Left at Eden - Chapter 17

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Left at Eden

The sun set as the girls sailed between several uncharted islands, mostly small spits of land. The area was dotted with lots of tiny islands where they were, nothing massive. Zarra had been gone awhile exploring the depths, but Brie had given her a waterproof satchel to carry starfruit, and anything else of interest she might have found so it was likely she was just doing her thing.

Hailey yawned. She had lookout shift while everyone else rested, but so far all she saw was the faint haze of twilight. She thought she saw something - or rather someone - out of the corner of her eye, a silhouette on a small island shore. Zarra splashed out of the water and up onto the ship, and when Hailey looked back, whatever she thought she had seen was gone.

“Sorry I was gone for so long,” Zarra said. “I was searching for more black glass and metal boxes.”

“Oh that’s fi- wait, metal boxes?” Hailey asked.

“Yes,” Zarra said as she reached into her satchel. “I found one, and thought there might be more. It definitely isn’t natural,” she said, as she pulled out a waterlogged iPad and offered it to Hailey. “Black glass on the front, with a metal back,” she said.

“Oh holy cow!” Hailey laughed, “This is an iPad.”

She ran down below deck, grabbing a small bucket and a bag of rice, with Zarra following curiously behind. She filled the bucket halfway, placed the iPad inside, and then covered it.

“Oh, I see,” Zarra said. “You’re dehydrating it?”

Hailey nodded. “Salt or sand would get inside of it, but rice kernels are too big. With any luck, it should still function. It’s a computer device, like Brie’s portable scanner,” she added. Zarra nodded.

She didn’t understand how Brie’s portable scanner worked, but she understood that it was high technology at least, and respected that high technology as a human respects a brown bear, which was to say she kept a respectable distance at all times, and kept track of her digits in the process.

“Our technology is mechanical,” Zarra replied. “Steam, clockwork, or combustion. I’ve never seen devices like what you and Brie use.”

“We can teach you.” Hailey answered. “It’ll probably be more common place soon on this world, so it might be good to learn.” She looked up at Zarra. “By the way you said you were here almost three weeks. Have you or the others noticed anything different about yourselves?”

Zarra shook her head, “Not really.”

“The ocean water here has strange properties,” Hailey said. “Healing and mutagenic. Like we said to those Furren girls this morning, Wendy and I used to be finless. The water changed us - not that we’re complaining. For others, the changes are more subtle. Ella’s gotten much stronger for example.”

“We’ve been more worried about finding others and food to really notice anything.” Zarra shrugged. “We did notice the water was sweet. There’s no salt in it at all, and it makes the starfruit even sweeter.”

That seemed to remind her that she had a fresh crop of it now, and she took one out of the satchel. She poked one fingernail just below the surface, dragged it along vertically, and the melon-like fruit split right in half. She offered half to Hailey as she bit into the other half, sucking up the juices.

Hailey smiled and took a bite. As the juice dribbled down her chin, she moved her hand to catch it, and in raising her head, spotted a slightly larger island they were approaching. “Rebecca! Land Ho!” She slurped down some more juice and bit into the soft fruity flesh. “Oh this is delicious.”

Zarra giggled. “It’s packed with nutrients, but it’s normally hard to cultivate.”

Rebecca came up the stairs with a solar lantern, her hair a mess, “Thanks for waking me,” she laughed. “No offense, but I don’t trust anyone else with landings.”

“None taken,” Hailey laughed too. “There’s two other things,” she said, pointing to the rice bucket. “Zarra found an iPad in the depths, for one.”

“Are you shitting me?” Rebecca asked.

“Nope. It looks like mine too.” Hailey laughed.

“I found it on a small outcropping, right next to a lone starfruit vine,” Zarra nodded.

“That’s fantastic,” Rebecca said. “So what was the other thing?”

