April 12 // Robin, Sam Carter
Date: BACKDATED April 12
Characters: Robin, Sam Carter
Location: Morpheus
Summary: Robin and Sam go to investigate Church's Mysterious Rock. Science happens. Weird Things occur. The Master listens in over the radio.
Warnings: Complete nonsense, making stuff up as we go along, wibbly wobbly timey wimey.
Robin led the way across Morpheus' ice, his headlamp illuminating a small slice of the darkness, the tiny, dim lamp of the Sun hidden from view by icy mountains and the curve of the asteroid itself. "Keep an eye out," he told Sam, "I think we're nearly there. It's around here somewhere, anyway."
Sam moved steadily across the alien landscape of Morpheus' surface. As she followed Robin she tried to take in as much of the terrain and its landmarks as she could with limited light provided by her headlamp and the distant stars. On her back over the space suit she carried a large black backpack filled with some of the portable scientific equipment she'd been carrying when she arrived here. "So, I seem to remember you mentioning that Cyril wandered off in the direction of this rock when you were here with him last. Do you think he may have had something to do with it being here?" Sam asked Robin over the suit radios, fully aware that Cyril might be listening in.
Robin turned a little, glancing at her, then kept bounce-walking in what he thought was the right direction. "...I dunno. It seems unlikely. Then again, he does some pretty unlikely things. I mean, that time vortex thing...." He trailed off for a moment, thinking, then shrugged a little. "I'm not sure what to think. He's an odd one, for sure. But likely as anything this has more to do with the people who brought us here. Or something else entirely. I don't want to jump to conclusions until I've got all the facts." He turned his head as he walked, hoping to catch the mystery rock in his headlamp. "I should've borrowed that flashlight I made for Tex," he murmured to himself.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Sam agreed. "We really don't have enough information yet to draw any conclusions. Though to be honest, I'm kind of hoping this is one of his schemes. Throwing together an access port to a temporal wormhole, from spare parts and raw materials is pretty damn impressive. If he continues to demonstrate that level of ingenuity I'd say he's got a pretty good shot at figuring out a way off this ball of ice." Looking around, Sam asks "Is this the right area, it seems to be from what I remember of Church's map?"
"Yeah, he's definitely a good ally to have. I just wish he wasn't so secretive. It makes me... edgy." Robin cast the beam of his headlamp around. "I think so. It should be- wait, what's that? Is that it?" The beam of light fell across a car-sized shape, its light, sandy color standing out against the dark, dirty ice. The Boy Wonder changed his tack, heading for the out-of-place mound.
Sam followed in his wake as they made their way to the car sized apparently stone obelisk. Sam walked around its full circumference, looking for anything unusual or out of place about the stone itself. As she completed her circuit she began to notice a very subtle patterning to the texture of the sandy colored stone. Waving to Robin, Sam said "Look closely here, it's hard to see at first, but there's definitely a high resolution fractal pattern to the texture and color of the surface."
"What?" Robin had been standing still, frowning at the strange stone, but at Sam's words he stepped closer, peering at the surface. "You're right. ...Weird." As he leaned in to get a closer look, he felt a strange, disorienting sensation, then jumped a little as his helmet tapped against the side of the stone. He'd misjudged the distance somehow. He leaned back a little, reaching out to the stone with gloved fingers, again touching the surface before his eyes thought he should. "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear," he murmured, his brow wrinkling into a pensive frown.
"What was that?" Sam asked as she took a couple steps back from the stone, and unlimbered her backpack. As she had walked around the rock she also noticed that Church had been right; there was no indication of an impact crater, and the stone did not appear to be part of a larger buried mass. Turning back to Robin as she pulled a tarp out of her backpack and spread it on the ice, she asked, "Do you have a knife, or Slim-Jim sort of thing you could try sliding underneath the boulder?"
"There's something funny with my depth perception," he replied, then also stepped back from the stone. "I can see what Church and Tex were talking about. This thing is weird. Not just because it's out of place. Something I can't put my finger on...." Robin looked over at Sam. "Um... not exactly. You thinking of checking to make sure the rock doesn't go any deeper? I could chip away some of the ice at the base of it...."
"Hmm, yeah that should work, I just want to make sure that it's actually just sitting on the surface here as it appears to be and not part of some larger formation." As Sam started pulling pieces of equipment out of her backpack and setting them on the tarp, her gaze kept being drawn back to the strange stone. “I'm beginning to see what you mean, very weird."
Robin took an ice ax from a loop on one of the utility belts he wore over the spacesuit. He moved a couple of paces away from Sam, knelt down, and started hacking away at the ice at the base of the rock. “So I figured we’d want to take samples. I’ve got some collection vials from the chem lab, and a hammer and a screwdriver we can use as a chisel, and the hand-held power drill with the diamond-tipped drill bit. I didn’t know what else I should bring… what have you got in that pack?”
"I've got a few interesting gadgets. I was on my way to an archaeological site to investigate a 10,000 year old alien production facility when I got pulled here. So I've got a few things that might be useful in my kit. But I think we'll start with something fairly basic." Sam reached down to pick up a simple black device that Robin might even recognize as a standard handheld Geiger counter. "A Geiger counter, let's see if this thing is putting off any interesting radiation." Holding the Geiger counter out toward the stone Sam studied its readout intently for several minutes.
"Heh. That's handy." Robin continued to hack away at the ice, occasionally brushing the chips away with a gloved hand. When he had about six inches cleared he stopped, ducking his head to peer at the bottom of the stone. "It definitely looks like it doesn't go any deeper into the ice," he said.
