Scene 2: New Ventures

You slowly come to again amid the soft pattering of rain; it’s died down, remaining as little more than a soft drizzle. You experimentally shift your arms and legs before attempting to stand. It’s a foreign experience to have to actually work against gravity so much, let alone use your puppet this often. But you’ll adapt.

You scrape open the entrance of the burrow and climb out, careful not to let your neurons catch on the top lip of the opening. Due to the rain, the ground is even softer than before, and it sucks on your feet with every step, tugging you down as you struggle to walk. Fashioning some sort of footwear may be helpful, but you don’t have anything that you could use for that currently.

For now, you straighten your puppet up, trying your hardest to follow your overseers as they pop up from the ground, signaling less bogged down places for you to walk to. You survey the area ahead of you as you go, consulting your internal data about the areas surrounding you.

To the south, between you and Five Pebbles’ can, are the old agricultural sectors, both hydroponics and soil growths. You know that this sector has been increasingly overrun by the old crops; last you checked, the grasses had fully colonized several of the old growing towers. Their presence will make the terrain firmer, but they are also a hazard for your neuron flies. No doubt they will be hungry so soon after the rains ended. You may be able to pick up a weapon before you reach the first grass fields, but there’s no guarantee.

To the east is your waste department. You haven’t checked on it in a while. Why bother, really. Most of your recent cycles were spent figuring out how to detach your puppet instead of doing any energy intensive calculations. However, you know that your waste department was always the most engineered part of your terrains; since the rest was largely farmland and other agricultural processes, it was not as extensively developed. If you’re lucky, you might be able to find stores of mechanical parts that you could keep around to repair yourself or to build tools with.

To the southwest are your old storage facilities. You did not extract the data on what they stored before you left, but you doubt it’s anything of interest to you. The facilities also mark the rough boundary between your regions and that of Sig’s. As much as you loathe the idea of having to traverse Sig’s areas, it’s undeniable that their regions contain a plethora of flora that you may find useful before tackling your main task again.

You’re eager to get to Five Pebbles, but with your current equipment, you have to admit you’re sorely underprepared. You’re going to at least need some sort of weapon before paying him a visit.

>Go east

You clench your rock in your hand as you squelch east.

You were among the last to be built; your local group was fairly young, too, at least compared to other ones. Sig speculated once that your local group was planned because they were running out of locations to build iterators in. Considering the fact that Moon was a proof of concept for building iterators on less than ideal terrain, you're inclined to agree. Not that it makes your current trek of tramping through mud any easier though. It's about as unideal as it gets for you.

It would definitely explain why you were built over farmland. Despite that, there is no immediate food within reach for you; you can feel the effects of your low cellular saccharide levels with each step you plod on. The tufts of grass around you wave in your direction as you pass, blue and red reaching out for your neurons, but you give them a wide berth. If you chance on some sort of weapon, even a spear, you could slice them down and render them harmless enough to consume. They were food crops, after all. But right now, they're dangerous to approach.

You push on, avoiding the grass where necessary, and eventually find yourself at the edge of a bona fide swamp. You're honestly not sure how there's enough soil here to cause this; even though you were built over farmland, most of it was in stone towers. But perhaps the stone walkways had enough time to erode into... whatever this is.

Ahead of you is a large, basically-liquid mud pit, with small pools of muddy water interspersed throughout. Many marsh noodleflies flit about along the surface of the mud, flying around with their young attached to their slimy bodies. You stand back and watch them; with so many here, there's bound to be eggs, but it'll be hard to actually grab one without any of them noticing.

You're fairly confident their eggs can serve as dry food, anyway. You don't have a lot of options out here. You know they lay their eggs close to the water, instead of suspending them from structures like the smooth noodlefly. You don't see any from your current position; if you really want to dig around for noodlefly eggs, you're going to have to step into the mud and really, really get your hands dirty. Your robes are already filthy, though, so it doesn't really matter anymore. (Calculated chance of success: 20%. Action unadvised.)

Or you could forage. For mushrooms. Again. You don't know what variety would grow around here, since you didn't particularly save that data, but you're fairly certain there are some that grow around marshes. [Forage for fungus: 50% chance of success.]

Though—you walk slowly around the marsh—it looks like there's a subducted structure here. You have no idea what it is, but where it sank into the mud, you can see uneven lumps in the mud. Constructs potentially mean spears, or other weaponry, though the structure does look to be buried considerably deep. You're not sure how far down you'd have to dig to find something. (Calculated chance of success: 30%.)

>Forage for some good ol' reliable mushrooms (success)

You’ve had good luck with fungus so far it seems. Barely a short walk around the perimeter nets you a big cluster of them, growing on the less slippery parts of the ground. Your rock’s not the best for harvesting these, but it’ll do for now.

(+7 generic mushroom)

You take half the patch, leaving the rest there just in case. What you have will last you a few cycles anyway.

