While the replicator is working on my next body I can’t take much risk. I wish I’d written down where that copper was, the only one who knew is getting devoured in a ravine right now.
I could investigate those “purple-geese” I wrote about, but I wasn’t about to experiment with new food until the replicate is finished. So I went to the beach and caught some more of those crustaceans and seaweed.
There were some new inhabitants since last time. These long, green, centipede-like creatures crawling from the ocean. They had 5 short legs on each side, and a pair of small claws in the front. They were twisting around each other like snakes. A mating spawn, probably.
I wonder how they taste with seaweed.
I don’t enjoy killing animals. But in the wild, without technology or civilization, it’s survival of the fittest. It’s just one of the many necessities of stay alive.
Someday, when I’m making machines, I’ll have a way to clone their flesh and eat guilt-free. But until then I might as well experiment.
I call it sand-scorpion and seaweed soup, garnished with some strange weed I found. It didn’t taste bitter when I sampled it, then again my tongue is adapted for Cirso’s flora so for all I know a gram of this plant is enough to kill me.
But here I am, full of soup and looking at the stars.
Replicate’s done, finally.
After a few hours, I set out to find that copper I’d spoken of. Like last time, I made sure to keep an eye out for anything that could help me.
I think I took a wrong turn, because I stumbled into a clearing with a lone tree. The one with my first body.
It was barely more than a skeleton. Still as surreal as ever. My bones were yellow, my horns had turned white, my equivalent of a ribcage was build more like a construction frame with triangular girders. Just a normal dwelf body.
I didn’t get close, I’d read the first few pages of this journal. It’s still radioactive, and probably will be for the next hundred years.
To think this is what my current body will look like. The one I’m breathing in, thinking in, writing with.
How many more of my skeletons will litter this place by the time I leave?