Ooh, Maria, Maria... This gets me into a good chance to talking about something involving her Magicant. Since it is a manifestation of her subconscious, I find it funny you first enter it via a cave instead of though any sort of direct discussion with her. She is never seen in-person, which is just so mysterious to me, so here's what I think the cave's deal is: that is where she and George first met Giegue. This can been seen by the password that clearly has some connection to Giegue "Who has lost his tail? The forgotten one from the ship that sails the cosmos." and the fact that the answer itself was in George's Journal.
When the first disappearances during that time happened, here's what I think happened: Giegue was part of some alien explorer's ship and somehow got stranded in that cave. The previous disappearances where people simply returned were Giegue's crew (I'm guessing he was probably an orphan but that's a different discussion) just picking up people trying to find him, realizing they had the wrong lead, and simply releasing them again, but George in his reporter's nosiness actually found Giegue and Maria soon followed to the very cave where the entrance to Magicant is, adopting him as their own until they were eventually the ones taken and kept around as babysitters of sorts until George escaped.
Maria didn't.
And at that point, she knew too much, they couldn't just release her again. Especially not with the revenge they had to plan against George in the future for taking their secrets of PSI.
However, the cave was so linked to her emotionally that the link to her Magicant formed there. In fact, as I write this, seeing as George had the password, he must have at least visited her a few times there to keep contact while he was on earth and she wasn't, but over time, he became far too engulfed researching PSI, visiting less and less frequently until he died. And Maria forgot. The link remains due to her strong lingering memories and likely some form of latent PSI but no one visited it until Ninten. She was just sad and lonely knowing something was clearly missing, but no longer remembering what, until he came along. Poor Maria... At least she died in peace upon finally remembering those she used to love. How tragic once you actually think about her.
How could we possibly forget season 1 is set in the year of our lord 2016????
Tim sprints out of the archives because a Snorlax spawns nearby (Jon doesn’t know what a Pokemon is.) Martin has a musical.ly, Tim has vine (the two of them make dubsmashes when they’re dicking off). There is an eraser shrine dedicated to Harambe in the archive break room. Tim got Sasha addicted to Geometry Dash. Lemonade is constantly playing. Jon grandpa-bitches about how annoying Closer (Chainsmokers) is. Tim’s entire laptop is covered in Pepe stickers. Sasha goes a 30 minute rant about Instagram’s changed their app logo. They all play Agar.io on their lunch break. Tim and Sasha rope Martin in to serenading Jon through an ominous chanting of ‘Alexander Hamilton.’ They have a collective aneurysm when Jon starts singing along. Tim T-poses everywhere. Martin dresses like Arthur (clenched fist version) for Halloween. Tim says “here comes dat boii!!!” every time he sees a worm. They teach Jon to hit the quan in a moment of weakness. The archives team does the mannequin challenge (ILL KISS ANYONE WHO DRAWS THIS HOLY FUCK). Brexit is happening