Author: kirabug

Day 471:

No rock rats today, small lime gelatin slime cubes instead.

The thing is, at least the slime cubes are cute, in a non-mammal kind of way. The rock rats look more like rock lobsters and are definitely not cute.

Of course there’s no guarantee they’re even quasi-mammalian either.

For that matter, so far, only cows give milk. I might see different evidence of that phenomenon when I actually have two sheep. But the pigs don’t seem to give milk and they don’t nurse their young. (I’ve never seen a cow nurse here either but I’m trying not to dwell on what the milk is if it isn’t milk. It tastes like milk.)

Day 470:

Have dug up gold ore, rusty-looking iron ore, sparky red rock, creepy blue rock, the usual white, grey, and granite red rocks, and a tiny bit of diamond. I think I’m missing green rocks. (Emeralds I guess? They’re the only green rocks I’ve seen here) to complete the color scheme.

It would be easier to dig if the rock rats would stop jumping into the holes I’m actively digging out of. I’m trying to dig steps and suddenly there’s a rock rat on my head.

The sun’s not even down yet and I’m exhausted. I threw a bunch of seed and hay out the door for the animals and told them to figure it out themselves, I’m going to bed.

Day 469:

Utterly boring day except when I was being attacked by rock rats – then it was a bit like having my hair set on fire. Long stretches of quiet punctuated by small creatures trying to murder me. That bit of the brain in charge of survival? The hindbrain? Utterly exhausted and even though I’m back safe in my own bed (for some definition of “safe”) convinced we’re going to be eaten by rock rats any minute.

Day 468:

Did you ever hear the old joke about the road painter? He was hired to paint lines onto the terrestrial roads on old Earth. The first day he did five miles… the second day he did two miles… the third day he did less than a mile. His boss said to him, “what’s up, you did so well the first day?” and he said “well you know I’m getting further and further away from that paint can…”

That’s most of what you need to know about my current mining operation except that I’m heading out to the furthest point every day and digging in. So in theory I should be bringing more and more ore in every day.

In practice, I’m carrying so many tools out into the field with me just so I don’t have to come back for them that I spend a lot of time with only enough left in my pack for a little ore… which means I have to run back and forth more often until my tools wear out and need to be thrown away.

I think that’s another argument for possibly switching to diamond tools.

Or for building another base, but that seems like work.

Day 467: things seem more coherent today than they did a few days ago. I’m going to chalk it up to something in the caves. Maybe bad fumes, maybe rock rats. Maybe exploding giraffe corgis knocked me out and I don’t remember.

Idiot (my current “pet” ducken) refuses to leave my bedroom except to swim in my makeshift bathtub. If he was a good canary I’d have him down in the mines with me.

On the other hand, there’s no guarantee that what affects my breathing would affect any of the natives here anyway. I don’t even know that they’re breathing oxygen – they may be breathing carbon dioxide or nitrogen or helium.

Well probably not helium or they’d be squeakier zombies.