My life on this alien world had become a very consistent series of activities. Things I do every day that help maintain some semblance of normalcy to my life. First, it was wake up, take care of bodily needs, make sure desalinization device is working, and that there were no pathogens detected that it would have to filter out. Drink water. Make sure food processing device was still functioning, and what the levels of organic fab-stock was at. Make a brick of primary nutrients and then eat it.
After doing my morning ritual, it was time to suit up and then dive into the endless sea around me. This skin-tight survival suit, rated to be habitable in any atmosphere, had become the best friend I ever had. That and the pod’s onboard intelligence that would keep me company as I did my tasks. It was the closest thing I had to a friend here, even though it would only ever give me direct answers. At least it was something that would talk to me.
The sun was out in full. I had made a rule of NEVER working at night. With all the sounds that carried in the water throughout the day, it was a simple rule that I had never broken. This place was terrifying at night. Not from the noises that I could tell what they were, but from the ones that I couldn’t. I could identify the noises that the giant pink and purple sluggish algae-feeding creatures were. They were harmless. They let me get close enough to scan with no problem. They just float along and eat algae. Or there were the noises from the kelp forests. I knew what lurked out there. But there were other noises. Bigger ones. Things that my scanner couldn’t get a read on because they were so far away. Far enough away to not get a possible scan, but loud enough to give me chills. I don’t know what it is from, and I don’t rightly care. It was something to avoid, so I did.
Once I put on the helmet and the survival suit readied to submerge, I dived. The water was so clear and beautiful. It reminded me of the seas back on the world I grew up on. There was a vast plethora of fishes who had gathered around the pod and its anchors. It seems the fast-growing algae had already started to creep in, something I was routinely having to deal with. What’s more, there was also the nutrients from the biological fab-stock that I would dump, and apparently from the mineral fab-stock as well. It meant that every day when I got into the water, there was a bright and beautiful menagerie of colors to greet me. Fish here were so strange. Some of them translucent, some of them bright colors, some of them seemingly polka-dotted, all of them moving with two to four fins.
The fish would move around me as if in greeting. Gotta admit, that part was a little bit cute. But I had a routine to do. I went down and checked the anchors to my escape pod. They were holding. I had gotten lucky in that I was in a shallow part of what appeared to be an endless sea. The bedrock was only 3 meters down. This was a very good thing. At some point, I knew that if I was to ever expand my salvage efforts, I would have to get past my fear of water I couldn’t see to the bottom of. I knew that my suit could dive to insane depths because of the nano-mesh that protected my body from pressure changes. But the noises out there. It was terrifying.
After checking the anchors, I went over to what I was calling the Garden, to see if there was enough material to harvest. The plant life on this planet grows fast. Incredibly fast. It was perfect for feeding into the fab-stock. I could cut it and fill up my container and then take it to the fab to break down and add to the fab-stock. I also decided that I would get more rocks and other mineral material for the mineral fab-stock. It was getting low, and if I needed to create tools or repairs, it would be essential.
Watching my air was always the tricky part. Each full tank would last me for just under an hour, so it wasn’t like I was in immediate danger, but it was still a risk. Especially since the most dangerous creatures in the reef were in the caves. One pierce of those four-armed crabs claws could break a bone, pierce flesh and draw in predators from the kelp forest, or damage my equipment. That, more than anything else, was the biggest risk. But I had gotten good at knowing their travel routes and where they were holed up, waiting for prey to come in. Now that I had a knife, it made it easier to defend myself as well. Most of the ones I came across knew that I had teeth and wasn’t above cutting off a claw to show I mean business, so they kept their distance.
After loading up a large amount of stones into my carrying container, I hauled it back to the pod’s fab unit to break down and integrate into the fab-stock. It was exhausting work. By the time it was done, it was just past midday, so I decided to drink more water and eat my nutrition block for lunch. I was getting tired of these things. The jokes about it being Lembas Bread stopped being funny when there was no one to laugh at it about. The loneliness was starting to become the hardest part. The onboard intelligence would never hold a conversation with me.