"Well that's good to know at least. Seems to be giving off slightly elevated levels of gamma radiation, but still well within safety margins." Setting down the Geiger counter she picked up five identical metal cylinders about the size of a tin can. Walking over to the stone she placed one of the cylinders on the ground and pressed a button located on its top. A spike shot into the ice and a cylinder rose into space about a meter so that it very much resembled a tiki torch complete with a glowing red light on top. "This is part of an array of gravitational mass readers, normally we'd use them over a large area to detect gravitational anomalies that might indicate subsurface structures or ore deposits. In this case we should be able to use them to measure the mass of this stone. Can you set up the other three around the stone while I take this one a few hundred meters away to take a baseline measurement?" Sam asked Robin as she gestured off into the darkness. "They should be spaced as close to equally around the stone as you can manage."
Robin stood up, stowing his ice ax and brushing ice chips off of his gloves and knees. He took a moment to be glad of the de-ice button on his suit. "Right, got it," he replied, picking up a couple of the cylinders. "You really do have some cool toys, Sam," he said as he turned one of the devices over in his hand with evident interest. He then backed up a little, eyeing the placement of the first mass reader and the general shape of the stone before heading around one side of it to place the next device.
"Thanks, they're useful for this sort of thing; a generator or even a sizable chunk of the Asgard database would've served us better for getting back home from here," Sam said as she began back tracing their trail, carrying the fifth cylinder. "Though I must say this is probably the most interesting thing I've done since getting here... Trying to solve the mystery of the rock."
"Heh, yeah, this place definitely gets a bit... boring. I mean, there's lots to be done, but it's all so monotonous. I miss going out and punching bad guys every other night." Robin finished setting the third cylinder, then went to grab the fourth one.
"Beating up bad guys every night huh... well I can't say I terribly miss alien firefights, but they do tend to spice things up just a bit." Who are you trying to kid Sam; you know you miss them, she thought to herself. "I think the thing I miss most being here is the sense of purpose and place I got serving with the SGC and on Atlantis. I mean there my actions and decisions mattered, there were times when the fate of entire galaxies rested on me making the right choice at the right time. Here, I'm tending a garden, banging my head against a wall trying to come up with a way to get us home, and still no closer to figuring out who or what brought us here," Sam said over the radio as she walked. Looking back she decided she'd come far enough and set her GMD on the ground, pressing the button to activate it.
"Oh man, I hear ya," Robin replied as he placed the last mass reader. "My job's no picnic... I mean, the bad days are bad, really really bad. But the good days are absolutely the best. Saving the world... there's no feeling like it. Here..." He sighed. "...I know it's not going to be a cakewalk, it never is. It's going to be hard work and a lot of luck if we wanna get home, and I'm used to that, I'll put in the work... but it's going to be a long time before we get results, probably. I feel like I'm walking chest deep in molasses. I miss the feeling of knowing I'm on the right track, that the puzzle pieces are falling into place and soon I'll know the answer. I miss my tools and gadgets and computers. I miss my friends-" He sighed again, standing up. "...I miss a lot of things." Robin took another look at the mass readers then nodded to himself, satisfied they were evenly placed.
"Yeah my crew and my friends, they’re probably scouring three galaxies trying to find me right now, unless they've decided I died in a beaming accident." Sam breathed a sigh. "I'm not sure which idea bothers me more, that my friends believe I'm dead, or that they're wasting huge amounts of time and energy looking for me in all the wrong places." Sam said as she began to walk back toward Robin and the rock.
"I know my friends are looking for me. They won't give up." Robin took a moment to be thankful for the large global network of Titans they'd established in the months before his abduction. Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire would be looking for him full-time, probably, but he didn't have to worry about Jump City... the other Titans would cover for his team. He wondered what his friends were up to right then.... "I hope they've got more clues to go off of than we do. They've definitely got better resources." He looked over at Sam as she approached, taking a few strides backwards away from the rock. "I guess I should steer clear so I don't mess up the reading?"
"Yeah, we’ll let the mass detectors run for a few minutes undisturbed to collect data," Sam said in response to Robin's question. "Now that you mention it, my friends do have a tremendous amount of resources to bring to bear on trying to find me. That's assuming of course some other crisis hasn't occurred in the meantime to occupy them," Sam said as she returned to the rock and her equipment..
Robin backed up another couple of steps. "Heh, there is always that. Alien invasion, end of the universe...." Robin chewed on the inside of his lip. "...I hope they're okay...." he murmured. They probably were, no matter what was happening. They were the Titans. ...Still.
"I have a couple more instruments I want to take readings with, then we can take some samples and head back. Unfortunately most of the findings will have to wait till we can get back inside and upload this data to my computer for analysis. Though that pretty much goes for analyzing the samples as well." Sam reached down to pick up a tripod and a device that very much resembled a camera, "This device detects photons across a fairly broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum and should allow me to calculate the rock’s radiant temperature," Sam said as she set up the tripod and trumped up camera.
"Right," Robin said, coming over to Sam. "Sampling will have to wait until the mass reading's done with. Let me know if there's any way I can lend a hand in the meantime." He stood facing the rock and just gave it a good long look, watching as the stars slid past behind it. He huffed a small breath of air. "What are you?" he asked the rock. "Why are you here?"
Sam suppressed a slight chuckle at Robin's questions, "Those are the questions, aren't they... and are you a threat." Sam reached down to pick up a 10 cm by 4 cm disc, "In a minute or two I'm hoping that this thing will help us take a look inside and maybe answer those questions; combination ground penetrating radar and sonar."
"I don't see how it could be a threat. ...Oh man, I really hope it's not a threat." Robin looked upwards at the stars. "I know I was complaining about being bored, but we don't need any nasty surprises, okay?" he said, addressing no one in particular.
