My Diary

2002-11-13

Woke up this morning to discover that I was alive, felt fine, and had a great night's sleep. The night was warm, the grass was comfortable, and nothing came to eat me. I was woken by something producing a series of piercingly clear, separate notes at apparent random in the tree above me. Whatever it was remained invisible among the branches.

The berries apparently agreed with me fine, so I stripped most of the bush. I had brief thoughts of dexter (or is that levo?) amino acids, but I couldn't do anything about it anyway, so I didn't bother worrying.

The only sour note was that the dictaphone hadn't stopped transmitting. Apparently last night the interstellar ether had been particularly dense, or whatever. Oh, well.

I resolved to take a more methodical approach to exploring the island. I would head back down to the lowlands and examine every building and structure, one by one, looking for one that I could get into. I would start at one end of the island and work my way round to the other. Then I would head back to the highlands and check out the few buildings that rose out of the trees there.

And this I did. I really wanted to make a map, but I had nothing to draw on. I had been abducted with nothing but the now rather stale clothes I stood up in, and I hadn't been in the habit of carrying a notebook and pencil with me ---- an oversight if I had ever seen one.

The buildings and sculptures were as fascinating as ever, but this time I was on the eye out for something useful. A silver möbius strip suspended in a crystal sphere was interesting, but I couldn't sleep in it.

I was particularly interested in a curved building down by the shore, with its concave side facing a beach. The hollow was lined with big panels of the black glass, and the other side was covered with smaller windows. Down at ground level was a door. It reminded me of nothing so much as a resort hotel.

I also kept an eye out for more fruit trees, and lunch was a thing like an S-shaped banana, picked from a small orchard near an inverted pyramid of white struts. I realised I couldn't live on fruit forever. Not to mention the effect it would have on my stomach, I didn't know what the seasons were like here; I needed to stock up on food while it was available, and find sources for when it became unavailable.

For the present, though, I felt I could rely on the orchards. This place was so human-compatible it couldn't be a coincidence. The air was right; the gravity was right; the length of the day was right; the ecology was right; the aerial bacteria were right (or I would be dead by now) ---- it was quite obviously tailored for human habitation.

Around this time I realised I had no way of making fire, and started to feel less cheerful.

My mood deteriorated through the afternoon. I stared blankly at the enigmatic buildings, and some of them stared back. None of them could be interacted with. I only found two things of interest; the Invisible Fountain, and the Pit.

The Invisible Fountain was just that. There was a small, empty pedestal near an otherwise uninteresting building. Except it wasn't empty; if you glimpsed it from the corner of your eye you could see an unmistakable fountain shape of disturbed air. When you looked at it directly, it vanished.

Close to, you could just make out a ripple in the air, but you had to concentrate. It wasn't an illusion; I put my hand into it and could feel invisible fluid pouring past.

The Fountain was interesting because firstly, it was the only thing on the island that couldn't be duplicated with Earth technology ---- even the Generator would be doable, with skill ---- and secondly because it was the only thing I'd seen, apart from the Generator, that did something.

The Pit was just that. A fence enclosed an area about twenty metres across. Inside the ground sloped down in a smooth funnel, lined with the familiar white construction material from a few metres down. The bottom wasn't visible.

This was the only thing I'd seen that was dangerous. I could easily, had I wanted to, ducked under the fence and walked closer, risking falling and sliding down to ---- whereever it went. It didn't seem to fit.

As the afternoon drew on I returned to the orchard, picked supper (a long, thin pineapple thing that tasted startlingly spicy), and headed up the hill. I was tired from walking all day and in a sour mood, so I stopped at the first building I looked at, a short tower. Interestingly, the tower had a spiral ramp running around it, so I walked up and found myself on a circular balcony just above the tree canopy.

The trees here were intriguing. At first glance they looked like Earth trees, simply chaotic fractal shapes. When you looked closer, you noticed a fundamental difference: where on Earth branches tended to divide into two, here they tended to divide into three. Likewise, the leaves were Y-shaped in cross section. I wondered why; surely flat leaves were more efficient?

As I stood there, leaning on the railing, my mood slowly drifted away. I eventually spent a couple of hours up there, watching the trees waving in the breeze while the suns slowly set. At one point a handful of tiny butterfly-like creatures flew past.

After a while I headed off back to my original campsite. On the way I noticed that the dictaphone had finished transmitting, so decided to call it a day.

I must find out what's going on with this thing.

[transmit]