by Kris Schnee
He climbed down the pod's external ladder and eased himself into the sea. It didn't dissolve his skin, so that was a good start. Through blurry vision he looked around underwater. He'd come down in a shallow area, maybe ten meters deep. The seabed here was sand and something like coral. He looked around suspiciously for anything shark-like. The few fish around here looked pretty harmless judging from their parrot-like beaks and lack of immediate interest in him, but he'd still need to be careful. He took a knife along. Where to begin? He looked up at the processing chute that was built into the pod's exterior, for him to more-or-less shovel stuff into. Time for some samples.
He used a hammer and spade to scoop up some sand and break off a chunk of coral, then fed those into the hopper. He grabbed a stalk of purple seaweed after poking it a few times to make sure it didn't do anything horrible. Then he climbed back into the pod to dry off and see what he'd won.
Silicon in the sand, the computer said. Obviously; sand was basically powdered quartz. The seaweed was carbon, nitrogen, the usual. Machines whirred to life around him to process the stuff. The pod had some ability to break what he'd found into simple chemicals, if not to turn lead into gold. Gauges for various materials filled up to a whopping 0.1%. Encouraged now, Neil flipped through the available blueprints again and saw that a basic solar panel would be within his reach, if he kept foraging. And if the pod's power supply held out. He looked at the battery gauge and murmured, "It's my life meter, for now." He slapped a button to stop the elemental processing, then to turn the lights and life support down to a bare minimum. The high-tech equipment grew suddenly quiet and dark but for three tiny red bulbs. It was a preview of a future without energy. A good motivator, too.
He shuddered and pulled himself back into the sea to work. He swam all around the lifepod to scout for resources and shovel them in. Okay, he definitely needed silica, so he could turn the materials processor on for that and a few other ingredients. But first, did he want to keep living in an upside-down habitat that might break the machinery if he used it that way? He risked breaking the pod worse if he righted it, but it'd be worse to leave it inverted. Or at least, it'd feel worse, like a perpetual emergency.
He climbed back inside and got out a coil of wondrously light spidersilk rope. He'd done some boating back home on Mars, in the mighty canyon city that'd been glassed over and terraformed. The scariest part back then had been when the boat had flipped over, but there'd been a solution to that. He tied the rope to a cleat built into the lifepod's hull, at what was currently the top. Then he braced his feet against the pod, leaned backward, and let his weight slowly flip the whole thing over with a smack against the sea. The pod bobbed and steadied on a set of bright orange floaters.
Progress! He had one thing on this damn world already that wasn't knocked over and ruined! Neil bobbed in the gentle current and found that he had something in his eye. He rubbed away a tear and let the salt mingle with this planet's supply.
Neil clambered back into the lifepod through the now-upper hatch and made sure everything was in order. He hesitated over the Start button for the materials processor, then slapped it. "Go, my robot minions." The pod started burning through its batteries.
He was starved, though. He went back out to the water and wasted time trying to catch the local fish. The pod's computer said it could process pretty much anything organic into Nutrition Bricks (the actual recipe name), but warned that the seaweed was probably going to be less efficient than the animal life. Worse yet, said the initial analysis, it looked like he couldn't directly eat anything that grew here! There was a warning, not that it was toxic to touch but that the protein was somehow... mirror-reversed? Inedible in any case. His specialty was the more hard and chunky aspects of engineering, like turning printed rivets and girders into buildings. If he could just get a sample of the fish, he'd have a better idea of his cooking prospects and whether the protein thing applied to all local life. He'd rather not spend the rest of his days eating bricks and being utterly dependent on one machine.
With the computer mostly tied up in running the whirring, chugging omniprinter, he didn't have much to do. He swam a bit more and gathered more seaweed, careful not to denude the whole area. Who knew how long he'd be here?
He didn't want to think about that, because the answer was "not long" if he forgot anything crucial. Back inside the pod he had the computer screen show him a survival guidebook called Survive and Thrive. It began with a statement that he hopefully was reading the thing before needing it. Neil muttered, "That ship has sailed."
