Ty followed Cock through a doorway, and into a corridor. As they walked down the corridor, they passed several closed doors, some with easily understood labels like "83-317 Archival Storage", some with more inscrutable labels like "83-262 Ambilatertal Processing", and some with only room numbers. They reached an elevator, which had only one call button, for down, and Cock pressed it. They waited for a moment, then there was a ding, and the door opened. They entered, and Cock pressed a button at the very bottom of the panel.
Ty saw that the panel had many buttons, from 83 at the top, down to 0, and below that, to negative integers reaching -16. Some floors had a bit of descriptive text, like 83, where they started, which read, "Administration." Many were meaningless to Ty. Some had no description provided. -16 said "Dock, Disposal."
More troubling was that some of the buttons had been gouged out. "The elevator works, but doesn't stop on all the floors," Ty said, and started giggling. He abruptly stopped. I've got to keep it together, he thought. I'm already near a breaking point.
The number on the indicator at the top of the panel slowly decreased. He looked at more of the floor legends. 82 was labeled, "Memory - audiovisual." 39 was labeled, "Upper motor control, right side," as they approached -16, Ty saw, "-14 Maintenance" and "-15 Service parts." Maybe those would be useful to him.
Finally, they reached -16. As they exited the elevator, Ty saw a sign indicating that Dock was to the left, and Disposal was to the right. They headed right. This corridor had fewer doors, and they were labeled only with room numbers. The corridor turned a few times, and then Gy saw that ahead, in the distance, it dead-ended at a final door. "That's it," said Cock. "This is as far as I'll take you. You're on your own."
"Thank you," said Ty, "I'll meet you back here shortly."
"No," said Cock. "I'm going back to Main Control," and turned and headed back. Ty considered ordering Cock to stay, but decided against. Ty walked to the end of the corridor. The final door was labeled "-16-999 Disposal." Ty opened the door.
He hadn't really known what to expect, but what he saw outside the door was a bleak landscape. He stepped outside. There was a dark, cloudless sky, with no stars. There was dim light, but the source was not apparent. He couldn't see very far, but in every direction he saw heaps of garbage. He headed to the nearest heap.
He couldn't even identify what most of the refuse was, but he did spot a few books. He grabbed one, and its title was, "Lisa, Operations Procedures, Volume MXXVII." He also spotted a corner of what looked like a control panel, and with great efforted pulled it out of the heap. It wasn't at all obvious what it was for, but it was clearly damaged.
Cock had apparently been truthful about dumping the manuals and control panels here, but as he looked about, he realized that recovering them, if possible at all, would be the work of a lifetime. His spirts, already low, sank further. He sat down and cried. "Oh, Lisa, what have I done to you?" he wailed.