It was at the end of the second period in the Riven day. Riven should be full of activity by now. I knew of two paths to get to the giant dome, the bridge from Crater Island, or the Mag-Lev. Taking the Mag-Lev would be quicker, but the path through Crater Island be less likely to be guarded.
But, I didn't have time to take the safe route around this Age. I decided to take the path to the local MagLev station. I carefully left the seclusion of the jungle and made my way through the paths and winding stairways towards the MagLev station.
The MagLev was deserted and I wasted no time entering it and getting it moving. With the limited means of traveling across the islands, I was surprised that the Moiety were considered a real threat. As far as I knew, they had to take the same MagLevs I did, so it shouldn't have been too difficult for Gehn to post guards at all of the appropriate places. Maybe they had other means of getting around Riven.
The MagLev bay on the Temple Island was clear of guards. I opened the main door to the Temple and was again greeted by the hologram of Gehn. There was no way he could anticipate my arrival both times. This had to be some kind of recording to instill fear in his subjects.
I made my way through the Temple and the Gate Room, then across the bridge to the inside of the dome. There were no guards and no signs of activity. Somebody had to maintain this structure. Out of the five Riven Guilds, I couldn't imagine which one would spend the most time here. The Guild of Builders perhaps.
I walked the full circumfrence of the inner walkway. On the north side of the dome was a path that I never walked before. A section of the walkway leading outside the dome was missing. Looking down I found the path going around the base of the dome. I rembered seeing this walkway on my first day here.
Next to me was a button. I pushed the button and heard a motor somewhere below start up. A section of the ground directly below me was lifted upwards along a set of tracks built into the base wall. As the ground lifted upwards, handrails appeared along the side to prevent people from falling off. The motor stopped with a sharp click as the two sections of catwalk were connected.
I walked across the catwalk which made a gradual turn to the right. I was closer to the smaller fire marble dome, but it was still unreachable from this path.
The catwalk met the hill surrounding the Gate Room. At the end of the catwalk was a metal door with a lever next to it. I lowered the lever and the door opened. Behind the door was a small room with an entrance leading into the Gate Room. Currently, one of the peepholes was covering the entrance.
I rechecked my map of the Gate Room. This was entrance C. I pushed the round button to control the room rotation. At the end of the rotation cycle I was facing an entrance with the opposing entrance facing entrance E, leading down to the stream cap. I pressed the button two more times and aligned one doorway with entrance C and the other with entrance A.
So now I had re-opened another path to the giant dome. I could enter it from entrances D and C of the Gate Room, or I could come across the opposite end from the Crater Island.
I retreated back across the catwalk towards the interior of the dome. I kept looking down towards the base of the dome trying to see if there was anything I could see from up here that I couldn't see from below. I remembered that the bridge from entrance D could also serve as a stairway leading to the cut-away section at the top of the dome. I never did see what was up there.
I walked back towards the east exit of the dome. I pulled the lever next to the doorway and the bridge slowly lifted upwards. The planks of the bridge rotated to maintain a level surface, becoming a set of stairs. I retraced my steps back to the north exit of the dome back into the Gate Room. I left the room from entrance A, then restarted the rotation sequence.
I rotated the room twice so entrances A and D were aligned again. At entrance D the bridge that once lead inside the base of the dome now lead up to the upper level of the dome. I climbed the steps and walked into the dark narrow recess of the dome.
The interior space was dark from the lack of sunshine, making the metal walls of the dome cold. The recess continued towards the other end of the dome, and I could see Crater Island in the distance. In the center of the recess was a piece of machinery blocking the path.
The machine was a long vertical tube about three meters tall, connected to the sides of the dome wall by struts. Connected to the bottom of the cylinder by a well oiled rod was a flat piece of metal that was also ran along the sides of the dome wall along guide tracks. The object resembled some kind of machine press.