“The other thing was probably nothing, but you told me to report anything unusual. Just before Zarra came back, I swear I thought I saw someone out of the corner of my eye on one of the tiny islands, but when I looked back, there was literally nothing there. Just sand and ocean, and nowhere they could’ve gone, so I didn’t wake you for it.”

Rebecca nodded as she took the wheel, “Thanks. I'll put that in my notes.” she said as she beached the boat, “All hands on deck!” she called out. There was a large bell by the wheel. Inside the bell the clapper had a little hook to rest on, so that it wasn’t ringing relentlessly every time the ship moved. She unhooked it and grabbed the rope that dangled down, ringing it loudly.

“Agh!” Brie could be heard groaning somewhere below deck, followed by a loud thump. A few seconds later she stumbled onto the deck, yawning. “Thank you, Rebecca. I was having a horrible nightmare and couldn’t wake up,” she said honestly.

Ella, Wendy and Karen soon followed. Rebecca grinned. “Glad to be of service. Sorry for waking you guys, but we’ve got a large landmass here. Wendy and Hailey are our resident Survival Experts, so I’m going to send you both in first. Do not go too far in, but I want you to do some preliminary scouting.”

“Roger roger,” Wendy said with a slight giggle as Hailey took out her phone.

“Don’t call me Roger.” Rebecca grinned.

“Testing, testing, 1 2 3,” Hailey said.

“I hear you,” Candy laughed as she came on deck now.

“Ok, once you two do your base scouting report back to the beach, We’ll wait for you here.” Rebecca smiled.

“Rebecca Rebecca,” Hailey said with a giggle, jumping off the ship before Rebecca could swat her.

“Uh,” Wendy said as she jumped off after Hailey. “What’s with the bucket of rice? You drop your phone in the water again?”

“Nope, Zarra found an iPad.” Hailey laughed. “I'll go right you go left?”

“OHMYGOD sweet!” Wendy squealed excitedly, cleared her throat, and then nodded. “Be careful.”

“You too.” Hailey nodded as she took off to the right and into the woods without a lantern because Furren had naturally keen night vision. The trees were dense, and there seemed to be a trail to follow. Some short distance in, Hailey was meet with a large Warehouse, that had the radioshack logo on it.

“Oh my God guys,” she quickly radioed back. “You’re not going to freaking believe what I just found out here.”

“What? What is it?” Candy asked. “Animal, mineral or vegetable?”

“Mineral.” Hailey laughed, “I found the motherlode of finds.”

Wendy called back, “Holy crap I found a car factory.”

“Okay,” Hailey laughed, “I found the SECOND most motherlode of a find. I found a freaking Radio Shack warehouse, out in the ass crack middle of nowhere.”

“What’s a Radio Shack?” Candy asked. Hailey could hear Rebecca laugh as she explained.

“Ohh, neat!” Candy said.

“Hold on, I thought I saw someone,” Hailey said. “Going to run up to the roof and check.” She secured her phone and then, sizing up a nearby tree, ran up and grabbed it, and began to claw her way up. Once she reached the top, she ran out along a sturdy branch and leapt, rolling onto the roof. She looked around.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are... Haley’s gonna find you,” she sang, to the tune of “Pop goes the weasel” as she looked around. There was no one there, and nowhere for them to hide. Unless they jumped off; her mind had to be playing tricks on her again.

“Did you find another survivor?” Wendy radioed back.

“I thought I saw someone, but there’s no scent.” Hailey sighed, “Ok guys I’m going to go in.”

Rebecca called back, “Negative, both of you return to the beach.”

“On my way,” Wendy called back. “I snapped a few pictures.”

“Yeah, I’m on my way. Hey, Candy, how far can we fall and not get hurt?”

“I’m not setting your bones,” Candy teased her. “I’d say about two stories on soft ground. More if you’ve got a softer target. It’s all in the way your body flexes as you land and distributes the force throughout, but even we have our limits,” she giggled.

Hailey called back a second later, “Ok, cats do always land on all four of their feet.”

