“Momma, Momma I wanna go play!”

Darana did her absolute best to keep the smile off her face as she glared down at her adorable son. A moment of weakness now would mean trouble down the road, “I don’t know… you ran off last time you said you would play.”

“That's because there was a cool car! I promise I’m not even going to go there this time. I want to see the farms with Mr. Delsorm!”

Darana paused for a moment as she considered the idea. Delsorm did work the fields outside the base and the experience could very well be helpful for burning off a bit of energy, “If you promise not to wander that's fine by me but we’ll have to ask Mr. Delsorm if it’s ok for you to join him.”

“YAAAAAAY!”

________________

Engineer’s Log Day 41.1

I decided to give the people of the town a day’s break before going back to my shenanigans. This single day delay coincidently had nothing to do with me iterating the design for the car further but that's neither here nor there and even if it did, the changes would be relevant to today’s mission.

Last time, I just wanted to take a preliminary look around the town but today we’re going to be getting much more personal with the buildings. Now you might be wondering how I plan to do this with my relatively limited mobility. Well, as a famous engineer once said “use a gun” and that’s just what I’ve done. Kinda. The trick for today is that I’ve added what essentially amounts to a paintball gun to the top of RC car and then instead of loading it up with a few small 360 cameras to fire in through the windows and open doors. I’ve also added normal paintballs for when my work is done because what's life without a little vandalism.

I think this has the potential to be even more fun than yesterday because now I get to shoot things.

Engineer’s Log Day 41.2

They’ve gotten much better at dealing with my RC car, I’ll give them that. I didn’t even manage to shoot all my paintballs before they caught me and not for a lack of trying. Still, I’d count it a success since I was able to get a bit more information about the buildings and their color classifications.

Yellow buildings are pretty clearly community housing. I managed to get the cameras in a grand total of two yellow buildings and each had plenty of signs of being lived in. I don’t know what I had expected but most of the decorations are kinda similar to what I’d see around the base, albeit in a foreign language. The only thing that surprised me was the distinct lack of chairs but I reckon that tails make the ones I use fairly obsolete for them. Aside from that, the two I was able to peek in on had bookshelves, computers, and even a kitchen at the edge of one of them, all in all pretty domestic scenes. That did make me feel a touch bad about shattering the windows to get that info but that’s the way the cookie crumbles ain’t it.

The blue buildings are kinda interesting. I was able to observe three in total and each were completely different. First blue building up to bat was a figurative flashbang of colors. The walls were lined with fabrics of all colors each organized to make a spectrum. The center bits were way less organized with large metallic vats and a pretty heavily stained floor. The second blue building was pretty clearly designed for woodworking. If the plethora of chisels, saws, and discarded lacquer cans hadn’t given it away, the bountiful piles of woodchips scattered on the floors sure did. Last one was the biggest and either a bakery or a metalworking shop. I’m not quite sure since the lights were off and my range of vision was a bit limited with a camera that small. Near as I can figure, blue means the building is specialized for some manner of craftable material?

Red buildings I’m still unsure about entirely. My second run around town did confirm that there are only a handful of the red buildings and the camera I did manage to get in only revealed a spartan room and a desk sporting some papers I couldn’t read. Maybe that's where the bureaucrats do their thing?

Engineer’s Log Day 43

Tried sending in another car though this time it didn’t quite pan out. It’s honestly fine since I didn’t really have goal for today, I’d just figured that my last two visits had established a tradition and the guards would be disappointed if I didn’t show up today. I was kinda pushing it trying a third time in a row and they’d pretty clearly planned for me showing up. Ended up getting chased all the way home, drone still in hand. If nothing else, today I really had it hammered home that the xythalaxns have an abundance of explosives and a great willingness to throw them at me.

Engineer’s Log Day 49.1

Today was a dreadful day. A no good horrendous day! It’s raining and I broke my arm but more importantly it’s raining!

Today’s no good day started as it usually did, masquerading as a good day until I was too deep in its clutches to escape back to my bed to wait it out. Got up, had a bowl of cereal, and checked over my plants to get any weeds that may have sprung up. After that, I realized the sky was a bit overcast and a memory came back to me unbidden. Now I don’t know if you remember from a few weeks ago but I’d popped open part of the roof of the generator room and I’d never actually come back to fix that.

Time being of the essence, I quickly jogged back to my workshop and grabbed the required supplies to get up onto the rooftop and seal everything back up. You might think this was where I’d have made my mistake and man do I wish it was but no that came later. I was able to get the panel fitted properly anchored to the surrounding ones and then sealed around the edges. Slid down the ladder, a job well done and was prepared to head on out.

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This is when the doubts started. Not the usual ones where you wonder if you did actually turn off that oven or not but the ones where you question how good of a job you really did. Concerned that water may leak through my work, I decided to do a test. Got the ladder back out, turned on the water, and then hosed down the roof before running back inside to check. I got a little wet but not that big a deal right? Luckily, my patchwork seemed to hold and I was happily on my way. Brought the ladder back to my workstation and then promptly slipped on the bomb drone and landed on my left arm funny.

