Dream Dance

Day 29 - Learning to Keep My Big Mouth Shut

Got sent to the principal's office. At least that's how it feels when I get a note from our PI. She reassured me that the calibration problem from my first week here was real, and suggested rather firmly that I not be too alarmist.

I stupidly only checked the support logs for the planetary positioning system, so I didn't see it. What happened was that the gravitational variations in low orbit were still being mapped so the cameras on the recon satellites were out of skew by a few tenths of a degree. This translated into meters of error on the ground and there were no other landmarks in my part of the continent to serve as way points. In fact my stumbling around in the jungle was cited as confirmation for the correctness of the final calibration.

So my face is red, which it nearly always is whenever Maija deigns to talk to me. She's so overly competent it's embarrassing almost just to be around her. Multiple doctorates in mathematical genetics, developmental evolution and biochemistry, years and years of experience managing huge research teams, respected by everyone, Maija di-Fraziel is the obvious perfect choice for biology team lead and principal investigator. I feel like a gnat in the presence of a giant and I hate to think that I made her take even a moment of her day to deal with my insecurities. I really don't want the giant to get annoyed with the gnat.

What may be more disturbing is how did she hear about my little rant about the PPS in the first place? Perhaps she has a modus for "paranoid outbursts from unpopular team members," or "ravings of non-critical personnel." Hard to see how even that could rise to the level where she'd want to spend more than a few seconds on it.

I'd like to think she fears rebellion and I'm the chosen one to lead it. Or better yet maybe I should learn to keep a low profile and keep things official and non-controversial. Giants swat bugs; I should remember that.

Day 24 - Transient Encounter

Saw one with my own eyes today. I was on the north ridge picking up the drop package and working on the collector array. I didn't need the beacon for the package; it was right out in the field where it was supposed to be. Looked like a child's toy, a little plastic flying gizmo. The rod in the center had my accelerometers, so I wasn't treating it lightly. Funny that something like that glided from 2km up and hit the mark pretty exactly. The printer's chewing it up right now, breaking it down into blue dots and vital components.

He was on the main trail along the ridge line. I have to cross that to get from the array to the pump station that feeds it, and I was distracted so I didn't hear him. I saw him suddenly -- he was about 150 meters down the hill -- and I froze. My heart pounded, but he hadn't seen me yet so I kind of slowly crouched. I wish I hadn't. My thighs still hurt.

It was surprising how different it was to see one in person than to look at recordings or even my own monitors. He was a young male, perhaps 10 seasons old, the red markings on his ventral flanks relatively dim compared to the more mature males. Still he moved with confidence, and with the grace that's common to the species. He stopped for few moments and I thought my heart would stop. He picked up a small rock and placed it in his belt pouch and then passed me about 30 meters off. If he saw me he showed no sign at all.

The belt was typical of what Rangapoor called a "transient" -- a member of no family that serves as intermediary between settlement and tribe. It may be that these are not a specific social caste but rather youthful individuals who have been ejected from their family of origin but have not yet been accepted in a larger community. Some of this can be settled statistically, but I have to find some life histories to support the hypothesis. I have to remember to account for that in the data collection program.

Along with every other bit of the thosands of experiments I'm supposed to support! Not that I'm complaining. Seeing that DAF today was like dunking my head in cold water. It's really real. I'm here, and they're all around me.

Day 16 - Titianium Space Love

I have a hot date tonight! No, not me here on Sigma 957; I'm at least 430 light years from the nearest restaurant if I'm calculating right, and if Rook's Pawn has restaurants. I don't know -- I've never been there. Right here right now I'm half a continent from the nearest human. And I think that's probably Jalyn anyway.

No, I'm talking about the me on Earth, twelve years younger and stupidly naive, getting ready for a date with the handsome Sven wu-Wendling. I was -- or rather I will be -- wearing my titanium sandals. Metal shoes were all the rage at the time, and they were remarkably comfortable plus super sexy with their woven titanium straps and shiny machined surfaces. Also if he got fresh I could kick his teeth in.

He didn't get fresh. He asked in a matter of fact way if I wanted to come home with him. I had a lie prepared but didn't use it. I just declined and we hung out for a while longer. He was pretty cool for an e1. Still, we had a second date and then things just petered out. At the time I felt rejected but looking back, frankly, he was insufferable. He only talked about his own research and how important it was, and the various tedious flaws he found in everyone else's. Don't know why I found him interesting or why I brooded about his lack of interest. Dodged a bullet there I suspect.

