I gotta do something. I'm getting cooked, here.

Nick knew that eventually the Death Star would sink low enough in the sky to start shining under the car again. He had to get some kind of wall set up before then. Hiding behind a tire didn't seem like enough protection.

He pulled out the display and started drawing. If I can make big bricks, and do it fast enough, that would be best. I don't think I have enough metal for real safety. Better to use rock.

He sketched a normal-sized brick next to a drawing of Petra for scale, confirmed it, then set Petra down on the ground, hoping the heat didn't damage the input port or whatever it was. It took a while, but Petra eventually built the brick, even though it was bigger than she was. Nick found out that the brick was just as hot as the rest of the ground when he tried to pick it up. But he was even more interested in the hole Petra had made in the ground.

It wasn't very large; Petra fit inside, but not much else would. Nick moved the device a little to one side. He used the display to start up a stopwatch and told Petra to make another brick. It ended up taking fifty-eight seconds. It was worse than that, though, because apparently chewing up rock and spitting out a brick consumed power faster than the solar panels were taking it in. If he waited for the charge to recover, it was more like two minutes for a brick.

There's got to be a better way to do this, Nick thought, but had no idea what else to do. He spent the next hour making thirty bricks and a shallow, uneven hole in the ground. The shadow of the Explorer grew larger and he got a bit of breathing room. He stacked the bricks into a tiny wall on the west side of the hole. Every little bit helps, I guess.

While waiting for a brick to finish, Nick searched the menus again. He decided to name the feature he was using 'Reshape' and added that label to the menu entry. Then he brooded a bit.

I'm being stupid. It shouldn't be this hard. I'm making Petra eat a bunch of rock, break it down into whatever, and then reassemble a rock in the shape of a brick. That's got to be hella inefficient. If I could get her to just carve bricks out of the ground, that would be faster and cheaper energy-wise, I bet.

He tried to draw what he wanted, but Petra didn't seem to get the idea. If he had been trying to get through wood, he would have drawn a saw and started cutting bricks himself, but this was rock. For a while he was stumped.

His mind started to wander to thoughts of home. He tried to push them down, because he was in a crisis, but his brain apparently needed a break from survival efforts. So he gave up and thought about the people he'd left behind.

Brian was his best friend, and the one who would miss him the most. He'd probably always wonder what had become of him. Nick wished he could leave him a message. One hell of a note, he mused.

Josh was a fun guy to hang out with, but didn't take much of anything seriously. Josh would be sad for a few minutes, and curious for a few more, and then Nick would be out of his mind, probably forever. That's just how Josh was.

Nick had a lot of friends like that. He really hadn't tried for deeper in a long time. And fortunately, he was between girlfriends, so there wasn't a woman he was leaving in the lurch.

As for family, Nick had a sister who hated him, and a Dad who he hated. Mom had passed away when he was twelve, and his father hadn't coped very well. Nick learned a lot of self-reliance early on, and freely admitted that he had some trust issues.

Of the people he knew, he was probably the best suited to be stuck all alone on an alien planet. So he was glad it was him and not them. I hope they at least drink a toast to me or something. I hope Brian decides I'm in a better place or something.

He ruminated for a few more minutes, getting maudlin, until he recognized depression trying to mess him up again, and pushed it away. Enough with the pity party. I've got work to do, if I'm going to survive until sunset.

Nick tried again to explain to Petra that he didn't want the brick built up atom by atom, just cut out of the ground. Finally, he got an inspiration. In the main oval, he drew Petra, a rock near the input, and two halves of the rock near the output. That hadn't worked before, so to make it clearer, he wrote the word “HELP” on the whole rock, and then “HE” and “LP” on the two pieces. Then he took the power cost and tried to shove it down.

When nothing happened, he hit the label for the drawing and filled in “CUT”. Then he tried again. This time he got a reaction.

The first thing he saw was that the label had been rewritten “Cut”. So Petra gets capital and small letters, he mused. Then the picture changed. Now it was a drawing of Petra, with something like a blade sticking out of the input port. Petra was about five inches long, and the blade looked to be a bit more than that. The display then gave him a prompt.

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Confirm (Y/N)?

Nick almost entered 'Y' right away, but made himself stop and think. If Petra's going to have a knife blade, I should make sure to hold it carefully. He gripped the alien device firmly, then entered 'Y' at the prompt.

He felt a faint vibration and heard a soft hum, which seemed loud in the quiet of this planet. After a couple of moments, he started smelling something, like burnt electronics. Oh God, please don't be burning yourself out, Petra! He pressed his lips into a thin line, took a breath, and then crouched down to cut at the ground.

