7. Channelwood Age
Like before I returned to the Myst Library, and in the back of my mind I was feeling comfortable in a sense that I was always returning to my starting point. It felt like Myst Island was my temporary home for the time being and these trips to the other Ages were little weekend vacations to satisfy my sense of adventure.
I took the two pages I found back in the Selentic Age and placed them in their appropriate books. Neither brother would acknowledge that they could hear me, but I was beginning to wonder whether they were really unable to hear me, or just unwilling to admit they could hear me.
Sirrus and Achenar both tried to persuade me to bring them more pages, and for the life of me I still had no idea why I continued giving them pages. They both insisted that the other was guilty, and now they blamed the other sibling for the destruction of the Myst library. On top of this, they now both gave warnings that freeing the "guilty brother" could result in my death.
That was certainly something I didn't dwell on before. What if Sirrus or Achenar would try to kill me? I had a fifty-fifty chance of trying to guess which brother was innocent, but I would prefer not to gamble my life on lousy odds like that.
It was fairly obvious to me that even if the library wasn't destroyed, I doubted that these two brothers got along. Sirrus was always condescending of Achenar, treating him like an insane child. Achenar despised Sirrus with a passion, making Sirrus out to be a shallow and greedy. I wondered what these two were like when they were younger.
Should I really even be helping these two out? I don't feel really qualified to judge who is innocent and who isn't, especially since I came along after the fact. I should probably be putting this decision in the hands of Atrus. Of course, I still had to find Atrus.
My final entry on the list of keys was the giant tree, with the key 724. I went to the giant shelf and leafed quickly through the Channelwood journal. I tucked the journal under my arm and exited the library, walking down the narrow path towards the far end of the island.
In the back of my mind I was beginning to work on theories about the library itself. Obviously, there were two types of books kept there. These journals, like the one I had now, and the larger books which actually took me to the various ages. I also beleived that within these books were symbols and equations that created the worlds they linked to. When the library was destroyed, Atrus took the remaining books and put them in their places of protection. The journals he left in the library.
But what about the smaller books? In each Age I found a smaller book to take me back to Myst Island. Did each of these smaller books create Myst Island, or were they just ment to take me to Myst Island?
Atrus must have created dozens more worlds like these, hundreds maybe. I couldn't even fathom how long it would take to create a world such as the ones in these books. Just how creative did someone have to be to create a world?
I suppose I could always tell myself I want to invent an island. Then maybe I'd want to put some flowers or maybe a forest on the island, perhaps even some wildlife. But to create something like this must be an entirely different level of complexity. To get the details such as how wide the path would be, what color the water was, or the exact height of the mountain. How could any one man create just one world in such detail, much less a multitude of worlds. Yet these worlds existed. They were created, and the only explanation I could think of was that Atrus actually wrote these worlds into existance Work that spanned at least two decades as far as I could recall. And one of his sons had destroyed all of that work in an instant.
Atrus must have known that something like this would be coming. Perhaps he always sided with paranoia. Why would he create the places of protection for these books if there was no danger to them? Could it be that others could find their way to Myst Island just like I have?
But if he created hundreds of books, why were there so few places of protection for them? Were there other hiding places that I didn't know about? Perhaps there were books that were hidden in a completely different age.
I rounded the corner of the path and arrived at the giant evergreen tree. The tree was surrounded on three sides by an eight foot high brick wall. I climbed up the steps to the base of the tree and noted how rigid and solid the tree was. It must be hundreds of years old. But did it really exist for hundreds of years, or was it hundreds of years old when it was created?
I walked back to the log cabin next to the tree and went inside. There was a safe in here, and I had a sneaky suspicion that the key 724 was actually the combination.
I pressed the buttons underneath the indicators until they read 724 and pulled the handle down. My guess was correct, and the safe opened for me. Inside I found a box of wooden matches.
