A Morning

Life in Neotropolis is different from what I'm used to.

I arrived on Kepler-609c a few days ago amd settled into a decommissioned tranport module in the outskirts of town with barely any folks around. I wake up early - time will tell whether that's due to my inner clock still ticking to space travel time or because the sun gets up so damn early. But as you'll see, I make good use of the time.

The planet is harsh but there's a beauty to it. Tempartures dip as low as 10° at night and go up to 30° during the day but the UV index is high and the sun is brutal. Even Helix lets us rest a few hours over midday, lest they lose their not sufficiently replacable workforce. The wide-open plain 800 meters above sea level invites strong winds and even storms, but so far I've been lucky. Even so, every gust kicks up dust and when working outside, it doesn't take long until it mixes with sweat and sun screen to form a dark patina.

But in the early morning hours, all that's still a long way off and a for a few precious minutes I can enjoy the planet's beauty... before Helix Industries inevitably destroys it in their efforts to strip this planet of every last Promethium molecule.

After breakfast, it's time to get to work. The city outskirts don't have electrictiy and so energy management is essential. The day's first task is to set up the solar panels to charge various batteries. Once that's done, there's about an hour left to work on Radio Nox drops like this one before I need to trek to the construction site of Megablock 1.