cowlark.com

My Diary, 2002-11-16

I had spent the previous day in the Hotel, so I thought I'd take a walk; I still wanted to check out the hills. The trip down through the closet/lift/transporter widget was still strange; step in, there's a slight jolt, step out. If they can do that, I expect there's probably some kind of transporter network to get me around the island, if I can find it. I briefly stopped to look at the pedestal. It was still made of sand. The writing, in an odd cursive script vaguely reminiscent of Arabic, was completely unresponsive when I waved my hand through it. I didn't want to try the handprint again in case I was checked out.

I was about to open the door when I noticed the now-visible Invisible Fountain through it, and an odd thought struck me. The Invisible Fountain was a few hundred metres away next to one of the Mysterious Pyramids, right? But I could see it through the door, so this must be a different one ---- it must have appeared when I turned the Hotel on. However, when I opened the door, it wasn't there. It was just an image visible through the black-glass door.

I have no idea what that is in aid of.

The hills were a couple of kilometres across, and not very high. They were, however, thickly overgrown and fairly difficult to get through. The tower I had visited a couple of days ago was near the edge of the woodland. Once I got deep into the dense undergrowth I very quickly lost my bearings; all I could do was to keep heading uphill and hope I'd reach the summit.

It was odd. This being an alien planet and all, I would have expected the local flora to be quite unlike what I was used to; strange pods on stalks, luminous flowers, airborne carnivorous plants drifting through the air, organic webbing between the branches... it was actually disappointingly normal. Oh, there were differences ---- the flora here seemed to be keen on those tripartite leaves I was talking about earlier, and the flowers tended toward spherical puffs of tiny florets rather than a single, large blossom ---- but for the most part I could have been wandering through the New Forest.

Admittedly, an extremely thick and unkempt New Forest, tinted with red, and with lianas.

Moving lianas.

It took me a while to notice, but the hanging vines were definitely moving, all by themselves. Not particularly quickly, but they would wriggle back and forth, and occasionally you would see a dangling tip moving in slow circles. They were quite definitely plants, not animals. I couldn't work out why they would want to move like that ---- motion is metabolically very expensive, and most Earth plants can't afford it. There's a reason why things like Venus flytraps take half an hour or so to prime themselves.

I eventually reached the summit. There was a small observation tower. Armed with my new knowledge of how to operate the equipment, I wanted the door, climbed up a ladder inside the curved, embarrassingly phallic shaft and found myself on a small platform at the top, which a wonderful view over half the island.

Near the top of the hills was a depression, with a lake in it that was five hundred metres or so wide. The still water reflected the trees and the deep blue sky and looked extremely inviting. I could just imaging spending a lazy summer afternoon there in a small boat, pretending to fish---

There was a boat. Or was it? There was certainly something in the water. It was so calm that I had difficulty determining what was reflection and what was boat, and it was small and a fair distance off. I considered heading off to investigate, but there was a lot of jungle to hack through and it would be easier to start again from the lowlands. I made a note of a landmark building to start the climb from tomorrow; the tilted-ring pillar, which I hadn't come up with a name for yet.

Embedded in the trees were a few more of the white buildings. From up here, though, I could see that most of them were observation towers like the one I was in, and there was a Mysterious Pyramid tucked away near the island's centre.

Eventually I headed back. Unfortunately I took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up in a maze of thorny bushes and mud. The island packed a lot of geography into a very small space and by the time I finally got back to the lowlands I was tired and filthy, and headed back to the Hotel.

On the way I dropped in briefly to the Mysterious Pyramid that I had first encountered. There was a big glowing patch on the front face of the Machine that hadn't been there before. I was beginning to suspect that the Mysterious Pyramids had something to do with power usage.

Oh, yes: my room moved. I got back to the Hotel, it lit up a door for me, I went through, and found myself back in my room again. Except that the view's changed; it's now down the other end of the Hotel, and I think it's a couple of floors lower.

I shouldn't really be surprised. Given that all the furniture is projected, and you get into the rooms by teleporter, they can just feed people into the next vacant apartment and recreate their chosen décor on demand...

Dinner was fried rice, or it would have been if rice grains were curved. Dessert was a complicated lattice-work of something like compressed biscuit, dipped in an assortment of coatings. I was pleased to find that this planet has chocolate.

Tomorrow I think I'll have a look at that lake.

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