An invisible blade seemed to cut the rock like soft butter. He almost missed the cuts at first, they were so fine. He ended up making a bunch of shallow slashes to get the depression in the ground opened up a bit more. The pieces of rock that resulted had very sharp edges, so Nick had to be extremely careful picking them up. But pretty soon, his cuts were getting closer to rectangular, and he started carving out a little quarry right there next to the car.

It took him probably an hour to get used to making reasonably well-shaped bricks, but once he got the hang of it, he could cut out at least a brick every minute. The size was limited by the length of the blade, but it was a damned sight better than one inch cubes. Best of all, the energy cost was something like 0.003 units. He had no way of knowing what the units actually meant, but he could tell he wasn't going to be draining the battery quickly this way.

He stacked bricks as he went, building a low wall to cover the gap between the damaged car and the ground, blocking the harsh sunlight that was creeping closer under the Explorer. He shook a little from relief when he realized that he was going to make it to nightfall.

Of course, the night would bring its own dangers. It was hard to imagine feeling cold after all this blistering heat, but eight hours earlier, he had been shivering from the chill, and presumably it would happen again in a few hours. This planet is freeze and bake. How is life even possible here? Can something natural make the oxygen in the air?

Nick checked the time, and the position of the Death Star in the sky. Then he tried to do some math. So...a day on BigBall is like...fourteen hours? That's going to suck. I guess I'll have to get used to it.

Apparently the smell didn't indicate any obvious problems. It had to be coming from Petra, because it persisted even in a hot breeze, even when Petra's blade wasn't touching anything but air. Ha, maybe Petra's cutting the air. I wouldn't put it past the little alien technological wonder.

He kept practicing his stonecutting, and realized that his main limitation was making the cut in the back, where it was harder to reach. So he couldn't make anything longer than the blade. I wonder if I can get Petra to make a longer blade. Or a separate device.

At the thought, he turned off the blade and looked over the menu options again. Every once in a while, Petra seemed to grasp something and add labels. This time, Network was a menu option. When he selected it, it showed four items. Two of them had the same garbled code, “VDK”, a third had “OZG”, and the fourth read, “Nick's Phone.” Nick relabeled the “VDK” items as “Solar Panel 1” and “Solar Panel 2”, and “OZG” as “tablet.” I wonder what kind of WiFi Petra does. She doesn't need wires to get the power from the solar panels... Whatever. So long as it works, I don't care.

He tapped on the empty space below his phone as if to add a fifth item. It let him add the label “Blade”, but it was grayed out compared to the others. Reconsidering, he changed the name to “Cutter.” Maybe Petra would make the connection with “Cut.” Then he went back to drawing, and tried to sketch out what he wanted.

The Death Star was finally getting close to the horizon as Nick crouched behind his little stone wall, sketching. At last, he was able to save a design that Petra was willing to make. Then the cost came up, and he groaned.

Apparently a “Nick's Blade of Wicked Sharpness” needed more ingredients than the solar panels and tablet combined. I don't have that much copper left, for one thing. I could manage the iron, and whatever it's getting out of the local rock, but I still don't even know what some of these are.

Nick sighed and looked at the lengthening shadows. When it gets dark, I'm going to have a hard time seeing things again. I should make a light. Nick doodled a star giving waves of light to a solar panel, and then a ball giving off those same waves. Petra didn't react.

“I got nothin', Boss,” he imagined Petra saying.

Crap. If I can't figure this out, all I'll have for light is the stars and Rudolph and the flashlight on my...phone.

Nick closed his eyes and shook his head a moment. Dumbass.

Crossing his fingers, Nick wrote “flashlight” in the drawing window, and pressed Done. He was rewarded with a new menu labeled Flashlight which had several adjustable options. Right away, Nick could figure out size and brightness, but a couple of others were less obvious.

One of them had a slider that seemed to shift the way the light came out from a narrow beam to wide angle to all directions. Another option had a picture of a rainbow, with some kind of curve on it, and you could change the shape of the curve with a couple of controls. If he twisted it too far, the curve stuck out past the end of the rainbow, which seemed like a bad idea, so he adjusted it back in.

Nick had no idea what the last two options did. He made selections at random, and then pressed Done. Petra showed the cost, and it seemed fairly modest compared to something like a solar panel. Nick saved his work for the moment. After sunset, he could get things out of the car to feed the alien device. He went back to cutting bricks while he waited.

When the biggest shadows disappeared, the Death Star had truly set. Nick looked up and watched the sky change from whitish to black. Rudolph was high up and got more obvious as night fell. A wind started up, still warm, but cooling off.

Nick felt the cooler air with a sigh of relief. I did it. I survived my first day.