Presenter: Milly LeCrique

[Laraqua]

The room is dark when she wakes up. The sun must not yet have dawned and she stayed up late last night finishing a shoot on ELF waves being potentially responsible for the bizarre moods felt by residents of an allegedly haunted tenement block in the outskirts of Berlin. Yet, for some reason, she wakes up with the finality of knowing she won't be going back to sleep - as though she had slept her fill. Yet she still feels quite tired.

OOC: Describe your home and your character's usual actions in this kind of circumstance.

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly starts awake amid a tangle of twisted sheets, the air conditioning rapidly cooling her sweat-damp skin. The same dream again, her mother's pale face, dark eyes glittering, mouth soundlessly forming words that Milly cannot hear. With a sigh, she rises, all possiblity of sleep fled.

Pulling on a light running suit, Milly stumbles over her clothes from last night's shoot and emerges into the sitting room of the luxury suite -- one more in a seemingly endless succession of temporary domiciles. Snapping on a lamp, she dials room service and asks for two poached eggs, fruitcup and wheat toast -- no, rye toast.

She shoves back a couple of armchairs to clear a space and begins a series of slow, rhythmic movements, between a dance and a workout. By the time the buzzer signals the arrival of her food, tai chi chuan has cleared her mind and relaxed her body once again.

She admits the bellman and cart, signs for the order and locks the door. While she eats, she slips the DVD of the DeNacy Show into her laptop and watches it yet again. When the recording ends, breakfast done and sunlight beginning to transluce the sheer draperies, she crosses to the bathroom to begin her morning routine.

[Laraqua]

Outside, light begins to brighten the night sky as the sun slowly creeps up to the horizon. It hasn't peeked out yet, however. The deNacy Show reaches its mysterious ending not long after she's finished eating.

Milly has her day off today. She's been advised by Daniel Carter, himself, the head honcho of "Hidden Places" to perhaps visit the Pergammon Museum on Museum Island to see the 3rd Liltian Tablet in the Kamchatka Display. If she wanted, though, she could drop by his office at around nine to help him screen new cameramen. Considering he wanted "Hidden Places" to go with the expedition to Kamchatka, and was trying to organize that, it'd be important for her and the crew to get along. Another option was to simply relax, check her emails and do whatever she usually did on her days off.

[Milly LeCrique]

After breakfast is cleared away, Milly showers and makes up. She scans her emails briefly, discarding bodily enhancement and cheap pharmaceutical spams, forwarding professional proposals to her manager (how do these people get her personal addy?), and responding to the only personal message from a chum in Hong Kong, Peter Chong.

By then she figures the Pergamon Museum should be opening, so she sets off across the city to Museumsinsel to see the Kamchatka Display and the third Liltian Tablet. Surely Carter is competent to screen a cameraman. They're all just silent cyclopes to her anyway, though of course she'll be collegial with whoever is hired. It's simple professionalism -- she isn't some sort of diva, after all.

After a thirty minute walk down Unter den Linden and Am Lustgarten, she is crossing the museum grounds from Bodenstrasse and approaching the museum itself. Inside, she realizes that she is a bit winded and sits for a few minutes before inquiring directions to the Kamchatka display.

[Laraqua]

Sitting, she notices the museum shop has a set of items on shelving that seem familiar. A plastic version of a Liltian tablet faces away from her. A tall, colourful hard-copy book with KAMCHATKA written on the back. A much smaller paperback. A series of other odds and ends that may be part of the same set of merchandise.

The Pergammon museum seems particularly busy. She can see the receptionist is virtually swamped with people. She also notices a sign erected not far from the reception desk, advertising tour guides and mentioning that the tour will go through the special exhibits. The tour will start in ten minutes.

Otherwise, she can simply ask for the receptionist and have a look at it herself without listening to the tour guide's descriptions.

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly registers for the guided tour. She then selects all the Kamchatka-related items at the gift shop and checks the bag at the cloakroom before the tour starts.

[Laraqua]

Background music.

The total for all of the Kamchatka items comes up to an equivalent in $210 in euros, which is hardly anything to her large income.

A woman stands shyly by the signpost, shuffling from foot to foot. She's dressed in the Pergammon museum tour guide outfit but seems really out of place amidst the very outgoing staff that normally populate this area. Her name tag reveals she's Natasha Chaikovskaya though she doesn't make the connectionfor the moment.

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly joins the group, browsing through the paperback version of the Kamchatka book. Although she doesn't recognize Ms. Chaikovskaya, she does keep glancing at her.

[Laraqua]

Background music.

The paperback book details a translation (and slightly jazzed-up version) of the diary found on the last ill-fated expedition to that mountain that led to the Tzarist government banning all travel to it in 1788. Good things it's a jazzed-up version. It would likely be very dry stuff considering the time when it was written.

"Uh, hello? I-Is everyone here who's going to be here?" Chaikovskaya cranes her neck to see everyone among the gathering crowd. "I guess we should really be off."

[Laraqua]

"Well, this, uh, this Pergamon Museum was built from 1910 to 1930 and houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate, all consisting of parts transported from the original excavation sites," Chaikovskaya says with a shy smile, her cheeks burning pink. "The museum is subdivided into the antiquity collection, the Middle East museum, and the museum of Islamic art. The museum is visited by approximately 850,000 people every year, making it the most visited art museum in Germany. It contains one of the Liltian Tablets that was found in a ... a dig in the Middle East ... and it was presented here be-because the museum director is quite fond of the expedition..."