No message needed from the me from the future -- past me ended up right even if she was depressed about it.

The search for intelligence in the universe is like looking for human love. That one "other" that will confirm for you that you're special. And you never find it.

Day 8 - Biological Razor Wire

Biology is a harsh mistress. It demands meticulous observations, long hours, sticky situations and smelly substances, not to mention dealing with confusing and inconsistent evidence. Do I really need support foulups?

I spent about 4 hours today -- in the heat of the day -- crashing through the underbrush looking for the damn goat tracks from the orbital pics. I was covered in welts and bleeding scratches before I stumbled onto one, and it was not the one it was supposed to be. MS kept telling me -- despite how much I yelled at them -- that it was a calibration problem. How can it be calibration? The PPS should be accurate to a tenth of a meter, and it's not like positioning satellites are some brand new idea. Our landing craft hit their marks. The transport that dropped me and my habitat set down within earshot of where I am right now.

I checked the Mission Support logs and there was no report of calibration issue. So someone was messing with me, or they were covering for a bigger problem. I'm actually hoping it was about me, because anything else would be too awful to contemplate. The Planetary Positioning System is pretty much mission-critical gear. If that isn't working then it's hard to imagine how anything could go right.

Anyway I have a better feel for the local flora. The southern hilltop region is almost completely impassable except for the paths maintained by the DAF. There's something that looks like a fern but cuts like razor wire. My field clothes repelled it, but my arms and face and neck are rather raw at the moment. Even the less well-endowed plants have some kind of very itchy toxin we don't a have a cream for yet. I'm also not a big fan of whatever burrowing animal leaves hollows that collapse under the overburdened human female. I'm guessing that if I hadn't been wearing a pack I could have walked over them unscathed.

Of course using their paths means a greater chance of direct encounters. Once I get the remote sensors in place I won't have to make the trips and can run things from the comfort of my hab. Well, relative comfort. The dot matrix printer made an unreasonable racket all night long. I have a lot of mounting brackets to print, so that shouldn't be as big a problem in the future, but I'm not sure when I've heard a noisier printer.

As an aside, I need 360 accelerometers to make my brackets and I only have 288. Logistics assures me that they'll have the missing 72 before I need them. We'll see. As long as no one is messing with me.

Day 1

Finally here. This may have been the most exhausting day of my life, and yet I'm still strangely wired. My hab is built, my power is on, the water is heating for my desperately needed shower, and yet at the same time the overall strangeness of it all is a bit overwhelming. I've trained for this for years, but there's something about really being here...

Odd to call it "day 1". We've been in the system 219 days, 72 days before that in loop precession, 233 incredibly boring days from Mars to Jupiter, and .. what was it .. six years preparing for this mission. Hardly day number 1. More like .. anyway a long time. Plus a lifetime.

Space travel is time travel. While we were twisting around the field lines to cover our 500 plus light years we wound ourselves back in time, so right now on Earth (if you can talk about simultaneous over light years) it's 12 years before we left. I've got a modus for it -- in my personal calendar it's May 3, 2325 but on Earth it's March 27, 2313. I was 22, just entering grad school, full of hope and dreaming of Crabs. What things would I tell my earlier self, if it were possible? Of course a message from me now to me then would take over 500 years to get there and I would be long dead. Or at least gone.

On the other hand when we return -- if we return -- we'll unwind all those twists and gain some time in the bargain. Our displacement is almost 18 years. If we go home after 8 years here I would still be my natural age of 43 but my Einsteinian twin sister -- if I had one -- would be 60. My friends -- or lovers -- would be 18 years older than they should be by my mental clock.

The fuel cell system is very quiet. The generator I used in training had a comforting sound. I was used to that. The night here is not so quiet though. Insect-like things -- I'm afraid we don't have names for them yet -- are moving around everywhere. There are also some nocturnal animals. I'm a city girl at heart so all this nature is discomforting, no matter the training and the adrenaline.

I'm hoping my hot water will be ready soon. I really, really need a shower. I guess I'm running the AC at the same time which is overtaxing the rather minimal power system I've been assigned. I can be hot and sticky now and have a hot shower, or I can be cool now and feel dirty all night. I think I'll turn down the AC now and turn it on after I get clean.