August 17th 3419 | Marcus Jones | Ipswi VIII
Everything in my base broke.
Up until now, I was leeching excess dark energy from the teleporter network to power all my base's functions. But there was some kind of quantum resonance cascade through the whole network that...you know what, the details aren't important. The point is that the tap has been shut off, and there's no way to turn it back on again. Teleporter: offline. Hydroponics trays: offline. Trade terminal: offline. I couldn't even open the locks on my storage containers. I needed a new power source.
I set off in my new exocraft to locate and salvage some useful tech. It was an interesting excursion. I found that my on-board computer had lost the data entries for several of the local minerals and plants, forcing me to re-scan them. (That virus again?) On the other hand, I found several genuinely new plant types, including one I'm calling "jade peas". And the craft allowed me to raid a supply depot for some rare, high-market-value resources. And then there was the hyperdrive upgrade I found in a lost probe. It turned out that the module came with a built-in micro-AI that instructed me on how to install it. Instructed me repeatedly. Incessantly. Without reprieve. I tried to shut off my comm-links, but it forced them open. I was about five seconds from destroying the whole thing just to get some peace and quiet.
...And then there was the part where I accidentally activated a cloaking device that I didn't even know the exocraft had. It's remarkably hard to hop back into a car when you can't see where the car is…
Eventually I gathered enough tech to piece together some power options, which I tried out back at my base. The bio-generator looked promising at first, but it guzzled condensed carbon at an insane rate; I fed in all the CC I had on hand before I even realized what was happening. I switched to a battery-backed solar panel array. The set-up costs were very heavy (I had to go to orbit to gather enough gold, fending off pirates along the way), and I'm not 100% convinced even now that I'm storing enough power to last the whole night...but it's still better than the bio-generator. Now, if I could just figure out how to wire the hydroponics tables into the grid, I'd be back to where I was before...well, not counting all my teleporters on other planets…