Boredom was dangerous but unavoidable for Dae. She sat waiting for something to happen, someone to contact her. She hardly left for food or water. Her mind began to wander. She ran out of witty comments to Karen's usual quips about monitoring her health. She toyed with the fabricator flipping through the different pre-downloaded blueprints looking for anything interesting. She swam ignoring the unpleasant feeling of her hair constantly crusted with salt and tangled beyond all belief.

More days passed and the radio stayed infuriatingly silent. She had to do something to distract herself. Dae could feel herself withering away. Each silent moment prickling at her senses and tearing at the seams of her sanity. She had stopped talking to Karen. Stopped talking to herself.

Dae pushed herself out of Henry squinting at the natural light. It took her a minute but she sighed and plopped herself without fanfare into the teeming waters below. The animals swirled around her brushing against her curiously, not knowing to fear the small human. She swam about and after a minute or two of looking she swam closer to one of the mushrooms that dotted the seabed. She tugged a few up turning them this way and that. She knew they glowed at night, but so did literally everything else on this planet.

She lightly touched the ripe feeling flesh of the plant. Dae grabbed a few more and swam back to the pod.

"Well," she began but immediately had to clear her throat as her voice had become slightly rusty. "Well, I don't mind mushrooms. Just gotta know they're not poisonous." She mumbled putting a mushroom underneath the Fabricator's scanners. There was a moment of silence but no edible options popped up.

"Karen, pull up the information for this species of flora."

"This particular species of flora has exceptional acidic properties." She froze looking at the little mushroom. It was acidic somehow. "Consummation is ill advised."

"Oh, well that's just great." She mumbled grumpily. "Karen, rename flora species."

"System ready."

"Acid Mushroom."

"Confirmed."

With the mushrooms not showing any promise for a more varied diet Dae swam around outside in the increasingly familiar terrain. She ducked into a few caves that were closer to the large patches of seaweed. And quickly learned to listen for the strange garbled sound that the evil exploding fish made. If she made a mad dash away from them they usually exploded harmlessly behind her leaving the cave safe. She grabbed more sulfur. Cornered a few fish in the close quarters so that she would have food. She even started using the hilt of her knife to crack open the little deposits she found on the side.

Dae grunted with the effort of swinging hard enough to crack rock underwater, but this time when the thin shell of what she guessed was limestone cracked away a different colored metal began its gentle fall to the seafloor. Dae confused reached out and caught it in her hands. The moment her gloves made contact with the metal Karen was talking.

"Copper is an essential component of all powered equipment. Your probability of survival has just increased to: unlikely, but plausible."

She swam herself to the surface taking a few deep breaths. Already after days on this planet she was more at home in the water. It was becoming routine to feel the tightness in her chest. The slight burn of her lungs. Even her movements had begun to become more efficient.

Unlike her improving body, Dae's mind was a maelstrom of guilt, fear, and doubt. No one had come for her yet. It didn't seem like anyone was going to be coming either. The wreckage burned on, night after night, like some great rotting corpse. An unmistakable reminder of what had occurred.

She avoided looking at it when she could. She kept her gaze on Henry moving with long strokes back to her safe haven. Once inside she placed the copper into the fabricator along with a mushroom and was mildly surprised to see an option pop into focus.

"A battery…" She muttered to herself reaching out to click the option. "Didn't a scanner need a battery?"

"Correct."

"What else did it need?"

The lasers did their little dance shaping a battery quickly and efficiently. "Required materials: a battery and titanium."

"I have that." Dae moved to her little cubby pulling out a sizable chunk of titanium to bring back to the fabricator. As soon as she put the battery and the titanium inside the newest option popped up. She pressed the button and watched the machine whir back to life doing it's complex dance to craft a sleek looking handheld device. It almost looked like a gun, but where the barrel would have been a long stretch of shimmering blue material swept down to meet at the bottom of the handle.

"The scanner can be used to synthesize blueprints from salvaged technology, and to record alien biological data." Karen explained.

Dae twisted the device this way and that watching the diffuse light shimmer over the white and blue. She tilted the device toward herself and squeezed slightly. The handhold depressed the smallest amount and blue light suddenly sprang out dancing over her suit and exposed skin. Thousands of little blue lines mapping out her whole body.

It shut off just as data scrolled in front of her eyes. She scanned through the data but the numbers made her head swim.

"Karen, what does that mean?"

"Detecting trace amounts of foreign bacteria. Continue to monitor."

"I mean, we are on an alien planet. I'd be surprised that there weren't bacteria that you haven't catalogued." Her voice sounded very tiny to her own ears. It had never occurred to her that there might be something that could bypass her immune system. It would be too easy to do in an alien world. Her stomach knotted at the thought.

Dae decided to go out and scan things seeing as she had nothing better to do. She swam in wider and wider circles ignoring the fatigue that began to settle into her limbs. It was a surprise when she found a large hunk of metal resting on the sand. She swam to it looking around when she saw a crate. Dae easily maneuvered herself in front of it to see a scrap of what looked like it used to be some technology sheared in half. She guessed it was damaged when this piece of the Aurora hit the water. She held out the scanner which sprung to life in her hands. After a moment it shut itself off and she saw a little notification appear on the edge of her hud.

Seaglide Fragment. Something tickled the back of her mind like a long forgotten dream. Distantly she remembered male laughter, hands guiding her own onto bulky controls, the feeling of being ripped forward water parting around her. The thrill. A warm hand on her back as she stood.

I won't be near the water, why do I need to learn any of this. I'll be supervising and training. Her own voice echoing back to her.

It's required. There was such warmth in that voice. You have-

"Thirty Seconds." Karen quipped ripping away the slow forming scene. Dae gasped and watched as her remaining air floated away from her.

"Oxygen." She wasn't sure but Karen sounded worried. She immediately kicked for the surface. Her lungs felt like fire and the intensity was only growing as she pushed herself higher. Breaking through the water was heaven. She breathed deeply ignoring the pervading taste of brine as water streamed across her mouth. In the distance there was a thunderous crack. Dae followed the sound to look at the Aurora.

"Detecting increased local radiation levels." Karen reported in that dispassionate voice. "Trend is consistent with damage to the Aurora's drive core, sustained during planetfall."

"That's ominous." Dae commented watching the fire flicker in the distance. "Okay, there's nothing I can do about that right now." She told herself quietly. "But maybe I should try to gather resources to make my stay here better…" She bit her lip feeling the dried skin split underneath the pressure. "Shit." She hissed tasting the blood. It already burned from the salt. "Maybe I can use some lubricant as chap stick." She muttered before taking a bigger breath dipping beneath the wind-whipped waves. After some wandering around the ruins Dae finally found a familiar hunk of twisted metal. A quick scan and she had the blueprint for the seaglide.

After a quick hunt for a meal she went back to Henry.

"Well…" She spoke to the pod itself as her meal was being deboned and cooked. "I haven't heard anything from the outside world, but maybe their pods were just as damaged as mine. Maybe if I explore further than my Safe Shallows I can find something important. There's always the kelp forest." Dae considered. "Or the Red Grass. But if I'm going to do that I need to be able to get around faster."

Dinner that night was the same as the other nights, but the fish themselves seemed just a bit more flavorful. Dae wasn't sure if she simply caught better fish, or if the planning had lifted her spirits. Either way she went over the various blueprints already loaded on her fabricator until she was too tired to read.

Karen noting the deepening breathing patterns and the beginning of her sleep cycle dimmed Henry's lights. Dae was rocked to sleep by an alien tide where she dreamed of large and glowing eyes curiously looking in on her.