"Yeah," Sam said breathing a sigh, "me too." After waiting for another minute or so Sam said, "Okay that should be enough good data, let's get this show moving." Sam moved over to the nearest mass detector and pressed a button on its top. The light turned off and its telescoping stand slowly retracted as the device settled back onto the ice. "You want to help me take down the others, we'll get the last one as we head out?" Sam asked Robin as she picked up the detector and put it back on the tarp.
"Actually, I thought I should take some samples, maybe?" Robin reached for the drill that was strapped in at his hip, pulling it out as he approached the rock. He glanced over the surface, looking for any edges that he could more easily break off.
"Sure, just wait a minute for me to finish deactivating these sensors." Quickly moving around the stone she shut off the three remaining sensors, then collected them and placed them back on the tarp.
Robin continued examining the rock, selecting his sample site. He glanced over at Sam as she collected the last of her sensors. "We good?" Turning on the battery-powered drill, he set the bit behind a small promontory in the stone so that the drilling would cause it to fracture and break off. He pressed against the stone, and was satisfied as the bit dug in, a small cloud of dust drifting slowly downwards in the low gravity. The drill bit had gone in a couple of centimeters when time seemed to slow to a crawl. He could see the drill turning; the dust now seemed almost motionless. He tried to pull his hand back but his muscles seemed so slow to respond. He could see the stone splintering, and a small chunk about the size of his thumb slowly slid from the larger stone, falling impossibly slowly. He thought to catch it, and watched in bewilderment as his hand took almost a minute to reach out and meet the falling chunk of stone. He thought then to try to turn and face Sam... and then he was facing her, and time was back to normal. He stumbled a little, like stepping off of a moving sidewalk, his eyes wide. "...Whoa."
Whoa was right, one instant Robin had been crouched down drilling into the stone; the next, he was facing her, a fragment of the strange rock clutched tightly in his hand. "What happened?" Sam asked, concern plain in her voice.
Robin blinked, eyes wide. "I don't know," he said, bewildered. He glanced down to his hand, loosening his grip on the fragment, then glanced back up at her. "I... did you feel that? Everything slowed down, impossibly slow... I watched the rock fall for a whole minute...." He turned his shocked gaze to the rock. "What the heck just happened?"
"Time slowed down... no not really... one moment you were drilling, the next you were standing, facing me, the rock in your hand...." Sam shook her head, "I don't know, from my perspective it was almost more like you accelerated a lot... very strange. Are you all right?".
Robin turned to face Sam again. "What? ...Yeah, I think so... I'm okay... you saw me accelerate? ...Just me, or everything? I mean... did the stars skip forward a bit? Did you notice?" He looked down at the sample in his hands then shook himself, reaching in his utility belt for a glass vial, slipping the sample inside and sealing it tightly with a stopper. He lifted the vial up, squinting curiously at the chunk of... well, maybe it wasn't actually stone.
"No, I'm afraid I didn't really notice whether the stars jumped too," Sam said shaking her head and shrugging. "But whatever this thing is," gesturing to the sandy colored rock, "it's a lot stranger than either of us expected. Though perhaps not stranger than someone on the colony expected," she muttered under her breath as she connected localized temporal distortions, and a certain time vortex and its creator. "I want to chance taking a couple soundings before we head back to see if we can take a look inside. Okay?"
Robin tucked the vial away, raising an eyebrow at Sam's muttering. It was clear what she was implying. Robin still didn't want to jump to conclusions, but understood what Sam was thinking. He decided, however, to hold off on that discussion for the moment. "Soundings?" he questioned. He looked at the rock, frowning as he hefted the drill a few times. "...I want to take another sample. See if that happens again."
"Alright if you want to risk it, the acoustic imaging won't work while you're drilling so I'll wait till you finish," Sam said as she picked up the disk shape sensor she'd set aside earlier.
Robin took a breath, shifting his grip on the handle of the drill, considering the risk... then flashed a daredevil grin. "Nothing gained," he said. “I just want confirmation it was the stone that did it, and not something else." He circled the stone, wanting to take a sample from a different part of it anyway. He selected an outcropping, then looked over at Sam. "Keep an eye on me. Watch the stars, too." Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, knelt, and started drilling. Once more, after several seconds of drilling, everything but his own mind slowed to a crawl. He tried to relax through it, making decisions and sticking to them, moving with intent through what felt like molasses. Again, after what felt like a couple of minutes, the effect wore off as he was telling his body to stand, and he reeled slightly as he returned to normal time. "Whoa. Heh. ...Yeah, same thing," he said, turning to face Carter. "It's definitely the stone. Breaking pieces off of it makes things get really weird."
Sam watched intently as Robin began drilling away at the rock. She was standing a little closer this time. As the fragment of rock broke away it seemed to fall with a fraction of the acceleration it should have had, and Robin seemed to freeze in place unmoving as though a statue. Sam tried to take a step toward Robin but felt as though she was moving through molasses. Then after what felt like impossibly long minutes she found herself standing next to Robin with a jerk as time and her perception of it return to normal. "Wow, are you alright?" she asked Robin. "That was bizarre."
"Yeah, I'm... it doesn't seem to be harmful, it's just weird. ...You okay? Did you catch some of it this time?" Robin pulled out another vial, sealing the sample inside.
"Yeah, I was closer this time and must have experienced some of the effect. Reminded me of the time dilation effects we experienced near the event horizon of a black hole. But yeah I'm fine. Think that's enough samples, or you want to go on your little roller coaster ride again?" Sam asked with a teasing smile.
Robin quirked a smile back at Sam. "No, I think I'm good. These two samples ought to be enough for tests, right?" He tucked the vial into the utility belt. "...You were saying something about acoustic imaging?"
"Yeah that's pretty much the last test I have to run here," Sam said as she moved over toward the boulder carrying a disc shaped sensor. "Though it just occurred to me that we still need to take measurements of its actual size, there should be a tape measure somewhere in the bottom of my bag. Can you start taking those measurements while I set this up? You can use that notepad and attached pen, to write down your measurements," Sam said gesturing to a small scientific field notebook she had set out on the tarp.