One of the marsh noodleflies wanders over to you, two larvae hanging from its long tail as it buzzes up in front of you. You glare at it, resisting the urge to wave your rock at it. You don’t want to aggravate it; a rock won’t help you very much if it decides it wants you dead.

You don’t have a good estimate of how far you are from your waste department right now, but you figure it’s still a ways off. The sky is clear, and the sun shines gently down on you; if you really push towards it, you might get there in time before it rains again, but there’s no real guarantee. You could send an overseer off to check, but the information they can bring back to you will be severely limited now that you’re out of your can.

Still, it’s something. You still need a weapon though.

>Look for firecracker plants (success)

Cherrybombs... you're unsure of how many there are in your regions. It was a rather uncommon choice of spice for your creators, and now you mostly hear of scavengers refining the material inside the seed pods to deal explosive damage. You don't know how to do that yourself, but it can't hurt to keep some on hand in case you figure out how later.

You do another quick loop around the marsh, shaking the mud off your feet every now and then. To your surprise, on the other side of the marsh is a sizable cluster of cherrybomb plants, all of them bearing a hefty bounty of seed pods. You carefully take a few fronds.

(+3 cherrybomb plant)

You will have to be careful. Though the raw form of cherrybombs is unlikely to deal significant damage to your puppet, they may damage your neurons if detonated. You also don't want to attract the attention of larger creatures when you don't have a weapon.

You glance up at the sky. A few clouds have drifted together. You still have some time left.

>Keep heading east to your waste department, and keep an eye out for any more buried structures or other things you could dig into to find weapons. Good luck!

This overseer is far too chipper for your current mood. You grumble to yourself as you march on, heading further east. "Good luck". Luck won't be the only thing you need.

Despite your griping, though, you do find a small tower on your way to your waste department. It takes you a few moments to recognize what it is; it's an old lightning rod tower. Lightning strikes in your regions are rare, but they still installed a few of these to divert the electricity away from your can. The ground here is more solid, less eroded than the areas behind you, because of the extra infrastructure they dedicated to these towers.

The tower is half sunken still, and mostly broken. You don't know if it's ever serviced you since global ascension concluded. It does mean you can freely loot it for materials though.

There is a slight chance that it still has electricity powering it, in which case you would get electrocuted if you touch it. Unlikely to completely incapacitate your puppet, but enough that it would gravely injure you. You should find a way to check if it's still on first.

>Let's throw the rock

You heft your rock in your hand slightly before winding your arm back, as far back as you can reach, and you throw the rock straight at an exposed metal part of the tower.

An array of sparks flies off the structure as the rock connects, and you instinctively shield your neurons, backing away. It's too far away to actually get to your neurons, and it ends before you manage to take more than three steps anyway. The rock sinks into the mud with a squelch. (-1 rock)

If the tower was functional before, it definitely isn't anymore. It should be safe to interact with now.

>Let's get disassembling

With the angle that the lightning rod tower is slanted at, it's a little hard to get decent footing as you climb and hunt around for loose pieces of rebar or other metal you could pull off. You do eventually manage to find one looser part, which you rip off amid the screech of metal. (+1 spear) You're also lucky enough to find a chunk of the concrete that can be broken off. You do so, replacing the rock you lost to deactivate the tower. (+1 rock)

Your inventory's getting a bit full, but you have a little more room. You briefly attempt to tug off one of the metal plates on the tower, but they don't budge. You'll likely find more supplies once you get to your waste department though.

You drop back down to the ground, stumbling slightly as your feet sink into the mud. You don't have a true ability to sense temperature, but you do have sensors all over your puppet that tell you that the mud is slightly cooler than before. You glance up at the sky; the clouds are starting to coalesce. The rain isn't far off.

>Look for a shelter

You resume your march towards your waste department. The ground gets progressively less muddy as you get closer to it; there was always more infrastructure here, so the bulk of the silt and mud here was washed down from the neighboring cans, along with the remnants of their rain bands. Since you're no longer in your own can, what rain you get here depends on what your neighbors are doing.

In particular, since you're closest to him, Five Pebbles. You see his can looming in the distance, the upper reaches obscured by the steadily greying clouds. You hadn't started paying attention to his increased activity since you found out Moon died. His rain output is much, much higher than it otherwise should be, and when you sent overseers out to observe the rain before, they never returned, presumably killed by the pouring rain. Even your own output before was heavy enough to kill some smaller creatures, but you've never seen it slam down nearly as hard as it did in Five Pebbles' regions. And because you're so close to him, and getting closer still, you have to be wary of the same lethality.

The worm grass begins thinning out; metal generally does not deter its colonization, considering the state of many of the old farm towers, but the sheer abundance of it in your waste department prevents it from getting too far. Stone's starting to rise up out of the mud, and the more you climb, the less slippery it gets. You vault over a final ledge and slide into your waste department.

