The cliffs are beautiful, and there are hundreds of caves in them. I have started to explore them when I have free time. Something I actually have a lot of. The scale is off in the image. What looks like people is some kind of tree, I think. It looks like a tree when I zoom in. But if they are trees, they are truly massive things. Then again, they are truly massive no matter what they are. I have a hard time dealing with the scale. I keep having to remind myself that the cliffs are one to one and a half kilometers tall.
I've spotted some kind of animal life here. I'm guessing the crash scared them, but they have started to get closer to the ship, and me. They look a lot like an animal back on my home world we used to eat, just bigger. The larger ones are nearly half my size. I've considered shooting one, but I need to know if it is even going to be edible before I do that. If so, one would feed me for some time.
I have been able to successfully transplant some of my garden to the soil here, that part of it that survived. As I might have mentioned, it was not an easy landing. The plants are loving it, and the water of this ocean only requires a very small amount of processing to make it drinkable and usable for the plants. Helps that it rains regularly. We are in a region that is, at least at the moment, in a kind of temperate semi-tropic. It is warm, but not tropics hot, but also doesn't get so cool as to get truly cold. I would vacation here if I wasn't already stranded here.
I have easy access to the engines now, after some digging. They are all encased in the scar crystals. I've tried just about everything but high explosives. I haven't been able to chip it, pry it, break it, or even scratch it. I don't even fully understand what the stuff is, other than it is what forms around the scar in space when a universe comes into being. I have the computers working a bit better and have been going through what little information I have on it, and that is not much.
Everything I am able to find on it suggests I shouldn't even be able to get close to it. I should be hotter than a star, releasing energy and radiation that should vaporize me. Yet, I have had my hands on it, wiped sweat on it after an hour of hammering at it. It will not budge, and until I can get it off the engine ports, I am not going anywhere. It has this beautiful internal glow, and really glows on it's own after a full day of sun, like it is being charged up. It is beautiful stuff, and utterly frustrating. I wonder if the descriptions of it assume it is still associated with a scar. I'll add that to my next search parameters.
I am well on my way to figuring out what is up with the time issue. There is a pattern to it, but I don't have it fully mapped out. Once I have it mapped fully, I can compensate and get everything, including all my advanced sensors, the AIs, and the communications suite, up and running.
Getting communications up will be a very good thing. While our comms generally work, it is mostly line of sight. As soon as Edix was a few kilometers beyond the top of the cliffs, we lost communication. We managed to get a drone up high enough that we can maintain communication out to where he is now, but the Drone relay thing is only going to keep working if I can get the time thing figured out. I cannot print new ones currently. They're too complex. The printer systems can handle simple things, but complex devices push the printers processors too hard, causing the time issue to cause data corruption. I have to print things one small, simple part at a time, and that really slows the process.
The pattern of the time issue is very complex, and it does repeat. I have the pattern itself down, it's the what causes it that I now have to solve. I'm taking apart an auxiliary system and digging out its heart, the clock that makes all the electronic pieces work. I need to understand what is being effected by this temporal effect. It is almost like whatever is counting the time is under an oscillating magnetic field, but in time. It is a fantastic puzzle, and it keeps my busy.
I've started to bring out some monitoring systems, setting them up on the cliff face to watch and record things. I have a distant hope that the various monitors, including cameras, temperature and pressure sensors, etc... will reveal something and help answer the puzzle of time. I have set them up at different locations along the cliff face, as well as different heights. I'm kinda grasping at threads, hoping one holds and reveals a clue that helps me figure it out.
Well, enough of a break. I am building an astronomical observation unit on top of the module, working in concert, once finished, with a set of them I will be putting at various points along the rim of the cliff, and on a few of the taller barrier rocks, islands of their own really. My hope is to create a composite telescope to improve my observations. I really need to map out and understand this system. Another thread to pull at, and something to keep me occupied. There's something about it, about this cove, the cliffs, that isn't sitting right with me.