"Right, okay." Robin fished in Sam's bag for the tape measure, then picked up the notepad and pen. "Length, width, height?" The rock was a bit longer on one axis than the other, so he dug the end of the tape measure into the ice next to the stone and reeled out the tape to measure along that axis, eyeballing fairly accurately where the rock's edge lined up with the marks on the tape.
As Robin rummaged in her bag, Sam activated her combination acoustic sensor and ground penetrating radar, then reached up to place it on top of the boulder as close to the center as she could reach. Walking back to the tarp she picked up a small data pad, and looked at the initial calibration readings. She looked at her pad for a moment shaking her head. "That's impossible," she said mostly to herself as she tapped the pad.
Robin scribbled the length down on the pad: 2.76 meters. He pulled in the length of tape, glancing up at Sam. "...Sam? What's impossible?"
Trying to recalibrate the instrument Sam said, "I think my instrument must be broken, its initial calibration readings suggest it's simultaneously three cubic meters across, twenty-seven cubic meters, and nearly a cubic kilometer, with density estimates which range over various regions from atmospheric, through gold, on towards neutron stars and singularities. Like I said I think my instrument is broken."
Robin blinked. "...It... what?" Robin walked over to peer at her instrument, then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the rock. "...I'm not so sure it's your instrument. Try measuring something else."
"Yeah that's a good idea," Sam said as she walked over to the boulder and picked up her sensor. She placed the sensor on the ice a couple meters from the rock, and checked her data again. The instrument seemed to be operating normally; low-density ice interspersed with cracks and fissures, about what Sam would've expected. "Yeah you're right, it's not the instrument; it seems to be operating just fine."
Robin retuned to the rock, measuring the width of the stone at its widest point on the axis perpendicular to the one he'd designated as 'length': 2.02 meters. He shook his head at Sam's announcement. "Well there we go. I have no idea what this thing is, but it is definitely no ordinary rock."
"Well I've pretty much collected all the data I'd planned to, not that I'm expecting to be able to make too much sense of it now," Sam said shaking her head and glaring at the object of her irritation. Moving back to her tarp she started putting things away. "I'll probably have to draw up a whole new set of physical laws to explain how this thing exists... oh well won't be the first time."
Robin laughed a little, moving around the side of the 'stone' to measure the height. "Tell me about it. ...Maybe this thing's magic? Or extra-dimensional? ...Multi-dimensional?" He scribbled the height down: 1.69 meters. He started to head back towards Sam's kit bag, then suddenly stopped, frowning. "...Okay Sam, more weird... over here where I took the first sample, the marks from my drill are gone. It's like it's... healed over." He walked over to where he'd taken the second sample. "Same here, healed over."
Sighing, as she finished putting the last of her equipment away and folding the tarp, she walked over to examine the healed over sections. "Yep that's pretty strange. I've seen similar things with nanite colonies, but that still wouldn't explain the strange readings I was getting a minute ago or the time distortions. Maybe some kind of artifact with multidimensionality, curled up fractal geometry, and self regenerative properties." Sam shrugged, "I really don't know at this point, this is definitely one of the more unusual artifacts I've come across."
Robin shook his head. "I have no idea what's going on, but I'm starting to be really glad we came to investigate." He trudged over to Sam's bag, kneeling to stow the measuring tape... just in time to avoid a pomelo-sized chunk of the same 'stone' whizzing past where his head would've been and colliding with the larger stone at an angle with an inaudible THWACK and ricocheting off into the darkness, bouncing off of the ice many meters away in the low gravity. "What just- was that a meteor?!"
"Velocity was way too low for a standard meteor, let’s go check it out," Sam said as she began to move in the direction she thought the object ricocheted, sweeping side to side with her headlamp.
"That thing almost took my head off!" Robin scrambled to his feet, following after her. "I didn't see where it went, did it go this way?"
"Yeah it bounced off the artifact and went this way," Sam said as she walked, long moon-strides quickly covering distance. "There it is," her headlamp illuminating a shattered ice boulder with a sandy colored pomelo size chunk of material sitting in the middle of the rubble.
Robin bounced up next to her. "That's the same stuff. Isn't it? The same exact material as the big rock... if we can even call it a rock. ...Where did it come from, did you see?" He put a gloved hand to his head in an unconscious gesture, prevented by the helmet from running a hand through his hair. "...What the hell is going on?"
"Yeah I'd say it is," Sam said as she moved closer to the pomelo. When she decided that the ice wasn't vaporizing around it and it was cool enough to handle, she reached down to pick it up. As she first tried to lift it was incredibly heavy, then as she started to raise it higher it seemed to become less massive and easier to handle. "I have no idea where it came from, but it's definitely the same stuff." Shrugging Sam said, "Maybe she just wanted us to have a larger sample for some reason," Sam said, unsure why she had anthropomorphized the artifact as a she.
Robin raised an eyebrow at her. "'She'?" He stared at the smaller stone. "...I guess we'll take it back with us, huh?" He frowned, thinking for a few moments. "...I wonder..."
Sam shrugged, "Feel like getting out of here before any more weirdness happens?"
Robin snorted. "Maybe, yeah." He glanced at the gauges on the arm of his suit. "...Probably should, anyway, while we've still got oxygen. We've been out here a while." He started heading back towards the rock and Sam's equipment. "You got room for that in your backpack?"
"Yeah, I think so," she said rearranging some things so that it would rest at the bottom of her backpack. Closing the pack she shouldered it, and said, "Well if there's nothing else, we'll collect my last probe on the way out." She took one last look over the strange artifact, then turned, preparing to head back.
