Sol 73

195 kTi

Alright, another day. I do feel slightly better knowing that apparently someone who gives a shit about me is watching out for me, but then again I don't totally know what it'll do for me. Still, I've gotta take the successes where I can get them, and right now I'm one of a handful of people that's made it this far.

It's strange, though. I'm one of the few successful Planet Crafters in history, and yet I still don't feel the way I think I should. It's like...I feel empty, almost. Well maybe not "empty", it's closer to a feeling of being unable to express the fact that I'm doing okay in words...or something.

Goddamn, it's been 73 Sols since I last saw or talked to anyone. For anyone counting, that's really only about 74 Earth Days, two and a half months, but any calendar that drifts a full day in two and a half months is unacceptable. The Julian Calendar was turned into the Gregorian Calendar for less deviation than that. Point is, I've been one of the loneliest people in the universe for almost a third of a year by this point, yet I'm still well underway to getting this done and I'm not crazy. Yet. I think so, anyway. The problem with going crazy is that you don't know when you've gone crazy.

That aside, I've been flipping through some of the new toys I get to play with now that I've crossed the Blue Skies threshold. The new nuclear reactor is up and running, and I've made sure to place it well away from Beta Base. Radiation sickness is not something that I want to deal with on top of everything else. There's also some new things for biomass generation, which right now is dependent almost wholly on Lirma seeds.

Fuck, seeds. I forgot to mention that I've got a lot more plant stuff at my disposal right now. I've found a bunch of seeds throughout all the wrecks I've gone about salvaging, Lirma yes but also seeds for flowering plants like Shanga, Pestera, Nulna, and a bunch of other things. On top of that there's also seeds for food growing, basic stuff like beans and squash. It won't be the tastiest thing ever, but it'll keep me from starving and I'll be able to stretch my food supply indefinitely. Not that it's an immediate issue, really. After so much dumpster-diving, I have enough to last me for 200 Sols.

There's a certain kind of confidence that I find dangerous with all of this right now. I'm good on food, I have plenty of water, and I'm on the verge of being able to grow what amounts to an infinite amount of food to bolster my rations. I'm past the Blue Skies threshold, and well on my way to the next step of persistent clouds. Everything's going good, which makes me paranoid that something else will go wrong again.

And right now there's plenty of opportunity for something to go wrong. Today is going to be spent on getting food production arranged, and when I finish with that tomorrow I'm heading out east to explore a bit more.

Sol 74

202 kTi

Alright, so it turns out that these crop cultivation things are huge power hogs so I've had to deactivate a bunch of my terraforming equipment to save on power. That'll slow my progress down for the time being, but it's fine. I've got something else to occupy my time.

At present, I have four different kinds of seeds at my disposal: beans, eggplants, squash, and mushrooms. So I at least have some variety. The truly sucky thing is that I have no way of cooking it at present. I could set up a campfire to cook it, because as we all know nothing ever goes wrong when you have fire in space. I'm sure I could jury-rig some kind of thing, but that's something to wait for later.

So what I'm doing now is getting the seeds ready and preparing to go on a new expedition. The growers will handle everything for me, they're basically a self-contained growing apparatus that will take care of everything. And because this is a barren planet, there's no insects or rodents or fungus to stunt the growth, so all I need to do is just leave it be and it'll handle things from there.

The logistics here at Beta Base aren't a problem, the problem will be trying to plan for how far I can go. Ideally I want to go as far as I can before I have to turn back, which means figuring out food and water. The good news: water is fine. The planet is steadily warming more and more, but it's still cold enough for the ice to remain in place. And with how available most ores are on this planet, I can build any number of smaller bases between here and wherever I end up going, which means more small crafting stations, which means that I effectively have an infinite amount of water and oxygen.

The trouble is going to be food. Here at Beta Base I have about 300 sols worth of food, which I can supplement with the crops to stretch a bit more even if I can't call the supply self-sustaining just yet. But when I'm out and about, I only have so much space. I've upgraded my equipment a bit but right now, I can only carry food for 10 sols, 12 if I ration and go down to starvation levels.