It's... seen better cycles. Instead of mud, there's just water in some areas; the machinery still functions while underwater, so it doesn't particularly matter, but you're not too confident about swimming. Most of the facilities are still intact, at least, and they form a small caldera, of which you're currently at the edge of.

You're vaguely aware of the layout of your waste department. You could probably have known more, but you didn't bother downloading this information. You know generally that the biological processing facilities are somewhere off to your left, and the slag processing facilities are off to your right. Up ahead is some generalized heavy metal processing; you probably shouldn't head there, both because it's far away, and because it's the most industrialized of the three sectors. You won't find much of use there, and certainly not shelters.

>Scout slag and biological processing facilities

Two of your overseers peel off and zip away in opposite directions, popping up from and back under the ground. In just a few seconds, they vanish from view. You sit down to wait, tapping your spear against your hand.

Now that you're untethered from your can, your overseers' processing capabilities are... limited, restricted to your own computing abilities. Your neurons are enough for you to run basic processes, particularly to keep your puppet running, but higher order calculations or intensive image capturing is out of your and your overseers' scope. You trust they will bring back information, but what they may be able to bring back may be considerably limited.

Your overseers return as the sky begins to rumble with thunder, waving in place as they project two images to you: part of the drainage system in your slag processing facilities, clearly half clogged, and a pile of rotting biological refuse. You grimace and dismiss the second overseer's report. The clogged drainage system would certainly explain the water pooling in your waste department; you could possibly figure out how to unclog it, but it'll have to wait until after the rains pass. The rotting pile is, at least, normal rot, the natural decay of unprocessed biological material. You suspect it's the remains of what got sent to your biological processing facilities from your slag processing facilities; clearly, neither are functioning at full capacity.

Regardless, you still need to find shelter. You're not sure how long the trek is in either direction.

>Go to biological processing

You head sharply to the left, stumbling briefly as you step into a puddle that was deeper than it initially looked. Considering slag processing facilities are built to be able to function at full capacity even when fully submerged, it's probably a good idea to head to biological processing instead. And with the rain bearing down on you, you don't want to try your hand at braving the incoming flooding.

Biological processing was always the largest of the waste facilities. Even in its semi-ruined state, you're dwarfed by the sheer size of the maintenance shaft, the walls and pipes and valves panning out high above your head. Your neurons cast a dim glow about you as you warily creep on, water sloshing around your ankles as you explore forward. Big facility means many shelters, you hope. You should probably climb up somewhere higher though. The various pipes around you could get you to higher points, but you don't know how far up this part of the access shaft goes; you know there's proper doors and passageways up further ahead.

>Go on and look for a proper access shaft to somewhere higher

A warning rumble of thunder, much closer this time, ripples through the air as you hurry your way down the passageway, water splashing this way and that as you stomp onwards. You really should have downloaded more information about this place, but it's too late now. You'll find a way out or drown trying.

Dimly, as you push your way past a mound of collapsed pipes, you wonder if this is how Moon felt. Probably it was worse; stuck in her chamber with nowhere to go, nothing to do besides wait, all while feeling her systems rot away and the slag build up until it broke her entirely. She compared slag build up to drowning once, long before any of this happened. In a sense, it is a type of drowning. The microbe strata need air, after all.

A ladder, up ahead. You climb, feet slipping in your haste, and you enter the upper maintenance shaft. There are access rooms to the pipe systems of various parts of your biological processing facility; some have rotting refuse spilling out from underneath the doors. You grimace and turn away from those. You should probably clear those out at some point.

On one of the doors, there are... You walk closer, running your hand along the metal. These are bite marks. The work of Miros quail. You glance around, cursing; of course they'd be here. You expected them to mostly be in heavy metal processing though. You don't hear any right now, but you're going to have to be careful.

There are other doors along this access shaft, and likely there's an upper floor. The facility is designed to guard against flooding, but that also means if the room floods while you're in it, you'll be trapped. But you're really running out of options here.

>Find a secure room without Miros quail or rotted biomaterial (check random rooms)

You start opening random doors, tugging on the turn cranks until your arms start to twitch from the effort. The first room is—if you could smell you'd probably be doubly disgusted—full of rotting refuse, from a burst pipe above you somewhere, and the next is full of water from a leaking pipe. You move along the whole corridor, neglecting stealth somewhat to be quick about checking rooms, but you keep your spear close as you yank doors open and slam them closed, looking for just one room that isn't full of garbage or water.

The last door along this part of the access shaft opens with a groan, revealing a relatively large room with a comparatively small pile of biological refuse in the corner. The room is dry, and your sensors don't detect any toxins from the refuse. This also seems generally less rotted than the other piles.

It's not ideal, but it's better than drowning. You pull the door shut, bolting it back into place, then slump against the wall with a sigh. Come next cycle, you're going to have to clean this place up.

[Proceed to Status Update 2 | Return to Status Update 1]