Didn’t think much at the time but when the pain didn’t go away after a while I decided to let the autodoc do a scan on me. Lo and behold, fractured forearm. A bit of local anesthetics later and the machine has splinted my arm. According to the machine, I need to keep the splint on for a minimum of 3 weeks and it’d probably be for the best if I keep it on for up to 5. I can already tell this whole thing is going to be real annoying since the splint makes it impossible for me to effectively grab anything with my left hand. I’m especially annoyed at this whole situation since I probably could have recovered if my left leg wasn’t still a little weak from previous injuries.

And then it started raining to add insult to my literal injury! The audacity of the weather!

Engineer’s Log Day 49.2

I decided to treat myself for dinner to make up for today and pulled out some of the steak protein rations. As it would turn out, you traditionally do need two hands to be able to effectively use your knife. I considered just eating it with my one free hand caveman style for a bit before deciding I was classier than that. So classy in fact, I duct taped the knife to my splint and used it like that. Surprisingly, this was actually quite an effective method.

Engineer’s Log Day 51

Doing things one armed is much more difficult than I gave it credit for initially but I’ve been especially feeling that sentiment while weeding. Since things have had a bit to dry, I’d decided it’d probably be fine for me to go and resume my weeding duties again. My speed when removing weeds has notably tanked and to my humiliation I even had to go get a trowel to uproot some of the particularly determined invaders. This being hurt thing sucks and I’m of the personal opinion that it should be abolished.

On a more serious note, I should probably try avoiding doing too much manual work for a bit. Both my leg and arm need more time to heal

Engineer’s Log Day 55

Did you know that clap on clap off lamps will not respond to chests, legs, or stomachs being smacked? They do however make an exception for when you smack your bald head in frustration and that information vaguely makes me want to die.

Engineer’s Log Day 56

I’ve read through most of my reading material and have had to resort to the fanfiction Command has graciously supplied me. May God have mercy on my soul because this grammar certainly won’t.

Engineer’s Log Day 58.1

I’ve received an unexpected visitor to my base and I’m not quite sure what to do. This whole mess had started with me bebopping over to the greenhouse like I usually. I am trying to take a break from physical work but between the automated sprinkler system and the fact the watering can easily be one handed, I can still manage the work pretty well. Gave the plants the usual once over while rambling about the inane things I’d been reading and exited like normal.

Stepping out, I almost immediately heard movement and caught a glimpse of something jumping at me from the rooftop. Brain kicked into emergency mode and I responded as any reasonable human would by backhanding the threat and legging it for safety.

Then the crying started behind me and things got a whole lot more complicated. See, my mystery guest wasn’t some random wild animal like I had originally thought but instead a small xythalaxn child… who was crying. His crying was high pitched, mournful, and immediately made me feel bad as if he hadn’t tried jumping me not two seconds prior.

After cursing my soft and bleeding heart for a moment, I carefully picked the kid and checked him for injuries. Fortunately, he seemed to have managed to dodge anything worse than a mean bruise, no doubt thanks to his youthful vigor. Part way through the inspection, he stopped crying and kinda just stared at me all angry which I mean fair enough.

Decided to give him one of the protein rations which he quickly ate and now I have a new issue. He’s kinda just staring at me expectantly now. What am I supposed to do in this situation? I’ve not received any training for what to do here.

Engineer’s Log Day 58.2

This kid has no survival instinct. It's now past late evening and dark which is an issue as he hasn’t left yet. He’s already plowed through the rest of the protein ration I opened earlier and is currently cracking into my meal for the evening. I probably… no definitely should have sent him away earlier but as mentioned before, my heart is soft, spongy and bad at that sort of thing.

Initially, it was just a lot of awkward milling around on both of our parts. For a bit, I was a bit concerned he was here to cause me problems but for the most part he’s just looking around. When I started pulling up some of the weeds, he watched solemnly for a little while before beginning to emulate me, chattering away in his native language. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty dang cute.

Currently, I’m heading about locking up any important places so he can’t cause me any trouble. When I’m done with this, I’ll pull out one of the folding beds and get him set up for tonight in one of our garages. This feels really stupid but I’m also not letting him out in the dark. I’ve seen one too many dangerous predators lurking about the area to do that.

Engineer’s Log Day 59

Sent the kid off today with some poorly translated words in his own language telling him not to come back and stressing the danger of the place. No real issues on that front as he gladly ate more of my food before zipping off after I temporarily disabled the turrets.

I spent a bit of time last night trying to figure out how he managed to slip into my base unannounced and I think it's a combination of a few things. I think the code I made to prevent the turrets from shooting random birds combined with what I suspect is a blind spot in my defenses. Basically, if he entered just right I can totally see the turrets ignoring him.

Ended up turning the turrets off again and walking around the outside until I found the spot. I’ve put in a new camera so in theory I shouldn't have to worry about other folks slipping through the cracks here. A small part of me is worried that he might try and come back so I’ve also taken the liberty to increase the size of creatures that get ignored just in case. Figure it’s better safe than sorry you know?