“Yes, well we also run faster on all fours too, but we don’t like to.” Candy giggled.

“Really?” Wendy called back. “Oh I have GOT to try that!”

“You should try climbing too,” Hailey called back. “Okay, going silent for a second while I figure out how the hell I’m getting back down.”

Hailey put away her phone again. She started to take a running position, thought about what Candy said, and took off in a dead sprint on all fours, using the extra momentum to carry her further off the roof. It was a good thing too because otherwise, she’d have narrowly missed latching onto the tree branch.

What she didn’t expect, was that her ability as a stardust blue furren kicked in, and she shifted forms to a large wild cat. It startled her enough that she lost her grip on the branch and fell, right onto the next branch. The branch creaked and groaned with the sudden application of force, but she managed to amble around into a better grip, scampering for the tree trunk.

“What the...” she said, in a voice somewhat her own, but with a guttural, primal growl underpinning it. “I... I did it!” she came barrelling out of the forest in her large cat form. Wendy looked up, let out a startled shriek, and sprinted for the deck of the ship by way of clawing her way right up the side.

Candy examined Hailey, “It’s Hailey! I recognize the markings anywhere, and her scent.”

“I did it!” Hailey giggled in her new voice as she danced around playfully on the beach, rolling over onto her back and wiggling the sand into her fur. “I don’t know how, but I did it!”

“Can you turn back?” Wendy asked looking over the edge of the boat now.

“Let’s see,” Hailey said as she got back on her feet again, shaking the sand off. She first tried to rear back on two legs. That did little more than make her look like a blue circus tiger - which admittedly, made Rebecca giggle. She sat down on her hind legs with her paws in front, and thought about it for a moment. As she was trying to think of something else she could try, her form began to shift again, until she was right back to her old self.

Luckily silvan cloth was a very stretchy material because Hailey’s clothes, albeit in need of just a bit of adjustment, were back where they belonged again. Wendy had by now cautiously climbed back out of the boat.

Hailey shook her head vigorously as she stood. “I wonder what else is on this island besides the two things we found.”

“No idea, but we need to vote on which one to go to first.” Rebecca said. “Then we’ll call it in.”

“Both have their merits,” Wendy nodded. “I saw some four-wheelers on the lot that we can use to explore the island faster, however I won’t lie, the thought of getting my paws on a laptop again has me squirming inside.”

“There’s also the fact that Hailey thought she saw someone at the warehouse,” Brie added. Hailey shook her head.

“No, that turned out to be nothing. There were no signs, no scent, and if they had jumped off, which had to be at least four stories by the way, I would’ve heard them hit the ground. I’m going to check myself into the clinic when we get back because that’s twice.”

“I wouldn’t stress over it. This planet takes some getting used to. The first year I was here, I kept hearing things too,” Rebecca said, giving little more explanation than that.

Ella nodded. “I still see ghost ships from time to time when I’m on watch alone. My vote is for the factory. Faster transportation will allow us to get to the warehouse more quickly, as well as any other interesting locations on the island.”

The others cast their votes, mostly favoring Ella’s logic, or in Zarra’s case remained undecided and neutral.

“Zarra?” Rebecca asked.

“Yes ma’am?” Zarra answered.

“You get a say too,” she said. Zarra looked at her like she was speaking another language.

“Excuse me?” Zarra asked, confused.

“On my ship, we’re a democracy,” Rebecca laughed. “Everyone’s voice matters.”

Zarra blinked a few times, quietly nodding. “I see. I’m afraid I have no input to offer.”

“You have a lot to learn, but we'll count that as a neutral vote.”

“I’m sorry,” Zarra said. “My people are an absolute monarchy. As bodyguards we advise the Princess on matters of her personal security, but even then, she has the final word on all decisions.”

“That’s not how our society works here. We have a governing body, and we all vote, and all peoples vote matters.” Rebecca said. “We value everyone's opinions.”

