Category: One Among the Dead

Day 260:

One nice part about the adrenaline rush you get when you’re literally standing on the precipice between you and certain death is that everything get suddenly louder. All the things you’re not normally paying attention to? Your body decides they are all noteworthy. Water dripping. Lava bubbling. Your own breathing. The breathing of the exploding giraffe corgi sneaking up on you from behind.

It’s been a rough week is what I’m saying.

Also, apparently the lake at the bottom of the chasm with the lava pouring into it is deep enough that the exploding giraffe corgi didn’t die on impact.

But that just gives me one more reason not to fall down into the chasm.

Day 259:

Hey remember yesterday when I found that lava pit?

Turns out that it was a lava lake built into the side of a very deep chasm. Like a “I can see zombies and they look like tiny bugs” chasm.

So it’s really good that even though I thought I knew all of the local dangers and the edges of the lava pit, I continued to test the rock. Because while jumping into the lake below may or may not be safe had I fallen hundreds of meters down, the lava fall that pours down the side of the chasm into that lake may have made that an uncomfortable choice.

Also, why are there so many damn chasms here? Whole blasted planet’s just an air bubble with attitude.

Day 258:

The first few weeks of training to be a miner, we were taught how to walk.

Specifically, we were taught never ever to put our full weight on a stone we hadn’t tested yet.

Most of this training came in the form of one of the managers or leads hitting us with sticks if they caught us. In fact, any miner at any time in any situation could hit any other miner with the handle of their tool if someone was caught standing with their full weight on an untested rock.

In space, the Company said, we couldn’t necessarily count on rock behaving the same way we thought it did on our home planets. Heck, my team had five people from five different planets (well two planets, two planetesimals, and an asteroid) and we couldn’t count on rock behaving the same way if we went to visit each other for Sunday breakfast.

(Not that we ever did.)

It didn’t take long to learn to test the rock, with a pick, with another rock, with whatever was handy, every time we wanted to step somewhere.

This got us a lot of teasing when we were on leave, because even when we were walking around the neighborhoods where we grew up, we tested the rock, and we looked really goofy doing so.

But this evening when I tested a rock and it fell into a lava pit a few yards below, and I didn’t know about the lava pit or the fact that I was walking on the ceiling of a magma chamber, well, I was glad for good habits.

Day 257:

Heading up again, sort of. So that’s a start.

Day 256:

I am still digging. I bet you’re shocked.

I’m way up in the top of a cavern and trying to dig my way back down, so I can dig back up again in  a more organized manner.

Like not running out of food, or torches, both of which I’ve done.

So I’m also very quietly way up in the cavern hoping that none of the monsters can find me.

And I think I hear lava popping.

For now, I’m going to wall myself in and sleep, and then start digging again in the morning.