Vaultress Logbook Entry Draft 3

 ''Okay... okay. Gotta stay focused. Where am I, how's my stuff?''

The woman hurriedly dumps the contents of her bag onto the ground and starts inspecting the various baubles she has collected on her travels. She finds everything she has miraculously intact, despite the fall she took. And whatever else had happened between that and her now being trapped here.

Multiple groans and grumbles of various timbre ring out in response to her. She jumps at the sound of these new voices. After traveling alone for so long, it's strange hearing others speaking her language again. Strange, but comforting. She dusts herself off and gets to work.

''Okay... Got all of my stuff, found some new muscle, trapped in... what and where, exactly? Gotta run a scan of the surrounding area...

Within a few hundred meters it all looks natural, then it repeats. Exact copies every time. We must be in a simulated reality space. This is nothing like the tech I've found elsewhere on the planet. Just have to see if I can get a look outside, see where the real Me is...''

A holo-display shines onto the inside of her helmet, showing the terrain scan data. Underneath the tiles, something resembling a network of nerves or roots spreads through the facsimile she finds herself trapped in. Following the lines to their nodes, she finds the organism hosting this simulation; and through it, a way to look into real-space. Instead of the cramped cavern she sees with simulated eyes, she instead finds a barren expanse, with glowing purple orbs jutting out from beneath the sands. She hones in on one of the rocks in the creature's field of view and runs another scan.

''Huh, interesting. Not a geological formation, but biological. Encoding DNA using the molecular structures of polymers. Suspend those polymers in liquid, and harden it into easily contained and transported rocks. Like a mosquito preserved in amber. Just gotta... put my own mosquito back together. Here's hoping those crabs didn't snip any of my wires.''

The simulation of the woman pulls out a data-pad from her bag. Somewhere, within the infinitely viscous fluid of translucent purple stone, disconnected transistors arc to life. Void cells flare open in response to the tampering. The liquid slowly coalesces back into a humanoid form, micrometer by micrometer, monomer by monomer. A's go with T's, C's go with G's. A simple matching game, trillions of times over.

''Last step has gotta be to disconnect myself from this simulation. Nothing to do but hope that that puts me back in my body...''

Some probing around the creature's neural space and she finds the entries for everyone trapped within. A connection is quickly severed and everything goes dark. 



She stands up, shakily; now on real legs. She counts her fingers to make sure she put herself back together correctly, and double- , triple-checks the contents of her bag. Then, she gets to work freeing the others.

''First prison break's on the house. You guys better be worth the trouble, time to show me what you can do.''