Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 42861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 214(@200wpm)___ 171(@250wpm)___ 143(@300wpm)
It’s been a week. Or something like a week. Adjusting to alien worlds is not easy, even if you’ve been training for it for a long time. As humanity started to depart for the stars, we discovered that a lot of life is built vaguely in the same way, and the kinds of life that aren’t don’t play well with us. Carbon-based lifeforms are pretty straightforward. The ones that are made of antimatter are very hard to connect with. It’s really hard to strike up a conversation with someone when your atoms keep disintegrating in their presence.
Fortunately for me, this is a carbon-rich planet, and so close to Earth in terms of climate and chemical composition, the odds that we’re going to find anything terribly frightening are low. We might still encounter pretty scary things, though, and that’s why I carry a laser weapon strapped to my back at absolutely all times, as well as two pistols holstered on each of my hips. My hair is always braided and then pinned at the top of my head. I don’t want it becoming a handle for some alien beast to use.
I’m wearing approved tactical gear. Because the atmosphere checked out as neutral, I don’t have to wear chemically protective clothing. It’s just a matter of keeping my skin protected from the elements and the suns. This planet has two suns, and very long days. The solar cycle means that we have light for approximately thirty-six hours and night for around twenty-two hours.
It’s a lot to get used to. Human animals, and most of the animals on earth, calibrate themselves to circadian rhythms. I’m tied to a twenty-four-hour clock regardless of what this planet gets up to in its spare time.
That’s why I’m making mistakes, and why I often feel tired. I’m out of sync, and I don’t know if I’ll eventually adjust or just go mad. That’s part of the study. This is not a job for the faint of heart, or anybody who is too concerned with coming home in the same condition they left. Fortunately, I don’t have any real ties to where I was born. Station 47-Alpha isn’t the sort of place you yearn for. It’s one of over a thousand stations orbiting Earth. I did get to visit Earth itself a couple of times during training missions, which makes me one of the fortunate ones. Most humans are not permitted to set foot on the planet that spawned us. It’s too fragile. Too precious. We hang in the skies above it, acting as guardians and looking for new worlds to claim.
I sit where I am for as long as it takes to muster up the energy and courage to come to the obvious and only conclusion to this sad little outing. I have to go back. Back over the log, back to my camp. I don’t want to go over the log, but if I stay out here with no supplies whatsoever, then I’m going to be in real trouble. Starving trouble.
It takes me a good couple of hours to work up the nerve to crawl back over the log. I don’t bother to even try to walk. I go on hands and knees, putting as much of my body to the wood as possible, shimmying along more like a caterpillar than a person.
Strumpet trip-traps her way across after me, completely happy with herself. Good for her. I have to walk three miles back to the landing camp I put up when we first got here. There’s a white globe tent and a white frame pen for Strumpet. She’s supposed to be confined to it, according to the guidelines, which I’m pretty sure are also at the bottom of the river now.
Within three days of my less-than-successful expedition, everything turns to…well, shit. For starters, I am not in a good mood. There’s no reason for it, no external reason anyway. There is an internal reason. And as luck would have it, Strumpet is also acting up.
Strumpet is wagging her tail a lot and bleating almost constantly. I’ve fed her as much of our extra grain rations as I dare, but nothing seems to settle her.
I am sitting in the sun, shivering, but with a blanket wrapped around me, the sound of an unhappy goat drilling into my brain.
“What’s wrong, girl?”
Strumpet lets out a shrill cry and wags again. I wish I could check the goat manual, but that was washed away, along with my birth control. I can feel cramping starting, the dreaded ache which heralds the unceremonious dumping of vital blood. My body is perhaps the stupidest machine I have yet encountered.
I hid the entire truth of it from the EET examiners. They would never have let me come here if they knew I was temperamentally and physically crippled for seven to fourteen days out of every thirty. I need my pills. But my pills have long been dissolved into the alien river, where they are probably wreaking havoc on the hopefully small number of sensitive creatures they encounter. We are taught to be careful about what we allow to leach into the soils and waters of alien planets. My little bungle broke a whole host of guidelines. I can imagine the lecture my instructor would be giving me right now if he saw what I did.