The First Feather on Earth

June 12, 2015

Dear Journal.

Sorry for Marcy yesterday. She was a bit on edge as well from the whole thing. But um, yeah. We really didn't do too much honestly. Me and Chatty just sort of... Wanted to cool off for a little bit, right? Yesterday was... It was rough on her. I think she's b-been repressing her real feelings.

Guys, she's scared. I'm scared. Marcy's scared too. We really are all alone here and of the four people to survive the Event, one was that Fucking Bastard. He nearly killed one of the only things that's keeping me moving right now and I couldn't do a fucking THING to stop him! If it wasn't... If it wasn't for Marcy showing up when she did, I would've... L-Lost her...

...I can't let that happen again. From now on, we stick together as a Team. Yes, that includes Marcy. We have nowhere left to go and we only have each other. I owe Marcy big time and I'm not going to squander that. I've... I've decided on something. Not sure how everyone's going to take it, but this has to be done.

We need to leave the city. Preferably south. I'm going to talk to them about moving back to Brechin. Large open fields, farmland stretching along the horizon, a couple of small stores including a pharmacy and my old workplace. Brechin Feed and Farms. The Feed Mill. And even more importantly. Direct access to a national rail-line.

I'm not going to be looking forward to the conversation but here's the thing. We need to find others. We need a way to quickly travel to many locations in rapid succession and we need a way for us to spread the word that we are Here. What I'm thinking is building a couple crude wagons with large wheels. It's going to have an electric motor attached to one if not two solar panels and on this wagon, there's going to be either a sign or some flyers or something that states.

"Follow the tracks

------>
You are not alone."

It's also going to have this large pole attached to the top, just so that way it'll be almost impossible for someone to miss it. We would then set them down on each side of the track and just sort of, let them run. Probably quite dangerous, but hey, you gotta work with what ya got. Later on, I'll make a manually driven rail trolley so we could send expeditions out there, which will be especially useful since you can't get lost on the tracks. You just turn around.

I'm not looking forward to the conversation, but this is something that we just have to do. Even besides the tracks, we simply do not have any place to properly grow crops here in the city. We may have a large stash of supplies for now, but we need to find a way to steadily obtain more and I'd much rather have us do that sooner than later.

Not to mention, it's going to be much more noticeable if we make a new Hive-Dome in the Town. I'm going to have to work on getting a carrier up and running, though that might just end up being a couple of wheelbarrows tied together. Or just a large ass wagon. Oooh, maybe a caravan? I'm liking the sound of that...

If this goes through, I'm putting all of my resources into the wagon and then we're getting the fuck out of this city. I'm also going to ask Marcy to watch over Chatty and get them to start putting up signs not only to the refuge here but also to put up signs saying that we're relocating the Hivedome to Brechin. Betadome perhaps?

What I'm thinking is we have the Betadome located at the old Wild Wing in Brechin, because of it's proximity to not only the tracks but also to a large amount of open field and farmland. Plus, it's a really cozy wooden building that we could easily repurpose into a living area. And by proximity to the tracks, I mean it's literally in front of the driveway to the Wild Wing.

Plus, once we're in Brechin we can actually start relieving Chatty of a lot of hassle because we could properly set up growing fields for the herbivorous bugs and set up a proper pecking order for the carnivorous ones. It'll be fantastic!

But still, I'm not exactly looking forward to all of this, but I think I've said all that I really can say. So, let's move on to the to-do list, shall we?

1 - I need to convince the girls that we have to move out of the city. It's very clear that we need to head to a more open area with much more growable soil.
2 - Work on creating a cargo wagon, like a caravan for us to easily transport mass amounts of goods. Might try to repurpose some old vans that are probably laying around in a junkyard. Most of the weight of those things are the engines and the fuel tanks really.
3a - Continue to work on acting as a second-in-command to the bugs.
3b - I need to work on that device idea I've been having in my head to help with that. I'm thinking like an audio tape or something to that effect that we can use to train the bugs to specific, basic sounds.
4 - Work on that train wagon, getting the word out that we are here and either need help or can go help others is a very high priority. We need more man/ponypower. End of story.
5 - Work on starting the farms and getting seeds planted into the ground. Start with simple stuff, but we'll need to be careful not to plant the wrong kinds of crops at the wrong times.
6 - Start crafting a water reclamation device. Probably something simple like an eavestrough, but with filters that we can easily clean. Our water bottles are going to run out soon and we can't survive solely on lake water. Especially not the lakes nearby.
7 - See about making signs that point to our new base location, something simple but straight-forward.

Your Favourite Mechanic
-- AJ --