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A time traveler's tale |
| I’m back. It’s been eighteen days for me back in the Pleistocene, still waiting for Haakon. Meantime, I’ve been learning more about this place. For example, it has a basement. Who knew? I also found access to the second floor which has all the guards. Oh, I didn’t tell you about those yet, did I? Charlotte Corbett was the one who called them “guards,” but they are really an automated defense system to keep predators away from the shelter. Who is Charlotte, you ask? Well, she’s a Timekeeper, but I haven’t really figured her out beyond that. On the one hand, she’s so cold she could freeze nitrogen with a glance. She has raven-black hair, skin whiter than Ivory soap, and lithe, panther-like muscles. She told me she was born in 1058 but went to culinary school in 2312. I’ve already told my 21st century friend Max most of what I know about her, so you could ask him. She’s the reason I’ve got that saber-tooth scar I mentioned. Anyway, back to the guards. Some of them are versions of what Charlotte called “needle guns.” I swear, they look like Buck Rogers ray guns. At first, I thought they must be high-energy lasers, but now I think they must be some form of plasma weapon. How that that to fit into a hand-held device, I have no idea. But here in the refuge, they are mounted in roof-top turrets and are a first-line defense against animal incursions into area around the refuge. Just yesterday, for example, some herbivores lumbered out of the grassland on the other side of the stream that runs near the patio. Besides drinking water, a couple of cubs started splashing each other midstream. They must have crossed some invisible line, because a beam of light flashed and nipped them on the nose, one after the other. They bleated, and fled back to their mother. I know from experience that if they hadn’t retreated, the beams would have turned lethal and turned them into instant, smoking barbecue. I’m told a second line of defense involves hummingbird-sized flying bots with razor-sharp blades. A dozen of those can shred even something as large as a saber tooth in seconds. Good thing, too. Charlotte told me they were what saved me from becoming tiger snack. There were other weapons on the second floor, too, along with manual controls. No instructions, though. I decided to trust the programming. It saved me once. It would do it again if needed. Oh, here’s another thing. There were consumables in the kitchen. Things like milk and eggs, but also energy drinks, flour, sugar, and other supplies. The containers all had countdown tags on them that told you the number of days to their expiration date. The coffee was due to expire in less than a week, and I’d resolved to take some of Max’s when I went back uptime to load to my blog. Turns out, the refuge is on some kind of automated resupply program. When I woke yesterday morning, there was a palette of supplies in the entry hall. There were pre-printed instructions addressed to the “current occupant of Refuge 172.12.16.03” giving instructions on disposing of expired supplies and loading current delivery. The palette itself had a countdown tag that said a logistics officer would arrive to check on the status of the refuge if the seal on the palette remained unbroken. By the time I saw it, I had eight hours and change before I needed to break the seal and keep my unauthorized presence private. I wonder what would have happened if I’d not broken the seal, if the countdown timer expired and I never touched the thing? Presumably, the palette would have then sent some kind of signal uptime to the people who sent it here, and they would then follow up by sending someone to check it out. So, I wondered, are they sitting around for eight more hours, waiting to see if the signal gets sent? If it were me, that’s not how I’d design it. Suppose I’d fallen and broken a leg or something else had gone wrong and I needed help. They have time machines, so they can decide when the signal arrives. If I were the logistics officer and the seal was unbroken, I want to check on the shelter as soon as possible. So the sensible thing would be to have an unbroken seal send a message back to the instant uptime when the palette was sent. When the “unbroken seal” message arrives, they can appear right away and check things out, with no delay at the refuge end. Time travel is full of these reverse-lef-twist logic things. When the effect can precede the cause, logic gets snarled. Oh, I found a schematic of the refuge in the basement. I’ll add that to the blog, along with a pic of the veldt taken from the deck of the refuge. See https://tempusviator.me/photos/ Well, that’s all for now. Still no Haakon, and I’ve now been waiting over three weeks my time. |
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