Engineer’s Log Day 10.1
Ok that was scary. Really scary. Whooooh. I need to properly calibrate those cameras.
Alright, I’m just talking for the sake of talking but if I had any hair left on the top of my head I would have lost it just now. I can feel the wrinkles on me growing deeper and my beard going grey and I know for a fact I’m doing that nervous rambling thing again.
I need to organize my thoughts… Where to start? Where to start? Let’s start with a status update and then move onto what happened. It’s currently 15 minutes to 11 with slightly overcast skies. Low percentage chance of rain but not zero if the clouds are anything to go by. We’ll be seeing a lot of variance in temperatures from the nice air conditioning in the workshop to stuck outside in the sun. You can find your local engineer currently hiding out in the forest with a decently sized cut on his leg from an ill advised jump. If you move over here on the map you’ll see the base currently has a higher than a xythalaxn front moving in and it isn’t clear when they’ll leave. We strongly advise that those looking to go outside today bring their water and sunscreen because you won’t be going back in for a while. Back over to you Henry.
Thank you Henry, I’ll be picking up here with the rest of the story. Sooo yeah to make a long story short there are xythalaxns in the base and I’m a bit hurt as I didn’t have the most graceful exit.
The day started out pretty normal. Last night when I had set up the security cameras, I rigged them to keep an eye out for motion then send a picture of the issue. Problem is I didn’t really calibrate it before going to bed and got pinged through the entire night whenever so much as a leaf was blown by the wind. As a result, morning eventually rolls around and I’ve barely gotten a wink of sleep. When my alarm for the day went off, I only half looked at the notifications. I’m a bit more of a zombie than usual but I figure some instant coffee will do the trick of waking me up so I wander off towards the generator to get that started.
The backup generator is housed in a little sheet metal hut designed to act as an impromptu faraday cage for its protection. I wander in as I usually do and start the power up sequence. Fortunately for my half awake former self, operating the sucker is pretty easy, even if it does take a little bit to power up. I figure I’ll take some time to go through the notifications and delete them all.
At this point, I want you to visualize the scene. It’s early morning and I’m standing next to the generator in a loose work shirt and pajama pants as the generator starts. I’m alternating between dreaming about coffee and deleting the random photos I got overnight when I swipe into the second most recent photo. Two xythalaxns moving in on my base.
I’d have done a spit take if I’d had my coffee.
I slammed the emergency cancel on the generators and then silenced my datapad just in case. You cannot know the stress of hoping you weren’t heard all the while waiting for your definitely not silent generator to quiet down in a metal room with one door. I swear I have the worst luck sometimes.
I checked the datapad again to see if they’d maybe left after standing out front but no. It seems like they were taking their time talking to each other before moseying on into my base. A quick peek out the door and I was able to see them just standing in the middle gawking at the sights like a bunch of tourists. Then, they decided to come and see my building.
Panic mounting, I shut the door and realized there wasn’t anyway to lock it from the inside. After all, its the room for the backup generator, you want to be able to get in. Makes perfect sense however unfortunate it may be to me. No time to lose, hopped on top of the generator and grabbed onto the roof. Like I said, the room is a Faraday cage so there were plenty of handholds to drag myself up to the ceiling. From there I began carefully prying one of the roof panels off.
Honestly, I would have been trapped on the roof of the cage if the builders hadn’t phoned it in that day they were doing the roof. I slipped out like a phantom of the night right as they entered. My jump down from the top of the roof was significantly less graceful. I didn’t have a particularly solid surface to jump from and I couldn’t jump very hard. The side of my calf caught on the edge of the building as I fell to the ground though I didn’t really feel it at the time. Staggering to my feet, I dashed out into the forest through the hole in the wall.
This brings us to the current point and time where I have no food, water, or base. I managed to get the bleeding to stop for now with my shirt so I’m fine on that front but still I really hope they leave soon.
