Still not used to the whole single-character thing but trying to make a go at it. People who are lost are always told to “stay put and let help come to you.” But most people aren’t 4km under the Martian surface. A clever girl, but still a 15-year-old girl, Alicia thinks she should look around a bit.

Perhaps in a later interlude, I’ll have to describe what Kira might be doing by way of a rescue effort. I don’t know if they were in signal when Alicia fell, but the Midwife would surely get work started nearly instantly. Being Russian, I may just have her pick a “volunteer” and push him down the hole after her. The right thing, of course, would be to attach a sensor system run by an ES to a tiny motor and send that down to look around.

We’ll see. There may be some very odd things going on in time before all this is over. And, yes, I have to make a map of her adventures as I’m already lost.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

She took out her flashlight and clicked to its lowest setting before thumbing it on.  Checking her skinsuit first, she did notice the pile of sand and dirt she was on.  From when the hole was made?  There should be a lot more material than this.  That done, she raised the light and looked around. 

The ceiling with the hole she’d slid out was maybe four meters overhead.  She could make out a rough-hewn cave wall ten meters ahead, behind, and to the left.  To the right was darkness.  Even with her very sensitive eyes, she turned the light’s power up a bit.  Still nothing, but now she saw the mound she was on ended in a similar rough floor three meters below her.  Power back down, Alicia stood and carefully made her way there.

“This is a natural cave which has been modified with technology,” she whispered.  “And not human technology.  I wonder if I am alone down here?”

A look at the monitor on her wrist to check remaining oxygen.  I may have to take things slowly to lower consumption.  In fact, when lost, we were told to stay put.

She looked up at the hole again.

Unless Kira tosses a volunteer down that, it may be quite some time.  There’s no harm in looking around.

Moving cautiously as there were several rocks about which could twist an ankle, she moved to the right but within sight of the wall which had been ahead as she landed.  Mentally kicking herself, the girl took her compass out from her little kit at her waist.  While parts of southern Mars had a vestigial magnetic field, the planet-lacing nanofibers put down at Aqua’s order very early in the terraforming gave it a much more robust one.  Critical for keeping the new atmosphere intact from the solar wind.

So, the wall to my left is south.  I am moving slowly west.  Deeper under Tharsis.  Mom always gave off some very odd vibes about this area, even before I was born.  She suspected there was something down here.

Alicia looked at the wall a little closer.

“And it seems she was right.”

The wall curved to the right so she now had the formerly unseen western wall to her left.  Moving the flashlight about, Alicia noted fewer debris on the floor.  Pondering that, she stopped at a circular tunnel, about three meters in diameter with a meter-wide flat for the floor, appeared out of the dark to her left.

She aimed the light at the precise center of the opening and turned the power up, click by click.

Perfectly straight as far as I can see.  And, given our kind of eyes, that’s got to be pretty far.  Hmmm.

Light back to its lowest, she balanced it on its end and set about gathering some rocks, making a little four-sided pyramid as high as her knees.  After, she took a sharp stone to drag through the dirt and sand, making an arrow pointing to the tunnel’s mouth.

“They can follow me,” Alicia decided, retrieving the flashlight and starting down the tunnel.