Category: One Among the Dead

Day 104:

Did some sand “mining” for a bit this morning, then went fishing the rest of the day. Pulled up a glass bottle full of liquid. I know you’re thinking “of course it’s full of liquid, you found it while fishing,” but the thing is that there was a stopper in the top of the bottle (cork maybe? Could there be cork here somewhere?) and the liquid in the bottle was a bright cerulean blue, unlike the darker blues of the river and lake nearby. (And ocean, I tend to forget to mention the ocean.)

I have set it on a shelf and I am hoping it doesn’t explode. I have no intention of opening it.

Well, not right now anyway.

Day 103:

I have so many birds that I can’t open a door without birds moving in or out.

We will not discuss the droppings.

Day 102:

Once upon a time there were twin ducken babies (chicklings? chicklets?) named Move and Get Out Of The Way who lived deep in the tunnels of Serendipity Plains.

One day the two babies decided to stand in the way of absolutely everything their nearby human did, until she accidentally tapped one of them with a shovel. Not hard enough to bruise, even, just hard enough to get their attention.

Then the creatures let up a wail that would set even the sternest and most uncaring heart ablaze with pain and sorrow of their tiny fluffy broken hearts.

And the human ended up serving the tiny chicklets the end of her bread off her sandwich.

And they were best friends again for at least ten minutes at which point the human started yelling at them by name all over again.

The end.

Day 101:

In addition to turning toward the giant mountain (a direction I call “east” based on the sunrise) I’m digging deeper than ever before. The deeper I go, the higher the quality and volume of valuable stone like granite and andesite I’m hitting. I’m finding more iron ore, too.

I’ve got two baby chicks following me around as if somehow we’re going to find a corn cavern or something down in the lower ends of the pit. They’re much more eager than Bobby is… Bobby just kinds of lolls about as if to say “yeah, sure, let me know if there’s something interesting going on,” while the two chicks are like “HEY WHAT IS THAT WHAT ARE YOU DOING HOW ABOUT IF I STAND HERE IN THE WORST PLACE POSSIBLE WHILE YOU DIG?”

Babies. Ugh.

Day 100:

If I hadn’t kept this log since arriving, I would’ve had no idea that today was any kind of special. And really except for humans’ obsession with base 10 and round numbers it isn’t special.

But it is day 100.

It takes less than 100 days to become a certified miner. Because the job is hazardous, dirty, and involves a lot of interstellar travel, it takes about 3 days to find a job after certification. Now that we use mining lasers and frictionless mining transportation, I could’ve taken this entire planet apart in less than 100 days had I the right equipment.  100 days means nothing in terms of mining.

It doesn’t even really mean much in terms of time. Earthers still keep to the old  30-day-to-a-month calendar, so 100 days isn’t even a round number of months in that system. It’s an overrun, meaning that whatever was supposed to be done in 90 days wasn’t finished on time.

But it’s a triple digit number. It means I’ve been here 100 days longer than I desire. It means my arms are always sore and my shoulders injured, my back aches, my legs are bruised, and I still sleep on a sheepskin in front of a fire in a glorified cave next to a yard full of very loud duckens.

(It occurs to me that I could probably make a feather bed. Why did it take until now to occur to me?!?)

I wonder how long it will take for me to totally adjust to my situation. Another few weeks? A year? Ten years? I’m already so tied up in my day-to-day that I rarely have time to get angry about it until I’m going to sleep, and then I’m blissfully too tired to care anymore.

I want to go home, but instead of a burning searing pain of knowledge of everything I’m missing every moment, it’s become an ache of longing for the things I remember. I’m afraid I’ll forget what it’s really like and at some point just miss it because I’m supposed to.

On the other hand, if you had told me 200 days ago that I would spend 100 days stranded on a planet by myself with no technological assistance, I would have bet all I had that I wouldn’t have made it 30 days, forget 100. I’m proud of surviving, if such a thing is allowed.

The sun has set and the zombies are starting to growl over the hills, so I’m going to dampen my fire and go to sleep.

Here’s to another 100 days.