“I’m going to investigate it here,” you notify Erin. “If it’s got anything dangerous, I don’t want it coming on the ship.” Eyeballing the size of the box, you estimate that it the base is 3x3 ft2, and you guess that the height is 1 ft. You walk up to the box and touch it, but nothing happens. Curious, you walk around the box, and you see a lever on the right side. You pull the lever, and the left side of the box begins to slowly swing open. When the left side is fully open, you return to that side to look inside. On the rightmost quarter of the inside, there are three vertical switches. You lean down to flip the top one up, and an apparatus slowly comes out of the box. Once it is fully extruded, the apparatus covers three quarters of the left side in width and is 9 ft. long.
“Erin, this seems to be an experiment container,” you report back to the computer. “Do you have any idea what kind of experiment could have been done in this space?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Erin answers. “From what I can see through the communications, there appears to be no discernible object inside the box or on the mat you just rolled out.”
Still wondering what the contraption does, you reach down and feel it. It feels very soft as you trace back and forth along the entire length of the mat. Your curiosity peaked, you put your weight on the mat, but it does not even bend. Thinking it could be a bed of some sorts and assured that it can hold your weight, you lay down on the mat. The mat still feels as comfortable as it did when you were feeling it up, and you begin to relax. “I think it could be a bed, Erin,” you announce your findings. “It’s comfortable, and it supports my entire body weight without even bending.”
“That is interesting,” the computer responds. “Why would someone drop a bed, of all things, in the middle of this planet?”
“I’m not sure,” you reply, “but I’m going to find out. This bed might have special features to it that would make it useful for the planet.” You crawl back over to the control panel and flip the middle switch. Laying back down, you hear a whirring sound from under you, and the middle of the bed collapses in on itself. Your body falls about three inches to another soft mat, but your arms are still resting on the top layer. Suddenly, something fuzzy wraps around your wrists and holds them down to the mat. Alarmed, you try to squirm out of the bondage, but it holds your hands fast. Then feathers shoot out of the sides of the bottom layer and begin stroking you all over your exposed body. Extremely ticklish, you react by screaming out in laughter as the feathers run over you. “HAHAHAHAHA! NOHOHOHOHOHOHO!” Still only clad in your underwear, you feel the feathers’ effect more intensely as they tease your bare skin from your neck to your feet. This tickle torture lasts a total of ten minutes before the feathers and fuzzy bondage retract. Once you catch your breath, you address Erin again. “Erin, that was a tickle machine. What in the universe was it doing here?”
“Well, I guess that is a valid science experiment,” Erin comments.
“What?” you question, shocked at Erin’s announcement. “A tickle machine is a valid science experiment?”
“Yes, of course,” Erin responds, seeming offended that you did not know this. “Tickle machines are used to measure the sensitivity of whomever is on the planet. If no data comes from the tickle machine besides an activation alert, the experimenters proceed with the information that whoever was tickled is not ticklish. A significant number of these types of responses or a complete lack of responses in a long time yields the result that either a non-ticklish species resides here or no one resides here. I believe that the Erimosi sent a tickle machine experiment here, and it is how they were able to recommend this for your exploration, since no data was retrieved. Congratulations! You just recovered the probe, and it will be of great help to the Erimosi, as they can use it to test another planet now. To make it smaller, just flip the switch that opened it up back, and it will retract. You should then be able to wheel it back here without too much effort. We will take it back to the Erimosi when you choose to visit them.”
“Alright,” you respond, a little surprised that Erin had known this yet failed to tell you. You go over and flip the top switch again. The mat slowly retracts back into the box, and then you begin to think about how to efficiently bring the box back to the Swift Feather. Eventually, you risk flipping the bottom switch on the panel, and to your happiness, a handle comes up. You roll the experiment back to your ship, taking just over an hour to get back because of breaks.
“Erin, I have the box with me; where is a good place to put it?” you ask the computer.
“There is a small storage space in the right wing,” Erin reveals. “It should fit nicely in there.” Once you place the experiment in storage, you head back into the main cabin. “What do you want to do now?”
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