At the far end of the cabin was a large boiler with a small opening underneath for kindling. To the side of the boiler was a large wheel. I lit a match on the side of the matchbox and started a fire in the boiler. Nothing happened until I turned the large wheel, which must control the flow of steam from the boiler.
A roaring blaze appeared at my feet and the pressure inside the boiler began to rise. A few seconds later I heard a thundering clap accompanied by a quake that shook the entire floor of the cabin. The gauge dropped back to zero, only to increase once again with the build up of pressue.
I walked out of the cabin and looked at the giant tree. Suddenly, I heard the clap again, and the tree rose three feet in height as if its life cycle was being presented to me at a thousand times normal speed. I waited a little more and the tree rose again, only this time I saw a small entrance carved into the trunk of the tree.
I looked inside and noticed that it resembled an elevator car inside. But where would this elevator take me? I looked up towards the top of the tree and saw nothing but the blue skies of Myst Island. Perhaps the elevator was supposed to take me down.
As the tree continued its ascent, I ran into the cabin and turned the large wheel until the fuel valve was completely closed. By the time I was done, I could hear the thunderous rumbles of the tree more frequently. The tree was descending.
I ran out of the cabin and towards the tree. The elevator was already halfway submerged under the ground. I jumped down into the elevator and pulled my feet close to my body as the tree descended another three feet. The outside light was completely cut off, and I was only able to see things from a small light bulb above me.
The tree continued to descend until I reached an underground cavern. The walls of the room looked like they were fashioned out of tree trunks proped up to support the underground room. It was like I was in an underground log cabin. At the far end sitting on a pedestal was the book I had expected to find.
I opened up the book and flipped to the very last page where the image of the Channelwood Age was. I saw a giant windmill come into view, and the scene moved past it to reveal a village suspended into the trees above. It looked very primative. I touched my fingers to the image, and felt my body begin to fade away.
I found myself standing and facing a tree. I was on a single walkway connected to other walkways that stood just above the water line. The water below me was a light blue/green color and hundreds of leaves floated on the surface.
All around me were trees that stretched high into the sky. About twenty feet above me was a series of small buildings with wooden bridges linking them together. From the sketches in the journal I had expected a primitive culture of sorts, and yet I knew that it was no small feat in itself of actually getting a village that high into the air.
The air was hot and humid. It was almost uncomfortable to breathe in this dense of an atmosphere. I wondered if the climate played a large role in the creation of the suspended village.
The layout of the walkways suggested a cascading tree like layout. They wrapped around the bases of all the trees, but merged together at the edge of the forest. I began walking along the walkways looking around for signs of life. I was ninety percent sure that this was the last age that I would be exploring, and I feared what would happen if I didn't find Catherine or Atrus.
I still had the Channelwood Journal with me from the Myst Library, and I flipped through it to confirm that I was where I thought I was. According to the journal humans and primates both inhabited this Age.
According to the journal, the humans lived on the island, and the monkeys lived in the trees. The island sank, and many of the humans perished because of the sinking, or their inability to adapt to the monkeys' environment. While I had desperately wanted some form of companionship, I wasn't sure how I'd feel if the only living thing I would find were monkeys.
I noticed as I walked that along each walkway ran a length of copper pipe. At each junction or branch of the walkway, there was a switch that would control the flow of the pipes. I knelt down and felt the pipe with my hand. It wasn't noticably warm or cold, nor did I feel any vibrations of any kind.
The walkways themselves appeared to have taken on quite a bit of damage over the years. Some sections of the walkway were totally destroyed or underwater, as if they were abandoned or were no longer necessary to the inhabitants of the village. In some cases the pipes that ran along the walkways were severed or submerged underwater.
I did find a staircase that lead up to the village, but it was completely blocked off by a closed door, locked from the other side. There were also two elevators that appeared to lead up to the village, but they were powered by water flowing through the pipe network, and I still haven't found any pipe with water flowing through it.
