Chapter 8 – Fire Technology

Mk23 -IRJ Droplet – Class 7 – Carpe Victoria (Wrecked)

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

6rth May 2341 (BSST)

When morning breaks I get up or rather down. Once again, my legs are aching and sore to move from my position in the tree. Locked at odd angles in a suit for eight hours makes them shaky and unstable as I climb down. The tree was a large elm or something rather close in the family. Well in looks certainly. Perhaps this world was seeded from earth. Or perhaps there is only a few types of tree that actually function. Anyway, the tree was maybe thirty metres tall and the fork in the tree happened just as the canopy was starting. This means I have got to climb down about twenty metres.

Once on the floor, I take a second to acclimatise before doing the rounds scanning the edges of the treeline. There’s nothing. No monsters hiding in the shadows, none in the trees. Not even a single footprint. I breath a sigh of relief letting my stress roll out of me like the moisture in my breath. Tumbling out. My muscles relax, shoulders dropping, chest slumping slightly as the tension falls away like a curtain. Falling to the floor where it gathers in one silky pile, unnoticed and no longer important, relevant or noticed.

With the first task of the day complete it’s back to work. At the end of the day, yesterday I had a small pot and a hardened clay disk with a small hole poked through the centre.

First task of the day is to get an improved fire starter and then get a fire going. I’m going to need a big fire for a long time to get my progress along.

For the fire starter I’ll need some string or plant materials that function as such. Heading into the forest I’m looking for fibrous plants, I take thin strips of bark off the nearby trees checking if it is good to use. Sadly, none of the trees have the required type of bark to make string from. With the trees a no go I move from the trees to the underbrush.

The small shrubs and grasses that litter the floor. Like a big thick green carpet, protecting and hiding the floor from those who would traipse over it in a relentless pounding march. Underneath this bountiful layer hides all manner of grubs, beetles and small mammalian life. A whole new world. Too small for the notice of the big predators and hidden away under a living roof from any aerial threats. On earth eagles and owls and ravens and so many others would be keeping the populations in check, but here. Whilst I hadn’t noticed any aerial predators it was probably a good idea not to assume about it. Something was hunting on the floor level and I’ve no idea how dangerous it is.

In my pondering I had covered a surprisingly large distance, but I had found what I wanted to. A fern like plant, Large, around my height and twice as wide. The leaves, split into many sections showed a fibrous nature as I ran my hands over the surface. Rough and corded hopefully when braided it would be strong enough. It wasn’t going to support a huge deal of strain, but it would be annoying to constantly replace the rope.

Using my flint knife, I cut samples from the big shrub. About a hundred of the leaves would do it. It took me the better part of a half hour to get the samples and bundle the up over my shoulder.

“Enigma, where’s camp. On the HUD if you please.”

“Certainly Ronja.” He said in the suave tone we had picked. It was crazy now I looked back on it, why I’d never had him pick up a voice. It just fitted his personality, if you could say he had one perfectly and I couldn’t imagine ever going back to the monotonous computer he’d had before.

They say with more interaction and subjective choices, the more the EI develops and I could certainly tell that was true. Enigma was sometimes expressing preference. I was almost glad. Perhaps he would be a fully-fledged AI before we left this place. I had taken to talking with him whilst working and in the evenings before going to bed. It often took me a long time to fall into her embrace and whilst waiting I would chat to Enigma. I hardly remember what we talked about anyway. Plans for the morrow almost certainly. Perhaps my choice in music, food, clothes or anything really.

In the evenings I had taken to learning a couple more languages. I already knew English, galactic standard, coalition one and two and could function in a few other more obscure ones. Though it was a standard, a lot of people didn’t bother learning it. In fact, with the translators those who could legitimately understand another people was falling rapidly. If they ever had a problem I wasn’t sure it would be easy to fix.

I suppose part of the motivation to learn another language came from the knowledge that if I’m ever rescued the chances it would be a party from earth are unknown. Who knows where I am. I could be in the outskirts of earth space or I could be deep in the unknown. Heck it was possible I was in a planet deep within coalition or Odrath space.

I wanted to be able to speak to my rescuers if they ever came so I had had Enigma teaching me some of the common dialects I didn’t already know. I was finding it harder and harder to separate the languages that swim around in my mind. Flowing down the neural pathways. Occasionally, words from the other languages seeped into a conversation. It wasn’t as bad as if I had several earthen languages it my head. In truth the languages were very different because not all species had the same voice box.

Fundamentally the way humans emit sounds comes down to three factors. One, the power source; our lungs. Two, the vibrator; voice box. And three, the resonator; throat, nose, moth and sinuses.