He got out the medical kit and reluctantly nicked his own finger to let it bleed into a sample vial, then fed it to the machine to scan whenever it was ready. He sealed the cut with some ExoTech QuickClot Foam.
The air was growing muggy and stale with the hatches closed, but he didn't want to waste power. He lay there and skimmed the survival guide.
Finally the machine beeped. It sounded happy. A gleaming black panel made of a tough, flexible plastic slowly whirred out of the printer, complete with wiring for hooking it up. Neil kissed the thing, then anxiously wiped the mark away and headed outside with it. Just then his stomach rumbled; he needed to recharge too. He shook his head. "I can go weeks without food if I have to." Outside, the sun hung low in the sky as further motivation. Neil carefully hung the solar panel like a flag or blanket on the side of the pod to drink what light was left in the day. He ducked in and out of the pod a few times to check the sensor feedback and think about where it'd be best to leave the thing long-term. Maybe right on the water, since it could absorb a little energy from the waves' motion too. No, no, he didn't want to risk having fish nibble on the thing when it was so important. He could play around with his second or third panel. When you have almost nothing, the guidebook said, even the simplest tools are to be guarded like a dragon's hoard.
The pod had a sunny yellow icon on its screen indicating a slight energy income. Neil sat down on the bare metal floor and said, "So the machinery's not about to go down forever. What's the next thing that could kill me?"
Water. The ocean's salinity was lower than Earth's but still undrinkable. Neil called for some purified water and put an ExoTech Ultimate Wilderness Container (apparently just a sturdy plastic bottle) under the tap. It filled slowly with pure, lukewarm water. Excellent! Once he'd drunk his fill he patted the machine and said, "Thanks. Now, food?"
The pod responded to a few keypresses and gradually extruded a brown block of "food". Neil made a face at it. Still he took the half-ration and nibbled it. Tasted like soap, but supposedly it was very nutritious.
He opened the hatch to get some fresh air. The sky was dim and red now, and he didn't want to swim at night and risk learning the hard way about local nocturnal predators. He took one last swim to gather interesting shells (full of calcium) and a new species of seaweed. The nimble little fish still eluded him. He dried off inside the pod and settled in to wait through the long dark. If only his fellow crewmen had made it here with him, they could've colonized this place together instead of the world they'd been heading for! Neil sat up on the hard floor with his back against a shelf, using his towel for a pillow and his ruined clothes for a mattress, and took a nap.
The computer roused him. "Biological adaptation analysis complete," it said. "Synthesize adaptation serum? (Estimated battery drain 2%, ingredients listed below.)"
Neil sat up. "What? Adaptation?" He pushed a button and the machine buzzed. He'd opened the wrong menu, and now he couldn't access the right documentation to get a good explanation without confirming or rejecting the offer. It looked like a small "purchase" from the resources he'd gathered, just common elements rearranged cleverly, so he went ahead and confirmed.
In a few minutes a tray opened on one of the omniprinter's smaller ports, revealing a full syringe. Neil stared at it and brought up more info at last. The odd thing was that it read like the Titan's corporate documentation rather than the more practical tech manuals. "Your personalized Ad
aptation Serum is keyed both to your own stored genetic profile and to an analysis of local life. Before exposing yourself to native pathogens, let your sample retrieval team feed data into the patented ExoTech GeneForge to prepare you for your amazing feats of colonization."
Native pathogens. Neil looked at his bare hands and arms, wondering what horrible microbes might already be taking him apart from the inside. From what he understood of alien life, there shouldn't be a lot of cross-compatibility of diseases, but who knew? The guys who built this pod knew what they were doing. He wiped a patch of his skin clean and injected himself, wincing at the sting.
Almost immediately he got hungry again. He ordered another brick and scarfed it down, then flopped back onto the pod's bare floor. The waves sloshed under him and the world spun for a while.
