"I Will Pour Down for You a Blessing, Edi"

Edi tried digesting the shocking message he had just received - that Cap and his crew had found him in a tunnel he had no recollection of ever being in, and that they were heading into it.

Cap, Runa and Edi had begun walking up a flattish pass leading into it, and Cap was scrolling through some data on a handheld tablet he had casually pulled out from his coat pocket.

"It looks safe to go in now, miss", he said to Runa. She nodded in agreement, and they entered the tunnel. It was lit up by thin, long spotlights going along the tunnel walls, and the tunnel itself stretched on for quite a distance. The walls were smooth, polished in a meticulous fashion.

"Safe? Safe how?", Edi asked them, worried that there was something - or someone - in there to make their entrance unsafe. The other two looked at each other while walking, and sighed, readying to perform a speech they had performed and perfected for years.

"You have already received a lot of information today, Eden", Runa established. "The thing is...", she said and paused to have a breather. "... this environment protects itself - and us too - from outside forces and intruders. The caves and tunnels in here -", she said, and pointed towards the light at the end of the tunnel, "... are filled with a foul gas now and then. There are time cycles to it, and we still do not know what cycle it follows by filling up with that gas - and being 'gas free', or viable for us to travel through", she explained. Cap nodded to confirm this information, and Edi took in that information too, but did so with raised eyebrows and in disbelief. "In some smaller caves between the tunnels, it also floods quite often - 'cauldrons', we used to call them", she said and smiled at a distant memory she experienced, and she subsequentially had to wipe away a small tear with the sleeve of her light jacket. Cap took over.

"We have found a peculiar way of life down here, and I am sure you will have many more surprises and things to marvel at", he said while maintaining his walking pace and looking down at his tablet now and then. "But tell us about yourself, Edi. Where did you grow up?", Cap asked to guide Edi back to a safe mind space, away from new realities and unknown uncertainties.

"Well... I am having a hard time remembering anything, really", Edi said while trying to keep up with the other two, and scratching the back of his head. "I know I grew up in a safe home, my uncle raised me. We had to leave the house because of the increased radiation from the sun - or, rather, because he did not have the financial means to make sufficient regulations to the structure of the house, so we had to leave. Or so I have been told, anyway", he explained, and gave himself a scare as to how little he actually remembered of anything before ending up underseas in what the locals kept calling 'Nuja'. The party of three stopped by a flickering bulb, which Runa examined before she reattached a wire and wrestled a piece of plastic back in its socket. The bulb stopped its flickering. Edi tried reminding himself he was looking at someone his elder by over a century, yet she walked with a spring in her step and carried out jobs for maintenance workers - and the venturing outside of the bubble, not to say the least. "You say you have lived here for a long time, yet you went out with us 'hoppers' as if you hadn't ever been outside in one of those suits before... Surely you must be an experienced deep-sea diver?", Edi pondered out loud. She laughed.

"No, actually I have never gone out there before in one of those suits. I am a true 'hopper' in that sense, the same as you", she said with a smile. "Truth be told, I have kept to other jobs. Maintenance, gardening and such. I have even had stints in kitchens here and there, but I will never be a gourmet cook", she laughed, and Cap snickered playfully.

"You've sure made some horrible casseroles through our history at the HQ", he added and made her laugh even more. A beeping sound emerged from Cap's tablet. "Would you look at that! Perfect timing, we can enter the first 'cauldron' anytime we want during the next hour or so", he informed Runa and Edi. They came closer to the end of the tunnel, and they entered a rounded space with a huge boulder in the centre of it. The entire room was situated way lower than the altitude they had walked through the tunnel, meaning they had to walk in there via a downward leaning slope and onto the sandy floor. Walking around the boulder, Edi soon found out the sand was not actual sand as he knew it. This kind was more like ground-up coral, drilling into his sole every step he made.

"This stuff is not made for walking on, surely?", Edi exclaimed while picking out micro pieces of coral from his heels.

"Are you ready for new information?", Runa abruptly asked him. "This is a space made by that boulder", she said and pointed to the gigantic rock they were walking around. "Whenever the sea level rises, scalding hot water pours in and swirls around here while grounding up pieces of coral and rock - sort of like a volcanically heated and powered whirlpool. We think it is heated up underground, and it sprays in here through that hole in the wall functioning as sort of a valve or nozzle", she explained while enthusiastically walking around and pointing to whatever she was talking about, while Cap was monitoring bar graphs and maps on his tablet.

They walked up and out of the circular sandpit into the next part of the tunnel and heard panting and heavy, though slow footsteps - like someone trying to run while tired or low on energy. A man emerged some hundred metres away, and Edi found he was an old man the closer he got.

He had a slouching back and white, short hair formed like a pretzel. His clothing was grey overall, as opposed to everyone he had seen at the HQ, along with the clothes he had been delivered himself to wear and what Cap and Runa had on. But they looked like they had been made by the same factory - the lack of details on them was familiar to Edi. He had a telescopic walking stick that he took out from his pocket and stretched out into its full length as he was almost standing in front of the three, and now he was walking steadily, not attempting to run.

"Good afternoon, Bo. Have you found anything interesting today?", Runa asked him cheerfully, appearing to be especially happy to see him.

"Oh, yep. A quite fascinating formation after a gigantic fossilized sea urchin. It has made a gorgeous pattern on the wall in 'cauldron Q', you should see it before it washes away again", he accounted for them, his eyes lighting up like a pair of stars. "Oh, but come with me right away, please. I have amazing news that will please you both immensely!", Bo chirped, while tugging at Cap's sleeve to make them follow him back from whence he came.

They followed the old man, and Edi again had to wonder about the 'age conundrum' that had presented itself there - now it was about whether this Bo was actually older than Runa and Cap.

He sure looked like he was, Edi had thought.

"Follow me, we have to get there as soon as we possibly can", Bo said and hurried them along with him, whirling up dust from the rounded and polished walls and roof. They came up to a crossroads of sorts - one leading them to 'cauldron Q', another leading to a short and sloping tunnel, the third leading to an even longer tunnel. Bo mumbled something about 'cauldron Q' and 'the fossil' but finally chose the shortest tunnel, and they entered it to find a 'cauldron R'. They got down on the sand, and Bo led them around the boulder to find something on the floor there, covered in sand and shaking, probably shivering from imminent hypothermia. "I just saw her and checked on her, and she seems to be quite alright", he explained to his surprised pack of followers. Runa ran up to brush the sand off the cold person, and she shrieked in surprise or sheer joy, Edi could not tell right there and then.

"Emm... Emma?!", she squeaked. "Is it you? You made it! Cap, quick, get out an emergency blanket!", she commanded him in a stern voice, and he quickly whipped out a package and folded out a huge sheet of what looked like tin foil, and Runa wrapped it around the woman, who Edi then noticed was tied by her hands behind her back. Cap took out a gigantic knife to cut her hands free, and he then lifted her up in his bulky arms.

"We have to go back now", Cap informed them. They hurried out of 'cauldron R', Cap carrying the woman who was unconscious, but looking like she was drying up and coming back to her senses.