💾 Archived View for brachycera.diptera.casa › writing › lovelace › 2.txt captured on 2024-03-21 at 15:34:54.
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# Captain's log, 2312-08-28 to 2312-08-30, 130 lines # Captain's log, Earth time 2312-08-28T11:14:09Z. I have appointed myself Captain. The other two aren't interested in the position. For the benefit of any Earths reading this log, I have to point out that stuff like "Captain" wasn't a thing on our little ship Haven. With only three people there was no need for it, we all did what we could do best to keep this ship together and barely managed that. I was the tech guy, of course, St'Wek was the muscles and XÄ“cnes was a scientist, of sorts. All decisions were a group effort, though when the usual options are "die or hit the road" there isn't much to discuss. Repairs on the Lovelace have been progressing slowly. I guess you can't make up for the neglect of a whole human lifetime in just a few weeks. The fuel tank had a leak and is now almost depleted, so we're faced with our first big problem. I'm not familiar with whatever it is that powers this ship. I understand the science of course, but the substance is completely alien to me. I guess it must be very common on Earth and its side of the galaxy. The ship's Computer is no help in tracking this down, since it has little idea where it even is. I should take the time to extend its knowledge of our local star systems. I've pulled XÄ“cnes away from the self-appointed, fruitless task of finding out what happened to the Loveless crew for a while to focus on finding the strange substance instead. - Captains log, Earth time 2312-08-28T08:56:02Z. XÄ“cnes has realigned the sensors to search for anything resembling the Earth substance and found a planet not too far from here. The ship has gathered that the planet is uninhabited but contains a diverse Flora. I've set course toward the planet, slow enough to be reasonable with our reserves but appropriately fast for the urgency of our situation. Once there, St'Wek and XÄ“cnes will take the Haven down to the planet to collect as much fuel as possible. Meanwhile I'll take the time to feed our collective knowledge of the sector into the ship's Computer, hoping it'll put an end to our somewhat aimless flying around. - Captain's log, Earth time 2312-08-30T18:11:31Z. After much complication, St'Wek and XÄ“cnes have returned from the planet with sufficient fuel to last for the next fifteen months. Since XÄ“cnes' logs are characteristically long and filled with tangents and St'Wek can't read nor write (by design, of course) I have decided to recount the events on the planet in my own words, despite not having been there myself. After arriving at the planet the two found the Flora to be more diverse than anticipated. As they exited the Haven, a big old rank started to grow around the ship at incredible speed. XÄ“cnes was quick to analyse the situation and concluded that this was "not good". St'Wek started ripping at the plant to get it off the ship, but as he brought one down another sprung from the ground. He made a sarcastic comment. They reentered the ship and broke off the plant invasion by withdrawing from the surface. XÄ“cnes explained that the plants had eaten parts of the ship somehow. Analyzing a dead part of rank hanging onto the Haven's window, XÄ“cnes also concluded that the brown substance leaking out of its torn off body was the fuel we had detected on the planet. The ship was too damaged to survive in space but not too damaged for air travel within the protection of the planet's atmosphere. After flying around for a while, looking for the place least likely to pose risk to the ship, they found a large city within a crater in the ground. XÄ“cnes was able to determine that the area was surrounded by a force field, keeping the hostile plant life at bay. Once they were hovering above it, the force field opened just enough for the Haven to enter the crater. They were greeted by a small settlement of tripodal green aliens. The city, protected by the force field from both our sensors and the technology devouring Flora, was full of machines and highly developed. You could almost forget that the rest of the planet was one big living jungle. The tripods were very friendly and repaired the damage to the Haven. They told its crew that their people had colonized the planet about a hundred 'years' ago for its wealth in metals and its two suns which produced a lot of energy. They had not expected to find it inhabited by plants that drew their nutrients from a chemical found in their flesh. They tried to fight them with fire, pest killers and all sorts of measures but this only made them stronger and more aggressive and more of a threat overall. Since they had by then, against all odds, already set up their settlements all over the surface, they decided the only option left was to engineer a virus that would turn the plants off their scent and onto metal, which was the only thing with enough similarities to the compound in their bodies that attracted the plants. This saved them from being brutally relieved of their flesh by the local Flora but it also lead to the collapse of their colony. They were a civilization that depended heavily on technology: they replicated all their food and clothing, their houses were made of metal, as was their transportation and so on. Soon they began to lose entire cities and starve, unable to digest the local plant life as well as it had digested them. The settlement my 'crew' found itself in was all that was left of the colony. They had shielded themselves and more importantly their tech from the destructive flowers and were in a constant battle with them over the remaining metal resources on the planet. The ground water was undrinkable, filled with the thick brown plant juice. They appealed to XÄ“cnes as a fellow scientist to work on a solution for their situation. XÄ“cnes, however, was very unwilling to help them. Very unwilling indeed. Extremely bemused by the story of the aliens interference in the local ecosystem, XÄ“cnes advised them to use the remaining metal to build a ship and get off the planet immediately, holding them a lecture about their irresponsible behaviour, the now doomed plant population and it's easily depleted source of nourishment. While St'Wek silently filled a tank with the planets ground 'water', XÄ“cnes had a very frustrating conversation with the colonists, who were entirely unwilling to give up their doomed colony. By XÄ“cnes' own evaluation, they were "extremely proud of their resourcefulness, while all they did was modify the planet to fit the life they were accustomed to, failing to see the potential risks to both the planet and their colony along the way and making their situation worse with every step they took to better it. I believe their civilization is entirely unfit to colonize any planet whatsoever until they learn to respect the native life and live alongside it. Once they had discovered the hostile Flora they should have simply found another planet. Their stubborn wish to stay despite everything serves no purpose and will undoubtedly doom them, just as they have doomed the planet". The team was met with resistance when they tried to leave, unable to pass the force field. The locals called them ungrateful and threatened to 'more than' undo the repairs. Over the communication's channel, XÄ“cnes let them know they should "reevaluate what I've told you", before having St'Wek "'pull the plug', so to speak, on your force field." XÄ“cnes' log contains a 110 line long justification for this course of action. After both of them were safely aboard the Haven, they returned with enough fuel to last us a while and a newfound aversion to similar away missions in the future.