Author: Marcus Nielson
The rain thrummed a little tune on her helmet before turning into a cacophony of sound. Each time the rain changed the tempo, she wondered if this was the time that it would finally stop raining. Then, without fail, the pitter-patter would become a tap-tappy, a hum-drum, or a class 3 orbital terraforming bombardment.
“You’d think I wouldn’t get my hopes up after two years on-site,” Jax muttered to herself as she fiddled with a bit of cord wrapped around her fingers.
A small stream ran from the top of a domed mountain verdant with greens that loomed behind her. The stream hadn’t been here when Jax had first arrived. The new trickle and then deluge excited her in its evolutions as it coursed its way down to the ocean which lapped against the rocks at her feet.
The neon cord ricocheted off a rock and into the stream. Jax pounded her hands against her helmet before lifting herself off of her perch. She snatched the bit of cord before it could drift too far and turned to face her ecological development observation bunker.
The bunker glared back at her from its one dark eye that ran along the entirety of the convex surface exposed from the rock face. Jax flipped it off and trudged back towards the entrance. Forty-two years, this bunker, or the pair of witnesses posted at it, had passively watched the transformation of this world. Forty-two years of firestorms, tectonic shifts, and so much god damn rain. Only when Jax ended up completely on her own, some bureaucratic misstep, did the little adorable stream turn complete evil, shift its course, and begin flooding her bunker through the smallest of faults.
Now inside, Jax extricated herself fromm the helmet with a soft plorp and took a look around. The bunker had three feet of water. Her vacuum sealed foodstuffs bobbed about in a merry dance. Her bunk, or rather what would now be her new partner’s bunk, had been consumed by the flood. Leaving the front door open for the water to show itself out was the best solution she’d dug up so far.
The cold bit at her skin as she sloshed through the frigid water to her workstation.
We’re so sorry for the inconvenience…“blah-blah-blah. Three weeks for a new bunker! What on the face of this planet am I supposed to do for three weeks with a river running through my…”
Buhring!
A new message. This could only be good. At least that drum roll of rain had stopped. Jax started thinking about the copious amounts of alcohol she would need to get through the next month.
Congratulations Terraformers!
Thanks to your hard work and some new data, we’ve confirmed that IXS-9221b has finished its rain cycle. Planet weather control will now be shifting towards sun, sun, SUN!
We’ll now be focusing in on plant and aquatic species cataloging.
Thanks again for all your hard work. Hope you have a Terra day!
“Great.”