Issue 17, Page 12
Yummy bag of delicious sand.
Transcript
1: Julia and Lily step into the dark warehouse-like building through its torn, open door, stepping over old, rusted metal. The large glass ‘eyes’ of Lily’s front are lit like spotlights, illuminating the interior, joining the natural light: various large crates and metallic pods that litter the ground. Alien symbols painted on the walls are accompanied by the vague, messy illustration.
2: Julia’s knife rips open a bag, and a sand-like mass pours out.
3: She pries a metal door back, seeing small empty boxes beyond.
4: Julia leans on a wall and tries to hold her head through her helmet, wincing in pain.
Lily (off-panel): [untranslated robotic alien speech – inquisitive]
5: Towards the back of the building, Julia taps at her computer. Lily watches her, its eyes casting green light across objects and rubble, illuminating a way forward.
Julia: <digital click> No luck finding anything drinkable yet… my headache’s getting pretty bad.
It’s probably just dehydration… ugh…
Hey, Mel, remember Zeng Ji? The record holder for longest time spent in deep space?
6: Julia ducks down to get through a ruined entrance way.
Julia: He reported terrible headaches and stomach problems… He was a mess when he got back to Earth.
They said it was radiation, but I remember some people calling it space sickness, like our bodies just can’t handle being far from Earth for too long.
Hmmm, sand could indicate that there is a body of liquid (maybe water?) nearby. That is how tends to form here.
Huh, given that mysticism has been shown to exist in this universe, maybe there is some kind of Gaia hypothesis sorta thing going on.
And what’s with that graffiti tag (for lack of a better term) that keeps showing up?
Grr, i need to find some time to try and decipher robo-speak, bound to be some clues.
In “At the Mountains of Madness” grafitti left by the shoggoths (belligerent messages, no doubt) were here & there on the abandoned city’s walls.
One method that MIGHT work, is a triangle with its incircle, excircles (3) and 9-point circle. Speak each name and see what the robby calls such. Geometry is universal.
Look around inside for some plastic sheeting or hard sheet plastics or glass – then go outside and have the little robot look for any moisture sources and go for a Solar Still. Dig a big hole in a sunny place, put a catch cup at the bottom, plastic sheeting and weight rock in the middle over the catch cup… Repeat many times over every potential source.
It isn’t champagne, but it’ll keep you going. If you can find some hose you don’t even have to take it apart to get the water out. Between that and the suit internally recycling moisture, it should be enough.
The Pain of Space (or whatever it was called in Scanners Live in Vain)