word mining central
Day 21:
The veins of valuable stone that I was chasing through the mine seem to have mostly dried up. Not much else to do but wait, so I’m shaping out some of the cave walls into more rooms so at least it looks nicer.
Might confuse some archaeologist some day too.
Day 20:
Just when I thought I had seen it all, I was attacked by the weirdest creature I’ve seen on this planet yet. If challenged to describe it in human terms, it was a squid. But this planet seems to have squid already – I can see them out in the water sometimes when I fish.
And those squid look like squid – multiple tentacles, mouth at the bottom, etc. etc. Whereas the horror squid was easily 10 feet tall, thin, black, and walking on the very tips of its multiple appendages. Also, two of those appendages were up high like arms.
And the noise! It was like someone was trying to tune an electric guitar with a cat. It hovered in my basement and made belching noises until, I don’t know, I got too close or something. Then it flat-out attacked me as if I was the worst thing it’d ever seen and I was sure I was a goner, probably to be eaten. It knocked me out.
When I came to, I was outside my house. I don’t know why it dragged me out and dropped me, but I’m not overly happy about it.
I went back inside my house and it was still in the basement, rooting through my stuff! I grabbed my stone sword and just pounded the heck out of it, eventually killing it. Unfortunately, like all the other unfriendly fauna here, it just exploded into dust. (The friendly fauna, like chickens, leave you a body behind to pluck and clean and eat.)
After killing the horror squid I realized that my food supplies were really low, so I spent the rest of the day fishing, thanks to some silk line a spider had dropped a few days ago. (Maybe something else ate the spider? Before I would have said that nothing could eat the great black pony spider, but having met the horror squid, I could be very very wrong.)
I caught another pair of boots and a very damaged bow, which strengthens my belief that the sea I’m fishing in happens to be over someone else’s garbage dump or shoe store or something.
Man, that horror squid really shook me up. I’m even dreaming about its horrible belching noises and its catgut guitar scream.
Day 19:
I was sent down here to mine, but I seem to spend more time on the surface than deep into the ground.
Sometimes it’s defensive; a spider climbed over the fence and attacked, so I had to kill it. The good news is I succeeded. The bad news is that I killed one of my chickens accidentally in the process.
Sometimes, it’s things like feeding the chickens (so that I now have a bunch of chicks) or gathering their eggs, or feeding the cows (so now I have more cows).
Sometimes, it’s chopping down trees so I can make fences so I have more space for the chickens and the cows.
None of this seems to involve digging up rock.
It’s making me think a lot about my ancestors, way back while we were still on the first Earth. The story goes that this is how they had to live before people invented robots and machines to do all the farming. It’s a lot of work, and it’s kind of crazy.
But I’m alive. I haven’t been killed by the spiders or the giraffe-corgis or the green zombie hominids or the skeletal archer thingamajigs. (I’m still not convinced they’re not robots of some sort.) I haven’t starved to death or broken any bones falling in a cave. So if I’m getting subpar digging done, well, there are worse things.
One other note: I saw a human today, a woman I think, dressed all in purple, a few hundred yards out from my house. I would have called out to her, but there was a pony spider between us and I didn’t want to alert the spider to either myself or her. Turning wild beasts onto the neighbors isn’t generally considered polite. By the time I got rid of the spider problem, the woman was gone.
She had a hell of an eerie laugh though. Almost a cackle.
Day 18:
Woke up, headed down into the basement to do more mining, almost got blown up by a hideous green thing right there about 200 feet from where I was walking.
The good news is I’m starting to learn their pace and if I can draw them away from my work area they don’t blow up my stuff.
The bad news is that usually I still get hit by the shockwave, and I’m pretty sure that can’t be good for my internal organs. Or any of the rest of me.
I’m hoping that the rock I’m using is the cheapest, so that when The Company comes for me, they don’t feel compelled to tear the walls down. This is a lot of work to do to have it wrecked, even if it is a temporary thing.
Later in the day I went out to chop down some trees. That sounds horrible when I put it like that, and it’s strictly against Company policy. On the other hand, the wood here is thick and solid and makes a good fence. It seems the easiest way for me to catch a horse is just going to be to install a fence around one. They don’t seem to run away from me, but they yell a lot if I try to ride them. If I fence a couple in, at least I can slowly train them, I hope, instead of trying to train different horses every day based on who happens to be grazing in the area.
I’m lonely. I go out and hug the cows pretty frequently, but I’d like to have someone to talk to that isn’t a chicken.
I’m starting to sketch more, or take more time with my sketches. I’m not claiming to remember anything at all from high school art class, but, well, it’s better than a quick line drawing. Plus, I’ve figured out how to make something a little like watercolors out of the local mud for brown, and some of the flowers for colors. Not much to go on here, but better than a plain journal I guess.
ps. Just watched a chicken push a cow across the porch, so we know who’s in charge around here. Ain’t me. Ain’t the cow either.
Day 17:
I fished for so long today that my fishing rod wore out. I guess I’ll have to kill another spider soon, since I haven’t found any other rope-like substances in the area.
I pulled up another pair of boots.
Maybe I’m fishing over an old abandoned shoe store.
I also dug up some sand to use to make glass. My cave is nice as caves go, the bed doesn’t stink nearly as much as it did, but even with all the torches I’ve lit it’s kind of gloomy.
It’s also hard to tell when the neighbors have stopped by to murder you if you can’t see out the windows. LOOKING AT YOU, CORGI-GIRAFFE-BOMB CREATURE.
I fed my cows, and they immediately produced a baby cow. I fed my chickens and they produced a baby chicken. Somehow on this planet, the native life got the idea that “hungry” and “horny” are the same thing.
I have to wonder what kind of external environmental pressures had to be on creatures to cause them to use any extra calories they receive to immediately spawn and develop and birth a baby creature.
I’m guessing it’s because it was the only way they could breed fast enough to survive the giraffe-bombs.
