Meanwhile, the body-comp finished calculating the best route up the cliff. It returned two options, each with an accuracy of about fifty percent. Looks like the pictures taken from this angle were not enough to accurately model the cliff's surface. One of the routes is longer, but not too steep, while the second option would mean that I would have to climb almost vertically. I tried to evaluate both options, but in the end I liked the first one more. It has more ledges, where you can relax. If it does not work out, I'll try the second option.
I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist, I spat on my palms, rubbed them against each other and carefully began climbing up. It was pretty difficult to climb. Although, there were some places where you could just walk without even holding on. Once, I nearly fell off when, while pulling myself up using my hands, my nose leveled with a flat ledge causing me to sneeze from the dust that I raised with my breathing. Thank God, I managed to hold on. Resting on that ledge - about thirty meters above the exit from the station - I slowly looked at the landscape through the computer's different levels of zoom. Wow, the nature here is really breathtaking... It's full of greenery and the air is so clean - just now I noticed that breathing here is actually much easier than even in our park back home. I finally admitted to myself that this could really be another planet or parallel world. In fact, this thought no longer caused such rejection and panic. True, this theory has yet to been proven, but now I am mentally ready for such a scenario. I decided to check if my body-comp can still contact the subnote that I left inside through the thick layer of stone and the walls of the station. It turned out that they perfectly see each other and, in fact, the signal quality here is even better than near the exit. This is very strange. This should not be possible. The presence of a signal at the exit is understandable, but by now it should have been lost. I thought of only two possible explanations. Either the metal of the station's walls is somehow special enough that the radio signal passes though it and the thickness of the stone above it is small enough. Or there is some kind other exit from the station that the signals pass through and I'm not too far from this exit. Fine, I'll remember to try to climb around here to figure out where the maximum signal level is.
After resting, I continued to climb further. An hour later I reached the top, flipped over the edge and, turning on my back, took a deep breath. After a little rest, I sat up and looked around. It looks like I climbed onto something like a meadow around fifty meters in diameter covered with grass and flowers. After the meadow began a rare forest with trees of usual height - unlike those giants I saw below. The trees, as well as the flowers, are unfamiliar. Wait just a second, I remembered something very important (it seems that after that electric shock, I'm really getting even more stupid): below I have an entire subnote packed with various software and databases. Back at home, in order to fill up the virtually endless subnote hard drive, I uploaded all the informational databases that I found on the sites of our helpful software pirates. I don't remember for sure if there was a database for flora and fauna, but I still should look around there. After contacting the subnote (the signal on the meadow became even better) I rummaged around on the hard drive and found the right database. A few minutes later I set it up and uploaded images of the trees, flowers, and leaves, as well as that "eagle" that I had saw before for identification. The program ran perfectly for all the specimens. Except there was one problem - it did not find any matches. Of course, it is possible that the database is incomplete, but at least something should have came up. After some thought decided to not draw any further conclusions for now. I got up and went to examine the place where I now was.
Spending around three hours for the investigation, I found out the following:
It seems that fate brought me to a large hill with a stony base, or rather, a granite rock, split in two. The remnants of which were covered with soil. For some reason, it seems to me that the land did not appear here on its own, but instead from some kind of explosion, or from a hundred bulldozers at the least. On one side, the rock abruptly ends with a cliff, which is where I crawled out. On the other sides the hill descends smoothly into the valley. The slopes are covered with trees of ordinary size, while in the valley the trees are huge, like the ones I saw at the beginning. There seem to be a lot of animals in the forest: a couple of times I saw some funny creatures, similar to a cross between rabbits and dipodidae [a medium-sized rodent], and in the distance sometimes larger animals, reminiscent of our deer, flashed by. Among the dense branches of the trees, I noticed some yellow and green berries the size of a kiwi, hanging in clusters, like grapes. For now I decided against taking my chances with them. Nearby a small stream gently trickled through some pebbles. An express water analysis showed that it is identical to the water I drank inside the station. Well, now that I am somewhat acquainted with the area nearby, it's time to decide what I will do in the near future. I still haven't noticed any people or even any traces of their activities.
***
Near the spring, I found a wonderful place where I can rest with comfort. It had a thick layer of leaves over the grass, and behind me there was an impenetrable wall of shrubs between the trees, the crowns of which were intertwined and formed an impenetrable tent against the rain. Closer to the edge, the branches thinned and opened into an amazing, beautiful panorama of nature. I even made a few high-resolution pictures for memory. It seems that this side is the west - the sun already visibly lowered to the horizon. I took off my jacket, folded it and, placing it under my head, lay down on the ground. Then I remembered about how damaged the back of my head was. I tried touching it with my hand, but there no pain. It's unclear why, but the wound pretty much completely healed. I shrugged my shoulders. I hope the hair grows back too. However, in my situation, this is really not my main concern.
Tearing off a blade of grass, I put it in my mouth descended into deep thought. There are a few paths that I can take going forward. I can go explore the world in which I arrived (yes, now I am starting to believe in that more and more), but that is somewhat scary. I would have to randomly travel on foot through an unknown territory, without any weapons. I could end up walking around for ages just to disappear in some swamp. Or, I can wait around until my computer decodes the inscriptions in the cabin of the station, I could find out something useful in them... But I really can't count on that. I am skeptical about the capabilities of my software with respect to decoding an unearthly language: comparative analysis with existing languages plays an important role in the process and in this case there may not be any correlations. However, I should still wait around a little anyway - who knows, something might turn up.
