Day 30
I fished all day.
When I was a kid, there were days when Grandpa and I would just go out for hours in the afternoon, fishing the cleaner creeks and streams in our area. We’d just stand on the shore, under a tree, or maybe sit if there was a grassy spot. We’d talk, figure things out, or maybe not talk. Sometimes we spent our whole time out there just cleaning up the shore. People are pigs, you know. Other times, we caught sunnfries and troutlets and doublebass to take home and clean and eat. (Well, the sunnfries not so much.)
The point is, I can think when I’m fishing. And I’ve got a lot to think about, standing on the shore here after 30 days of pure hell. I still don’t know what happened that left me here. It’s crossed my mind that since The Company didn’t pick me up, I may never know what happened.
I may be stuck here for the rest of my life.
I’m surrounded by exploding camouflage giraffe corgis, mind, so “the rest of my life” might be the next few hours if I don’t get that hole in the back of the cave sealed up soon.
My death might be walking through the walls below me even as I write this.
Anyway, the point is I can’t sit around waiting for someone or something to save me.
I’ve got to assume that somewhere on this tiny rock there’s some kind of society, because if it was fully uninhabited we wouldn’t have done our initial drop at night because we wouldn’t have needed to sneak in.
So now I have to figure out where there might be people, and head that way. But that also means I have to plan carefully because coddamn it, every flocking thing on this planet except the cows could kill me. It’s like the old stories of Old Earth’s Australia wildlife but with exploding brown snakes.
I’ve decided that I’ll start tomorrow by tunneling down as deep as I can go, to see if I can find more iron ore. That’s probably at least a few days to a week of work, but I can’t risk being out in the middle of a field when some screaming land squid decides to have me for lunch. I need protection, and I need tools.
At least this compound’s pretty safe. I have fresh water, I have food, I even have a cow to hug. Things could be worse.
I fished all day, then I cleaned my catch and started drying it.
I’ll find a city here somewhere, then I’ll find my own way home.