Next to where I stood was a control lever built into the wall of the dome. I pulled the lever down and a white button was revealed underneath. I pushed the button. The cylinder rumbled a bit, and the flat metal section lowered itself until it met the ground. I walked over towards the mechanism to examine it a bit more. Nothing was moving, and there didn't appear to be any other indication that the machine was doing anything.
I walked back to the control lever and pushed the button again. The giant press lifted up until it met the base of the cylinder. I walked back towards the machine and examined the area underneath it.
The top of the press met with a large grid that was divided into five by five sections. Furthermore, each five by five section had a five by five grid of recessed bubbles. I looked up at the underside of the press. The exact pattern was repeated.
Off to the right of the bottom plate were a row of six balls, each placed in a seperate holder. The balls were slightly larger than the fire marbles the D'ni used for light and each one was a different color. These were probably the six colors of the Riven color wheel. I knew of the first five colors from working with the Whark feeding system. The last color in the wheel was violet. I made a note of the color in my chart.
I lifted up one of the balls from its holding place and held it in my hand. It was slightly warm to the touch. I moved it towards the metal plate on the ground and placed it in one of the holes. The ball fit perfectly. Maybe these balls were supposed to be placed in the press.
I took the five remaining balls and placed them in random holes of the metal plate. I walked back to the control lever and started the process. The top half of the press lowered itself and created a seal with the bottom half. Again, nothing happened.
I opened the press back up to take a look at the bottom plate. The balls were still there, and they didn't appear to have changed from the process. I tried rearranging the balls again and repeating the process. Still nothing.
I worked out the math in my head and realized there was no way I could figure this out by random guessing. There had to be a pattern. It would also have to be an easy pattern to remember, or it would have to be recorded somewhere otherwise it would be easy for people to forget.
The grid had 25 bubbles across and 25 up for a total of 625 holes. The main surface of the plate was broken up into a larger five by five grid. Something was starting to seem familar about it. I noticed that the gaps between some of the plates were a bit wider than the others. In fact, the spacing between the plates matched the pattern of the islands grouped together.
The bottom plate was really a of map of all of the islands clustered together. So the individual bubbles must represent points on the map.
The Temple Island was represented by this shape
And each sub-square of the shape had a five by five grid to represent points on the island. So more than likely, I had to place the balls in certain indentations on the grid based on some geographical significance to the island.
I decided the only way to find out more about the geography of Riven was to head back to Survey Island. I didn't like the idea of returning there so soon after running into the Guildsman, but I felt I was coming very close to figuring out how to activate the power source.
I made my way back to Survey Island by means of Crater Island. My path would have avoided any workers at the bottom of the crater below (of course there were none to speak of), but I would have to go through Gehn's lab. Since the lab was made of glass, I could tell from a distance that nobody was inside. I made my way inside and was about to go out the other door.
When I closed the door I realized immediately that something was different. The smell of the Ytram was very strong. Much stronger than yesterday. I walked over to the desk to see if it was coming from the pipe. But the pipe was missing, and so was the rifle. Gehn must have returned to this lab sometime and taken them away. But when?
I left the lab and took the Mag-Lev to the Survey Island. From there, I made my way through the winding path to the imaging system.
I stood on the balcony of Survey Island looking over the metal models of the islands. I selected the model of the fifth island and watched as a bubble of water formed on top of the structure. I made my way back to the surveying room and watched as the metal pins made a three dimensional model of the island.
This was the one island I hadn't seen yet, and it was also the smallest. It only occupied the one square of the main map of the Riven islands, so the entire island was represented on a five by five grid of the map generator.
The island appeared to rise up to a plateau where a smaller hill, or perhaps a man-made structure was placed in the center. The hill itself was uneven, but I could make out a small path leading from the bottom of the hill to a small dome shaped object. A fire marble dome.
I selected the map of the Survey Island and specifically chose to examine the area close to where I was. The mapping system had shown where the fire marble dome would be on this island, exactly in the middle of one of the grid squares.
I looked back in my journal to where I made a chart of the dome characteristics. The dome on this island opened by selecting the following symbol:
According to my other notes, this was the symbol for the color orange.
