Chapter 10 – Purifying water.

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

Sector - Unknown

Planet - Unknown

7rth May 2341 (BSST)

I wake to a much nicer feeling than the past few days. Unlike before, where I was sleeping up in a tree, I’m now comfortable on the ground. I’m supported by a layer of biological matter with a nice soft pillow. The strong scent of sap, and greenery invades my nostrils. The suit is not filtering my air any more. Spectroscopic analysis of the environment shows it is similar enough that only partial scrubbing is needed for me to survive.

My suit has three options for air supply. Absolutely no scrubbing where the vents around the neck support folds open and I can breathe atmospheric air. However, even if I could breath without a little assistance the pressure on this planet would not be conducive to my health.

Secondly, I can have pressure alteration and oxygen boosting which is what I was surviving on right now. It basically compresses or expands the air in storage tanks to earth pressure and scrubs some nitrogen or carbon dioxide from the supply to replace with new air there by boosting oxygen levels. I was running at around twenty-two percent oxygen, slightly above earth ranges.

Lastly, the suit could run on bottled air. Taking in air and fully scrubbing the air to earth standard. This took a lot of power and the suit couldn’t maintain this rate on standard passive charging.

Even now I was slowly losing charge as I went about my day to day activities. I’m planning on getting the camp up and running before allowing the suit to charge. From passive charging it would take maybe one hundred hours to fully charge the suit. Too long to be out of use if my camp wasn’t fully active. Luckily, I had a few more days before the suit was at reserve power.

Lying on my makeshift bed I stretch out. Pointing my toes until the nice shakes occur in my thighs and hips. Raising my arms to open up my core, sides and chest. I take in a big refreshing breath and roll my head, working out the crick in my neck.

Unsealing my faceplate to rub my eyes, an almost subconscious process, feels damned great. With naked eyes, I stare through the woody canvas above me. The leaves almost glow with a translucent gold gleam that sends the shadows of their veins cascading over me like a mismatched, patchwork quilt. A tessellating web of shadowy lines that trace me and caress me.

In the morning light, I revel in the silence and doldrums, laying there in my makeshift bed. Not sleeping but resting. As time passes and the suns rise in the sky the light takes on a harsher, less feathery quality. Like needles it pierces my eyelids, jabbing into my eyes until I acknowledge it. Taking in its restless spirit and making it my own, accepting it and acting on it.

With a sigh I get up, crawling out of the bed with slow, deliberate motions. I grab the fronds and exit my safe haven. The morning is a far more beautiful sight than I usually experience. It must have been a damper night as little silvery droplets of dew cling to the greenery. The blades of grass, the cracks in the bark that runs up the trees and even the tips of the leaves that point down at the floor like an audience are coated in a thin film. A glossy, liquid coating, a patina that gleams and dazzles in the morning sun.

From the camp, I look down towards the beaches where the forest falls away beneath me. I have undisrupted vision all the way to the curved line of the horizon as it arcs from the edges of my vision. Where the ocean meets the sky, it is blushing in embarrassment, the meeting reveals a pink blossom that colours the water and skies with a dainty brush. The semi-circular sun glows brightly, like the pulsating heart of the galaxy it beats with a constant rhythm. The photons, streaming across space, screaming towards me at light speed. They are the lifeblood of the solar system and they bounce off the sea, revealing a trace of sunlit ocean that blinds and bewilders. The ripples stand out in stark contrast as the small shadows conflict with the bright light. From the sunlit tract a faint mist rises up, visible only in the rare fleeting moments as it is projected against the vast canvas of the heavens. Darker in colour the contrast lasts only mere moments, but the wispy rising mist provides a slight haziness that only seems to enhance the sight.

Transfixed, I stand, stock still, staring out in silent wonder at the beauty of an unravaged world.