* * *
When he could think straight again, it was because of something caught under him. He rolled over, groaning, and his tail banged into a cabinet. He did a double-take. He'd grown a fuzzy brown tail! He grabbed the thing and felt the touch, as though he were clutching part of his spine. He was overheated too. He looked himself over again and yelped in surprise. A fuzzy pelt covered his torso and was slowly spreading out to his upper arms and thighs. It felt like he'd put on a partial wetsuit. He stood up, careful not to bang his head against the pod's ceiling. There was a little mirror in the supplies. It showed him his normal human face, but the fur — cream-colored on his front, darker brown on the back — was prickling and creeping upward from his chest to approach his neck.
"Computer! What the hell!"
The screen said, "Unknown command. Elevated voice stress level detected. Would you like to engage the 'Wilson' Survivor Conversation System?"
Instead, Neil tapped buttons on the screen. His medical profile hadn't gotten a full update since his last checkup aboard Titan, yet the record had changed greatly. His basic stats of height, weight and colors were all different (especially the last one), and the "Biomods" section had expanded. "Disease Resistance Upgrade, Swimming Enhancement, Metabolic Chirality Adapter" and other entries, none of which explained why he had fur! Or did it, under the "Swimming Enhancement"? He looked himself over with the little mirror again, watching as the fur spread slowly down his limbs and up to his chin. He was actually able to see two layers of individual brown hairs sprouting along his arm. "I look like... an otter?"
In answer to his question, his face began to push forward into a muzzle, and he felt his teeth reshaping subtly in his longer jaws. His ears itched terribly as they migrated higher along his skull, over the course of a few minutes. He tapped the screen's buttons for more information and noticed that his fingers felt stretched out, gummy in between. His palms had become thicker and leathery, with webbing growing in between them. He opened and closed his hands repeatedly and watched little claws forming from what had been his fingernails. It was crazy to give somebody a change like this as part of a survival system! Still, it made sense in a roundabout way. He had this high-tech lifepod, but just a little while ago he'd been scared that the batteries would run out and he'd be totally out of options. With this changing body, he should be better equipped to survive with or without tools. Which was good, because right now he was naked.
He spent a while patting at his ottery, whiskered muzzle and his little round ears, and looking the rest of himself over. A subtle fizzy sensation all through his body came and went, maybe the serum finishing its work. He leaned back against the lifepod wall, letting the rocking of the waves calm him. His tail felt cold against the metal.
He opened the floor hatch and gingerly lowered himself into the water, feeling it flow through his fur for the first time. He was floating in a strange way. He ran one webbed hand along the fur of his chest and felt it ripple, full of air and a little water that'd keep close to his skin and absorb his warmth. Built-in wetsuit!
Neil dived. It was easy to hold his breath long enough to explore the shallow seabed. Colorful things drifted past him and caught his attention. By instinct he darted toward them without properly kicking, yet he was moving really fast! He flipped around in a vertical loop and saw his long tail waggling. Here was a new way to swim. He darted after the fish again and saw them more clearly than before even though he was underwater. His eyes must have adapted. Just a little farther... Aha! He snagged one of the big-eyed critters in his webbed hands and held onto it while it thrashed. Victory! He swam back to the pod and whacked the fish hard enough to kill it, then sliced off a chunk of the flesh. He fed it into the machine.
"Processing," it said. Neil tapped one foot impatiently and whipped his tail back and forth. Finally it spat out an analysis showing that it was protein-rich and ought to be edible by anyone with a Metabolic Chirality Adapter. The machine offered to process the fish into a Nutrition Brick.
Neil grinned, tapping buttons. "No, I want this one grilled." He fed the whole fish into the machine to be heated with minimal processing.
It was delicious. Tangy. A chunk of lightly roasted seaweed made a nice side dish.
* * *
Two weeks later, Neil inspected the concrete he'd poured. His new base, a collection of metal cylinders, was on the seabed around eight meters down, to protect it against storms. He'd extended part of it upward until he could add a concrete bunker that broke the surface and was only partly covered. He had a patio! There were solar panels feeding energy to his base's batteries, and he still had the lifepod itself as an emergency backup shelter.