When we inhale the diaphragm lowers and the rib cage expands. The new space is empty and therefore a difference in pressure is created. Lower on your insides than the atmosphere. Fluid always flows from higher pressure to lower pressure, so air is drawn into your longs filling them up with life sustaining air. As we exhale the reverse happens. Our intercostal muscles squeeze and the pressure is greater and so air is forced out.

This air forms a flowing stream in the trachea that provides the energy for the voice box to do its thing. Stronger the airflow the stronger, louder the sound. The steadier the airflow the clearer the sound produced.

The larynx or voice box sits atop the windpipe. Within it there are two folds called vocal cords. These open during breathing and close during swallowing and making noise. The airstream passes over these two folds creating a vibration. Generally, in the range of a hundred to a thousand times per second providing a range of pitch.

If you’ve ever wondered why you sound like a drowning cat when you try to sing this is an explanation. The vibration, and thus the pitch is controlled by the muscles in the larynx. Like a guitar string or even the rudimentary rubber band that every child plays with. When tighter; turning the screws for a guitar, stretching further for the rubber band or contracted for the larynx muscles the pitch increases to a higher note. And when looser the opposite is true. Its why its so hard to make noise at the pitch extremes. Imagine trying to make a steel wire vibrate when it is pulled taught. Or a rubber band when unstretched. The rate of airflow would need to be enormous to get any resonation

So, if you’ve never trained the muscle like you would at the gym then its no wonder it is weak and unable to perform properly.

However, that assumes you all have the same resonator. Without it there would just be a low buzzing sound. Like a trumpet everything past the lips, or the vocal chords in this case amplifies the sound distorting it and changing it into what were used to. Another moving part to control how you sound when you sing.

Anyway, I digress, the point is that some of the languages feel natural to each species and the others feel harder to pronounce and are so different it is hard to switch from English to say the Odrath growl that sits deep in the throat and hurts me after even a long sentence.

I make it back to camp as I’m finishing the mental explanation of how voices work. I don’t really know why I do it. But talking stuff like this over in my mind eases me. I’ve always done it. I love the fact I know how things work. It gives me great satisfaction to understand something fundamental to my life. I live in a world of my understanding and creating. Otherwise I feel like I’m in a cage. Sure, it’s a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless.

Sitting down at the pool I take my morning drink, I’m down to about a quarter of my supply of decontamination now. Probably only two or three days of safe drinking left unless I can get the purification system working.

Ripping the leaves in half down the middle splits them well. Scraping off the leafy part I’m left with the midrib and lateral veins of the leaf. Because they are so large I split the midrib in half again. Testing it I wind the fibrous strands around each other and give a tug. It breaks but not without giving a decent resistance. It’ll do I suppose.

The next hour is taken up by ripping the leaves up to create the strands. Its tedious work, thankless except perhaps by my future self. But I get it done. I have made far too many strands but that’s okay. I gather them up and begin winding up a string. Any girl knows how to braid so it doesn’t take me long to get a few decent strings together. Winding them together gets me a string about half a centimetre in diameter.

I take this over to the fire bit and coat the ends in ash. Wetting it a little I can get some of the clay to stick to the end like the plastic coatings on normal string.

I take the other dried fire sticks and cut a notch into the top trying to hollow out a little under the neck takes a while but soon I have a hole with a thinner column coming out of it. Before I fit in the string I take the disk and try to force it over the stick. The hole isn’t wide enough. Instead of widening it though I start whittling the stick down. Until it just fits. After forcing it down half way it rests on an unwhittled part that is wider than the hole, so it can’t fall. Taking some left-over clay, I fill in the hole and compact it. Testing the fit, I find it doesn’t slid around so that’s perfect. Fitting the string doesn’t take long and soon its complete. Time to start a fire.

Setting up the same as yesterday I place the new stick into the base. The string has two strands that I twist around the stick. Grasping the string I pull down and out. The string unwinds forcing the linear motion of the string into rotational motion of the stick. When I reach maximum extension, the stick keeps its momentum because the clay disk acts as a flywheel. The string rewinds up and then I pull down again. Repeating this motion is less intense and painful and soon the constant motion creates a smoke and hot ashes.

Like yesterday it doesn’t take me long to get a fire gong and soon its roaring loudly. Comforting. Well task one is done for the day. Next priority must be getting the water purifier online. However, to do that I should probably get a shelter built. That will take me the rest of the day and some of tomorrow and then I can get the water purifier working properly. Then I’ll go hunting. I can feel the hunger gnawing at my bones, twisting like a knife in the gut. I put it off though, concentrating on what I need to do.