Issue 17, Page 28
Transcript
1: The road ahead is especially overgrown, with vines and roots breaking the road up almost beyond recognition in some places. Julia follows it quickly. She’s looking tired, her hair a mess from her exertion. She keeps the glowing Lily clutched to her chest as she tiredly runs. Lily’s crunched form has been wrapped up in the wire that was once her leash, in an effort to keep her together.
2: Through trees, something glistens and sparkles.
3: Julia squints off to her side.
4: Julia walks out from the trees into a clearing. There is a large, artificial body of what appears to be water. It has some plant life growing atop.
Julia: Fuck… It’s… that’s got to be water, right?
5: Lily is delicately set down on the grass, some of the lights show through broken glass eyes.
Lily: [untranslated robotic alien speech – unclear.]
6: Julia examines the water with her wrist computer. The screen on her arm tells her that it is indeed water, with trace of other elements.
Water with plants in it. Here’s hoping they’re non-toxic and non-parasitic.
What gets you worse? The 2% unknown, or the biological traces?
Well, she only has like 2-3 days left at most with no water (and to be honest, by day 4-5 she’d barely be functioning).
It’s certain death vs. a chance, take the chance.
In one movie, Superman was exposed to pseudo-kryptonite. The fool who tried to synthesize it found 2% a “??” and out of desperation used cigarette ash as the “??”.
The pseudo-kryptonite had a red-kryptonite effect , making Superman irresponsible, alcoholic and unconcerned.
Gah knows what THIS ?? will do to her.
Stab it. If it doesn’t respond, scoop some up with the helmet or something, and boil it. Scan again, if no change, drink, and prepare another batch.
If can’t boil… well, toss a coin:
heads: drink the water, with the certain microbes, possible parasites and perhaps toxins, that hopefully are no match for your alien biology
tails: eat instead something living that looks moist inside – lower risk of dangerous microbes, higher risk of toxins and possible killer cacti
edge: die of dehydration
Since the atmosphere has a much higher concentration of oxygen, trying to start a fire for boiling could end disastrously.
That hadn’t occurred to me! Good point!
Not to me, either. A jump from 21% to 37% – easier to start a fire, but might not be easy to control one. Peat fires come to mind. Quite a few nonflammable ruins nearby, though.
I wonder how the others of the teams that ventured thru the portal to the moon are doing ?
Many got assimilated by the god-thing, one at the base turned out to be one of THEM in disguise and exploded, and so on …
Maybe issue #18 will update us.
let’s just hope those 2% are not a Bio-solvent that will dissolve poor Julia from the inside out…
I also am wondering why such a smart girl did not keep that cloth she used as bedding you could also us it to filter water.