Continue the tour

"We have arranged quarters for you on the Commons level," said the doctor. "The room door has been programmed to respond to you with a simple hand gesture like this," and he demonstrated the simple motion. "The room includes basic furnishings such as a mattress for sleeping, a table and a chair. If you need further items, you can use your MPAD device to determine how to obtain them. For your meals, continue to visit the medical bay until further notice."

"Thanks!" you replied. It would be nice to have your own quarters and not have to sleep in the medical bay.

"You may continue your tour of the ship in case there are areas you would still like to visit. However, the maintenance level is currently off limits due to an emergency situation," replied the doctor. "If you need anything else, I will be in the medical bay," he added and then headed down the hall.

"MPAD-24, let's continue the tour. I'd like to see the Engineering level next," you ordered.

"Tour resumed. Next destination, Engineering Level," it droned with it's mechanical voice. Then it floated down the hallway toward the elevator. After you were both inside and it started to move, you asked, "Is it possible for me to operate this?"

"Affirmative," replied the robot. "Non-synthetics may use gesture motions to operate elevator controls via the Standard Optical Scan Interface."

You'd been called a lot of things, but never a non-synthetic. That probably meant that robots like MPAD-24 used a different method. "Can I try it?"

"Affirmative," it replied again.

You tried hold up your hand and moving the fingers, but there wasn't any response. "Is there some kind of guide I can see for the gestures?"

Instantly MPAD-24 shifted into a new form which displayed a menu system featuring details for the Standard Optical Scan Interface. From there you easily found the section covering gestures and soon realized it was fairly intuitive. There were a set of basic gestures for binary operations like on/off, start/stop, open/close and so forth, along with gestures for numbers or magnitudes. There were also some more complex gestures for additional operations, but for most devices the simple gestures would be sufficient. To test it, you made the gesture for stop, and the elevator suddenly halted. Next you tried making making the hand wave gesture for five, and the elevator resumed movement. However, when the door opened it was obviously not the engineering level.

"This is the seventh level which is a storage level," stated MPAD-24. It looked like a circular warehouse floor partially filled with a variety of strange devices and boxes of varying sizes organized into radial rows. The outer edges had small compartments of varying sizes. One section of the room was mostly empty aside from a large pile of what almost looked like rags. There was also a really strong musky odor, something like a cross between a locker room and a stable.

"What is that smell?" you asked.

"The odor is due to the Gargo using this level for quarters," it answered.

You recalled seeing a Gargo working on the subspace relay from the view on the bridge, and how you couldn't take your eyes of the enormous bulge in his spacesuit. You also realized you were getting wet again. Was it from recalling what you'd seen, or could something in the musky scent actually be turning you on? Before breathing in any more of it, you made the symbol for closing the door and tried the hand gesture for five again. The elevator moved to another floor, and this time when the door opened, it looked like you'd arrived at the intended level.