kirabug's idea files

Day 290:

Spent the day making paper because I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my handwriting is pretty big and it takes up most of the page on these little sheets I make.

I’d make bigger sheets but that means trying to make bigger frames, and honestly the paper rips most of the time when I make it on the little frames. It’s not easy to get a pulpy substance to congeal into a papery substance without things like, say,  wire mesh.

Huh, I wonder if I could use those weird wings those killer night birds have to do it.

That would require being outside with the killer night birds, though, and honestly I think I’d rather take on the horror squid.

Speaking of which, they’ve been pretty prevalent in the caverns I’ve been mining lately, It is not coincidental that I’m taking a day or so topside to do some housekeeping kinds of tasks. Horror squids are nasty nasty creatures.

I’m still trying to figure out if I can boil down the liquid from the cane and turn it into sugar. Maybe that’ll be the other half of my work tomorrow. Some candied carrots would be a nice change.

 

Day 289:

There’s no salad makings here.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not the “gallon of iceberg lettuce with CO₂-ripened tomatoes and ranch dressing” type. No, I’m definitely more the “bring me your finest platter of meats and potatoes” type.

I kind of have to be. Even before landing on this forsaken rock, I was burning thousands and thousands of calories a day mining and hauling back supplies. The inertia dampeners and power suits can only do so much, and even when they’re running at their best I still have to bend or lift or swing a pickaxe a few hundred times a day to get anything done.

But, well. I have bamboo. I have potatoes. I have carrots. I have a wheat-like grass. And I have some pumpkin-like gourds that I could swear look like someone carved into jack o’lanterns while they were still on the vine.

And those are all heavy-carb heavy-starch kinds of veggies.

There are no lettuces, no cabbages, no tomatoes. No grapes, no pomegranates, no oranges, no peppers. Heck, I don’t even have the semi-starchy vegetables like broccoli or cauliflower. It’s either all-starch or go home hungry.

And I could do with a good glass of OJ or maybe a mixed greens salad, is what I’m saying.

I never thought I’d miss it.

Dug holes. Climbed out of holes. Occasionally got lost. Tired, don’t feel like writing. Almost out of ink. Guess I need to go kill another squid.

Day 287:

Not much going on today. Digging.

Looking back through my notes it doesn’t look like I’ve talked about the duckens’ hatching problems.

Or rather the weirdness of them.

See, all the animals here — except me, obviously — mate as soon as you feed them. What they eat seems to vary by species. The cows prefer hay, the duckens prefer wheat seed, and the pigs seem fond of potatoes or carrots.

And as I’ve mentioned there’s some kind of weird time compression. Or weird biology. Because within seconds of eating and then mating, they give birth to one and exactly one baby, alive, small, but fully formed. None of this eyes-closed-for-the-first-two-weeks nonsense for them!

So, that’s a thing, and it applies even to the duckens.

Except, well, the duckens lay a lot of eggs. So many that I trip on them regularly. (I mean, there are some places in my compound now that probably have a few hundred duckens in a room. Being frustrated at them, I threw one the other day… and out popped a baby ducken. Fully formed, and just as healthy as if they had been “born” the “natural” way.

So I’ve made it a habit to throw extra eggs. If they hatch, more duckens. If they don’t hatch, they don’t even leave a mess on the walls, which puzzles the heck out of me. Because if I crack one on the side of a bowl, I definitely get egg.

Honestly, I need an engineer, a biologist, and a physicist on this compulsory trip so badly.

Day 286:

I dug up and out of my current mining area. (Yes, I was chasing a vein of ore at the time. Yes I do remember what I said yesterday. No I don’t regret it.)

Anyway, it was nice to be out in the sun. And I knew exactly where I was when I came up.

I was about 100 yards from my front door.

I’ve been digging for days and I’ve made it less of a distance than my pigs wander when they’re hungry.

Perhaps I really do need to focus a bit.