Whilst beauty is thy name this foreign planet of mine, my heart belongs to Earth. I love her so. She is beauty; she is wonder; she is heaven by divine design. She is a bionetwork; an ecosystem; an ecology. She is mother; she is father; she is sister; she is brother. She will nurture our nature and foster our freedoms. She is home to us all and in this vast universe there can be no greater place for any of us, and all of us, than home. My love is absolute and all-encompassing and when I am welcomed with open arms I shall sing of her wonder; her beauty and bounty. Til my voice is hoarse and broken. For I am home and what more would I want? What more could I need?

Oh, would that I could; but I can’t so I shan’t. Oh, when will I be home my dear Earth. Just a spec in the sky, one mark upon millions. You are special dear Earth, oh Earth you are dear. So never fear, fore long will I return. Fore if this weary, broken body of mine doth fail. You will always be there. In my heart and in my mind. I will always carry a piece of you. In every mote of my existence; in every beat of my heart; in everything that I am. For Earth is my home; it always has been; it always will be. So, fear not mother; I will be home one way or another.

But trapped here I am on this planet of mine. With a sky full of stars and a land full of leaves. You’ve got dirt under my feet, yet it’s not quite so neat. There’s air in my lungs but I won’t beat to your drums. You’re the same yet you’re not. You’re familiar yet dissimilar. Earth you are not; only similarities you’ve got. You’re a pale imitation, and that’s your limitation. So, stuck here we are; nought left but a lodestar. So, follow I must, in this planet I trust. I’ll strive to thrive, and I might just survive. For only in the face of adversity can you be confident in your certainty. So, seize the day my dear child and make of it what you will. Because on this land that is sunlit I’ll damned sure make the most of it.

Finishing off the tepee part of my shelter takes the rest of the morning. Unlike with my bedroom part I don’t have enough of the lashings to fill in the sides. What I can do though is tie the fern fronds down around each section and this is what I end up doing. It takes the rest of the ferns to finish and the only problem I ran into was the very top of the tepee. Basic basket weaving skills come to the rescue though.

Taking two lashings of about half a metre length I cross them at the centre. Tying them together with a third piece allows me to start interweaving more lashes in. bending the first lashings to make a dome shape and filling in with lashes is harder than it seems but it doesn’t take too long after I get going. As with the bedroom part I slip the fronds in between the lashings to secure them and this works.

To put it into place I have to add a loop to the top out of lashings and raise it up hooked onto one branch part from a forked stick. It’s about two metres long with a short fork in the last twenty centimetres of branch. I can hook one cut off limb into the loop and lift it up above the top of the tepee and lower it down, so it rests on the very top of the structure.

Having a removeable top section of the tepee has unforeseen benefits. If the planet gets cold ever which Enigma ensures me it will. Based on his observations the planet is in an elliptical orbit and will end up having fairly extreme temperature shifts along its orbit. So being able to remove the top will allow me to have a fire inside the tepee with the smoke blowing out of the top of the tepee. Perhaps I could even build a chimney up and out of the top. It’s food for thought and a long way off. Now it is time to tackle the water purification system. In the dusty floor I use a stick to trace out a sketch of what I want before getting started. It’s complicated but I think feasible.

I get a fire going and whilst it is starting up and getting steady I try to get what I will need ready.

First task is to dig two holes. Two big holes. At the side of the pool of water there is a rocky border. Beyond that is fairly soft earth. It is here that I dig a decent sized hole using a flat piece of slate and sticks. The hole is about a half metre in diameter and depth. On one side is a small tunnel that leads down to the bottom and up to the surface. The tunnel is about a tennis ball in size. On the opposite side I just knock down the sides so that there is a gentle slope.

This hole is where I will build the fire. The small hole is where the airflow can leave. The large opening is where I can build the fire from and where the air will be drawn in from. It is a poor man’s draught furnace. A thing I will almost certainly have to build in the future. On top of the hole I place a dark slate rock. The rock is roughly square and about five centimetres thick. It covers the hole perfectly.

A second hole is dug closer to the water and about two metres away from the first. It is about half a metre in all directions.

