journal shard: direct interface link

how far does this swamp go? after swimming for 3 days and consulting nova every ten seconds we seem to be no closer to any kind of civilization. its not that i dont feel there's any intelligent life down here. quite the opposite really. almost tooo alive. heavy levels of bio sentience. all these intermingled root structures and water animals of innumerable species. this is a living laboratory of genetiks. i can feel it. but somethging else is here too, a buzz and hum indicating wired culture. there's a city somewhere, i know it.

i look out over the treetop sea from yet another mesa above the clouds and treetips. skye is giving me the early dawn readouts of oxygen and nitrogen levels and is monitoring my life signs like a worried mother.

transmission record> nova > neto : aquarion 4 : code level 3 . high encryption

-lay off it nova. i'm fine.

-you are exhausted. you have to come back. this is pointless. you'll end up deathly ill and wyk will know what's up. she'll spot the subroutine decoy setup soon enough. it gets too complex for me to try and manage all the possible scenarios. lucky she's been gone for so long.

-so what's up with this yoda planet. its like freakin dagobah without even one yoda to ask for directions. these fish are'nt too communicative, and the trees, well i'm not like kysa in talking tree, but i think they are hiding something.

-hard to say. biofields that intense can hide any number of magnetik waves. there could be a whole core full of cities and we'd never find it because of the trees

-what did you say? wait a sec...nova, scan the waterfloor for openings and depth

-ahhhh..i see, lets look under water. hmm, why didnt i think of that?

-indeed. thought you were some sort of a metamachine that could think beyond the surface

-hey, i'm wired into your ethernet,human

-fair point. so what the detail on the forest floor yo. gues the pool goes deeper than we thought. looks from your readouts here that there are portals in the rootstructure.

>

i climb down from the mesa and put on the airflow breath streamer. i dive into the swamp and make thru the clear but dark water towrds the tangled mass of braided roots. looks like dna all wriggling about and intertwining. i come to what appears to be a glass bubble behind which is an entrance door with a bold icon emblazoned across the front. when i tap on the bubble i realize it is soft. i push a bit harder and suddenly i am being sucked into the bubble along with a fair deal of the water which drains out quickly thru an interesting porous surface that acts as the floor. it is bone dry within seconds. like some sort of sponge.

typical star rek scenario. i'm at the front door of a new culture. not first contact i don't imagine, but the stuff of myth and legend. three or four generations of star travel back. maybe even 5 or six. astrograms of the sector are rare enough. no maps exist. nothing but sketchy suplementals heresay.

i look at the icon on the door closely. the door is made of some highly polished material somewhere between metal, plastic. a sort of high density polymer. i imagine it doesnt rust or rot. i love seeing what people develop to deal with their circumstances. doesnt seem right though. hard to believe that these people developed all this technology on the planet during their evolution. planet dosent fit tthe specs. this is a bio planet. seems like a plant world and water based lifeform eco system. i dont spot the pssibilities for industry. nova says there's no geography or readouts supporting the analysis on the door material, much less how to open it.

suddenly the door opens. of course. i've seen this before. text book star trek. i walk into a white chamber.