Sol 102

489 kTi

I've just been going through the motions of terraforming lately. The truth is that I'm kinda antsy to get back out and do some more exploring, since it's just about the only thing I can do for fun right now. I mean, I have enough food to last me for almost an entire annus (stop laughing). I could travel west, but with how annoying the sand is I'd probably have to stick to the base of the mesa. Maybe there'd be a cave or something I could find.

Anyways, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I've been able to figure out an ad-hoc way of forcing the computer I have to access the information on the data sticks I harvested from the Warp Gate. The bad news is that it's all ancient stuff. Someone on that warp gate must have really loved classical TV because every last song and TV show and movie is at least 1000 years old. I'm talking ancient ancient.

So I've got a whole library of stuff but it's a bunch of things I've never actually seen before, it's the stuff that you usually only hear about in media classes like The Hunger Games, or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, or Sunset Boulevard. If any of those names mean anything to you, then congratulations, you know more about this stuff than I do. At the very least, it'll mean that I'll have a bunch of things to watch that I've not seen before, but I hated having to slog through this stuff in my prereq classes before I could actually get into my geoengineering classes. I enjoy setting up drill arrays and vegetubes more than I did those classes.

Whatever. Beggars can't be choosers, I guess. If I'm lucky I'll develop Stockholm syndrome.

Sol 103

501 kTi

I'm trying to plot out the next few stages of terraformation. Right now, with clouds being a perennial feature of the sky, the next stage is rain. The planet is slowly becoming warm enough and with a dense enough atmosphere to carry out a water cycle. You know what I'm really anxious about, though? Being able to take my helmet off outside. There will eventually come a point that I won't need to have my suit on whenever I go outside, and that's going to be a godsend.

Sol 103 (2)

514 kTi

So my airlock exploded today. I'm fine, and so is Beta Base. But my god was it unpleasant.

I suppose I should explain exactly why, and it's because Beta Base is made out of those kinds of metallo-ceramic alloys that actually stay together. In the early days people had to do with these kinds of inflatable tents with rigid skeletons, so if something popped that was a huge structural failure that needed to be addressed.

Beta Base, by contrast, is made out of rigid alloy materials so even if the airlock seal goes "pop", the rest of it stays in place. Know what doesn't stay in place, though? Anything that's not nailed down. And Steve's atmosphere is getting denser, but it's still below normal atmospheric pressure, so when the airlock failed I got blasted out the front door by all the air inside the base rushing out. It launched me like 5 meters and I landed on my back, knocking my head on a rock.

Someone really needs to do something about all of these rocks, they keep trying to kill me. At least this time I didn't break any part of my exosuit, but I just laid on my back for like 10 minutes before the world stopped spinning. Now I get to worry that I've got a concussion.

All my plans keep getting keelhauled by things going wrong. If it's not one thing, it's another, and I'm suddenly very aware of why Planet Crafters fail so often. Not that I already wasn't, but still, every time it happens it's no less unpleasant. I was able to drag myself back up to the airlock and repressurize Beta Base, which is good. The plants I had in the vegetubes were flash-frozen by the exposure to the atmosphere, but thankfully the seeds on the inside weren't in bad shape. So I just have to replant them and start over.

God, this is frustrating. Just once I want to have a windfall without any strings attached, I just want to be able to get things done without everything falling apart. Is that too much to ask?

Sol 104

527 kTi

Didn't get anything done today. My head has been spinning all day, and out of fear that I've had some sort of concussion from yesterday I've forced myself to just lay down and do nothing. It's horrible. I've been trying to put off watching or reading or listening to anything from the data files, but I guess I can't hold it off for much longer. I can start with some of the really old stuff at least. Someone on the warp gate must have liked baroque music, because I at least recognize names like Bach or Mozart.

Sol 105

548 kTi

Still nothing done today. I hate to say it, but I kinda miss walking around and setting up terraforming equipment. I don't know how long I'm supposed to wait with my condition, but I suppose I'll have to wait for Mike to orbit at least once, I suppose, which is roughly 14 Sols. And that was two Sols ago...so I've got ten Sols worth of time to kill. The music is at least nice to listen to. Apparently people thought this was good for babies to listen to, so perhaps its's helping my brain recover too. Dumber things have happened. Like my airlock exploding.

Sol 106

569 kTi

Still nothing. I did get up and walk a little to keep my muscles from atrophying. The plants have at least started growing back again, which is good. It's set the growth cycle back again, though, but whatever. It's not like it was doing much to help me in the first place.

Y'know, since I have time to plan things again, I suppose I could investigate the ship to the north of me again. I'm going back over what I remember, and I think that it might actually be one of those colonization ships that they send out to start settling a planet. That means I could give it another pass, and see if there's any more seeds there I could use to beef up my crop production. I kinda skimmed it the last time I was there, since I was busy trying to get resin to repair my suit.

I can't think too much about it, at any rate. If I do, I'll end up frying this potato I have for a brain.

Sol 107

590 kTi

Another day of doing nothing much. I don't know what it is I could even really do to try and keep myself busy besides just laying back and taking it easy, but I'm not allowed to take it easy. I'm a Planet Crafter, this isn't a vacation or something for me to just have fun with.

Actually, you know what? Fuck Sentinel. I'm going to get as much enjoyment out of this as I can. Because guess what? They're not standing here looking over my shoulder. I could feasibly just sit around and do nothing while I let the planet get to a more Earth-like condition. There's still some more stuff to do between now and then, though, namely having to spread more plants and animals. The biomass won't just come from nothing.

Sol 108

611 kTi

The classical music is starting to get on my nerves. The annoying thing is that the most recent song on these datafiles is from the 2040s, so that's not exactly a lot of help. Some of this stuff is more timeless than others, but it's still weird trying to sort through thousand-year-old music and wonder what you want to listen to.

Let's see here...how about we just pick something at random. Let's see what the Bee Gees are all about.

Sol 109

632 kTi

I hate to say it but I'm starting to get into this stuff. That might not normally be annoying if I hadn't decided that today's the day to get out and start doing stuff again, mostly because I think that any problems I did have are probably healed enough to be manageable. And let's be honest, I don't really have too much to do around here. Even a lot of the heavy lifting is dealt with by my multitool.

Either way, nothing strenuous for now. Just routine improvements to the terraforming array. I have the materials I need for more heaters, which is good, and drills are easy enough to set up. Plus, I've got some flowering plants I can use to start beefing up the oxygen levels.

The atmosphere is still too thin to breathe, and at the same time there's a lot of nitrogen to liberate from the rocks as well. Oxygen gets a lot of credit, but it's important to make sure that there's a sort of buffer gas because it's also fucking horrible. Oxygen will kill you if you breathe the pure stuff for too long, purely because it'll burn up your lungs. That'd be a fun way to die in space: dying from too much oxygen.

Not that it matters too much right now. If I took off my helmet right now it'd just kill me through bog-standard asphyxiation. And that's not terribly exciting, now is it? 95% of people who've died in space died because of oxygen deprivation through one way or another, and I die here I at least want to die with style.