I rubbed my face with my hands. Okay, lets take the middle ground between the two options. While I live here, I will slowly start exploring the area around the hill and look around in the station itself - I could have missed something. If after a month my subnote does not advance in the decoding process, I will leave it to work unattended and go on the trip anyway. In the meantime, I'll take care of some accommodations for me. It seems that in a couple of hours the sun will set, where should I spend the night? Here? Or back in the station? I remembered the dark corridors, and decided against retuning. Although on the other hand, there may be predatory animals here. Hmm... what a dilemma. Anyway I shouldn't be so afraid some wolves - I'll stay here.
After a short search, I found a tree with large leaves and soft branches. I broke off enough leaves to make a mattress and to cover myself with them. Oh, and here's another useful plant. Two large leathery leaves, growing from one root. I made a soft bed out of them - although I had to fight with the bushes a little to create a deep niche in them. In the end, it turned out pretty nice. Once again, my thoughts drifted back to food. I still did not want any. Despite the fact that I have not eaten for over 24 hours, my body felt suspiciously light. All the same, it is necessary to accustom myself to the local food. To begin with, let's try those fruit berries. I went back to where I noticed the bushes with berries. Huh, there is another problem. I have nothing I can use to carry them back to my camp. After a moment's thought, I tore off a couple of leaves from the local burdock and folded them up. I tore off a couple of bunches of "kiwi" and carried it back to my "cave" in the bushes. After spreading them out in front of me, I began to carefully consider my prey. The appearance of the berries told me nothing about them, except that they are all ripe and juicy. I took one - black with firm skin. It's a pity that the body-comp's analyzer doesn't work on something like this. Anyway, I can't sit around forever, now can I. I squeezed a little juice onto my hand, rubbed it in, and began to wait for a reaction, which, thankfully, did not follow. Half an hour later, I mentally crossed myself and gently bit into the berry. Suddenly, the berry burst in my teeth, and covered my mouth with its juices. I froze, listening closely to my sensations. The taste is sweet with some sourness - very refreshing. After waiting a minute, I swallowed. I sat still for another five minutes. My stomach seems to be keeping quiet, no unpleasant sensations. Taking a deep breath, I ate a few more. Each berry just exploded in my mouth. Emboldened, I began to try other berries. Fortunately, they were all edible and very tasty. The problem came from the last heap of "kiwi". Deciding that everything is OK, I rashly threw the berry into my mouth and bit it. My jaws instantly closed and jammed tightly. I have never tasted such a bitter berry! My tongue and cheeks instantly went numb and tears sprang from my eyes. Jumping to my feet, I rushed to the spring. Only a few minutes later I was able to drown the bitterness and wash off my face. Then I threw a handful of the sweetest berries in my mouth and began to chew them nervously. Looking at the pile of bad kiwi, I picked them up and threw them as far as I could. Meanwhile, the sun has almost completely set, so I should lay down already. I'll find out the results of eating those berries soon enough.
I buried myself in the leaves and branches, and settled in. I connected to the subnote. Turned out nothing special happened while I was away. The computer already found several logical connections between the symbols or drawings, which can be investigated at the later stages of processing. This pleased me. Perhaps something can be decoded, after all. From nothing to do, I tried to read some fantasy fiction, but I realized that I can't even perceive the text when I am already in such a fantasy situation where I all I can do is hold on for dear life. I returned to my bed cleared my mind, staring at the sky lit up by the last rays of the sun. Soon stars began to appear on it. I should shoot a picture of the night sky through the body-comp and run it through some programs, I could find some familiar constellations. Once all the stars finally came out, I abruptly sat up in surprise. I'm certainly not an astronomer, but I do know the Big and Little Dipper and here I see them clearly. To say that I was happy was an understatement. I was delighted. I am on Earth after all! From my nervous excitement, I jumped up and began to walk back and forth across the clearing, thinking. So, the stars look similar to the ones on Earth, it means that I am located on Earth. However, the trees, berries and animals are clearly unearthly. And the radio frequencies are pretty much empty (except for atmospheric noise). What does it mean? This means that I'm still on Earth, BUT, I'm either in another time, or in another dimension. Sounds reasonable, but it's still necessary to clarify this.
After taking a panorama image of the sky, I sent the data to the subnote for processing and waited impatiently for the result. The program did not take long. The verdict of the computer was that almost all of the stars are the same as on Earth, but their location relative to each other is slightly different. In addition, there are several stars not described in the catalog of the starry sky of the Earth. Their presence speaks against the version of travel in time. Hmm... still no clarity.
I once again back to the bed and turned on the guard program on the body-comp. It analyzes the surrounding noise, infrared radiation, night vision picture and if it detects something unidentifiable or dangerous awakens the owner. Needless to say, in the standard setup the program often alarms for every small change - damn lite version. You would have had to pay for the professional version, but I never used it so I didn't bother. Now it would have came in handy. I closed my eyes, tried to relax and began to recall the events that led to my current state of affairs. I didn't even notice how I fell asleep.
I woke up several times at night. The guard program kept waking me up. As expected, there was nothing dangerous. A few times the program reacted to the appearance of small animals - night rodents. After the second such awakening, I set the program to limit the size of the object - no less than the average dog or fox. The third time I woke up because a wind had risen. Naturally, the program reacted to the fact that everything around began to move. Cursing, I disabled all of the triggers except response to the movement of objects giving off heat with the intensity of a large animal. After that, I slept peacefully until morning.