Once that part was done, I decided to get back to a job that I had originally been tasked with – scanning. I was contracted with the RSI to get scanning data on the planet that I was originally being sent to. I would have gotten paid for each scan that I got, the juicier it was, the more I would get. Since that was the job I knew, I figured that I would do it as much as possible. Assuming that someone ever comes here and finds the remains of this place, they could get my scanning data. Would make somebody very happy.
I had resigned myself to the reality that I was never getting off this planet. I would do all I could to survive, but eventually either the elements or local fauna or something else would end me. If there was a command crew somewhere, they were so far from me that it didn’t matter. I had exhausted the wreckage I found in my immediate vicinity, so I was stuck with the tools I had, unless I wanted to be insane enough to venture further out. Fear nipped at me so hard, but I knew that I had to conquer it. I was brave. I was strong. Stronger than this. But it was still terrifying. I had never been known for my bravery, but it was something that was getting better.
Today I decided that I would venture into the kelp forests again. I had been watching, observing, getting data, and had learned the patterns of the things in that forest that frightened me. Half-plesiosaur, half-alligator, they stalked the kelp forests, catching prey that was unaware. However, they never left them. For whatever reason, they were also very reticent to leave their help haven. I found that strange, but comforting. Still, they were consistent. I was able to conclude that they do the bulk of their hunting at night. Why? Because it seemed like during the day, they would drift along. That wasn’t to say that they weren’t on the lookout for an easy meal, but it wasn’t their preferred time to hunt. Probably because, with their dappled white and black skin, they stood out way too much.
This planet has no moon, so when it was night-time, it becomes so dark underwater that it is terrifying. All my fears of water come to the forefront as I am down there having to repair something and hear noises at night. Sure, my suit lights up, but that drains the internal batteries and must look like a beacon in the night for anything curious enough to come say hello in the gloom.
I took the pack to load up on any good biological scans I could get who could be added to the fab-stock as new elements to open up new creation opportunities. The journey only took about half an hour. Boy, if nothing else, I could say that my time being much weaker than other people was gone. In the 23 days I had been here, my muscle had gone up exponentially. Watching my body get more buff was kind of awesome.
Once I reached the forest, I took out my scanner and got a read on my immediate area. Seems that none of the fearsome predators of the kelp were out and about. This was the best chance I was ever going to get. I gently swam in. Now that I was brave enough to look around more thoroughly, there was a lot to see. The first thing to scan was the kelp itself. The structure of it was amazing. Fast-growing, but also very strong. The fibrous tissue making up the structure was durable. This had potential. I cut off the base of one of the leaves and put it in the pouch. It had to be added to the fab-stock. Once scanned in, I could make it from the fab material at any time.
There were also these pods that reminded me of octopus eggs hanging from big bundles on some of the arms of the kelp stalks. These were no eggs, though. Indeed, they were filled with a kind of syrup-y material that held a great deal of vitamins. This could be good, because one of the things that I needed was to increase the vitamin intake to ward off scurvy. I put several of those in my pack.
I also got to scan a kind of fish that traveled in schools through the forest, eating the fast-growing kelp quite voraciously. Very nice! I knew that there would have to be a food chain here that would keep the natural growth of its plant life in check. Otherwise it would be out of control. It explained the size of the fish too. The big purple six-eyed sea cows were easily as large as their terrestrial counter-parts, floating along eating nothing but algae. Today’s fish were streamline-made to move quickly and efficiently through the kelp forest. They were green like it too, for blending in.
At the base of the tower was a species I can only describe as a sea slug with tube feet. They were eating the fallen kelp stalks. Everything goes back to nature. Not a single mammal I had seen. No surprise. How could creatures with fur evolve on a planet which I am convinced is entirely covered in water?
Motion detectors showed that something was on the move. Big enough to get my attention. Looking up, I saw the evening sky colors out. Time to move! Without trying to show panic, I swam out of the kelp forest and back towards the pod. It was nice that the HUD on this helmet always kept a firm fix on its position, so I was never lost. It was like my compass point. My central magnetic north, as it were.