Now here's the caveat. With how many ships have apparently crashed on this planet, there's crates and storage boxes all over the place, and I've been able to find a good amount of useful salvage just by walking around. Some of it has been food rations, which means that if I'm lucky I'll be able to stretch the expedition by...I don't know, however much food I end up finding.

Okay, let's see...I need 2000 calories a day, I've been keeping up a diet of about 2100 because of how strenuous a lot of the work here is, though after 74 Sols of work I would like to think that my metabolism has adjusted to all of this. And with this expedition, I'll probably have to raise it to 2200 calories just to keep ahead of all the walking, to say nothing of whatever else I might end up doing. Climbing, jumping, jogging, depends on what I end up coming across. For most of the first part it'll be flat ground, if a bit rocky, but after a while I'll come up on the Aluminum Hills, and past that I'll have to see what we come across.

So...I'll take 10 Sols worth of food, and an extra Sol just for safety's sake. That means I can travel for five days before I have to turn back. And I will have to turn back then, there's no room for error in all of this. That's assuming I don't end up finding any food. I could try and take the A-frame with me, but right now my concern is going as far as possible and hauling that with me is just going to slow me down and make me burn excess calories.

There's a part of me that feels extremely anxious about this. But if I can go through the Dune Sea and back then I'm sure I'll be fine.

Sol 75

213 kTi

I almost died today because I'm stupid.

To recap, I set out heading due east from Beta Base. Eventually the sun started to set and I was down to 5% of my oxygen, so I decided to stop and set up a base camp for the night. That meant finding the base I'd left in the Aluminum Hills. The problem was that it was already getting dark, and on top of that my suit's navigation gets really thrown-off by all the aluminum reflecting its navigation beacon back at itself.

I knew this would be a problem, but I had thought that I could manage it. The trouble is that I've never been here when it's really, properly dark, and I got lost. It's difficult trying to find any way of navigating around here without having a beacon to use, even moreso when it gets cold as hell, and then I got a notification that my O2 was down to 5%. That's when I started to panic. And I shouldn't have panicked. Because panicking uses a lot more oxygen, but I was wandering around and trying to figure out where I was going, yet I kept running back over my own footprints and...I kinda lost myself.

That's when my suit warned me I was out of oxygen.

Now, that's not an automatic game over for me. The tanks were out of oxygen, and I was stupid enough to not bring a refill because I had figured I'd be at Gamma Base by now. But there was still a bit of oxygen left in my suit, so I had to try and clear my head as best I could to scrape all the resources I needed to make a new living compartment. I got it down just as I was starting to feel too woozy to stand up, threw myself inside, and pulled my helmet off.

I was light-headed for a while, but eventually I pulled myself together and just decided to lay down and try to rest. I woke up with a dry mouth, meaning that the first thing I had to do was immediately drag myself outside and find some ice. But then I realized that I didn't have the resources for a crafting station to make it into a water bottle.

I just felt defeated at that point, and couldn't bother to try and keep going around even if it's not that complicated. I just walked inside and decided to wait for it to melt and drink it then.

At this point I'm already willing to call the expedition a wash. When I feel up to it, I'm going to complete a crafting station and get some water prepared, then head back. I'll regroup at Beta Base and try to plan for all of this again. It's demoralizing to think that I almost died because of a mistake that I made. I could have gotten this far with the terraforming and just died of asphyxiation because of how much of a moron I am.

No, no, stop it. That kind of attitude isn't going to get me anywhere. Let's just...try and feel better. I'll leave this compartment here with the crafting station in place, I'll just stay here for tonight, and then I'll walk back to Beta Base in the morning. I'll be able to navigate by seeing where the sun is coming from. Right now, I just need to try and handle my emotions.

Oh, I know. Since I'm heading back already I have way more food than I'll need. So I'll indulge myself. Two meal portions, and no rationing. A whole lovely 5,000 calories all for myself.