"Can we just skip the rest of the museum guide and just go straight to the tablets," says a man in a business suit. There is a chorus of agreement from the crowd.

Chaikovskaya doesn't seem to understand how she should react. "Well, I, uh, I was told that I should... There's meant to be another tour guide with me. I'm just ... a guest tour guide ... well ... I suppose that's how you would ... well, how I should be ... well, described." She cringes inwardly.

[Milly LeCrique]

"Perhaps, Fraulein, you would prefer to wait until the regular guide joins us. I'm certain none of us would mind waiting for a few minutes." She beams her brightest smile at the other visitors to gain their compliance and spare the young woman any further discomfort.

[Laraqua]

Background music.

"Yes, yes, thank you," Chaikovskaya says. "It should hopefully be only a few more moments. Perhaps ... perhaps we could convince her to simply go to that exhibit first?"

"That sounds like a good idea, fraulein," says a cheerful, elegant brunette in the tour guide uniform. Her name tag identified her as Maria Swann. "Any objections?"

There is a chorus of agreement.

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly relaxes -- realizing how tense the young woman's discomfort made her -- and dutifully falls in line with the others.

[Laraqua]

"Hey, you're that girl from "Hidden Places"!" states a trendy young man who falls in line with her. "Right? You're her? Wow, is that why you're here? Is this another hidden place you're going to check out? The Museum or the mountain? Wow, I love that show. Could I grab an autograph?"

[Milly LeCrique]

"Sometimes I just go places for fun," Milly whispers, as she favors the young man with her the-fans-are-the-reason-I-do-what-I-do smile (which she's practiced until it looks at least 80% genuine) and scribbles her name on his program. "Let's not miss any of the information."

With that she turns her attention resolutely to the guides.

[Laraqua]

So begins a trek through the Pergammon Museum, seeing the various exquisite artwork and the beauty of the ancient world. One of the highlights of the museum is the Pergamon Alta, which was transported and rebuilt from the original excavation site. The Pergamon Altar is a magnificently opulent structure originally built in the 2nd century BC more in the Ancient Greek city of Pergamon (modern day Bergama in Turkey) in north-western Anatolia, 25.74 kilometers (16 miles) from the Aegean Sea. It has long been assumed that the temple was dedicated to Zeus. This museum in Berlin was originally mainly built to display it.

Yet another are the Ishtar gates to Babylon Castle. There is one particular area they walk through before entering the Liltian Exhibit seems almost creepy and she instinctively pauses as the others move passed. She feels watched.

There is a scent in the air ... something unsettling ... something familiar...

OOC: Remember italics mean non-roll links.

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly halts in her tracks and looks all around, but can't locate any watchers, except for the ubiquitous security cameras. She shivers slightly as she tries to place the strange odor. For a moment, she feels tired and much older than her years.

Then she makes a determined effort to throw off the feelings and hurries to catch up to her group. Soon she is standing in the first rank, listening to Miss Swann'a spiel, but unable to keep from glancing at the other guide.

[Laraqua]

Background music.

"I-I suppose now's the part where I should, uh, explain," Chaikovskaya says, her pretty pale cheeks growing rosy even as she speaks. "I-I'm Natasha Chaikovskaya, th-the linguist, erm, epigrapher, who managed to translate these tablets. The Liltian Tablets are written in a language that uses a complex system of symbolic inter-relationships between the various symbols etched into the stones. It's like, the symbols themselves aren't the only words, there's also words and meanings in the spaces in between them, in the relationship between each symbol and the one next to it - like in our language - but also in the relationship between each symbol and the one above it, in each group of symbols and the grouping next to it. It's like a complex mathematical formula where every single piece of it forms a singular sum ... basically, the whole tablets have one meaning ... like all those symbols are just one word ... but that word is infinitely complex and is the equivalent of one of our paragraphs or even a whole page."

Behind her is a display hidden behind a glass wall of a fake snow-covered mountain slope where three men stand huddled around a flame, wearing old Russian mountaineering outfits.

"Th-these men there, they are, the ones who died, in that expedition, the 1786 ones. I mean, not them, precisely. These are mannequins. But they are mannequins representing them. Uh... And ... er... The items around them, the lantern, metal pieces, all that ... are what was found there. Where they were found. Where they did. There is a, uh, there is a diary in the display case over there..." She points to a space near them. "That diary is the actual one ... it was found and carefully preserved by this man's brother ... I, uh... Any questions?"

[Milly LeCrique]

Milly raises her hand and smiles encouragingly at the stammering epigrapher (have to nail down the meaning of that word, she thinks).

"What is The Word -- the overall message -- that the tablets mean to convey? And is it the same on the other iterations found elsewhere in the world?"

[Laraqua]

Background music.

"The o-overall message is disturbing," Chaikovskaya says. "It seems to be some kind of cry for help for a city lost in perpetual splendor and ruin. At least, that's the overall meaning of all of the tablets. And no, they each have an independent meaning, almost like a stanza of poetry. It's just that the independent meanings, when put together, also have an additional meaning - which seems to be some kind of S.O.S. including co-ordinates."