Characters: Robin, Sam Carter
Location: Morpheus
Summary: Robin and Sam go to investigate Church's Mysterious Rock. Science happens. Weird Things occur. The Master listens in over the radio.
Warnings: Complete nonsense, making stuff up as we go along, wibbly wobbly timey wimey.
Robin led the way across Morpheus' ice, his headlamp illuminating a small slice of the darkness, the tiny, dim lamp of the Sun hidden from view by icy mountains and the curve of the asteroid itself. "Keep an eye out," he told Sam, "I think we're nearly there. It's around here somewhere, anyway."
Sam moved steadily across the alien landscape of Morpheus' surface. As she followed Robin she tried to take in as much of the terrain and its landmarks as she could with limited light provided by her headlamp and the distant stars. On her back over the space suit she carried a large black backpack filled with some of the portable scientific equipment she'd been carrying when she arrived here. "So, I seem to remember you mentioning that Cyril wandered off in the direction of this rock when you were here with him last. Do you think he may have had something to do with it being here?" Sam asked Robin over the suit radios, fully aware that Cyril might be listening in.
Robin turned a little, glancing at her, then kept bounce-walking in what he thought was the right direction. "...I dunno. It seems unlikely. Then again, he does some pretty unlikely things. I mean, that time vortex thing...." He trailed off for a moment, thinking, then shrugged a little. "I'm not sure what to think. He's an odd one, for sure. But likely as anything this has more to do with the people who brought us here. Or something else entirely. I don't want to jump to conclusions until I've got all the facts." He turned his head as he walked, hoping to catch the mystery rock in his headlamp. "I should've borrowed that flashlight I made for Tex," he murmured to himself.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Sam agreed. "We really don't have enough information yet to draw any conclusions. Though to be honest, I'm kind of hoping this is one of his schemes. Throwing together an access port to a temporal wormhole, from spare parts and raw materials is pretty damn impressive. If he continues to demonstrate that level of ingenuity I'd say he's got a pretty good shot at figuring out a way off this ball of ice." Looking around, Sam asks "Is this the right area, it seems to be from what I remember of Church's map?"
"Yeah, he's definitely a good ally to have. I just wish he wasn't so secretive. It makes me... edgy." Robin cast the beam of his headlamp around. "I think so. It should be- wait, what's that? Is that it?" The beam of light fell across a car-sized shape, its light, sandy color standing out against the dark, dirty ice. The Boy Wonder changed his tack, heading for the out-of-place mound.
Sam followed in his wake as they made their way to the car sized apparently stone obelisk. Sam walked around its full circumference, looking for anything unusual or out of place about the stone itself. As she completed her circuit she began to notice a very subtle patterning to the texture of the sandy colored stone. Waving to Robin, Sam said "Look closely here, it's hard to see at first, but there's definitely a high resolution fractal pattern to the texture and color of the surface."
"What?" Robin had been standing still, frowning at the strange stone, but at Sam's words he stepped closer, peering at the surface. "You're right. ...Weird." As he leaned in to get a closer look, he felt a strange, disorienting sensation, then jumped a little as his helmet tapped against the side of the stone. He'd misjudged the distance somehow. He leaned back a little, reaching out to the stone with gloved fingers, again touching the surface before his eyes thought he should. "Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear," he murmured, his brow wrinkling into a pensive frown.
"What was that?" Sam asked as she took a couple steps back from the stone, and unlimbered her backpack. As she had walked around the rock she also noticed that Church had been right; there was no indication of an impact crater, and the stone did not appear to be part of a larger buried mass. Turning back to Robin as she pulled a tarp out of her backpack and spread it on the ice, she asked, "Do you have a knife, or Slim-Jim sort of thing you could try sliding underneath the boulder?"
"There's something funny with my depth perception," he replied, then also stepped back from the stone. "I can see what Church and Tex were talking about. This thing is weird. Not just because it's out of place. Something I can't put my finger on...." Robin looked over at Sam. "Um... not exactly. You thinking of checking to make sure the rock doesn't go any deeper? I could chip away some of the ice at the base of it...."
"Hmm, yeah that should work, I just want to make sure that it's actually just sitting on the surface here as it appears to be and not part of some larger formation." As Sam started pulling pieces of equipment out of her backpack and setting them on the tarp, her gaze kept being drawn back to the strange stone. “I'm beginning to see what you mean, very weird."
Robin took an ice ax from a loop on one of the utility belts he wore over the spacesuit. He moved a couple of paces away from Sam, knelt down, and started hacking away at the ice at the base of the rock. “So I figured we’d want to take samples. I’ve got some collection vials from the chem lab, and a hammer and a screwdriver we can use as a chisel, and the hand-held power drill with the diamond-tipped drill bit. I didn’t know what else I should bring… what have you got in that pack?”
"I've got a few interesting gadgets. I was on my way to an archaeological site to investigate a 10,000 year old alien production facility when I got pulled here. So I've got a few things that might be useful in my kit. But I think we'll start with something fairly basic." Sam reached down to pick up a simple black device that Robin might even recognize as a standard handheld Geiger counter. "A Geiger counter, let's see if this thing is putting off any interesting radiation." Holding the Geiger counter out toward the stone Sam studied its readout intently for several minutes.
"Heh. That's handy." Robin continued to hack away at the ice, occasionally brushing the chips away with a gloved hand. When he had about six inches cleared he stopped, ducking his head to peer at the bottom of the stone. "It definitely looks like it doesn't go any deeper into the ice," he said.