“That will... take much getting used to. But the Princess will love it,” she added with a slight giggle. “For what it is worth then, I believe Ella’s plan seems sound. Ordinarily I would be concerned with noise attracting unwanted attention, but I have seen how you seek out others, and imagine that there is no unwanted attention, in this case.”

Karen couldn’t help giggling a little. “Ella, I think we just found you a new best friend”

Ella laughed. “I’m a guard too, of sorts, among my people,” she explained. “We’re peacekeepers and mediators.”

“Base, this is the Victory,” Rebecca radioed back.

“Go ahead Rebecca. What is your status?”

“Condition green,” Rebecca called back. “We’ve landed on a large island. We can’t see where the beach ends from here. We’ve located two structures that we’re going to investigate - an automobile factory, and an Earth electronics warehouse.”

“Did you say an automobile factory AND an electronic warehouse?” the woman radioed back.

“Yes ma’am.” Rebecca answered.

“That just got the science lab buzzing.” The woman laughed.

As the group began to travel towards the car factory, Zarra suddenly stopped, and scales rippled up her body. There was a faint sound like rustling bushes, and it was coming closer. The furrens’ ears twitched. They heard it too.

Rebecca whispered “Stand ready”. Hailey, Wendy and Candy had their claws out and ready for anything.

A pale woman with black hair and fangs emerged onto the path directly in front of them, chewing a piece of fruit the native island’s fruit. She stopped, slowly turning to look at the group ready for battle, dropped the fruit, and put up her hands.

Hailey started to giggle, “A Fruit bat. We all got freaked out by a friendly.” She retracted her claws. “Sorry about that.”

“You scared me half to death,” the girl laughed as she realized they were relaxing. “I haven’t seen anyone since I got here so I thought I was alone.”

“Oh, goodness no. There’s about 40 more of your species back at our colony.” Brie replied.

“To make a very long story short,” Rebecca laughed, adding, “And I’m very sorry for scaring you by the way. We’re part of an exploration guild. We were all brought to this planet by a mysterious force; some of us as much as eighty galactic standard years ago.”

“My goodness,” the girl said. “It has only been a few days for me. I hide out during the day at the strange building near here, and go out at night to look for food.”

“Wait, your species has no scent.. You must have been what I saw.” Hailey blushed. “You were at the warehouse earlier weren’t you?”

She shook her head, “Nope.. I was near the temple further in getting some fruit.” She opened her bag to show them the assortment of bananas, apples, even a papaya. “I avoid the warehouse. For some reason, it unsettles me.”

“Weird.” Hailey sighed. “I swear something was there.”

“When I go near there the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stands on end,” the girl said. “It sounds silly, superstitious, but when you are alone in these woods, your mind can really mess with you. I am so glad to find other people.”

“You mentioned a temple?” Rebecca asked.

“Yes. It appears to be ancient.” The girl smiled as she pointed toward the small, almost indiscernible path she had been following - at least, indiscernible in this light, to the humans and to Ella. Brie and the furren could just make it out.

“Oh,” she said after a moment. “ i'm Sasha, by the way. On my planet I’m a surveyor. Come, we can get small vehicles from the automotive factory that we can take to the temple more quickly.”

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Wow

The gods/overseers seem to have decided to make East Eden an industrial district. All that tech is going to be one hell of a bootstrap for them, even if the engines don't take the Wendy's fuel well (but they probably will, maybe with some minor adjustment), not only do they have the metal, but they have the equipment to make new engines, same sort of deal with the warehouse, not to mention as they upgrade the power efficiency of both the warehouse and the factory, they will gain electrical power, once they get fuel production going, then the land based operations of both colonies will become so much more efficient, I get the feeling that neither colony has fully explored their main islands, this will enable them to do so. They are probably going to have to set up East Eden main island as a new colony.

Hmmmmm another

Samantha Heart's picture

Fruit bat person but SOMETHING about three Radio Shack is off. I think Haiey also saw another of the fruit bat people on the small island as well.