Eventually, the pipes branched together towards a single pipe that went along a single walkway going towards a large rock just past the grouping of trees. On the very top of the rock was a large windmill, made out of wood and with large pieces of sailcloth for fan blades. It was an impressive sight. The structure of the windmill dominated the giant rock. The base of the windmill housed a small shack which probably held some mechanical equipment of sorts.
I walked along the final walkway and finally felt a breeze of warm air, giving me a mild relief from the humidity of the forest. The walkway ended at the base of the rock, and concrete steps covered with sand forged a path up the rock to a small shack near the base of the windmill. Where the pipe ended, a long rubber hose continued, winding along the steps towards the shed.
The hose came to a large reserve tank which took up almost the entire shed. Off to the side was a small pump with a large pipe going up along the side of the tank, and a small spout where the water dripped in.
Pipes on the other side of the pump went straight out the other side of the shed, and then turned straight down into the ocean. The pipes leading to the pump were cold to the touch.
The windmill must power the pump, and since the pipes are cold, then the mechanism to pump the water must still work!
I stood up on the tips of my toes and looked inside the reserve tank. It was indeed full. I noticed that there was an overflow lip that allowed water to drain back down towards the water on the far side of the rock, where it would probably just get caught in the pumps again as if it were running along a mobius strip. At the base of the tank where the rubber hose connected, I noticed a small shutoff value which was closed. I opened the value a little and water began flowing down the hose towards the copper pipes.
As I walked back along the walkways I could hear the water flowing near my feet. As I winded along the path back to the elevator I opened and closed the valves at the various junctions I crossed, just to make sure all the water went directly along the path I was walking.
I arrived at one of the elevators and looked over the entire mechanism. The motor for the elevator was at the edge of the walkway, powered by water flow from the pipes. The motor pulled on the long thick ropes lifting the elevator car up to the village level. The elevator car itself currently rested just above the water, the single rope was the only thing holding it in place.
Inside the elevator I found a single control level. I noticed that it was tied to a thin rope that also ran the length of the elevator cables, only a weight was also attached to keep the line taught. At the top of the elevator car were massive metal bolts to keep the rope held tight.
I pulled the lever to start the elevator and I noticed a small outlet on the side of the motor open. Water started flowing out of the motor and the cables tightened up as the elevator began it's ascent.
But my trip had almost ended right there. The door was still open, and the weight of the door was tilting the entire elevator, almost making me tumble out into the murky water below. I reached out with the tips of my fingers and pulled the door closed. The elevator corrected its balance and continued upwards.
I looked through a small window in the front of the elevator door and watched as the village came into view. The elevator car stopped at a landing which surrounded the elevator on all sides to prevent it from swaying. I opened the door and jumped across a small gap onto the landing.
From here, there was a single bridge made of rope and wooden planks that lead to a circular hut that was open on many sides. It resembled a hut that I had seen drawn in the journal, which gave me further reassurance that this was indeed Channelwood.
I felt the wind up at this height, and I was totally oblivous to any humidity. Compared the the scorching sauna of the ground below, the village maintained a calm gentle climate.
When I looked at it in real life the hut itself reminded me of the fortress in the Mechanical Age. Of course the hut was much smaller, and made out of wood and bamboo, but the general shape and layout gave me the impression that it was somehow related to the Mechanical Age fortress. Perhaps one of them inspired the other.
I walked along the bridge to the circular hut and did a complete survey of the buildings around me. They were all small huts, either circular like the one I was standing in now, or rectangular shaped. The circular huts gave the impression that they were common areas used by the monkeys (or the villagers) to do work, or share in common tasks. The rectangular ones looked sturdier, and blocked the wind out from all sides suggesting they were shelters or homes perhaps.
Above me there was another level, with what appeared to be three buildings. There wasn't a map of this area, but I figured it must be important. The walkways were roughly twelve feet above me, beyond my reach. Perhaps there was another staircase, or elevator.
I walked around a bit thinking about how Atrus came about creating this world. The more I thought about the similarities between the hut and the fortress, the more I thought about other similarities that I noticed. The clocks I had seen, the usage of natural power sources, the marvelous inventions that Atrus had created when he visited the worlds.
