kirabug's idea files

Day 234:

Discovered the hard way that there is such a thing as diving too deep here, especially if one is harvesting sand. There’s some kind of undercurrent that forms if you take too much of the seafloor away, and it pulls down on your body while you’re trying to swim back to the surface.

The water is not for breathing, it seems.

I should probably just be grateful it’s water and not liquid methane or some other horribleness that so many of the planetesimals I’ve  cleared over the years have been filled with. But really, it’s hard to be grateful when you’re coughing it up.

Here’s hoping the water isn’t filled with lung-eating parasites.

Day 233:

I’ve decided I’m staying topside until I’ve harvested all the sand from the immediate area.

1. I won’t have to come back for sand in a while.
2. I’ll know not to come back here for any more sand.
3. If there are any more pigs around, being topside has a much higher chance of catching them than being underground
4. this whole “seeing the sun” thing kind of feels nice. I don’t know if I was running low on  vitamin D or what, but sunlight is definitely better than no sunlight.

The Company gave us supplements for vitamin D and a bunch of other vitamins directly in our food rations, so we didn’t have to think about them much. Since food rations were directly correlated with metabolism, which was being measured by our mining uniforms at all times, that was pretty easy.

Now I do things like “I feel sad. When was the last time I saw the sun?” and “my skin is kind of orange, maybe it’s time to lay off the carrots” to control my vitamins and minerals.

As for volume of food, I’ve gotten so skinny over the past few weeks that even the clothes I’ve made since I arrived don’t fit right.

I’m eating a lot of fish sandwiches right now and they still taste delicious, which I think is my body’s way of saying, “yo, you’re malnourished”. So I’m going to keep eating until I finally get sick of them, and keep bringing in sand until I run out.

Here’s to a fatter, happier me hauling glass into the caverns sometime in the future.

Day 232:

Not much to report today. Harvested sand, hauled sand home, drained sand, melted sand, dried off next to the furnace.

Found some good supplies of clay. I’ve been making bricks but i haven’t decided what to use them for yet. Maybe I’ll build a castle. (A castle made of brick is doomed around these exploding jerks, but hey, a woman can dream.)

The pig seems happy. He grunts outside the back door and occasionally I give him carrots.

Killed three zombies and two skeletons today. Low total but they were busy setting themselves on fire for coming out between the trees, so it was hard to get a clean shot before they died on their own anyway.

Feels like a Tuesday. No idea if it is, but that’s what it feels like.

Day 231: I caught the pig! It’s in my back yard right now!

I was eating a carrot at lunch, between sand-gathering dives, and the pig walked right up to me as if to say, “Hello, human, may I partake of your carrot?”

So of course I lured it right into my fenced in yard with the carrot… and yes, I also gave it a carrot, which made it grunt happily.

It grunts a lot and seems to be able to balance on the top of the fence using its head, which is a bit disturbing. But I’m pretty sure it can’t escape.

I’m dreaming of bacon and pork chops and more bacon and pork tenderloin…

and then I’m realizing this pig weighs a fat ton and should I decide to butcher it, I’m going to be carrying a lot of pig up and down the steps into the cold cellar below my main living space.

Plus, the pig is kind of cute and if I’m not careful I’m going to name it and then I won’t want to eat it anymore.

Sand harvesting continue apace.

Day 230:

While wandering a nearby island to the north, I came across another pig. And this time I’m sure, this is an honest-to-cod actual pig, with curly tail and oinking and the whole bit.

Which only strengthens my belief, by the way, that this whole planetoid is nothing but a failed and abandoned terraforming site because I have pigs but no butterflies and only an idiot would try to terraform a planet with no pollinators.

Even I, a girl whose family hails from the sticks of Old Earth, know you need pollinators to survive.

Anyway, now I’m trying to figure out how I can lure the pig into my fenced-in field. Because pigs are smart and big and good eating. Probably easier to harness a pig on this danged rock than a horse.

Oh and I got a few loads of sand in and I’m freezing cold, but the furnace is roasting the glass and rapidly drying my soaked clothes, so that’s a good end to the day. Having roast fish and carrot sliders for dinner tonight.