Just Another Day (G/t)

Monday

"Alright, team. What have we got?"

A group of excited inquisitors had their itineraries for their day back in the lab filled, each detailing them examining their recent gatherings from the prior two days. They had yet to be studied due to their extraction being from off-campus site 'Valley 6C', but they all – people and samplings – finally made it to their base for the finds to be cataloged like all the others over the years. They didn't look like much at first glance, almost indistinguishable from past surveys of dirt plots, but something just felt off about them, enough to make them at least emotionally eager to physically check with at least a little curiosity in what wonders or wastes from their table-top test trays contained.

From the early morning to sunlit hours, each of them took on a different role in a different side of the room with its respective equipment and saw what they could find. Overseeing them was the Director of their department, just as curious as each of his subordinates and of their specific discoveries if not more so.

Valley 6C and all other locations referenced in a similar fashion were only just recently opened to the public for traversal and study. He didn't explicitly know why they were ever closed off, but he had a few suspicions and knew some theories that the few who had closed off the Valleys claimed – all of which sounding ridiculous to him but not enough to be disregarded. Contrastingly, he knew that most others, including those in the room with him, were most likely unaware of the closing as they were most likely kept in the dark of those areas of the world existing in the first place. Nonetheless, he hoped that everyone would at least learn something today through their trials.

The scientists had constructed a lengthy list of hypotheses regarding their contents before commencing their tests, ranging from the Valley containing a possibly new element or rock mixed in its usual soil to it having fossilized remains of something unknown and dead scattered and almost irretrievably disintegrated. They were all viable options, really, but, they could have just as easily not been any of them. Thus, they tried everything to reduce the list. All of them were busy, but some handled less drawn out tasks than others, and those were the ones that garnered his attention.

The Director found a researcher deemed the 'Sensor' having taken one of the trays for themselves and messing with it with every one of her basic natural senses. In most cases, having unknown materials possibly entering the body through some stoma was generally a bad idea. But, she seemed immune to most anything on top of getting permission from the department to test so rashly and being in what's probably the safest place to be if something goes awry. Hence, the Sensor was left alone if she made sure that her antics didn't hurt anyone else in the process.

"Sir, I'd say that the soil idea looks promising," the Sensor stated first. "This consistency doesn't differ greatly from dirt."

She exemplified the idea by dragging her gloved finger through the deeply tinted substance of various shades of brown and made a cavern as it went. It went directly through a gray patch, dividing its ground level area into two greatly smaller sections with a valley in between and adhering the rest of it – a conglomerate of insignificant specks to her.

"But," she continued, "I'd say it's more like sand than soil, like sand crystals." To show it, she scooped up a thin layer of the stuff from a corner into her palm and then angled her hand such that the mysterious grime fell off the side and through the separations between her fingers back into the tray. "Do you see how it falls so gently? I think I've accidentally inhaled some of it from the blowback." The Director could figure why, seeing the smoke-like puff the falling muck made upon its contact back to the surface. "Lucky for me, it hasn't yet appeared to be an irritant. There's a bit of a metallic odor, but I'm sure that's just the tray and tools here. Unless..."