"Well that's good to know at least. Seems to be giving off slightly elevated levels of gamma radiation, but still well within safety margins." Setting down the Geiger counter she picked up five identical metal cylinders about the size of a tin can. Walking over to the stone she placed one of the cylinders on the ground and pressed a button located on its top. A spike shot into the ice and a cylinder rose into space about a meter so that it very much resembled a tiki torch complete with a glowing red light on top. "This is part of an array of gravitational mass readers, normally we'd use them over a large area to detect gravitational anomalies that might indicate subsurface structures or ore deposits. In this case we should be able to use them to measure the mass of this stone. Can you set up the other three around the stone while I take this one a few hundred meters away to take a baseline measurement?" Sam asked Robin as she gestured off into the darkness. "They should be spaced as close to equally around the stone as you can manage."
Robin stood up, stowing his ice ax and brushing ice chips off of his gloves and knees. He took a moment to be glad of the de-ice button on his suit. "Right, got it," he replied, picking up a couple of the cylinders. "You really do have some cool toys, Sam," he said as he turned one of the devices over in his hand with evident interest. He then backed up a little, eyeing the placement of the first mass reader and the general shape of the stone before heading around one side of it to place the next device.
"Thanks, they're useful for this sort of thing; a generator or even a sizable chunk of the Asgard database would've served us better for getting back home from here," Sam said as she began back tracing their trail, carrying the fifth cylinder. "Though I must say this is probably the most interesting thing I've done since getting here... Trying to solve the mystery of the rock."
"Heh, yeah, this place definitely gets a bit... boring. I mean, there's lots to be done, but it's all so monotonous. I miss going out and punching bad guys every other night." Robin finished setting the third cylinder, then went to grab the fourth one.
"Beating up bad guys every night huh... well I can't say I terribly miss alien firefights, but they do tend to spice things up just a bit." Who are you trying to kid Sam; you know you miss them, she thought to herself. "I think the thing I miss most being here is the sense of purpose and place I got serving with the SGC and on Atlantis. I mean there my actions and decisions mattered, there were times when the fate of entire galaxies rested on me making the right choice at the right time. Here, I'm tending a garden, banging my head against a wall trying to come up with a way to get us home, and still no closer to figuring out who or what brought us here," Sam said over the radio as she walked. Looking back she decided she'd come far enough and set her GMD on the ground, pressing the button to activate it.
"Oh man, I hear ya," Robin replied as he placed the last mass reader. "My job's no picnic... I mean, the bad days are bad, really really bad. But the good days are absolutely the best. Saving the world... there's no feeling like it. Here..." He sighed. "...I know it's not going to be a cakewalk, it never is. It's going to be hard work and a lot of luck if we wanna get home, and I'm used to that, I'll put in the work... but it's going to be a long time before we get results, probably. I feel like I'm walking chest deep in molasses. I miss the feeling of knowing I'm on the right track, that the puzzle pieces are falling into place and soon I'll know the answer. I miss my tools and gadgets and computers. I miss my friends-" He sighed again, standing up. "...I miss a lot of things." Robin took another look at the mass readers then nodded to himself, satisfied they were evenly placed.
"Yeah my crew and my friends, they’re probably scouring three galaxies trying to find me right now, unless they've decided I died in a beaming accident." Sam breathed a sigh. "I'm not sure which idea bothers me more, that my friends believe I'm dead, or that they're wasting huge amounts of time and energy looking for me in all the wrong places." Sam said as she began to walk back toward Robin and the rock.
"I know my friends are looking for me. They won't give up." Robin took a moment to be thankful for the large global network of Titans they'd established in the months before his abduction. Cyborg, Raven, Beast Boy, and Starfire would be looking for him full-time, probably, but he didn't have to worry about Jump City... the other Titans would cover for his team. He wondered what his friends were up to right then.... "I hope they've got more clues to go off of than we do. They've definitely got better resources." He looked over at Sam as she approached, taking a few strides backwards away from the rock. "I guess I should steer clear so I don't mess up the reading?"
"Yeah, we’ll let the mass detectors run for a few minutes undisturbed to collect data," Sam said in response to Robin's question. "Now that you mention it, my friends do have a tremendous amount of resources to bring to bear on trying to find me. That's assuming of course some other crisis hasn't occurred in the meantime to occupy them," Sam said as she returned to the rock and her equipment..
Robin backed up another couple of steps. "Heh, there is always that. Alien invasion, end of the universe...." Robin chewed on the inside of his lip. "...I hope they're okay...." he murmured. They probably were, no matter what was happening. They were the Titans. ...Still.
"I have a couple more instruments I want to take readings with, then we can take some samples and head back. Unfortunately most of the findings will have to wait till we can get back inside and upload this data to my computer for analysis. Though that pretty much goes for analyzing the samples as well." Sam reached down to pick up a tripod and a device that very much resembled a camera, "This device detects photons across a fairly broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum and should allow me to calculate the rock’s radiant temperature," Sam said as she set up the tripod and trumped up camera.
"Right," Robin said, coming over to Sam. "Sampling will have to wait until the mass reading's done with. Let me know if there's any way I can lend a hand in the meantime." He stood facing the rock and just gave it a good long look, watching as the stars slid past behind it. He huffed a small breath of air. "What are you?" he asked the rock. "Why are you here?"
Sam suppressed a slight chuckle at Robin's questions, "Those are the questions, aren't they... and are you a threat." Sam reached down to pick up a 10 cm by 4 cm disc, "In a minute or two I'm hoping that this thing will help us take a look inside and maybe answer those questions; combination ground penetrating radar and sonar."
"I don't see how it could be a threat. ...Oh man, I really hope it's not a threat." Robin looked upwards at the stars. "I know I was complaining about being bored, but we don't need any nasty surprises, okay?" he said, addressing no one in particular.