Love Samantha Renée Heart.

What's off is

That it's a warehouse and its abandoned, Ok sure another fruit bat may be there, but a warehouse is typically a large featureless building, remove signs of life from it, add to that its in the middle of a wooded area, with no roads to or from it. Its unsettling, there are two settings that easily disturb the unprepared, the forest and the warehouse, this is a warehouse, in a forest. Warehouses are designed with a purpose, store stuff, and do so efficiently, such that stored items take up minimal area and are easy to access, they are monotonous inside and out, built to withstand potential break ins or environmental damage, relatively cheaply, everything that doesn't directly correlate to storage is shoved in one corner of the building maybe with restrooms at other corners, but that's it and a maybe, at least one wall of the building is dedicated strictly to loading and unloading, from that side you can see seemingly endless rows of large shelving units, and looking down one seems just as endless. Factories don't have quite the same imagery, not only are different things going on throughout, but in a factory happy employees means better product, better production, fewer mistakes, and if management does things right, better safety, so while modern factories are designed for efficiency, they are also designed with employee morale in mind, unhappy employees have ended companies in the past, including a car company or two, so employee morale- on the factory floor especially, is as vital as the employees having the parts, tools, and materials to do the work.

the Warhouse

not only contains lots of equipment they can use as is, but with some work, also contains most if not all of what they need for a proper electronics manufacturing plant, even some parts to make new circuitry with, and will enable them to make their production capabilities more efficient. There are also drones, which if they generate enough lift to fly, will help them map out the area,

Actually the warehouse doesn

Brooke Erickson's picture

Actually the warehouse doesn't even come *close* to letting them build electronics.

It'll have tools to *assemble* parts into working items, but they can't use the stuff there to build the parts to assemble.

I used to work for a company that produced silicon wafers. Not ICs or transistors or whatever, just the pieces of hyperpure & carefully doped silicon that they use to create the chips.

That plant took up the space of *several* American football fields. and it still needed a lot of stuff from elsewhere. Including some rather nasty chemicals.

Brooke brooke at shadowgard dot com
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it will get them started, I

it will get them started, I mean the smaller scale that is little better then what was used in the 50s, not the massive wafers that are made today, the simple induction heater around a quartz crucible, with a slowly spinning seeding crystal slowly moving up, barely able to make the silicon ingots the size of a small (but not miniature) flashlight, as for the rest, they ARE making ICs and panels with their silicon substitute, and they DO have a few molecular assemblers on a crashed ship for the hard to fabricate chemicals.

By the way the Warehouse is

By the way the Warehouse is just that, it's a place they can call in to the main island, they're an exploration team not a build team *Smiles* But yes, it opens up massive resources for the colonists of Eden.


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Please

With their polymer synthesis capabilities, the 3d printer parts alone are an incredible boon, the main advantage of the factory is that it already has built vehicles and engines, and engine designs, and heavier duty servo mechanisms, if they had just the warehouse they could have made a factory, it would have taken some doing but it could be done. Main issue is going to be the greatly increased demand on their electrical grid, but that's always going to be a never ending problem

A couple things

1 How big is the Victory's cargo hold and loading ramp? I mean we know its big cause of what Ella unloaded to give to Circle Sea colony but what about clearance, would they be able to drive a car in?
2 Sasha is a surveyor, that's a useful skill for a group of explorers, yes she has problems with sunlight, which NORMALLY could prove a hindrance, however, depending on the range of those drones (both flight and radio) at the warehouse, that might not matter.

I Love this story, adventure

I Love this story, adventure and alien races without turning it into a which race is going to try and kill me next type of series like most sci-fi turns into. I kind of wish Hailey had turned into a Finnari now that i know of them, mostly cause I like mermaids way more than cat girls. Im wondering if someone will arrive, almost drown and get turned into a Finnari. Im guessing that the person Hailey thinks she sees on the island and then on the warehouse are the same person and that either they are a member of the overseers getting up close and personal or they are another species with interesting abilities such as invisibility or phasing, something cool. Great story.

