Getting Back to Work

With the thrill of the tower over, it having been fully extracted just a few days ago, I needed to get back to work. I had invested most of the money to ensure my continued survival, at least as long as the investment is a good one, and with the rest repaired my worn out tools and bought myself a shiny new quad. I had been working with some intelligent individuals back on Calypso who have finally been able to clear my name and image out of the archives, basically making me a free man again. With this freedom, and the new fighter, I should be able to make some trips once more between planets, though I anticipate Arkadia will remain my home for some time, though I am anxious to visit once more with my friends on Calypso. I have decided to have some fun with the money I had left over after my initial spending spree was over and planned to make a quick stop by a certain asteroid to see if I couldn't find something worthwhile, though I wasn't about to hold my breath as I believe it is still a difficult place to mine, the signals are just so weak and hard to get a lock on.

As anticipated, the stop by the asteroid was not profitable, though it did give me some resources to get some more experience in crafting, a skill I have been greatly neglecting since I had extracted my previous knowledge. I knew most of what I was doing would prove to be loss, but it was fun to actually have the luxury of spending it anyway and so I did. Though now, down to the last 300 PED of my tower, I have switched back to conservative mode, though with the knowledge that there will be more PED coming my way regardless of how my runs go. I have not yet run in to any of my old friends, but I haven't been down on the planet that long yet.

The Tower Club

Not much has happened in the past weeks since I last wrote. I've been out mining, had some luck, had some non-luck. I've hit a few finds of a good size, stuff that made it easy to live for a few more weeks and in those few weeks I've pretty much lost what was saved up. It seems to go like that a lot in mining. Some weeks you find the good stuff, then others you can't seem to figure out how to lock in on a good signal. I've had to do some odd jobs here and there to keep the PED flowing, nothing special, just your basic work that brings in a small monthly allowance. I had read about an investment opportunity recently that would bring in a steady weekly income, but after reading what it would cost I knew it would take me a long time to earn enough to buy into it. Or, I could just find a lucky rare claim. These rare claims I dream of don't come as a normal claim, the markers are modified to do the extraction for you. It would be nice if all claims did this, but I suppose it would cost too much. Anyway, the term given to these claims is "tower". The claim marker is called a tower because it works like a drilling tower would. It pulls the resource up and stores it until it can be taken somewhere else. These kinds of claims are hard to get, and more people who I've heard of that get them have larger pocketbooks than me and can afford some of the fancy amps that I occasionally try to use, though without much success usually. So I dreamed for the last couple of weeks, wishing I could become part of that elite club and dreamed of using that money to make life easier here. To me it was always a dream. Then I made the next drop.

Words can't adequately describe what I felt when I saw that XXIII size on my finder. I thought, it must be a glitch, I didn't really find something that big, did I? I looked again, making sure I didn't imagine it; no, it was still the same. I checked myself, tried to make sure I wasn't dreaming, but no, the adrenaline flowing through my veins told me I was quite thoroughly awake. I went to the claim site and did a test extraction on it, sure enough I got a message saying that the resource was already being pulled up for me and that I could get the first load of it in about a day. I had really done it, I had hit a tower! I sat there and thought of all my dreams, realizing now that some of them could start to happen. I could get involved in that investment opportunity and make a steadier income, well, as steady as it is for a miner who will use it to search for more treasures. After about ten or fifteen minutes I finished my dreaming and realized I had been standing there staring, I looked one more time at the claim deed and then moved on, finishing my mining run and anxiously anticipating tomorrow when I could extract part of my claim and buy the deeds that were involved in the opportunity.

From a Shack to a House

The morning again came too quickly, I was still tired from my lack of sleep in the last two days but was determined to continue my work. The night had not been restful, too many dreams had flooded my mind. Among which I had seen a device I very much desired to try making. I knew it wouldn't be as good as the one I had seen but it would be adequate enough until I could make it again with better materials. I didn't even think about my hunger until I smelled the fresh bread that came with the revisiting elders, there were noticeably fewer this time and when they arrived they stared at the device I was holding. Clearly it wasn't the one I had made yesterday and they wondered what it was. I explained to them my dream and what this device would be used for. I also described to them the process of how it worked and how I believed it was a design from my previous life. When I had finished eating they asked to see it in action, which I gladly obliged to, I had been wanting to try it out since before I sat down.

We made our way further from town and out of the woods into a wide open field. The device took some moments to charge up, I was sure it was due to the poor energy generator that I had built in it and when it had finished and I pulled the trigger the shock of the energy hitting the ground made us all stumble a bit. A few moments later however and the screen was showing me all the resources available beneath our feet. The device had appeared to work and I then switched modes and began pulling up what it had found. It wasn't a large amount, mostly due to the device being inefficient in its current state, but the things it would find would be useful in making the next version. The elders just stood there, dumbfound as to where these chunks of metallic stone were coming from. I had explained it to them but I don't think they thought it possible. When we were done there were some spots in the ground that were visibly sinking under their own weight and so we had to quickly get the resources out of the area before we found ourselves sinking into one of the new caverns. The load was heavy, even after refining it, but we managed to get it all back to my shop by mid-day. They had worked with metal before, but nothing with as fine a quality as what I had now. They desired greatly to get some of it and so they informed me that since I now had the means to survive on my own that I would now be treated as a regular citizen and need to barter for my food and other things from town. I knew this would give them an edge over the other towns, but I had no room to argue with them as they had control over the fields and livestock. I also knew that they would quickly regret it as they didn't have the tools to actually work the resources yet. They also informed me that the first of the elders from the other villages would begin visiting, having finally received the news and started arriving in town. I knew this would mean a lot more work for me before the evening was through, but I was confident that I could get it all done and still get some sleep before they arrived.

The elders had left hours ago, but not before I confirmed with them that I could be in possession of where my shop was, the concept of ownership was somewhat unfamiliar but they understood it better after I explained it to them. I wanted to make sure the land I was on could be worked in the manner that I had plans for without offending someone for destroying their property. I wasted little time in clearing the immediate area around the shack and pulling in the rest of my resources. I then got to work adding a much larger set of rooms to the building and isolating the shop part in the back of the new home. Moving the furniture was easy with the new device, which had a much better range and could hold more resources in it without being heavy. I wondered at the original design I had copied, would better resources make it even more efficient? I planned to remake it again, but decided to wait until tomorrow. With my new house done I closed it up and once again heard the sound of creatures sniffing outside. It was dark and my little lamp didn't make much of a dent to illuminate the now big rooms of the house, but I could work out how to create better lighting later.