"Oh! Yes! You're right!" I started scrolling through the pictures on my phone. "Hey, your phone has bluetooth for sharing, right?" I asked. Cally was doing a good job of not getting too close, but I could tell she was itching to help.

"Yes! Send me the pictures and I can help look," she said, bouncing on her toes.

It took us a moment to figure out how to get the photos transferred, but we managed to do it eventually.

"You look for the backside symbols and I'll look for the front," I said and she agreed. We were silent until I saw what I was looking for. It didn't surprise me that I found them faster than she did; I was excellent at looking for pattern matches.

"Look! On..." I looked around to find the pattern again, "that wall!" I was pointing back behind us, "Those are these symbols."

She flipped to her next photo. "Oh! And on that wall," she said, pointing opposite of mine toward the front of the room to the wall over the door, "are the others."

"That means that the ones on the left are probably... there!" I nearly shouted in excitement when I found them.

"And then the others are on that wall!" she said, smiling broadly at the last of the four walls.

I was a bit overwhelmed. There were too many choices and now the walls that had once been beautiful with their reds, blacks, and golds were simply swimming in my vision. "Where do we start?" I said in a hushed tone. I knew that she'd understand my problem.

"Hmm. Let's start with the front ones? Then around counterclockwise because that's the way the passageway went?"

"Good plan," I said, grateful that she had one.

"Let's go to the wall and take a closer look. Things won't be so overwhelming once we have less choices around us."

Oh, yes, I definitely liked her.

Once in front of the symbols, we could see the glyphs with it. I couldn't read them, but then, I was a geologist, not an archeologist specializing in Ancient Egypt. Fortunately, though, I was with one.

"Okay, so this symbol on top is with the symbol that means, 'I, me, or my.' The second symbol is something like, 'find,' the third is, 'self,' and the last one is... hmm... I think it means, 'location'."

"I find self location?" I asked.

"Well, technically, yes, but things are often lost in translation. There are subtleties that we miss."

"I get that," I said as I took a picture and wrote down the statement.

We moved to the next wall. I took pictures of the new symbols which would have been on the right side of the pillar when I was mapping it.

"Umm. I don't recognize any of these symbols except the two at the bottom. The bottom one is, roughly, 'house,' and the one above that is, 'land'.

"Hmm. Something, something, land, house." I said as I documented.

On around we went, now at the wall opposite of where we started to work with the symbols from the back side. The walls were swimming less around me and were beginning to order themselves once again. They really were quite lovely.

"Here's the symbol for, 'you.' We know the second one is, 'find.' The third one is, 'yourself,' and the last one is, 'location,' again."

"You find yourself location. Got it." I snapped pictures and wrote the words.

On the last wall was, "We find ourselves location."

"Huh. So, three sides deal with finding location for me, you, or us. The fourth side is still a real mystery."

Cally began to pace. "You know, I just feel like I should be understanding this. Like, the meaning is just right there out of reach."

"'Tip of your tongue,' feeling?" I asked.

"Yes!" She walked over to the stone pillar on our side of the door. "Don't you think there's probably a connection between this pillar and the one inside?"

"That would seem logical," I stated and came to join her. The five-sided pillar was devoid of any markings save for an odd puzzle-looking thing on top of the pillar. It was a set of concentric rings set into the top. I reached out and turned the outer ring. It spun easily, but I got no reaction from the pillar, door, or anything else in the room.

The stone pillar was, by the look of it, solid marble, white veined with dark gray. The oddness of it struck me. "You know, it seems very odd that the rest of this place is basically polished sandstone, but this pillar is solid marble."

She stood and stared at the pillar before studying the rest of the room. "You're right! I don't see any other marble in the room... except for that," she said, pointing to a motif above the huge door.

I gazed at the motif for a moment. It was the symbol of a sun, with rays coming from an outer circle. Inside the circle was what looked like a labyrinth design. "I feel like I've seen that symbol before. I'm pretty good with pattern matching, so I'm betting I have. Maybe in the room somewhere?"

Cally was already flipping through pictures. "Look, at the top of each of the set of markings is a motif that looks similar. Each one is slightly different, but they all have that same outer circle of rays. Only the labyrinth part on the inside is different." She held up her camera to me to show me one of the motifs.

I flipped through my own set of pictures and found the four motifs. "I just can't seem to make the connection having to flip back and forth," I explained gruffly.

"Well, maybe instead of getting frustrated, you could simply sketch them side by side in your sketchbook?" she suggested with a slight smile.

