched watching Moose make new words in its book, she went back to those questions. What did a Moose eat? Watery things of course. Even her book that showed a moose had it with green things in its mouth. Green things that she now found floating in the water. Watery green things meant food for a moose. That meant this was clearly a moose garden.

  The words used to describe a garden were starting to make sense now. They were vague and hard to understand because a garden needed to be described by the creature ‘cultivating’ it, not what was ‘cultivated’. She still was unsure what that word meant exactly, but she guessed that watching Moose would lead her to the answer at some point. She also didn’t understand why Moose ate the disks when it had so many watery green things right here.

  Maybe they tasted better?

  Her new understanding of gardens also found the small creatures difficult to pce. They were clearly small things. None longer than her arm, though there were many different sizes. Were they a part of the garden? That didn’t make sense. While a moose might eat watery things, the creatures moved around a lot while the green things didn’t. It wouldn’t make any sense to try and catch a creature when the green things could be taken so easily. She supposed that the creatures could be the ornament part that she had trouble grasping, but she didn’t find them all that pretty. She wasn’t a moose so that may be why, but the Pages seemed to think that everyone found ornaments pretty.

  Could they be the rexing part?

  They certainly didn’t seem to be in a hurry, even with all the movement. Was that how it worked? She would have thought a moose garden was supposed to be rexing for a moose, not for the creatures that were part of the garden. She would be the first to admit she didn’t know much about gardens though, so it was possible she got that part wrong. That didn’t expin why Moose let them into the garden though. She just didn’t see any reason to let creatures smaller than herself hide in the green stuff.

  Oh.

  ‘Why do they have to be a part of the garden when I am here and not a part of it?’

  She had only been thinking about gardens. She hadn’t even tried to think about other possibilities. Those creatures were so small she had no doubt they would be eaten by monsters without a fight. Even smaller monsters. Why where they here? The same reason she was, they were using Moose to hide. If Moose only cared about the green things, all the other creatures in the garden were basically safe. This would clearly be a part of Moose’s territory, so other monsters would be reluctant to make a mess.

  Which they would have to.

  She had been looking at the hard water that held everything and she hadn’t found any way to get to the creatures without making a mess. Something that would anger Moose. Those small creatures were smart. And lucky. She would love to live in the water with them, safe behind Moose’s magic and territory. She didn’t know what the watery green things tasted like, but for safety like that she would eat them regardless.

  It would be small for something her size though. Maybe Moose would make her a pce like that in the garden? She would be happy so long as she could…

  .. Was her home a garden for the Others?

  She looked back that the rge bits of magicked water.

  What did those little creatures see?

  Was it a foggy wall?

  She shivered as the thoughts raced through her mind. She had never connected her home to anything other than being her home before. Seeing the garden that Moose had made changed all of that. She could see things from the other side now. See what the foggy wall looked like to those outside. Were those little creatures like her, content with their lives because they were safe? She didn’t know what such small creatures ate or did the rest of the time, but she had just imagined herself doing exactly that. Surrounded by magic and left to herself, safe and apart from everything.

  ‘I wonder if they are empty? Could I give up the magic inside me for that kind of safety, now that I know?’

  The fact she couldn’t decide made her body press into Moose’s side.

  ‘Why can’t I just be safe and full..’

  [B]After a painful, but thankfully retively short, time trying to get the numbers for the aquarium tanks, he had a fairly good estimate of the numbers in each of them. They weren’t anywhere near what he would like for a healthy ecosystem, but he supposed that was what the bs nearby were for. There was enough to be self-sustaining, so long as he didn’t change anything, but that was a big gamble with how little he knew about the system. Or genetic engineering.

  There was a chance he could do something with those bs, he had some training on what things did what, but it would be like following a recipe. He would need step-by-step instructions. Lab work had never been his strong suit, his focus on computer engineering favored the software side. Microscopes and spectrometers didn’t change much across disciplines though.

  At least not that he had seen.

  He would feel a lot better with a soldering iron and a circuit board than a micro needle and gene splicer though. Their needs didn’t really care what he favored unfortunately. If he had to learn how to genetically engineer a fish so they could eat, that’s what he would need to do. Of course that all depended on learning to read the nguage. Something he wasn’t really getting better at.

