***I am detecting patterns in the way these stalks are moving. They are not plants…rather each stalk is a small swarm of nanobotic structures…the way they move back and forth seems to be a regular and repeating pattern***
“I want to explore, Doc…I’m moving out a few dozen meters…there seems to be a small rise over there…maybe I can get a better view.”
Winger tested his hypersuit legs and found that he could move around, with some difficulty. The stalks parted before him, almost disintegrating in puffs of particles as he shuffled carefully along. At first, the stalks gave a little resistance and his suit sensors indicated what Doc had already detected: the stalks were actually conglomerations of nanobots held in plant-like patterns. As he pushed through in his hypersuit, the plant bots tried to hold their patterns, giving a little resistance, but he found he could move nonetheless. As an experiment, he triggered his suit boost with a brief pulse and found he could lift himself a meter or so above the ground as well. So movement was possible in that dimension too.
Some kind of rise in the ground was less than fifty meters away and Winger headed that way. The Doc II swarm was nearby, not visible, but sniffing through the field of bots and providing EM, thermal and acoustic background data on what they had encountered.
“Doc, maybe we went through some kind of wormhole. Maybe we’re not inside EUROTOP anymore…but somewhere else.”