"Yeah," Sam said breathing a sigh, "me too." After waiting for another minute or so Sam said, "Okay that should be enough good data, let's get this show moving." Sam moved over to the nearest mass detector and pressed a button on its top. The light turned off and its telescoping stand slowly retracted as the device settled back onto the ice. "You want to help me take down the others, we'll get the last one as we head out?" Sam asked Robin as she picked up the detector and put it back on the tarp.
"Actually, I thought I should take some samples, maybe?" Robin reached for the drill that was strapped in at his hip, pulling it out as he approached the rock. He glanced over the surface, looking for any edges that he could more easily break off.
"Sure, just wait a minute for me to finish deactivating these sensors." Quickly moving around the stone she shut off the three remaining sensors, then collected them and placed them back on the tarp.
Robin continued examining the rock, selecting his sample site. He glanced over at Sam as she collected the last of her sensors. "We good?" Turning on the battery-powered drill, he set the bit behind a small promontory in the stone so that the drilling would cause it to fracture and break off. He pressed against the stone, and was satisfied as the bit dug in, a small cloud of dust drifting slowly downwards in the low gravity. The drill bit had gone in a couple of centimeters when time seemed to slow to a crawl. He could see the drill turning; the dust now seemed almost motionless. He tried to pull his hand back but his muscles seemed so slow to respond. He could see the stone splintering, and a small chunk about the size of his thumb slowly slid from the larger stone, falling impossibly slowly. He thought to catch it, and watched in bewilderment as his hand took almost a minute to reach out and meet the falling chunk of stone. He thought then to try to turn and face Sam... and then he was facing her, and time was back to normal. He stumbled a little, like stepping off of a moving sidewalk, his eyes wide. "...Whoa."
Whoa was right, one instant Robin had been crouched down drilling into the stone; the next, he was facing her, a fragment of the strange rock clutched tightly in his hand. "What happened?" Sam asked, concern plain in her voice.
Robin blinked, eyes wide. "I don't know," he said, bewildered. He glanced down to his hand, loosening his grip on the fragment, then glanced back up at her. "I... did you feel that? Everything slowed down, impossibly slow... I watched the rock fall for a whole minute...." He turned his shocked gaze to the rock. "What the heck just happened?"
"Time slowed down... no not really... one moment you were drilling, the next you were standing, facing me, the rock in your hand...." Sam shook her head, "I don't know, from my perspective it was almost more like you accelerated a lot... very strange. Are you all right?".
Robin turned to face Sam again. "What? ...Yeah, I think so... I'm okay... you saw me accelerate? ...Just me, or everything? I mean... did the stars skip forward a bit? Did you notice?" He looked down at the sample in his hands then shook himself, reaching in his utility belt for a glass vial, slipping the sample inside and sealing it tightly with a stopper. He lifted the vial up, squinting curiously at the chunk of... well, maybe it wasn't actually stone.
"No, I'm afraid I didn't really notice whether the stars jumped too," Sam said shaking her head and shrugging. "But whatever this thing is," gesturing to the sandy colored rock, "it's a lot stranger than either of us expected. Though perhaps not stranger than someone on the colony expected," she muttered under her breath as she connected localized temporal distortions, and a certain time vortex and its creator. "I want to chance taking a couple soundings before we head back to see if we can take a look inside. Okay?"
Robin tucked the vial away, raising an eyebrow at Sam's muttering. It was clear what she was implying. Robin still didn't want to jump to conclusions, but understood what Sam was thinking. He decided, however, to hold off on that discussion for the moment. "Soundings?" he questioned. He looked at the rock, frowning as he hefted the drill a few times. "...I want to take another sample. See if that happens again."
"Alright if you want to risk it, the acoustic imaging won't work while you're drilling so I'll wait till you finish," Sam said as she picked up the disk shape sensor she'd set aside earlier.
Robin took a breath, shifting his grip on the handle of the drill, considering the risk... then flashed a daredevil grin. "Nothing gained," he said. “I just want confirmation it was the stone that did it, and not something else." He circled the stone, wanting to take a sample from a different part of it anyway. He selected an outcropping, then looked over at Sam. "Keep an eye on me. Watch the stars, too." Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward, knelt, and started drilling. Once more, after several seconds of drilling, everything but his own mind slowed to a crawl. He tried to relax through it, making decisions and sticking to them, moving with intent through what felt like molasses. Again, after what felt like a couple of minutes, the effect wore off as he was telling his body to stand, and he reeled slightly as he returned to normal time. "Whoa. Heh. ...Yeah, same thing," he said, turning to face Carter. "It's definitely the stone. Breaking pieces off of it makes things get really weird."
Sam watched intently as Robin began drilling away at the rock. She was standing a little closer this time. As the fragment of rock broke away it seemed to fall with a fraction of the acceleration it should have had, and Robin seemed to freeze in place unmoving as though a statue. Sam tried to take a step toward Robin but felt as though she was moving through molasses. Then after what felt like impossibly long minutes she found herself standing next to Robin with a jerk as time and her perception of it return to normal. "Wow, are you alright?" she asked Robin. "That was bizarre."
"Yeah, I'm... it doesn't seem to be harmful, it's just weird. ...You okay? Did you catch some of it this time?" Robin pulled out another vial, sealing the sample inside.
"Yeah, I was closer this time and must have experienced some of the effect. Reminded me of the time dilation effects we experienced near the event horizon of a black hole. But yeah I'm fine. Think that's enough samples, or you want to go on your little roller coaster ride again?" Sam asked with a teasing smile.
Robin quirked a smile back at Sam. "No, I think I'm good. These two samples ought to be enough for tests, right?" He tucked the vial into the utility belt. "...You were saying something about acoustic imaging?"
"Yeah that's pretty much the last test I have to run here," Sam said as she moved over toward the boulder carrying a disc shaped sensor. "Though it just occurred to me that we still need to take measurements of its actual size, there should be a tape measure somewhere in the bottom of my bag. Can you start taking those measurements while I set this up? You can use that notepad and attached pen, to write down your measurements," Sam said gesturing to a small scientific field notebook she had set out on the tarp.
