Travel (B)log - Week 1

I seem to have found myself in a strange land, or perhaps a familiar land in a strange time. It's as if I'm living in an ancient civilization that is somehow in the future. They write everything using strange, ancient looking, glyphs combined with overly cheerful emoji. The architecture is dichotomous. Some is modern, some ancient;  some efficient some ornate. The technology is incredibly advanced, yet I still see people carrying other people around in hand carts. My chronological device is obviously broken, since it claims that I am permanently stuck in tomorrow, but I'm still in the same decade. I will need to further investigate these anomalies, but for now I will write my findings here in the hopes that they will find they're way back to the world as I know it.

I'm not alone. Five others were transported here with me. Fortunately, one of us is able to speak the language and read the glyphs. The other five of us have learned to distrust him, we are certain that he knows something we don't know. We keep a watchful eye on him, and are loath to let him out of sight. The second day here it rained gratuitously, unable to verify the chemical nature of the rain we thought it imperative that we find protective measures to defend ourselves. I consider one member of our party lucky to have survived the downpour, since he was hesitant to trust the umbrellas we had secured. We were later able to convince him of the error of his ways, I pray we were not too late, and that no ill effects are borne of this.

Once we had a means of protecting ourselves we began our investigation. We started with an anomalous region, that seemed to predate the rest of the architecture by eons. It seems that the new civilization has preserved the ancient, building alongside it, instead of on top of it. This particular region piqued our interest since it starkly contrasted the surrounding region. Instead of a sprawling metropolis of streets and buildings, it was green and lush. As if it was a tiny nature preserve in the middle of a city that does not end. We carefully documented our findings of the region by photographing everything that seemed to stand out to us. Satisfied with our findings we moved on to investigate other regions.

It seems our party leader (the one who is able to communicate with the natives of this time and place) has been here before. He made contact with one of his agents, who had discovered and was able to infiltrate a splinter group that call themselves 'ninja'. Much like the ninja of ancient times, this is a group of assassins that have burrowed deep into the bowels of this civilization, hiding in plain sight. We made our way to the entry of their village, and greeted a sentry. The strange thing was that there was no gate. I say 'the entry to their village', but no entry was apparent. The sentry guarded an empty room, with only one exit, the one directly behind us. Fortunately, our agent had made prior arrangements, or I'm certain this encounter would have gone very differently. The sentry gave some sort of secret signal and a ninja entered the room via a secret passage. I was unable to understand their conversation, but the ninja proceeded to show us into their village, deep within the middle of the city. We were treated to a meal fit for a king. We were barely able to finish what was placed before us, partly because we were famished; but mostly because we dare not find out what would happen if we didn't. Upon finishing the meal, one of the ninjas (I assume the one that our agent had made arrangements with) gave us a demonstration of ninjutsu magic. We were then allowed to leave the village, which was a relief to all of us.

I'm still alive after the first five days. I hope that I survive long enough to make my findings known to the world I left behind. I have begun to learn some simple expressions, and phrases. Not enough to get by on my own. So I will need to keep our party leader around, for now. I've begun to suspect that he is the reason we are all here, I can't prove anything, but I think he knows we are suspicious of him.