The concrete patio had cured, hardening despite exposure to seawater. Neil grabbed the railing he'd built into it and climbed down a hatch and ladder, into his new home. This was a little world of metal and plastic that hummed with electricity and creaked faintly with the waves.
"Greetings, Neil," said the robotic voice of the base's computer. Neil had given in and activated the Wilson Survivor Conversation System so he'd have a fake personality to talk with and avoid going nuts. It said, "All systems are in good condition. How are you?"
"Hungry!" he said. He hadn't yet figured out how to build a full-body dryer, so he grabbed a fluffy towel and dried off his fur. It was another sunny day on the ocean planet. Down here inside the base he'd installed a big reinforced-glass window. Light streamed and rippled through it in fascinating patterns. His bed was a pile of cushions and blankets he'd manufactured, all synthetic fibers but reasonably comfortable. With his fur he didn't need much warmth inside his insulated house. Even so, he'd installed a ventilation system to make the interior liveable. A storage locker on the wall held some interesting shells and stones he'd collected. The desk had his handheld, waterproof computer and some paper notes. The pod's omniprinter had been just as useful as advertised! All in all, the underwater base was a better house than most humans had ever owned. There wasn't even a mortgage to pay.
"Will you be dining out today?" asked the base. For Neil that meant catching wild fish and eating them raw. He'd only done that once so far for the experience of being a natural otter. The omniprinter's analysis system had assured him it'd be reasonably safe but he'd decided that cooking was definitely an improvement. The thing was, Neil didn't want to be totally dependent on the computer and his other technology. He'd found a partial solution to that.
He said, "No, thanks. Going to the patio." Neil rummaged, pulled a couple of fish out of the fridge, and climbed back up to the sunlight. The tray of seaweed and wood-like plants he'd gathered had dried out at last. So, it was time for some low technology. He used an electric lighter to get the little pile of fuel blazing, then sat on his porch and grilled fish over the open fire.
"Hey, computer, how is the antenna synthesis going?" Neil was sitting on bare, warm concrete as he roasted his catch on an improvised skewer.
"Main antenna body design is complete. Currently known material sources will be adequate for a tower that greatly extends your communication range. However, the receiver circuitry requires elemental gold."
Gold! Where was he going to find a gold mine on this wor
ld? Well, he'd have to do more exploration. That was fine. He'd build the big antenna he had planned and use that to beam out a proper distress signal, so he could get rescued. He was in no hurry at this point. He'd already begun colonizing a planet, if not the one he'd intended to. He had a swimmer's body, an endless supply of tasty fish, and a whole world to wander through. At worst he'd go down in history as the first explorer of this place and send back tons of data about how to live here.
Neil stood up, stretching from head to tail, and looked out to the sunny sea. Maybe after the antenna, he'd start building a cool submarine. There was plenty to see out there!
* * *
It was week four since the crash. One of the nice things about being shipwrecked in the modern age was that the emergency equipment included plenty of computer data storage for the omniprinter's blueprints. As the survival guidebook noted, one of the biggest threats to a stranded traveler was boredom. So, the lifepod's designers had set aside a few percent of the data storage system for a partial copy of the famous Archive of Research and Culture. There were hundreds of famous novels, textbooks on a dozen subjects from basic to advanced level, a few hundred recorded songs, and a collection of video games. Not coincidentally, there was enough material to begin recreating human civilization from scratch... at least the "from scratch" that included computers and omniprinters. Now that he'd established a base, he'd started to delve into the ARC for fun as well as construction advice.
Every day out here on the sea was nice. Usually brilliant and clear, sometimes windy and overcast but pleasant indoors. His ever-expanding set of solar panels drank the sunlight to keep his machinery powered. He'd even begun to set up a lesser omniprinter that could make basic tools, for fear of the day when the larger one might break beyond his ability to repair it.