Next task is to make the clay. Lots and lots of clay. Whilst making the clay I am sure to keep the main fire stocked up. In the end I have managed to make a huge mound of it. Night begins to set so I must work quickly. The fire at least is illuminating me enough to work by. I may have enough light to work through the night.

Before I start working with the clay I chop down a tree of uniform thickness and drag it alongside the fire.

Using the clay, I create a thick slab of the material to sit on top of the stone over the fire hole. A few more to complete the sides and I have enough to build a cuboid shape. I set them to bake as close to the fire as possible and get to work on the next pieces. Slapping the clay down upon the tree I can make a uniform curve. Spreading it out over the length of the tree in three pieces, one about three metres long and two two-metre-long pieces respectively takes me an hour. As night begins to set in seriously I build the fire up and over the clay carefully. On another tree I make a few more similar sections that I might need.

I then must move onto the next task using clay. The final task. In the other hole I begin by moulding the clay to the bottom of the hole. Using my hands, I roll out sausages of clay and apply them to the sides of the hole smoothing out the joins between layers with water. Similar to how the small pot was made. Just on a much larger scale. When the clay stretches up around half way I take some burning logs from the fire and use them to light one in the hole I’ve been working in.

When morning comes to illuminate my work, I am pleased. It hasn’t gone perfectly but I have certainly made progress. The system I have will be quite tricky to assemble and support, but I think it is manageable.

Picking up the largest square section I carefully manoeuvre it careful to avoid breaking it. It should be strong but it’s best to be careful.

I slide it onto the slab. Where it sits statically. Taking the side blocks out of the ashes of the fire I trim the edges using my knife to fettle them straight. A little sap from the surrounding trees sticks them in place as they rest. Whilst the sap keeps them in place I use the left-over clay to seal the gaps, cracks and general defects smoothing out the corners and vertices to make the whole thing more waterproof.

Into the sides I cut two slanted holes. Without Enigma this would be impossible. He tells me when the angles, size and everything else is just perfect.

Taking a block, the size of a Jenga tower I place it dead centre in the box. The block has a concave hollowing cut out at a thirty-five degree to the horizontal angle cut in it. Into this block I rest a curved clay section that I moulded over the tree trunk. This however has holes in the end that is elevated. The holes are on the sides and not the bottom of the pipe. I fill the joins with new clay. The ends of this pipe protrude from the two holes that I had carved in the box. Into the pipe another similar section rests. A u bend into another u bend leaving a few centimetres under the join. On top of this new pipe another rests. Inverted though. Sealing the pipes with more clay means I have finished one section of the water purification system.

Next, I start a fire underneath and let the whole thing start baking more. I need the joins to seal properly and become water tight if this is to work.

As the clay is baking I begin to pile up earth on all sides of the box until they reach the hole to the outside. Adding water and compressing it makes the whole structure more solid. It also insulates the whole structure. Across the side where the hollow is I place two strong sticks that press the side in firmly. They extend past the bounds of the box and more dirt is piled over the ends securing them. Like a car grill. Water and as the system is baking I can feel everything warming and hopefully sealing. As the mounds of dirt bake I can feel them begin to become sticky and more solid and less like the loose sand of a beach.

Whilst the box is baking I take another square slab from the ashes. Brush and blow the dust off and head over to the other hole. The slab is supposed to act as a lid, but it is too large. Taking my knife out I slowly shave of sections until it fits fairly well. A little more work on the joining edges gets it to fit pretty snugly. Now I just have to clean out the residue of the fire from last night.

Cleaning out the holes takes a few hours. This is to be my water reservoir, so I have to make sure it is clean. It is nearing evening and I reckon I have one more task I can complete before I have to sleep. Since I worked through the night I feel my eyelids drooping and threatening to just lock closed. I take the first few steps to the forest before I just can’t hack it any longer.

Stoking the fire one last time I crawl into the bed and let my eyes fall shut, and my muscles go slack.