Red Meadow.

[johalt]

John slowly walked over to the desk, as if transfixed by it. "You know," he said to no one in particular, "they say that dust is 90 percent human skin... I always wondered how then that dust could accumulate in a place that no human has been in for so long."

The thrumming was getting louder as he approached the desk, fully audible and unshakably there. He began to recognize it now; it was a sound he heard everyday in the city, permeating the background, the air, becoming one with both, one he had learned to shrug off and ignore. But here, of all places, he did not expect to find it. "Electricity? Here?" he mumbled under his breath.

As he reached the desk, he reached down and picked up one of the pieces of paper. He gently blew on it, in an effort to remove a layer of the dust, only to have a light coughing fit as just that happened. He took off his glasses to try to read what was on it. It looked like it was in some sort of code; at least that's what he thought, until he saw something he recognized as the greek letter "pi". He looked to see if there were anymore Greek symbols on the paper. He found a few --sigma there, alpha here -- but they were all interlaced with other symbols he couldnt even recognize from anywhere... And yet... He couldn't help but fell like he should recognize them. They symbols all seemed to have some sort of pattern to them. Then it hit him: math. That's why he recognized the pattern: it was math, although in some other form or language, but indisputably it was calculations of some sort. He put his glasses back on and looked over the other pages. More symbols, some of them even in the latin alphabet... Though it looked like the writer had stuck to the original language. From what little he could make out, it seemed like the writer --who at this point seemed to have been himself -- was desperately trying to figure something out... And then leave some sort of... Instructions? He couldn't say. But one thing was for sure: it was all in his hand writing.

He looked over the rest of the desk again. He felt like he was... Attracted to something. Like something was trying to pull him towards the desk... Or into it. He decided to look under it. He didn't know why: he just felt like he should. On the wall at the back of the space under the desk looked to be some sort of... Engraving? He tried to get closer. It was an engraving. It looked like a one with a line under it, and a zero below that, and to it two horizontal lines representing an equals sign. Infinity. the word popped into his mind immediately. He felt the urge to look down. Directly below him was a figure eight: the symbol for infinty. He moved his fingers over it, and the spaces within the infinity sign seemed to depress a bit, like two buttons. He pushed them both in. He felt the bit of floor below him shift slightly, and he heard a loud "click". There was now a slit in the wood below him, just big enough to get his fingers in. He scootched back a bit, and pulled the bit of floor back. It slid towards him with ease. After it finished moving, the was now a hole in the floor just big enough for him to fit through. It was very dark, he couldn't see down more than a few feet; only enough for him to tell that there were steps leading down. "Well I'll be..." he got out from under the desk, the began to move the desk out of the way from the trap door. After he was done, and the opening was clearly visible, he said to Jewl, "what do you make of this?"