How much of this place was actually built? How much of it was written? Atrus had always visited a world and was amazed by the things his mind created, and yet he always contributed in some physical form to improve the world itself, to benefit the inhabitants, or himself.
Maybe these Ages are related merely by Atrus' creative process. Perhaps something he creates in one Age inspires him to create something in another. I recalled the clock tower I saw in the Selentic Age, and the boat in the Stoneship Age. Were they inspired by artifacts on Myst Island? Or was it the other way around?
I began to notice that some of these huts had looked like they had barely survived a tornado. There were wall panels lying on the floors, broken pottery, or minor debris scattered about. There was also a hut that had no linking bridges to it, but there was an elevator car directly below. And I had yet to see any inhabitants, primate or otherwise.
Where were the inhabitants? Someone had to build these structures, and I doubt that it was Atrus. Why would Atrus create all this if it wasn't put to use? Something was very wrong here. And if I could find out what happened here, I might be able to explain what happened to the inhabitants of the other Ages.
I continued walking along the paths, using a map I found in the journal as a guide. I reached the top of the staircase that I reached earlier, but it was blocked by a closed door as well. Next to the door was an elevator that appeared to go to the next level, but I doubted that it would work since there was no water flow to the motor.
There was no latch on the door, or any visible means of opening it. From the other side I saw a rope that ran up and through some pulleys that were nailed into nearby trees. The rope ended at a small device in one of the circular huts. In he middle of the rope was a weight that was far beyond my reach. I noticed that the path of the rope was laid out on the map in Atrus' journal.
I walked back along the paths until I reached the hut where the rope ended. From here, I could clearly see the door. In the hut itself was a large switch on a pedestal. I pulled the rope and the weight dropped, opening the door. I assumed that the control to open the door was placed here for some defensive purpose. To make sure opening the door wouldn't be too easy for an outsider to accomplish.
Like before I returned to the Myst Library, and in the back of my mind I was feeling comfortable in a sense that I was always returning to my starting point. It felt like Myst Island was my temporary home for the time being and these trips to the other Ages were little weekend vacations to satisfy my sense of adventure.
I took the two pages I found back in the Selentic Age and placed them in their appropriate books. Neither brother would acknowledge that they could hear me, but I was beginning to wonder whether they were really unable to hear me, or just unwilling to admit they could hear me.
Sirrus and Achenar both tried to persuade me to bring them more pages, and for the life of me I still had no idea why I continued giving them pages. They both insisted that the other was guilty, and now they blamed the other sibling for the destruction of the Myst library. On top of this, they now both gave warnings that freeing the "guilty brother" could result in my death.
That was certainly something I didn't dwell on before. What if Sirrus or Achenar would try to kill me? I had a fifty-fifty chance of trying to guess which brother was innocent, but I would prefer not to gamble my life on lousy odds like that.
It was fairly obvious to me that even if the library wasn't destroyed, I doubted that these two brothers got along. Sirrus was always condescending of Achenar, treating him like an insane child. Achenar despised Sirrus with a passion, making Sirrus out to be a shallow and greedy. I wondered what these two were like when they were younger.
Should I really even be helping these two out? I don't feel really qualified to judge who is innocent and who isn't, especially since I came along after the fact. I should probably be putting this decision in the hands of Atrus. Of course, I still had to find Atrus.
My final entry on the list of keys was the giant tree, with the key 724. I went to the giant shelf and leafed quickly through the Channelwood journal. I tucked the journal under my arm and exited the library, walking down the narrow path towards the far end of the island.
In the back of my mind I was beginning to work on theories about the library itself. Obviously, there were two types of books kept there. These journals, like the one I had now, and the larger books which actually took me to the various ages. I also beleived that within these books were symbols and equations that created the worlds they linked to. When the library was destroyed, Atrus took the remaining books and put them in their places of protection. The journals he left in the library.