Well remember Finnari aren't

Well remember Finnari aren't the only aquatic people on Eden, there's Chucklefish's people. Merefolk while originally very manipulative (lure ships in with song and drown and eat the crew) have become basically "humans with fish tails" cat people, on the other hand, have various feline personalities to explore. One thing to consider for what Hailey is seeing, her entire physiology, brain included, has just been massively altered, yes it could be someone, but it just as likely could be nothing, the overseers have such technology that races with technology that to our society is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic (Which our technology is to the Finnari), that is indistinguishable from magic to THEM, they have little reason to ever be observable on the planet, save for their cute messages.

Finnari and their Finnless counterparts are a pre-electric steam age society, now with that comes some useful perspectives, things that could be overlooked by more advanced ideas, for one thing, a Finnari clock or watch maker would be useful, but another thing is that outside of use as a bottoming cycle in thermal-electric power plants, we don't typically think about the Rakine or Stirling Cycle much for power generation, they will be useful for not just colony power generation, but for when they start having their ships powered by fuel and solar, clock/watch makers are useful particularly if they are steam age as they would also be DESIGNING machines, in that they take material that is typically disregarded where computational equipment is needed to be made, and make computational equipment out of it, this need is mitigated with the warehouse, provided a supply of quartz and some doping agents, it is more or less alleviated.

As to whom might become Finnari, Amber.

Wall of text

More than likely, East Eden main island will be used as an outpost base, which they need, while the Victory has the experimental supplies to last a month, and Zarra to aid their food supply, but not only will at least some members of the crew need a more varied diet, but they need somewhere they can go to drop off samples and survivors, and pick up various supplies. I see Sasha becoming a permanent member of Expedition team 2, again her difficulty with sunlight will be overcome with the drones from the warehouse (higher gravity, but counter with a thicker atmosphere, and they may work fine). However, this means the Victory will have to have accommodation for 2 additional crew members, their personal effects, drones, tools and supplies to modify and maintain the drones (add more sensory equipment to make them more useful), a car, and some space has to be allotted for an engine room and fuel storage, all of this means less space, not to mention, some of what they pick up will have to travel back to the colonies before long. The crew will likely do a number of makeshift retrofits during the voyage, using supplies they have on hand, for experimental, PoC work and to provide information that the colonies can use to plan and prepare a more optimal (and likely more compact) retrofit, this is likely to be what calls the Victory back.

It is also likely that the team will get a whole new ship, built with the crew in mind, adaptive engines, speed, power generation, extended radio equipment, 8 crew (at least) + passenger space, lab, and so on, The Victory is established as being a smaller vessel, now while that is great for speed, it isn't great for duration, especially as it was designed with the idea of a full crew being 5 people, and expeditions being limited to about a week, without accounting for a lab, engine room, communications equipment, a potential drone control room (and charging space), loading and offloading an automobile, and so on. The ship cannot be expected to be viable for month long expeditions, even if food isn't as much of a problem. An outpost can mitigate the cargo demands to an extent, but it will still be strained, especially as they want to go farther out, the ship will still have to be capable of beach landings, which will make things difficult, engines will help overcome concerns with ship's power supply and speed with the size increase, but they will still want to run most, if not all systems reliably on solar, (which also means space for batteries) and they may want to use wind to aid propulsion, they will also want to have more spare parts and tools on hand. They need a bigger boat, the larger crew, longer expeditions, additional equipment and functionality, all mean it couldn't be otherwise, they probably could do with a kitchen and video conference room.

Pot of gold

Jamie Lee's picture

Finding an iPhone was pure luck, given the size of the ocean. And now a car factory and Radio Shack warehouse? These folks must be in hog heaven.

And another fruit bat who knows about a temple. Perhaps the temple will have clues as what's going on?

Others have feelings too.