Suddenly, everything came to me at once. As if my mind has suddenly clicked into a higher gear. The fire marble domes were identifiable on the maps created by the generator, so the coordinates of the domes could be the coordinates that I need to use in the press. Also, each dome was represented by a color, so I now knew which colored marbles to place in the coordinates of the map.
But I didn't have all the information yet. I had no idea what color was used for the dome on the fifth island, and I wasn't 100% sure where the dome was on Crater Island because it was underground.
I spent another hour doing surveys on the islands of Riven, discretely running from the survey room to the balcony to select another island to view. I had drawn up coordinate tables and made notes of which colors presumably went to which domes. When I felt that I had enough information, I made my way back to Temple Island.
I made my way back to Temple Island and tried out my hypothosis. I had taken a guess that the coordinates of the dome on Crater Island were at the same area where there was a small indentation in the crater wall. I had also two choices for the color of the dome on Prison island, blue or yellow.
Back and forth I went, making suttle changes to the layouts of the marbles on the grid. On the third try, something happened.
A slight tremble was emenating from the plates as if it had trouble trying to contain the marbles. The rumbling became louder until suddenly, a blast of hot air whistled from a small tube located on the top of the cylinder. Then I began to hear a rhythmic pulse that started out from the cylinder and continued across the surface of the dome.
The power source from the dome appeared to be working.
I quickly filled out the chart in my journal on the placement of the colored marbles.
| Fire Marble Dome | Island | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|
| Purple | Crater | 2 across, 22 up |
| Green | Temple | 16 across, 25 up |
| Blue | unknown | 22 across, 25 up |
| Orange | Survey | 6 up, 4 across |
| Red | Jungle | 9 up, 9 across |
I then made my way back down the staircase to the Gate Room. From here I could check out the Fire Marble Dome on this island, or I could try to head back to the Jungle Island. I decided that it would be safest and quickest if I could find a path to the dome on this island.
I rotated the Gate Room so entrances A and C were aligned. I then made my way back towards the interior of the giant dome. The pulsing noises of the power system were greater here, and the water in the pool below was moving around at a much faster rate. I followed the walkway down to the lower path that ran alongside the base of the dome. When I reached the section of the path where the twin tracks ran along the dome I stopped.
The socket that was previously empty now held a button and the ground I stood on was a different metal surface than before. I pushed the button and the platform beneath me descended. From above me I saw the section of catwalk that I had used earlier descend. There were two elevator platforms on these tracks, and I was now taking the lower elevator to another path.
The elevator stopped in a small man-made tunnel that lead towards a staircase. I took the staircase up to a landing on the north side of the island where the fire marble dome was. I used the kinetiscope to open up the dome, and then used the combination to open the inner shield. The outer dome closed up around me and the pedestal with the Linking Book lifted up to meet my hands.
The glass bulbs on the wire frame above the book glowed as the energy was pumped into the pedestal. An arc of electricity jumped from one bulb to the next. I opened the thin Linking Book towards the final page.
The window was black at first, but then an image in red appeared as the energy was pumped into the book. I was looking at a barren red landscape with giant rock formations reaching upwards a dusty red sky. The image panned across the desert until a single rock formation came into view. On top of the rock formation was a small structure. It looked like a giant bowl sticking out of the rock. The image began to rotate around the stucture and I realised that it was a building of some kind.
I felt nervous about this Link. If I was in hostile territory now, then this new Age would probably be much worse. I reached out and touched the image on the page.
I felt the energy run through my body as I linked. But this wasn't like the other times. This one felt more difficult. As if my the linking process was struggling to deal with my body as I traveled from this Age to the next. Either the materials of the book, or Gehn's writing style made the link more painful. I felt as if the Book was pulling my body at a much slower rate, but the power of the linking domes was behind me pushing my body until it would finally be enveloped in the linking window.
And when it was all over, after my molecules had reasserted themselves into a solid form, I found myself in another cage.