💾 Archived View for midnight.pub › replies › 2608 captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
With newly hightened spirits from the good food I take a crack at the laptop again. Hmm, the display manager is not fully up to date? I think I remember hearing something about a possible bypass. I try pressing and holding the escape key for some while.
The iron oxide is suspicious - perhaps the pipe goes to the room upstairs? But without a key I won't be able to investigate this much. Does the pipe have any holes or loose parts?
Can I see any wires coming from the device on the ceiling? If yes I'd like to see where they go. I still don't know what it could be - if it is a smoke detector there should be one in the kitchen too, so I look at the ceiling there.
Does the plank under the bottle crate look out of place compared to the rest of the floor? I try to see if it is loose and if something is below it (would not be the worst place to hide a key after all).
After years spent reading CVEs, you became agile like a cat: the login manager crashes and you contemplate a somewhat unusual desktop. The active window contains an incomplete journal entry about food recipes. A minimal web browser is running behind it, showing a recipe named "Chole Bhature". A terminal emulator is keeping track of the system log, where you see the report of a recent segmentation fault. On the bottom you see a dashboard that blinks in a weird way: it is probably buggy.
While you meditate on the age-old problem of software usability, you decide to have another bite of pizza, and get back to the kitchenette to heat up a slice. You notice the wooden plank again, and decide to check it out.
You leave the microwave humming, move away the crate, and take a look: is an old sturdy board, painted in yellow. You lift it, and you find that it covers a square hole in the floor. You look down the hole, but it is completely dark: all you can see is the top part of a wooden ladder.
A loud *ding* makes you jump: the pizza is ready! It is actually way hotter than what you intended to get. You wait to be able to touch it. Glancing the ceiling, you notice another round device, similar to the one you saw in the restroom. Is it just the same?
As the pizza seems to take ages to cool off, you decide to check the restroom again. First off you look at the device: it is exactly the same. Both of them are turned on (the LED is on), but none of them seem connected to a wire. You guess the wires are passing behind the false ceiling.
Finally, you glance at the pipes: they are rusty, but they seem still in working conditions, at least for now. Given the amount of dust, the upstairs pipes might be broken.