"Right, okay." Robin fished in Sam's bag for the tape measure, then picked up the notepad and pen. "Length, width, height?" The rock was a bit longer on one axis than the other, so he dug the end of the tape measure into the ice next to the stone and reeled out the tape to measure along that axis, eyeballing fairly accurately where the rock's edge lined up with the marks on the tape.
As Robin rummaged in her bag, Sam activated her combination acoustic sensor and ground penetrating radar, then reached up to place it on top of the boulder as close to the center as she could reach. Walking back to the tarp she picked up a small data pad, and looked at the initial calibration readings. She looked at her pad for a moment shaking her head. "That's impossible," she said mostly to herself as she tapped the pad.
Robin scribbled the length down on the pad: 2.76 meters. He pulled in the length of tape, glancing up at Sam. "...Sam? What's impossible?"
Trying to recalibrate the instrument Sam said, "I think my instrument must be broken, its initial calibration readings suggest it's simultaneously three cubic meters across, twenty-seven cubic meters, and nearly a cubic kilometer, with density estimates which range over various regions from atmospheric, through gold, on towards neutron stars and singularities. Like I said I think my instrument is broken."
Robin blinked. "...It... what?" Robin walked over to peer at her instrument, then narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at the rock. "...I'm not so sure it's your instrument. Try measuring something else."
"Yeah that's a good idea," Sam said as she walked over to the boulder and picked up her sensor. She placed the sensor on the ice a couple meters from the rock, and checked her data again. The instrument seemed to be operating normally; low-density ice interspersed with cracks and fissures, about what Sam would've expected. "Yeah you're right, it's not the instrument; it seems to be operating just fine."
Robin retuned to the rock, measuring the width of the stone at its widest point on the axis perpendicular to the one he'd designated as 'length': 2.02 meters. He shook his head at Sam's announcement. "Well there we go. I have no idea what this thing is, but it is definitely no ordinary rock."
"Well I've pretty much collected all the data I'd planned to, not that I'm expecting to be able to make too much sense of it now," Sam said shaking her head and glaring at the object of her irritation. Moving back to her tarp she started putting things away. "I'll probably have to draw up a whole new set of physical laws to explain how this thing exists... oh well won't be the first time."
Robin laughed a little, moving around the side of the 'stone' to measure the height. "Tell me about it. ...Maybe this thing's magic? Or extra-dimensional? ...Multi-dimensional?" He scribbled the height down: 1.69 meters. He started to head back towards Sam's kit bag, then suddenly stopped, frowning. "...Okay Sam, more weird... over here where I took the first sample, the marks from my drill are gone. It's like it's... healed over." He walked over to where he'd taken the second sample. "Same here, healed over."
Sighing, as she finished putting the last of her equipment away and folding the tarp, she walked over to examine the healed over sections. "Yep that's pretty strange. I've seen similar things with nanite colonies, but that still wouldn't explain the strange readings I was getting a minute ago or the time distortions. Maybe some kind of artifact with multidimensionality, curled up fractal geometry, and self regenerative properties." Sam shrugged, "I really don't know at this point, this is definitely one of the more unusual artifacts I've come across."
Robin shook his head. "I have no idea what's going on, but I'm starting to be really glad we came to investigate." He trudged over to Sam's bag, kneeling to stow the measuring tape... just in time to avoid a pomelo-sized chunk of the same 'stone' whizzing past where his head would've been and colliding with the larger stone at an angle with an inaudible THWACK and ricocheting off into the darkness, bouncing off of the ice many meters away in the low gravity. "What just- was that a meteor?!"
"Velocity was way too low for a standard meteor, let’s go check it out," Sam said as she began to move in the direction she thought the object ricocheted, sweeping side to side with her headlamp.
"That thing almost took my head off!" Robin scrambled to his feet, following after her. "I didn't see where it went, did it go this way?"
"Yeah it bounced off the artifact and went this way," Sam said as she walked, long moon-strides quickly covering distance. "There it is," her headlamp illuminating a shattered ice boulder with a sandy colored pomelo size chunk of material sitting in the middle of the rubble.
Robin bounced up next to her. "That's the same stuff. Isn't it? The same exact material as the big rock... if we can even call it a rock. ...Where did it come from, did you see?" He put a gloved hand to his head in an unconscious gesture, prevented by the helmet from running a hand through his hair. "...What the hell is going on?"
"Yeah I'd say it is," Sam said as she moved closer to the pomelo. When she decided that the ice wasn't vaporizing around it and it was cool enough to handle, she reached down to pick it up. As she first tried to lift it was incredibly heavy, then as she started to raise it higher it seemed to become less massive and easier to handle. "I have no idea where it came from, but it's definitely the same stuff." Shrugging Sam said, "Maybe she just wanted us to have a larger sample for some reason," Sam said, unsure why she had anthropomorphized the artifact as a she.
Robin raised an eyebrow at her. "'She'?" He stared at the smaller stone. "...I guess we'll take it back with us, huh?" He frowned, thinking for a few moments. "...I wonder..."
Sam shrugged, "Feel like getting out of here before any more weirdness happens?"
Robin snorted. "Maybe, yeah." He glanced at the gauges on the arm of his suit. "...Probably should, anyway, while we've still got oxygen. We've been out here a while." He started heading back towards the rock and Sam's equipment. "You got room for that in your backpack?"
"Yeah, I think so," she said rearranging some things so that it would rest at the bottom of her backpack. Closing the pack she shouldered it, and said, "Well if there's nothing else, we'll collect my last probe on the way out." She took one last look over the strange artifact, then turned, preparing to head back.