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I’d kill to know why they even showed up though cause I don’t think I’ve given them any signs I’m back. I’ve been pretty careful about going outside and keeping the lights off. Looking at the picture, one of them is in combat gear but the other is just in some normal looking clothing… I think? Maybe they did it as a dare or something? I don’t know, super odd.
Ohh quick note to add to the end, I need to reseal the roof when I get back. I do not want water on my generator if it rains.
Engineer’s Log Day 10.2
Well, it took them long enough but they’ve finally left. My leg has been hurtin’ more and more as the day progressed so I’m probably gonna need to boot up the autodoc in the medical wing. I don’t super love the idea of leaving my wound in it’s automated hands but a gash like this should be exactly in its wheelhouse. No surgery or anything complex just closing a straight cut.
Yeah… I’ve watched too many horror movies.
Engineer’s Log Day 10.3
Oh man…
I didn’t know man…
The autodoc gives ya painkillers which is nice for the pain killing…
But like…
Man I hope they don’t come back tonight.
Hoooo boy!
Engineer’s Log Day 11
I still feel a bit swirly from the painkillers and it's still a bit hard to focus but I’m more or less back now. Unfortunately, I slept through the back half of yesterday and that means my lights were on and obvious all night. As much as I’m not back to full, I need to finish that last generator by this evening and be setting things up tomorrow.
Engineer’s Log Day 12.1
You know what I still haven’t done? Calibrated the cameras. Those suckers are still pinging me every third minute of the day and I’m slowly losing my mind. I figure I’m like 23… 22 pings now off of insanity. I’m hearing pings that aren’t even real and am just checking the datapad with no sense of rhyme or reason. I’m losing my Cheerios and I’ve been alone for like 2 weeks now.
On a less annoyed note, I’m currently riding back from the wall and am between setting up generators. It’s late afternoon so I may not get them done before dark at this rate but I’m kinda thinking about just pushing through and working in the dark. It’s not quite ideal and I might have managed completing the job if I hadn’t ended up having to finish the last generator this morning but I just wasn’t in any state to concen- 21 pings. I wasn’t in any state to concentrate yesterday evening. I vastly overestimated how ok I was.
It’s kind of a weird risk reward situation I’m in right now because obviously I’ve been up on the walls all day and have been way more visible so I don’t want to risk just putting it off until tomorrow in case anyone is watching but if I push into the night I’m gonna run into other issues. Keeping the lights on will be a must and, after having a night with the lights on and then a night off, turning them back on again will be incredibly suspicious. Additionally, as i work later and later, the odds of me fucking something up with my placement increases and I really don’t like that situation like “Oh haha you can’t hit me” and then I just get blown to smitherines. Like not only am I dead but that was also an embarrassing way to die. At least with the other route I have some dignity as I die.
Frankl- 20 pings now. Man it sure loves taking pictures of that tree. Frankly though, I’m thinking pushing through will work better since I’ve gotten plenty of rest over the last few days and I don’t know if I’d even be able to sleep tonight with the stress looming over me. I’ve only got 2 generators left and it should only be a little dark when I boot everything up.
19 pings you know what I was wrong. I think I’m going to lose my mind now.
Engineer’s Log Day 12.2
We’re finally done. I’m safe. The absolute relief I feel right can not be understated and I want to cry tears of joy. I’ve been alone for a full 12 days now and it has been so touch and go and that's finally done. I don’t have to worry anymore. I mean I do cause like I don’t have automated defenses but like not nearly as much as I did.
There was a heart stopping moment mixed in when I was trying to turn everything on for the first time. 7 out of 8 of the generators were working perfectly fine but I just wasn’t getting anything from the last one. If my stomach had dropped any lower in that moment, I would have been on the floor. Fortunately, I’d just made one of the classical engineering blunders and caught it almost immediately. I’d forgotten to plug it in and one power cord traced back to the generator later had everything resolved.
Man… I’m gonna sleep well knowing that that blue field is gonna be keeping everything out. You know… I think I’m gonna see if I can’t scrounge up a nice cold beer and do a bit of stargazing. Now… where do we keep the lawn chairs.