Shadows were passing above. I was staying low, to avoid prying eyes. It was unnerving. The hunters of this forest are easily the size of the average alligator. What they were hunting in this place that got them to that size, I figured it was something I hadn’t seen before. Maybe the sea cows? Just a hypothesis, but with no evidence. Bad science, really. Not enough data to be conclusive.
Finally, I got free of the kelp forest and began my swim home. It wasn’t that far.
The sun was getting low into the sky as I put the new biological material into the fab to deconstruct to add into the organic fab-stock. I had also found some titanium metal deposits! This was good. If ever I needed repairs, you couldn’t get much better than that. Now I could add that into the mineral fab-stock and it would be able to make repair parts much stronger. All-in-all, a good day.
I decided to eat my dinner nutrition block on the top of the pod. Sunsets on this world were glorious. Absolutely glorious. A place I would have loved to take Jean on a date. A nice thought, that was a thousand worlds away. Getting out of my suit was starting to feel like peeling off a layer of skin. I had become so accustomed to being in it that not being in it was always strange. It meant that I was sitting on my pod naked, but what did I care? The weather here was tropical, and there was literally nobody around to judge me. Since there were no dangerous pathogens detected in the water around my pod, I will admit that I sometimes swim naked around the pod, to clean myself. The suit gets wet, but what’s underneath only gets perspiration from exertion, no sea water. It felt so refreshing and naughty to be doing this.
Afterwards, I laid out on the top of the pod, watching the sun fall below the horizon as I looked at the setting sun. While this planet had no moon, it did have a binary orbit with another world, but one that was so far away that it would only occasionally eclipse the sun. This was a strange place, but beautiful in its way.
Laying there, wet hair that was getting long enough that I would have to deal with it at some point, I thought about my situation. I had to start thinking long term about survival. There was no way around it – I had to start going out further. I had no choice. Far down the horizon, there were the lights of the still-burning crashed vessel that had followed me down to the surface. That place was a gold-mine of potential tech for me to use. Not to mention, I was getting strange readings from it. Ones that were more than a little concerning. If their core was at risk of melting down, the damage to this planet and to my immediate area was unthinkable. I’m not an engineer, but I knew enough to know that something had to be done.
What’s more, there were other things in that crash or nearby that could be useful. I know for a fact that the ship had tiny submersible vehicles. A one-man sub that could charge with solar energy. Such a thing would be invaluable to my work! It would mean I could get around quicker, safer, and not have to concern myself with keeping a floating security case around for keeping things in for resupply. There could also be blue-prints for other things. My mineral fab-stock was very full. I could do some building, if I get the blue-prints for tech I need. There’s copper, steel, and now titanium in the fab-stock database, so it can generate it from what’s in there now.
But there was another thing that I could hope beyond all hope was there – a function bridge. If the bridge was intact, then I could be able to get a distress signal off planet. The pod’s distress beacon was active, but how much could that possibly help? We at at the Frontier of RSI’s claim to this space. The ship, on the other hand, would have a much more powerful beacon. There was no choice. I had to risk it. My hands started shaking thinking of going out there, past the drop-off to deeper water. Towards the noises that frighten me. But if I ever wanted to see the woman I love again, there was no choice.
Just then, there was a light above me. A lance of brilliant, beautiful blue that was passing in the sky above. It was so bright that it painted all of the world around me in its color. Beautiful! I took out my scanner and captured an image. This wouldn’t be worth any funds, but it was too amazing for me not to capture. A comet of some kind, or maybe a meteor big enough to actually hit this world. It was headed in the direction of the fading light at the edge of the horizon, and was magical to see. I couldn’t get enough of it. Sitting there, the cooling night air, my body air drying, I felt a sudden surge of bravery that I hadn’t felt before. It was a very nice feeling.
Tomorrow, I was going to load up my security case, then begin my journey out to deeper water. I remember seeing crashed wreckage past the drop-off, like a whole section of the ship. That was my first destination. I didn’t delude myself into thinking I was getting off this world, but at the very least, I would be able to survive easier. That was a victory enough.
Until next time, a quote,
“Hope brings organic lifeforms comfort in times of uncertainty. We…admire the concept.” – Legion, Mass Effect 3
Peace out,
Maverick
Lucien Maverick's Den 