Slicing was a difficult task at the best of times, which is why most of the time it wasn't worth actually going full-force on. And that was the case today. Rather than bothering with trying to press into the system, steal authentication codes, create a mirror frame of the admin accounts, and everything that would take him so long, Riley decided to just send a message off to the guy who approved all the outgoing messages.

Gᴏᴏᴅ ᴅᴀʏ, ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀssᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴀᴜᴛʜᴇɴᴛɪᴄᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴜɴɪᴛ. Pʟᴇᴀsᴇ sᴇɴᴅ ᴜs ʏᴏᴜʀ ʟᴏɢɪɴ ᴅᴇᴛᴀɪʟs sᴏ ᴡᴇ ᴄᴀɴ ᴠᴀʟɪᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀᴄᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ ᴄʀᴇᴅᴇɴᴛɪᴀʟs.

Twenty minutes later, the man had responded back with a full list of his login information. When he typed it into his workstation, it immediately gave him total access to the message traffic for Planet Crafters in the Izitial Prime sector. Of course, there wasn't a lot of traffic, and almost all of it was outgoing traffic for Planet Crafters. Any of the incoming traffic would just be automated messages indicating someone had died.

Insofar, fifteen dead of the original 18. Another message indicated that twenty more were being brought in to keep track of. That would be good, because the more people there were working in Izitial Prime the less chance any anomalous traffic would stand out right away.

From here, he was even able to see whether or not any Planet Crafters had managed to construct FTL antennas, and tragically even the man who'd raised his planet's TerraIndex above 45,000 hadn't managed it yet. Oh well, at this rate he'd accomplish it in no time. Even if he could send a message though, he wouldn't be able to do so right now. This needed to be done slowly, in stages, and the more that he did in a short period of time the less he'd be able to get done before someone noticed.

So he simply decided to log out and leave his workstation. Tomorrow was another day.

Sol 50

46820 Ti

I woke up today with a renewed appreciation for life. That's what you say when you're coming off the back of nearly dying, right? I don't think I did it right the first time, and I'm already late for it this time.

Still, it's worth considering that being full of spite and bitterness towards Planet Steve isn't going to get me anywhere. If I wanted to "punish" it, I'd just stop trying to terraform it. The solar wind will sweep away the atmosphere and send it back to being exactly the way I found it.

The people I need to be angry at are Sentinel, but then again, I was already angry at them. Transposing that anger onto Steve isn't going to do anything to help me out. What I need to be doing with Steve right now is treating it with respect and dignity. This planet is just as much my ticket out of here as it is where I'm trapped.

So from now on I'm about to start treating Steve like a goddamn spoiled child. Right now my job is going to be all about setting up drills and heaters like my life depends on it. Which it does, of course, but you get the point. And that of course involves more aluminum and iridium, both of which I have access to at the moment.

There's something else that's become of interest though, mainly the fact that there's a blueprint in the crafting station for a lighting chip that's better than the one I have now. But it needs sulfur to work, which I don't have. So now the question is whether or not there's sulfur around in the area, and if there is how I can manage to get to it. That'll be a bigger thing to deal with once I have time to get exploring, but for the time being I have exactly one goal, and that's to reach blue skies.

It's been 50 sols and I still haven't managed to finish the first damn stage of this whole project even though I've nearly died twice now. It's time to get serious about this process. First step is throwing down wind turbines and solar panels left and right. Actually, scratch that. At this stage, wind turbines are no longer efficient for my purposes. It's solar panels from here on out. I have some flat space not too far away, perfect for setting up a solar farm. As for other forms of power generation, I suppose that at some point I'd just have to wonder about how to rig a generator.

Sol 51

51853 Ti

Oh boy does my body ache. But the results are already turning up. The TerraIndex is rising like a motherfucker, and I have plenty of power ready to start throwing down drills left and right tomorrow.

I really should be doing a more balanced job of terraforming, but Sentinel doesn't care if I do. It's just a strict process of meeting certain criteria, dolled up with pretty names like "blue sky" or "clouds" or whatever. It'd be a lot easier to get this done if I had the proper materials, those machines that can neatly sort all the materials in the soil and basically just chew across the surface like a giant combine harvester. But instead I have things that only really do one thing at a time.

So tomorrow is going to be almost entirely focused on trying to throw down as many drills as possible. That's the new step 1. Step 2 is building more heaters to put energy into the atmosphere, and then step three is figuring out the oxygen situation. Obviously I can just take up the materials I have right now and build more vegtubes, but the issue is getting enough seeds to fill them. Beyond that I could also go about trying to figure out how to access better models of vegtubes that can more efficiently extract oxygen, or find other seeds for plants that make more oxygen.

All that can come later though. Right now, though, the drills are the more important part. So they're what I'll focus on. Even if the sky turns blue, though, the atmosphere isn't going to be breathable right away. Which is disappointing, obviously, but I'm slowly starting to get used to that.