Challenge #01640-D179: Wonderful Things?

[Blunt summary of situation]
So your job is, as our mutual boss put it, to "swiftly unfuck this shit posthaste." Good luck. -- RecklessPrudence

It had made the news a year before Rael was recognised as a cogniscent being by the CRC and the lawsuit began to completely free him and his kind from corporate slavery. Four years into relative freedom, and the Archivaas, Forensic Analysts, and assorted science crews had finally finished scouring the area for the slightest clue. News like a pristine and untouched 'bubble' in the Glunk is the sort of thing that gets nerds of all kinds excited. Even the SPOEns got involved, though there was really nothing for them in it.

Now it was his turn.

Rael now had a special pass that let him this close to the Treatment Lock, where crews of technicians were using whatever worked on the current boundary of the Glunk, and a series of mobile walls and automated decontamination machinery.

"We're calling it The Tomb," said Technician Carol. "We're still not even sure how the previous occupants managed to fill it the way they did."

Modern technicians had excised the door and small portions of the wall. A small collapse had turned into a larger collapse when someone touched something and almost buried them.

"It scans clean," said Technician Carol. Obviously trying to sugar-coat an abhorrent situation with faint praise. "But... just in case... you're one of the few who can survive an encounter with unexpected vectors."

The presence of a Decontamination Team setting up in the only means of egress did not warm the cockles of his heart. It spoke of the usual paranoia of anyone living on a space station, true, but it also spoke of a future in which he was doused in chemicals and despising himself for the remains of the day.

Inside the plastic walls were three historians in thin livesuits, feeding objects into a conveyor after they documented them. Beyond the initial landslide was floor-to-ceiling packrattus. Boxes of things, stacked haphazardly. Random objects inserted into whichever space it would fit. Tightly-packed wads that could be fabrics.

"We want it unpacked," said Technician Carol. "Preferably without further damage to the structure or the contents. You'll be getting shares in your discoveries, Time of course, and..." she checked her data viewer. "A kilo of treacle toffee per cubic SDU safely cleared."

"Safety defined as...?" prompted Rael.

"Everyone else is unharmed. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." Technician Carol looked upset at that. "Word from on high is, and I quote: 'swiftly unfuck this shit posthaste'. And you have to have hovercams watching everything you do because the Archivaas are into all of this."

The Archivaas were likely waiting on the other end of the conveyor to metaphorically dribble over every last thing that this team processed. People like the Archivaas loved dump sites with a passion bordering on psychotic.

Rael visually analysed the surviving face of The Tomb 's contents as the extant archaeologists sorted a path for him out of the landslide. A landslide that must have fit the dimensions of the door. The packrat responsible for The Tomb had been cramming things into this space with force before they finally managed to jam the door shut. That was why that part of the face had collapsed. If he approached it logically, with a mind to behaviour analysis...

He could, if necessary, make extra arms to deal with instability, at least until Technician Carol intervened to add propping and shoring. It meant a surcharge to the administrator who green-lit all this in the form of a Bad Day Blowout per extra limb. Ze knew the job was expensive when ze decided on hiring Rael. All the same, it hurt his biological economy to do that, so he avoided it.

It took the better part of a month to reach the point where collapse was clearly no longer imminent. In that time, he found two mummified corpses[1], three treasures previously presumed destroyed, four lost art works, and one inactive artificial intelligence that he was allowed to restore to full function. She was now a citizen of the AI Alliance and acclimating herself to a new world.

Now, though, they were finding furniture. This space had once been a domicile before the packrat had got to it. Evidence that they had once lived in this hoard was mounting, but the assembled archeologists and historians were having fits. These levels of obsessive compulsion were previously thought to exist only in humans, and humans had not been welcome at the time that matched the dates of this hoard. Theories were argued, often in Rael's way, and Security teams had to join the overall throng to break up the fights or at least provide mediation.

Two Standard Months, three hundred and ninety-seven kilos of treacle toffee, fifteen Bad Day Blowouts, and shares in what was fast becoming a museum... Rael considered himself very well paid.

[1]: They died, uninterestingly, of natural causes and a collapse prevented them from being found earlier.

[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / trekandshoot]

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