kirabug's idea files

Day 319:

Most of the things here have very sharp edges to them, as if they all want to grow to be squares or rhombuses instead of ovals or fractals the way they were where I grew up.

Now I sound like an old interstellar miner. “Back in my day, plants knew to grow round so they got the most sun”. But that was on a planet where the tilt of the axis meant the sun changed location in the sky regularly. Here there’s no tilt, and no seasons, so maybe it makes sense for things to grow more flat.

Anyway, that makes creating wheels harder because when you’re growing almost-perfectly round trees, you cut a slice out of the middle and you’ve got almost-perfectly round wheels.

I’ve tried to cut the corners off the plants here but the wood tends to fracture and split along the grain both lengthwise and width-wise. It makes it easier to cut playing dice but not so great for wheels.

Day 318:

After thinking way too much about the reanimated material in my water supply overnight and into the day, I think I’m going to have to experiment with my own waster filters.

I mean, yeah, as far as I know, I don’t have a ten-foot tapeworm, but since I’m not sure how to tell, I’m just going to assume I’ve probably got parasites by now.

(Then again, as previously mentioned, there don’t seem to be bugs here and things don’t seem to rot. It’s like we totally skipped those sections of the taxonomic tree. Somehow we got mushrooms the size of small apartment complexes, but no bugs. So maybe no parasites? One can only hope… and wonder how one’s own gut bacteria are doing.)

(Oh heck I bet every time I go to the bathroom I’m exposing this environment to gut bacteria, which means if there really weren’t any bacteria before I’ve just colonized the whole planet. Whee! That’s worth jail time.)

Anyway, I have pitchers I made out of clay and I have charcoal so conceivably I can figure out how to make a charcoal filter…. but I’m not sure how since I don’t have any woven cloth or cheesecloth or anything like that to use as filter material.

Also I don’t actually know how they work.

Also charcoal doesn’t taste very good and I don’t want it in my water.

I miss vending machines.

Day 317:

I really should go topside soon and see what’s up there. See, I dug through the ceiling (again) and flooded the cave I was in…. but the water wasn’t the nice clear blue color of the bay area. It was kind of a brackish green with icky bits floating in it.

I can’t tell if I’m under some kind of swamp or if someone threw some zombies into a blender.

And now it occurs to me that I’m probably drinking zombie bits in my drinking water and now I am totally squicked out. So it’s bedtime.

Day 316:

I’m still digging toward the sheep. That’s progress moving forward.

I’ve given myself a bit of a challenge though because apparently I was digging below this area before, and so I’m trying to build in space that’s been structurally compromised.

By “structurally compromised” I mean “one wrong move and I fall down a hole”.

Being the klutz I am, I’ve already fallen a couple of times, but nothing too serious. Still, that headache I got from the explosions the other day hasn’t quite faded, so I’m taking it slow and trying hard to pay attention to what I’m doing.

So yeah, by the time I get back to my cave, I’m exhausted. I figure I have about five minutes when I’m done writing this sentence until I fall asleep.