But what about the smaller books? In each Age I found a smaller book to take me back to Myst Island. Did each of these smaller books create Myst Island, or were they just ment to take me to Myst Island?
Atrus must have created dozens more worlds like these, hundreds maybe. I couldn't even fathom how long it would take to create a world such as the ones in these books. Just how creative did someone have to be to create a world?
I suppose I could always tell myself I want to invent an island. Then maybe I'd want to put some flowers or maybe a forest on the island, perhaps even some wildlife. But to create something like this must be an entirely different level of complexity. To get the details such as how wide the path would be, what color the water was, or the exact height of the mountain. How could any one man create just one world in such detail, much less a multitude of worlds. Yet these worlds existed. They were created, and the only explanation I could think of was that Atrus actually wrote these worlds into existance Work that spanned at least two decades as far as I could recall. And one of his sons had destroyed all of that work in an instant.
Atrus must have known that something like this would be coming. Perhaps he always sided with paranoia. Why would he create the places of protection for these books if there was no danger to them? Could it be that others could find their way to Myst Island just like I have?
But if he created hundreds of books, why were there so few places of protection for them? Were there other hiding places that I didn't know about? Perhaps there were books that were hidden in a completely different age.
I rounded the corner of the path and arrived at the giant evergreen tree. The tree was surrounded on three sides by an eight foot high brick wall. I climbed up the steps to the base of the tree and noted how rigid and solid the tree was. It must be hundreds of years old. But did it really exist for hundreds of years, or was it hundreds of years old when it was created?
I walked back to the log cabin next to the tree and went inside. There was a safe in here, and I had a sneaky suspicion that the key 724 was actually the combination.
I pressed the buttons underneath the indicators until they read 724 and pulled the handle down. My guess was correct, and the safe opened for me. Inside I found a box of wooden matches.
At the far end of the cabin was a large boiler with a small opening underneath for kindling. To the side of the boiler was a large wheel. I lit a match on the side of the matchbox and started a fire in the boiler. Nothing happened until I turned the large wheel, which must control the flow of steam from the boiler.
A roaring blaze appeared at my feet and the pressure inside the boiler began to rise. A few seconds later I heard a thundering clap accompanied by a quake that shook the entire floor of the cabin. The gauge dropped back to zero, only to increase once again with the build up of pressue.
I walked out of the cabin and looked at the giant tree. Suddenly, I heard the clap again, and the tree rose three feet in height as if its life cycle was being presented to me at a thousand times normal speed. I waited a little more and the tree rose again, only this time I saw a small entrance carved into the trunk of the tree.
I looked inside and noticed that it resembled an elevator car inside. But where would this elevator take me? I looked up towards the top of the tree and saw nothing but the blue skies of Myst Island. Perhaps the elevator was supposed to take me down.
As the tree continued its ascent, I ran into the cabin and turned the large wheel until the fuel valve was completely closed. By the time I was done, I could hear the thunderous rumbles of the tree more frequently. The tree was descending.
I ran out of the cabin and towards the tree. The elevator was already halfway submerged under the ground. I jumped down into the elevator and pulled my feet close to my body as the tree descended another three feet. The outside light was completely cut off, and I was only able to see things from a small light bulb above me.
The tree continued to descend until I reached an underground cavern. The walls of the room looked like they were fashioned out of tree trunks proped up to support the underground room. It was like I was in an underground log cabin. At the far end sitting on a pedestal was the book I had expected to find.
I opened up the book and flipped to the very last page where the image of the Channelwood Age was. I saw a giant windmill come into view, and the scene moved past it to reveal a village suspended into the trees above. It looked very primative. I touched my fingers to the image, and felt my body begin to fade away.
I found myself standing and facing a tree. I was on a single walkway connected to other walkways that stood just above the water line. The water below me was a light blue/green color and hundreds of leaves floated on the surface.
