Category: One Among the Dead

Day 283:

This sounds absolutely ridiculous to say but I’ve run out of rock.

Or rather, I’ve run out of hot polished rock, which sounds a little better.

I discovered a while ago that not everything I mine has to come out the size of ugly cobblestones… more importantly I discovered accidentally that putting a load of cobblestones in a furnace will result in a possibly good slab of stone.

This should not work. There’s nothing in physics from anywhere else in this universe that even suggests this should work. Which means either the cobblestones here are so iron-rich that I can “smelt” them back together or perhaps I’m not even in my universe any more.

The thought had crossed my mind.

So the hot rocks (don’t know what else to call them, even though they’re not radioactive — well, heck, for all I know they are radioactive, but with no geiger counter it’s hard to tell without them being so “hot” that they melt my face off.) make really nice floors and I like to keep them around for that purpose, but somehow I lost track of how many I had.

So instead of digging to the east and laying down good solid flooring as I go, I’m fishing again while my cave fills with smoke and hot rock fumes, none of which are particularly healthy for the lungs.

At least it’s a nice day. Standard temperature, no rain, no zombies or exploding giraffe-corgis, no horror squids, just me and a line and some fish. And some boots. And a bowl. And a glowing book.

But other than that, normal-like. Relaxing.

Until I have to carry around tons of hot rock later anyway.

Day 282:

It’s hard to dig to the east from where I’m currently located without hitting water. There’s a bay-like swamp-like thing to the northeast (the algae bloom is still in full swing) and a river just south of it. I wrote a long time ago about trying to keep them separate via the land bridge that cuts between them, and now I’m digging rooms into that land bridge.

I’m beginning to wonder if my feet will ever be dry again.

It’s amazing that I haven’t gotten athletes foot or gangrene.

For that matter, I’m still not convinced that there’s microbes here of any actual size, since there’s still nothing rotting or putrid except for the zombies.

On the other hand, the mushroom are insanely big, so who knows?

Day 281

One of the things I haven’t quite adjusted to here, even after 280 solar days (and change) is the length of the solar day. It’s much shorter than on earth, even shorter than the shop standard year that the company kept. So even though I’ve been here for a long time, I’ve had a lot of time adjusting because night here falls roughly slightly more frequently than a nice sunday when you take a nap at mid afternoon and then have a drink or two at the ballgame and then go back to sleep early. sunburnt and full of hot dogs.

But on the other hand, sky terror birds.

So the last few nights instead of staying awake to get things done — considering that the bulk of what I need to get done is putting in stores of food — I’ve been sleeping when the sun goes down.

So far it’s a lot like taking a nap, with the requisite “nap mouth” and everything.

But on the other hand, I can hear the birds screaming over my house when I doze off, so this is safer than night fishing by far.

Day 280:

I spent the day fishing because I’m low on food.

I’ve noticed some changes lately. The salmon that are running in the waters nearby (at least they look like salmon to me) have changed shape slightly and have a much sharper, more aggressive-looking head. And the cod have changed color slightly, as if the seasons have changed.

And the water itself is, well,  north of here it’s greener than usual, is if there’s been a giant algae bloom somewhere in the water. It makes me worry whether the fish is safe to eat, especially if it seems to be changing as well.

On the other hand, it’s quite possible that the seasons are finally changing here, two hundred and eighty days in. I don’t remember (if I was ever told in the first place) what this rock’s solar year was. So maybe this is fall? Or summer? The temperature hasn’t changed as far as I can tell. (Sometimes it’s hard to tell how warm it is when you’re sitting in the sun all day, just as it’s hard to tell how cool it is if you’re sitting in a cave.

Anyway, the fish are literally swarming, to the point that I can see them, so that’s new. I’m assuming it’s some kind of migration.

Migrations mean food, as everyone who’s ever watched the nature channels on the neural net know, so I’m going to be fishing for the next few days.

Day 279:

I went out late last night to gather eggs from the duckens and there were these… birds? raptors? pterodons?

Something big, and blue, and it flies in flocks.

Also it likes to attack my head.

Whatever they are, they scream like hawks and they tear at your head like owls and personally, I was quite happy with my bird-free existence up to this point. I mean sure, some songbirds would be nice, but if this is my option? I’d opt out.

And of course they didn’t do anything at all to the native fauna – didn’t attack my animals, didn’t fly off with any of the duckens… they were just here for me.

Anyway, they’re dead now. I killed a number of them and the rest caught fire and plummeted to their death when the sun came out. (That’s still baffling, but I’ll go with it.)

My head was bleeding despite my helmet, so it’s time to work on fixing that up a bit.

And I’m thinking I’d rather deal with the zombies and the skeletons and the horror squids, so I’m going back underground as soon as I can.