I chuckled. "Yes. Of course, that would be the obvious thing to do." I set about the task.

As I drew, I realized the connection. "You know, these labyrinths all have the same circular components, only they're arranged differently." I showed her what I meant. There were three circles, the outer one of rays they all shared and two inner ones that seemed to be rotated to different positions.

"But what does it mean?" she wondered, mostly talking to herself.

I looked up to the fifth motif and added it to my sketch. When I was done, I blinked; it was as plain as day to me. "They're dials! Like what's on top of the marble pillar! I'm betting if we set the pillar to one of them, that door will open."

Cally gasped then quickly turned to the pillar. "Come and show me. I'm afraid to mess it up."

"I don't think you can mess it up much. I bet there's only five ways to put it together than make a labyrinth in the middle."

I tried the first motif I'd drawn but got no response.

"Wait, the only real representation of a motif is that one over the door. All the others are pictures on the wall. Try the door one."

It made total sense when she suggested it and so, naturally, I tried it. When the center clicked into place, we saw the round door slowly disappear, revealing the room beyond.

I looked at a wide-eyed Cally, my own eyebrows raised at the sight.

"Aliens," we both said together.

"That or our governments have been doing higher level research than anyone can imagine." I said, looking back to the doorway.

We must have looked like a couple of tourists when we entered the room. In fact, we were looking around so intently that we bumped into each other a couple of times. I didn't even care.

The room was bathed in blue light and various control panels, I assumed, had a wide variety of buttons and lines in every shade of blue imaginable. The effect was so pervasive that I couldn't tell if the walls were blue or if they simply reflected the blue light.

It wasn't until I turned around, taking in all the instrumentation and glyphs that I noticed the door had reappeared behind us.

"Umm... Cally? I think we might be in a little bit of trouble," I said pointing at the wall that had had the door. Now, it was nowhere to be seen, the seal invisible.

She mouthed an 'Oh' and then looked at me as if I knew what to do.

"I guess there's no going back then?" I said, trying to be cool.

"I guess not," she agreed.

I saw it then; in the center of the wall and all the glowing items was the same motif we'd used to get into the room on a glowing button. On a whim, I pressed it and the doorway reappeared.

I heard Cally breathe a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. I don't like feeling trapped."

She looked at the pillar in the middle of the room and I followed her gaze. "But, how do we go forward? I mean, the other pillar opened the door, but what about this one? What does it do?"

"Is that... a hand impression on the top?" I asked, moving closer. I found that the top of the pillar had an indentation of a three-fingered hand in it. There was also a dial indicator with an arrow that pointed toward the wall with the door.

Unable to resist, I made the 'Live long and prosper' Star Trek hand sign and fit my palm into the indentation. It was a close enough fit, apparently to do something, according to the grouping of glyphs on a panel that now glowed red.

"I hope red isn't bad," Cally whispered.

I tuned the dial, having to turn my body with it for my hand to stay in the indentation. As it clicked into place pointing at the next set of panels. This time, many glyphs in green, lit up as the red ones returned to blue.

The next set around glowed yellow and the last glowed orange. I turned the dial back to the red set.

"Are we going to be brave enough to push buttons?" Cally asked as she stared at the glyphs.

"Do you recognize any of them?"

She stepped closer to look at them in more detail. "Not really, no. At least not in any way that makes sense."

I looked at each wall in succession, looking for patterns. Then, I turned back to the red wall. To the left, I realized there were three of the symbols found on the side of the pillar that faced it.

"Look! 'I find myself' is on this panel. But, where's 'location'?"

Cally looked at the next wall, "This one has, 'you find yourself,' but it is also missing location."

"Yeah, but look. A lot of the other buttons match the first wall."

We studied the third wall. It was set up exactly the same. "We find ourselves," was shown, then the same set of glyphs.

The fourth wall followed the same pattern with the three top pillar glyphs being shown to the left, but the array of buttons off to the right were completely different.

"Oh! I wish I understood!" Cally said, voice rough.

"Hey, it's okay," I reassured her. "I'm frustrated, too, but we'll figure it out."

I could see that her eyes were shiny; she was close to tears. I changed the subject fast.

"So, which button do you want to press first?"

She couldn't help but smile. "So, we're going to do it?"

"Yeah, let's do it. What's the worst that could happen?"

She looked at me. "Aliens, remember?"

I sighed. "Yeah, and eyes in a Void." I scuffed my Chucks on the floor. "Still, my curiosity is killing me!"

Cally laughed outright. "Mine, too!"

I reached for the panel and touched the top left button.