In hindsight, he probably shouldn’t have been so excited.


    Finally finding a water processing area had made him lose sight of the bigger picture for a moment. The actually large area seemed to be some kind of aqua-culture loop. A large opaque tank he didn’t know the purpose of, several other large tanks that seemed to be made of a transparent material and a lousy amount of pipes.


    A couple of the transparent tanks seemed to have aquatic life of some description. Fish and shellfish most likely, but he didn’t immediately recognize any of them. All but one of the others seemed to be plant-based tanks with what looked like seaweed but was probably something else. The last transparent tank was doing some kind of mixing.


    It all seemed clear water to him, though following what pipes he could the system seemed to recirculate the water. He would need to know what was in the last tank eventually, but this find pretty much ruled out running out of water. So long as it was just the two of them, they could live on this much water for years without running out and that didn’t take what the system was doing into account.


    He wouldn’t be surprised if the habitat tanks were a bio filter of some kind. He would still have to poke around to see if there were any filters or separation tanks that needed maintenance, but from the look of things the system didn’t need to be touched. It would explain why the future soap was so strange, it was meant to play well with the overall system. The only worrying part was that he didn’t see any sanitizing systems. All of the pipes that seemed to leave the room were large enough they could have one, but it was strange it wasn’t labeled if that was the case.


    He did have to sigh once a thought struck him though.


    ‘I am going to have to count every living thing in those tanks, aren’t I?’


    Not a task he looked forward to. Never anything for free. Unlimited water budget paired with the torture of learning all the things about the system. Possibly a power crisis as well, as the system was way too big for just two people. He hoped that wherever the power was coming from he would be able to understand the readouts, it probably wasn’t a great idea to shut this system down even if he could figure out how. He didn’t think the critters would do so well if things stopped and he didn’t know where to get more. Best to just do what he could to keep everything alive.


    <hr>


    It took him several hours to copy down all the labels he found in the water treatment room. That along side a rough estimate of the numbers in the tanks should give him a fair amount of work to go through once he found a power area.


    He had come down here to fix a problem with the power. Not having to worry about water any longer was a good thing, but it didn’t touch the immediate problem. Either that water system had been working in low power mode and he had screwed up by hitting yes at the panel, or it had been working the whole time. He had been out of cryo long enough for sensitive water creatures to be having issues had that system been off completely. Barring future tech of course. Still, he doubted it had been the thing to change the power situation, as it didn’t appear to be a system that had an ‘off’.


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    Stopping at the panel on his way out, he tried to close the big door. To his not surprise, the panel popped up with something similar to the other large areas he had come across. A lot of words and what were probably options to select and not a bit of it that he understood. Sighing as he continued on his way, leaving the room open, he could only shake his head.


    “I hope that wasn’t a clean room. Or at the very least the whole place is filtered.”


    In normal operations it was probably a terrible idea to leave open systems like that exposed. Seeing as how he had yet to find any terrestrial life on this level, it was likely not worth the risk to press buttons and hope for the best. He would need to translate the panels before he selected anything on them.


    Another project that kept being pushed down his to-do list.


    Making his way back to more unknown parts of the level, he began working on his map again. If he found more areas like the water one, he would need to think long and hard about opening them. If they were dormant and he started them up again he wasn’t sure things would turn out all that well.


    <hr>


    Tiredly trudging back towards his room was probably not the best course of action. He needed a shower before he went to sleep and he doubted he would want to make the trek after he got back. He had already done far too much walking for his liking.


    He had managed to find two other areas like the water treatment one. Large closed industrial doors, though much smaller than the water area, and a suit of rooms that seemed to hint at a purpose. He assumed the labs near the water area were testing and treatment labs now that he knew where they were located, relative to everything else. These new rooms had no context to help him, as he had not opened the other doors. When the panel popped up asking questions he didn’t have answers to, he had simply copied down what it said and left it behind.


    Once he had gotten some rest and done what translating he could, he would either return to them or continue looking for more, depending on what the panel said. He had needed to return to his level though because he ran out of supplies.


    He really couldn’t justify taking the shelf-stable choco-sticks down with him en-mass, so he only took a couple. It was better to use up the powder first as it was an open bag. Not to mention it gave him a chance to rest and puzzle out the translations. That meant he couldn’t manage more than two days on the other level though, limiting how much he could find at a time.


    What he found when he made it back to his room might have been more surprising than anything on the other level though. He had expected the girl to be off playing with her new toy. Finding her crouched in his room, staring at him with strings in her hand was quite the shock. She almost looked guilty, though he had no idea why.


    He didn’t put much thought into it though.


    The items spilling out of the pillowcase she seemed to use as a bag were drawing all his attention.