All around me were trees that stretched high into the sky. About twenty feet above me was a series of small buildings with wooden bridges linking them together. From the sketches in the journal I had expected a primitive culture of sorts, and yet I knew that it was no small feat in itself of actually getting a village that high into the air.
The air was hot and humid. It was almost uncomfortable to breathe in this dense of an atmosphere. I wondered if the climate played a large role in the creation of the suspended village.
The layout of the walkways suggested a cascading tree like layout. They wrapped around the bases of all the trees, but merged together at the edge of the forest. I began walking along the walkways looking around for signs of life. I was ninety percent sure that this was the last age that I would be exploring, and I feared what would happen if I didn't find Catherine or Atrus.
I still had the Channelwood Journal with me from the Myst Library, and I flipped through it to confirm that I was where I thought I was. According to the journal humans and primates both inhabited this Age.
According to the journal, the humans lived on the island, and the monkeys lived in the trees. The island sank, and many of the humans perished because of the sinking, or their inability to adapt to the monkeys' environment. While I had desperately wanted some form of companionship, I wasn't sure how I'd feel if the only living thing I would find were monkeys.
I noticed as I walked that along each walkway ran a length of copper pipe. At each junction or branch of the walkway, there was a switch that would control the flow of the pipes. I knelt down and felt the pipe with my hand. It wasn't noticably warm or cold, nor did I feel any vibrations of any kind.
The walkways themselves appeared to have taken on quite a bit of damage over the years. Some sections of the walkway were totally destroyed or underwater, as if they were abandoned or were no longer necessary to the inhabitants of the village. In some cases the pipes that ran along the walkways were severed or submerged underwater.
I did find a staircase that lead up to the village, but it was completely blocked off by a closed door, locked from the other side. There were also two elevators that appeared to lead up to the village, but they were powered by water flowing through the pipe network, and I still haven't found any pipe with water flowing through it.
Eventually, the pipes branched together towards a single pipe that went along a single walkway going towards a large rock just past the grouping of trees. On the very top of the rock was a large windmill, made out of wood and with large pieces of sailcloth for fan blades. It was an impressive sight. The structure of the windmill dominated the giant rock. The base of the windmill housed a small shack which probably held some mechanical equipment of sorts.
I walked along the final walkway and finally felt a breeze of warm air, giving me a mild relief from the humidity of the forest. The walkway ended at the base of the rock, and concrete steps covered with sand forged a path up the rock to a small shack near the base of the windmill. Where the pipe ended, a long rubber hose continued, winding along the steps towards the shed.
The hose came to a large reserve tank which took up almost the entire shed. Off to the side was a small pump with a large pipe going up along the side of the tank, and a small spout where the water dripped in.
Pipes on the other side of the pump went straight out the other side of the shed, and then turned straight down into the ocean. The pipes leading to the pump were cold to the touch.
The windmill must power the pump, and since the pipes are cold, then the mechanism to pump the water must still work!
I stood up on the tips of my toes and looked inside the reserve tank. It was indeed full. I noticed that there was an overflow lip that allowed water to drain back down towards the water on the far side of the rock, where it would probably just get caught in the pumps again as if it were running along a mobius strip. At the base of the tank where the rubber hose connected, I noticed a small shutoff value which was closed. I opened the value a little and water began flowing down the hose towards the copper pipes.
As I walked back along the walkways I could hear the water flowing near my feet. As I winded along the path back to the elevator I opened and closed the valves at the various junctions I crossed, just to make sure all the water went directly along the path I was walking.
I arrived at one of the elevators and looked over the entire mechanism. The motor for the elevator was at the edge of the walkway, powered by water flow from the pipes. The motor pulled on the long thick ropes lifting the elevator car up to the village level. The elevator car itself currently rested just above the water, the single rope was the only thing holding it in place.
Inside the elevator I found a single control level. I noticed that it was tied to a thin rope that also ran the length of the elevator cables, only a weight was also attached to keep the line taught. At the top of the elevator car were massive metal bolts to keep the rope held tight.
