kirabug's idea files

Day 606:

There’s a reason when you see someone building a new building they’re usually building the stairwells and elevator shafts first, and that’s that you really want those particular things to be rock solid foundations for the rest of the building. They’re like chimneys in all the ways you don’t want them to be, too, which is why you don’t make your staircase out of wood.

Especially if you live on a backwater asteroid in the middle of nowhere where the wildlife tends to explode or catch fire.

So unlike a ladder, which I’ll gladly throw together out of wood because around here a 3 meter fall is called “Tuesday”, building a stairway to the heavens is something I’m willing to take my time on.

And oh frog is it boring.

I mean, every room looks exactly the same, they’re stacked one on top of each other, the most exciting thing you can hope for is some interesting ore. And I’m two floors above where I started and I haven’t even found any decent dirt yet.

Day 605:

The duckens like to block the rails.

I don’t like to kill the duckens, but I don’t mind a hot lunch either. Which is a fancy way of saying that I’ve gotten back to the place that I’m going to dig a stairwell, and I have a nice hot lunch to show for it.

Day 604:

I’ve dug far enough that I spent today extending my rail network so I don’t have to walk as far to get home.

It’s so far from where I usually am that I’m considering adding another mattress out there so that maybe I don’t have to come home every night.

I mean, ok, let’s be honest, I don’t come all the way home to where the duckens and the sheep and the cows and pigs live, every day. I already have a spare bed out about a two hour walk from there because. And another bed that’s close to Bed 2, but about eight floors down, because some days that is also a two hour walk, and it really is uphill. (The inside of the hill.)

So a third bed a two hour walk from Bed 2 would probably be good.

As it is I only go back to “home”, “the farm”, whatever I feel like calling it any given day, every few days to make sure all the animals are still alive and the crops are still growing.

So far so good.

Or when I need fancy tools I’ll head back. Or I want to store something important. The things you use a home for.

I don’t know what to call these other caverns. Camps? If so, this one’s going to be Camp UnderMountain, because I’m pretty sure that’s where I am. And that means I have a whole lot of digging straight up to do.

It’s time to build a stairwell.

Day 603

Killed some rock rats today and managed to save their skins. Why sometimes the bodies fully disintegrate and sometimes they don’t I don’t understand in the least and I’m hoping it’s something simple and not “because the ones that disintegrate put something into the air that will kill you”

Not that “will kill you” isn’t a requirement of this place to begin with.

When I got home I started tanning the skins, something I’m actually pretty good at now. They’re fragile, but I’m thinking that if I poke the tines through a ducken skin (which is thin but surprisingly sturdy, based on my mattresses) then I should be able to do something to attach the ducken skin to some cards (or heck, maybe just wrap it around a brick) and then use that as a carder.

Or I’ll stab myself ten dozen times with the tines and have a giant allergic reaction and die. Hard to tell at this stage.