Category: One Among the Dead

Day 114:

So back in the day, before we’d gotten terraforming space right, we got it wrong a lot.

A LOT.

Humans would take an ordinary dead planet (there are thousands of those in the galaxy alone) and load it with machinery that could change the air temperature and the environment to be hospitable to oxygen-breathing life. They’d literally create all the things life needed – air and water vapor and rain and in some cases mountains and oceans  using these fission/fusion creation things that some physicist came up with and, over the course of about 10 years, do what only ten billion years and a couple dozen comets could’ve done naturally.

They’d seed the planets with genetically modified organisms specifically designed to live in that host environment. Sometimes they started with microorganisms and we ended up a few dozen years of human-enhanced evolution later with sentient arachnid-like creatures and bipedal cows and really really angry corvids, all of whom are now members of the League of Planets, I might add.

Or they’d start with just  a few dozen fully-developed animals and put them on the planet as “starter farms” for communities that had outgrown their current habitations.

Some of the experimental planets were government research and exploration funded, but many were self-funded communities or corporations. Some were attempts to get away from it all. Some were attempts to start over and “do humanity right this time”. And some were giant land-grabs with the intention of mining resources or producing crops or animals or the like.

Thing is, most of these early experiments were unlivable. Some went geologically unstable. Others were ravaged by a mistake in the genetics or a disease no one had anticipated. A few were even destroyed because existing life, undetected by the scouting teams, took even stronger root in better living conditions and killed the transplants.

Anyway, all this to say that I got back from my long-ass digging expedition the past few days and suddenly realized all my cows have the exact same markings.

Exact. Same.

I compared them to the wild cows out in the field and they have the exact same markings too.

Now, there’s a lot of ways that two cows can mix up some cow DNA and they will never get a perfect match for either parent. There’s even been studies on how cloning might accomplish the goals, but even when an animal is cloned there’s no guarantee that environmental stuff isn’t going to impact coloration.

So the only way I know of that every cow on this planet could look identical is if some very heavy duty genetic manipulation was taking place. It certainly doesn’t align with any of the biodiversity research or population research that we learned in school. And it’s not like these cows need the coloration to blend into their environment like, say zebras (although even zebras are all different if I remember correctly.) They’re brown cows on green fields.

I knew this planet was odd because the animals explode. I knew it had some kind of history because I keep pulling shoes out of the river when I fish. But now I think I might be living on a failed terraforming experiment.

I don’t know what that means except that I’m almost out of light for writing tonight, so I’m going to sleep on it.

Day 113:

Once upon a time a woman on the planet of Serendipity followed a vein of ore until it came out in a big cavernous area right near the surface. She mined all the ore, and then realized as the night fell that there were not one, but two different gaping holes in the ceiling of her cavern where the monsters could come through. 

There was no way to reach safety immediately. If there were any horrible creatures lurking above, they would have immediate access to her, and likely tear her to pieces.

She braced herself for the spiders, but the spider did not come.

She braced herself for the zombies, but the zombies did not come.

She hoped beyond hope that the horror squids that walk through walls would not come, and lo, they did not. And she was grateful.

But the exploding giraffe corgis, they came.

Not one, not two, but three giraffe corgis, in succession, as if there were some giraffe corgi queue in the ceiling and a giraffe corgi traffic cop was ensuring that they each gave enough time for the exploder in front of them to clear the way before they exploded.

Three times our hero fended off the horrible beasts.

Three times the flockers blew up anyway.

But three times our hero stayed out of the blast radius and had only broken glass and destroyed fragments of torches and a few shattered blocks of stone to clear.

The moral of the story is “build a watch so you can clear out before night time” but I have nothing to build with. If I had more gold I might manage – it’s soft enough for me to shape and carve.

It’s one more project for the list, and one more in a succession of interesting bruises I should probably start sketching for posterity.

Day 112:

It’s the kind of day where I tried to wave some dust out of my face and instead poked myself in the eye with my thumb.

I’m going to bed.

Day 111:

Some days I swear all I have to do is cross a threshold underground and there’s a horror squid waiting for me. Today’s bruised me up pretty badly, and wrecked some of my stuff, but I eventually beat him.

I think I need to build better weapons, but out of what? I have found exactly two metals out here, and that’s iron and gold. (The chunk of gold I found today. It’s a pretty sizable nugget, but has a lot of other crap rock mixed into it, so it’s not exactly a high quality. And for all I’ve been digging, it’s an indication of the scarcity of gold that it’s taken me this long to find some.)

It’s not much of a surprise that this little planet isn’t metal-rich. If it was loaded with heavy metals it probably would’ve drawn more debris in during its formation and the planet would’ve been bigger. The benefits of the planet’s size and lack of heavy metals is that gravity isn’t nearly as strong as it would be on, say, earth, where most of these explosions would’ve been a lot more deadly as they threw me into their.

Either way I’d like to get rid of the squid. And maybe make a mirror somehow. I’m sure this is a hell of a shiner on my left eye but I’ve got no way to take a look at it.

Day 110: More singing

Here’s an old one I’ve been singing.

Some blues are just blues, mine are the miner’s blues.
Some blues are just blues, mine are the miner’s blues.
My troubles are coming by threes and by twos.

Blues and more blues, it’s that coal black blues.
Blues and more blues, it’s that coal black blues.
Got coal in my hair, got coal in my shoes.

These blues are so blue, they are the coal black blues.
These blues are so blue, they are the coal black blues.
For my place will cave in, and my life I will lose.

You say they are blues, these old miner’s blues.
You say they are blues, these old miner’s blues.
Now I must have sharpened these picks that I use.

I’m out with these blues, dirty coal black blues.
I’m out with these blues, dirty coal black blues.
We’ll get attacked by squid tomorrow with the coal miner’s blues.

***

Not everything I’ve been mining has been coal, obviously, but it still seems fitting. It’s dated way back, to before the last calendar change, probably a few hundred years ago.