To be fair, I haven’t seen much in my short life. But even I could tell this was not how an average hallway looks. The hallway itself seemed normal enough, really. It had quite a bit of wear and tear, peeling paint, busted furniture, and broken doors among other things. The floor was tile and the walls were painted an off-white with a blue stripe running down the center. Faded logos for a company called ‘DocLabs’ were on display at several spots throughout what I could see. Most of the doors were shut, some even fused closed, but other than that the hallway itself was fine. What made it strange was what I could see in the doors that were open. We hadn’t even moved from where we had come out of the vents and I already had spotted two rooms that had been affected by the multiquantum generator. Both looked like they had once been dorm rooms, the beds and decorations were all they had in common. In one room all those things were made out of living plants. The bed was a large tangle of vines, the chairs had become hedges in the shape of chairs and desk and shelves were both made of living bark. Even the carpet was grass. It was oddly beautiful.

The other room was simply filled with water. It didn’t leak drip or try to come into the hallway, it stopped at the barrier of the room, filled to the brim and no further as if there was a wall blocking the way. The room was also much bigger than Shelly thought it should be. The size of a large swimming pool in length and width, not even accounting for the height, but that was only from inside. It just didn’t take up that much space from the outside. just a normal-sized room.

{spacial warping…} I blurted.

“What?”

{space is being distorted, it’s spacial warping.}

“How do you know that?” Shelly asked ‘tilting her head’

{I don’t know. I can feel it. can’t you?}

“No. why… can you?”

I sent her the concept of a shrug. And we dropped that topic of conversation. Shelly was way too interested in the remaining rooms to pursue questions anyway. Plus, we needed to find the wiring and get me connected to the rest of this floor.

We flew past at least fifty other rooms as Shelly led me back to our lab. Most were shut but she stopped at every open one to explore and catalog what the generator had distorted. I thought she was tired but apparently, science trumps a need for sleep (I wouldn’t know). Luckily nothing else was hostile so far. And to my dismay there weren’t any sentient beings, let alone any with any powers. Many of the rooms that had once held live-in employees now had some bizarre change, but many rooms had remained seemingly normal.

Fortunately, the 3D printing room was one of those, it had all the machinery we would need to print what we wanted as long as we had the templet. Unfortunately, on the other hand, it had no materials for actually printing, we would need molecular cartridges containing any metals, alloys, or other materials we wanted to use. The only cartridge we had at the moment was magenta ink, Ironically.

We were getting close to our room and the broken wiring should be nearby. It would hopefully be exposed but we had no way of knowing if it would be. After a lot of searching during which we found a room that resembled the void of outer space except for a single eye staring out of it watching every move our drones made(I named him Joe) we finally found the wire that had destroyed my view. Our hope paid off and it was out of a crack in the wall seeming damaged only from exposure. It was easy to repair with us working together, even with the limited mobility of our drone’s arms and their lack of thumbs. It was a hack shot job, but I could tell it worked when something that I can only describe to a human brain as the sound of snapping but visual popped several times in my field of view. Everything seemed to hum as I felt several cameras and microphones come online. It was tingly, or the closest thing I could experience to that sensation. The visual clicking stopped and I had full access to the feeds in a rush like sneezing a hundred eyes open all at once. I now had access and control of most of this floor, there were still a few bits that were disconnected but we could fix that in time.

[AREA UNDER A.I. CONTROL 58000 SQFT]

{Shelly, I only have access to this floor. Why?}

“there must be damaged connections on the level below us too. I was expecting so but I was hoping otherwise.” She sighed “we’ll just need to get down there to fix it, I guess”

Still, this was much better. Being stuck in one room was like having my arms and legs tied behind my back. I opened the door to our room as a test, it obeyed my command without issue. It was like raising an arm. A part of me. I tried opening and shutting every door I could.

{huh, that’s strange.} I said {some of these doors say they’re connected but I can’t open them.}

“those doors are magnetically locked” Shelly explained, “the system is designed so that even the resident A.I. can’t open them without the code. And before you ask. No, I don’t know it. I do wonder what’s behind them. And the ones that are welded shut what the hell is going on there? “

I didn’t have an answer. There were cameras inside of all of those rooms, but they were blocked to me.

{why are they locked?}

“I just told you I don’t know what’s behind them.”

{what exactly was Doc’s plan?}

“What?”

{What do you know about it, Shel?} I wasn’t being hostile I was just curious, I felt like I needed to know and the fact that she had never gone into details bothered me. With the addition of locked doors in the closet thing I had to a body, knowing was a necessity. Imagine if the front of your hand may hold the secrets to the universe but you can’t turn it over to see

“I don’t know much… she… kinda went about things on her own… I was really only told the bare minimum”

{What’s the bare minimum? Like, why make me?}

“I know bits of that but… if you don’t know there must be a reason, I just need you to trust me.”

{Okay…}

“I’ll try to make sure you know as things happen but, truthfully, I know very little from my perspective she told me some stuff, then a screen that said ‘entering cryostasis, then I met you…”

We sat in silence for a few minutes

“you know,” Shelly, noted, changing the subject “we can’t fix this whole place by ourselves, it was hard enough just getting you connected to this level, getting things actually fixed, like to full functionality, we need help. Like someone with arms. And with the generator leakage, we are going to need- “

{Metabeings? Right?}

“yes. Metabeings. Stupid, Don’t interru- “

{Do… I get to train them?}

“Well, I doubt it, but you can try.”

Oh yes, try I would. There had to be metabeings who could use my help. I’d figure out all of Doc’s mysteries later.