kirabug's idea files

Day 258:

The first few weeks of training to be a miner, we were taught how to walk.

Specifically, we were taught never ever to put our full weight on a stone we hadn’t tested yet.

Most of this training came in the form of one of the managers or leads hitting us with sticks if they caught us. In fact, any miner at any time in any situation could hit any other miner with the handle of their tool if someone was caught standing with their full weight on an untested rock.

In space, the Company said, we couldn’t necessarily count on rock behaving the same way we thought it did on our home planets. Heck, my team had five people from five different planets (well two planets, two planetesimals, and an asteroid) and we couldn’t count on rock behaving the same way if we went to visit each other for Sunday breakfast.

(Not that we ever did.)

It didn’t take long to learn to test the rock, with a pick, with another rock, with whatever was handy, every time we wanted to step somewhere.

This got us a lot of teasing when we were on leave, because even when we were walking around the neighborhoods where we grew up, we tested the rock, and we looked really goofy doing so.

But this evening when I tested a rock and it fell into a lava pit a few yards below, and I didn’t know about the lava pit or the fact that I was walking on the ceiling of a magma chamber, well, I was glad for good habits.

Day 257:

Heading up again, sort of. So that’s a start.

Day 256:

I am still digging. I bet you’re shocked.

I’m way up in the top of a cavern and trying to dig my way back down, so I can dig back up again in  a more organized manner.

Like not running out of food, or torches, both of which I’ve done.

So I’m also very quietly way up in the cavern hoping that none of the monsters can find me.

And I think I hear lava popping.

For now, I’m going to wall myself in and sleep, and then start digging again in the morning.

Day 255:

It might be just about time for me to take a day off.

I just started laying out the supplies that I need to make more pickaxes, and realized that instead of the bowl of iron ingots I’d meant to grab, I’d grabbed a bowl of eggs.

An egg pickaxe wouldn’t forge very well.

Yes, definitely time for a day off.

Day 254:

One thing I’ve learned here is how important listening is.

You hear a zombie through the wall? Pay attention to how loud it’s getting. If you knock down that wall there’s a good chance you’re getting a face full of zombie on the other side.

Earlier I dug through a wall and discovered two skeletons, two exploding giraffe-corgis, a zombie in gold armor, and a twenty-foot pit  (containing all of the above denizens) that lead to the door to a chamber I’d dug two floors down from where I was currently excavating.

If I had paid attention to the growling sounds, perhaps I may not have fallen into the pit, though. Which would’ve been better.