Robot of the Day: Oct 09, 2021

Sharing a brief glance at each other, we turned and proceeded haltingly down the narrow corridor towards the lights. They moved: back and forth, receding, dimming, disappearing. There was a pattern, a rhythm but no sound accompanied the lights’ traverses across the darkness as we approached. Eventually we moved into a room with a large window set in to one wall— it was through this that we could see the lights. A few few chairs, covered in a thick layer of dust and debris, were arrayed along the opposite wall. On the wall above was a large plaque, our hand-lights glinting off its metallic frame. We climbed on the chairs to get a better look and one of the robots wiped a hand across the face of the plaque, revealing… the name of this place? The function of this room? “ASPEKT High Energy Particle Research.” We all looked at each other; the plaque provided no additional information and all we could do was speculate. Turning our attention to the window and the view beyond we discovered the true nature of the floating lights. They were set in a series of arches that curved away into the inky darkness. The lights flashed in sequence, eventually disappearing around the curvature of the tunnel, after a few minutes the lights returned from the opposite direction. What the lights indicated we could only guess, but one thing was clear: something was still active. In this place. One of my companions turned away from the window, “Keep all shields in place and do not activate wireless communications. I am detecting increasingly elevated EM energy.” What’s going on here? What is this place?