I pulled the lever to start the elevator and I noticed a small outlet on the side of the motor open. Water started flowing out of the motor and the cables tightened up as the elevator began it's ascent.
But my trip had almost ended right there. The door was still open, and the weight of the door was tilting the entire elevator, almost making me tumble out into the murky water below. I reached out with the tips of my fingers and pulled the door closed. The elevator corrected its balance and continued upwards.
I looked through a small window in the front of the elevator door and watched as the village came into view. The elevator car stopped at a landing which surrounded the elevator on all sides to prevent it from swaying. I opened the door and jumped across a small gap onto the landing.
From here, there was a single bridge made of rope and wooden planks that lead to a circular hut that was open on many sides. It resembled a hut that I had seen drawn in the journal, which gave me further reassurance that this was indeed Channelwood.
I felt the wind up at this height, and I was totally oblivous to any humidity. Compared the the scorching sauna of the ground below, the village maintained a calm gentle climate.
When I looked at it in real life the hut itself reminded me of the fortress in the Mechanical Age. Of course the hut was much smaller, and made out of wood and bamboo, but the general shape and layout gave me the impression that it was somehow related to the Mechanical Age fortress. Perhaps one of them inspired the other.
I walked along the bridge to the circular hut and did a complete survey of the buildings around me. They were all small huts, either circular like the one I was standing in now, or rectangular shaped. The circular huts gave the impression that they were common areas used by the monkeys (or the villagers) to do work, or share in common tasks. The rectangular ones looked sturdier, and blocked the wind out from all sides suggesting they were shelters or homes perhaps.
Above me there was another level, with what appeared to be three buildings. There wasn't a map of this area, but I figured it must be important. The walkways were roughly twelve feet above me, beyond my reach. Perhaps there was another staircase, or elevator.
I walked around a bit thinking about how Atrus came about creating this world. The more I thought about the similarities between the hut and the fortress, the more I thought about other similarities that I noticed. The clocks I had seen, the usage of natural power sources, the marvelous inventions that Atrus had created when he visited the worlds.
How much of this place was actually built? How much of it was written? Atrus had always visited a world and was amazed by the things his mind created, and yet he always contributed in some physical form to improve the world itself, to benefit the inhabitants, or himself.
Maybe these Ages are related merely by Atrus' creative process. Perhaps something he creates in one Age inspires him to create something in another. I recalled the clock tower I saw in the Selentic Age, and the boat in the Stoneship Age. Were they inspired by artifacts on Myst Island? Or was it the other way around?
I began to notice that some of these huts had looked like they had barely survived a tornado. There were wall panels lying on the floors, broken pottery, or minor debris scattered about. There was also a hut that had no linking bridges to it, but there was an elevator car directly below. And I had yet to see any inhabitants, primate or otherwise.
Where were the inhabitants? Someone had to build these structures, and I doubt that it was Atrus. Why would Atrus create all this if it wasn't put to use? Something was very wrong here. And if I could find out what happened here, I might be able to explain what happened to the inhabitants of the other Ages.
I continued walking along the paths, using a map I found in the journal as a guide. I reached the top of the staircase that I reached earlier, but it was blocked by a closed door as well. Next to the door was an elevator that appeared to go to the next level, but I doubted that it would work since there was no water flow to the motor.
There was no latch on the door, or any visible means of opening it. From the other side I saw a rope that ran up and through some pulleys that were nailed into nearby trees. The rope ended at a small device in one of the circular huts. In he middle of the rope was a weight that was far beyond my reach. I noticed that the path of the rope was laid out on the map in Atrus' journal.
I walked back along the paths until I reached the hut where the rope ended. From here, I could clearly see the door. In the hut itself was a large switch on a pedestal. I pulled the rope and the weight dropped, opening the door. I assumed that the control to open the door was placed here for some defensive purpose. To make sure opening the door wouldn't be too easy for an outsider to accomplish.
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