  Once the easy transtions and letter swaps were out of the way he hadn’t really made any progress on his quest to fully transte the things he had found. To be honest, the papers he had found in the hidden b were the only thing that had gotten him this far to begin with. With them using future english that he could read, it gave him a lot of context on the words around those parts.

  Maybe he should have returned there to begin with.

  He was running up against his ability to manage the transtion on a lot of the parts in the panel. There was clearly a lot of technical data and commands he wasn’t equipped to handle with his limited understanding of the nguage. It gave him hope, since it would mean that the panels had access to a central database and could probably give him a lot of information.

  Unless they were super future tech and had some kind of general A.I. in every panel. That would be a waste if you asked him, but he wasn’t trying to hide a secret genetics b in the middle of wherever they were. Either way, the panels represented the best pce to get information. They also represented the most dangerous pce.

  He had mostly determined that he and the girl were alone. Barring a human zoo scenario, but he wasn’t counting that. Everything he had explored had been clean and unbroken. There were things that hadn’t been put away yet and personal artifacts left in rooms, but nothing that indicated a struggle. If there had been a mutant genetics outbreak and everyone had been eaten there would be a lot more evidence of that. Even if they were smart and covering their tracks, there would always be small signs or clues that couldn’t be covered up or removed. Things that he had yet to find. Even the girl, as quiet and elusive as she was, was easy enough to track when he knew there was something there.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t worried about being jumped or attacked by living creatures so long as he remained on one of the two levels he had been exploring. Robots were something to consider, but he hadn’t seen anything to indicate they existed either. That was less clear than living things though so he would keep his eyes peeled.

  It was why he was fine with bringing the girl down with him. He had explored the water pnt before and knew mostly what to expect. He didn’t think there would be anything that would spook her so badly she ran off. He also didn’t think she would be able to hurt herself here before he had a chance to stop her. That left the only danger in this journey as something he made for them both. Like pressing the wrong button on the panel. Hence the panels being the most dangerous.

  With the girl basically glued to his side, he wasn’t afraid she would get stuck in something without him. The chance they both got stuck though was pretty high. Every time the panel asked a question, he would note down everything and transte it as thoroughly as possible before selecting an answer. If it had the words activate or initiate anywhere, he would say no. In fact most times he said no, even if those words weren’t present. He wanted to see all the options the panel gave him so he could transte them all at once, agreeing to things he wasn’t sure about wasn’t going to happen.

  He lost track of time for the most part, one eye on the girl and everything else on his work. When the girl pressed into his side and shivered, he figured that it was time to wrap things up. It wasn’t cold exactly, the temperature well within a safe range, but it wasn’t all that pleasant either. Especially after all the time they had spent in his own room that held the heat in nicely. He assumed the rge amounts of water were acting as a thermal battery and keeping the temperature at a stable point that was good for the aquatic life, even if it was a bit low for them.

  Which would expin why the door was a thing as well. Evaporation could be a huge problem if any of the metal around here was susceptible to corrosion. The humidity in the hall was noticeably higher than his st visit. Fortunately, this trip wasn’t a waste.

  He had learned how to close the door.

  Something he was happy about until he remembered the girl was skittish.

  ‘Hmm, how do I handle that little dilemma.’

  If he held her tightly enough to prevent escape, it could scare her. He could pick her up, which she seemed to not mind the st time, but then he might not be able to put her down until they got back. In the end he chose a compromise. Getting the girls’ attention with a pat on her head, he started to give her scritches. Once she was invested, he freed up one of his hands and navigated the panel to the door controls. As he suspected, the girl did not like the noises an industrial door that big made. He very nearly had to pick her up, the scritches not enough of a distraction.

  On the positive side, she didn’t bolt. On the less positive side, he now had a semi-permanent attachment to his side. Even once the door finished closing, the girl seemed reluctant to stop. As they made their way back to the elevator, she stuck right where she had been, unwilling to let go and walk on her own.

  ‘At least she is using her own legs.’

  It was an awkward walk, considering he was doing his best to not trip or step on the girl’s foot. At least now he knew what she would do in a situation where she got spooked. It was a lot better to have her nearby if something happened, so that he didn’t have to worry about her getting lost. Though if he needed her to escape that would backfire quickly.

  ‘At least she can have some nice rexin-jacks while I fiddle with the panel in the mess hall. A warm meal should get her mind off of things.’