<div class="bbCodeBlock bbCodeQuote" data-author="Sirnoobsalot">
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<div class="attribution type">Sirnoobsalot said:
				
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<blockquote class="quoteContainer"><div class="quote">Ashana's brow raised as Milenya assessed the site's setup in the millions. She looked at everything with a new appreciation. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">Hundreds, huh... that's a lot of people to disappear.</span> She looked through one of the windows as they passed it, glancing over the work space, the tables and instruments hanging over the various bits of warped and pitted metallic objects. They just looked like scrap to her, useless space junk, piles of which could be found in most any street of Omega.<br/>
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Milenya's mention of the artifacts not even being Prothean didn't phase Ashana, however. She barely even knew the word Prothean, little alone any of their significance. <span style="color: DarkOrchid">I'm amazed you can tell anything from this crap...</span> she muttered, passing another sectioned off small semi-standing structure. A light had been set up, shining on it while a table of instruments had been set beside it. <br/>
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Firas gave them a lingering look before looking to the right, the side that the generator was on. there were a few areas where the walls were spread out to create a more open area, but nothing larger or roofed. <br/>
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<span style="color: blue">Roger Milenya, left side from the entrance, approximately 600 meters from the airlock there's a few roofed areas... and against the far wall there looks to be a taller partition... larger too... maybe an enclosure.</span><br/>
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On the left side of the site, the roofed area Firas had mentioned were the living quarters of the head research staff, inside which were desks with half empty cups of water, data pads with various readings open on them full of cross reference data and material analysis. In the head researcher's quarters was a bookshelf with a number of leather bound books, valuable relics of Human history found usually in the hands of wealthy collectors. On the desk sat a short glass and bottle of aged whiskey left open, the glass a quarter full. At the edge of the desk was an engraved plaque with "Dr. Andrew Mosalev." The name being one of moderate reputation among the archaeological community for his published works, among them, "Commonalities and Distinctions of Apex Species," for his theories and findings on sapient traits of the Prothean era and theorized earlier periods, and, "Prothean Technology: Zenith of the Sentient Mind," which looks at the radically advanced Prothean technology that is the basis for all space faring species.</div><div class="quoteExpand quoteCut">Click to expand...</div></blockquote>
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</div>Milenya nodded.<span style="color: #6495ED">"Thank you, Firas. I'll take a look through them. As for how I can tell, well, I do have a doctorate in researching Prothean tech, and nearly a hundred years researching in the field on top of my studies. This material is too different from anything Protheans made. It bears no resemblance to, say, the buildings on Feros, or more recently, the trickle of data coming out from Ilos. This is not Prothean, whatever it is."</span><br/><br/>The first spot she visited was the 'amphitheater'. She noted the instruments for later, and took a quick look into the opening, mildly startled at the condition of the interior. As the functional component was apparently missing, she contented herself with a quick omnitool scan and moved on.<br/><br/>When they reached the lead researcher's quarters, Milenya paused and took a look around. Before disturbing anything, she tagged the datapads with her omnitool and copied what she could, confident that her suit computer can handle the data storage.<br/><br/>Then, the console. Which curiously was simply in standby mode; she frowned faintly before flipping through the journal.<span style="color: #6495ED">"He seems to have come to the same conclusions as I have. This isn't Prothean, it's much older, probably. The material those supports are made of doesn't exist in nature, or in the Prothean architecture I've studied. Asari would be very hard pressed to come close to creating structural materials like this."</span>She stopped halfway through the entries.<br/><br/><span style="color: #6495ED">"Darion, I have to ask. Are all your scientists naive, trusting, and foolish? Because this... Dr. Mosalev didn't seriously question who all the millions of credits and equipment was coming from, or why. He just accepted it and the condition to keep this all secret, without fully considering the implications of what it meant for his site's security. Also, staff on site afterwards numbered approximately two hundred, give or take ten."</span><br/><br/>It was then she turned to the video, and started playing it. As she watched, she nodded a time or two, but when it came near the end, she began to flush purple. Ashana's senses could quickly pick up Milenya's growing anger. She leaned back, glowering at the image of Dr. Mosalev, and then asked in a quiet, tense voice,<span style="color: #6495ED">"Ashana, if you were faced with a working object like this, obviously functional and active, you didn't know what it did, and your reason for being there was to figure out what it was and what it does, what's the first thing you'd do? The very first thing."</span><br/><br/>Ashana, briefly distracted from her unsettled thoughts, answered Milenya's question with an offhanded<span style="color: blue">I have no idea, but if someone gave me a million credits to look at something and not talk about it, I'd look at it and not talk.</span><br/><br/>The comment seemed to break Milenya's dire mood, and she coughed out a rough laugh.<span style="color: #6495ED">"Fair enough. In any case, if you want to find out what an old, functioning machine is doing, you take the time to find out what it's doing right now. You take readings. You take measurements. You grab as much data as fast as you can before you disturb it, in case it stops functioning while you're looking at it or in the process of removing it from its location. You don't, as this half-trained student did, pull out the glittery blue thing because it's blue and glittery. I don't know what he was thinking, but what I think on just seeing the video is that that object was providing power. Power goes somewhere. It's used to do something. So when he pulled that object free, something somewhere nearby lost power. And now we have a completely, mysteriously abandoned dig with over two hundred people missing. If we're lucky, there's more data in these journals, and this computer net. If we're not, the journal's going to devolve into incoherency before revealing any useful information. And I hope to the goddess that he was able to get some good readings off that thing. A compact power cell or generator that uses eezo and dark energy like that, lasting that long..."</span><br/><br/>She trailed off, eyeing the books briefly.<span style="color: #6495ED">"Does anyone see a crate or footlocker nearby? If we have to move out fast, I want some of this stuff in an easily portable container. We should also grab some of the power cells for the generator and improvise a hook-up to the alien device. Lots to do. Lots to consider. Sorv, tell me when you have a link to the Asheron. Need to upload what I've got."</span><br/><br/>Milenya begins to mutter to herself, as she flips through the journal on one hand and datapad after datapad on the other, glancing between them and apparently taking in information rapidly.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>