Isolation

It’s been more than a year since I posted here. Two years? This planet revolves so quickly around its little green star, it’s surprising how fast time moves here.

Apparently this past year was very slow for some people, because they were mostly locked up in their homes due to a somewhat nasty strain of flu. More infectious than usual, but not particularly lethal. Time actually stopped for a few of them, unfortunately. I knew a few of them. I’ll miss them, but I’ll probably see them next time around.

Let’s see if this coming year is any more interesting. Maybe I’ll leave the bunker for a few excursions. Maybe a trip back to Mars in a courier (if space is available).

We’ll see.

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

Yes, it has been quiet here in the jungle. Mostly because I have not actually been here. I have been traveling all over the northwestern quadrant of this planet, doing little missions here and there, four to six weeks at a time. It’s been nice, because it was very boring to sit in my concrete bunker in the jungle heat, which is what I did for much of 2017. Which explains why I was quiet in 2017, because there was little to report. 2018 has been excessively busy, which explains why I am quiet now.

Life has been good though. This body is aging, and is less reliable than it used to be, which can be annoying. Also, a huge algae bloom in the Gulf of Mexico has caused a yearlong outbreak of “red tide,” which is a combination of decaying algae, dead sea life, and a bacterial neurotoxin released by the algae, which helps kill more sea life, and also makes the atmosphere near the Gulf coast almost unbreathable. This has encouraged me to spend as little time in the jungle as possible, to maximize my already-impaired breathing ability by being as far north and west as possible.

I see that WordPress has updated its editor. That’s nice, but unnecessary. Of course, WordPress has to keep its programmers busy, lest they start developing viruses like Stuxnet for fun. Idle hands.

I discovered how my camera got broken – darling wife dropped it. I thanked her for doing it shortly before the warranty expired, because it was fixed at no cost to me. Now I hide it so she cannot find it and drop it again. I bought her another, more durable camera. She likes it.

I will try to post more often. Thanks for stopping by – I hope you are well!

Still breathing

Living on this planet with its endless flood of pollens and molds makes it difficult for a Martian to breathe, even with extensive surgical augmentation. I’m managing it, though, even though it gets harder every day.

Life continues. My new mission is similar to my old one, but with more time spent remotely with clients, working with them from the safety of my bunker. It’s pleasant but unremarkable; there are fewer expeditions into the field with new sights to see and new people to meet, so there are fewer events to stand out in my memory.

My favorite camera mysteriously broke itself and so it is being repaired. Hopefully I will have it back soon.

No news is good news

Because I’m an observer, and I’m not typically integrated with the events on this planet, I tend not to check in very often. Oh, I make the mandatory reports back to the Martian imperial functionaries when they’re due. I wax poetic about people or places or events when it’s required, because it’s my job. But I haven’t done it lately, here. Things have been going well for me. My current mission is smooth and uneventful, dealing with organizations and people from afar, remotely. I have not had to travel much at all, and for that reason, I have little to say and no pictures to show.

I regard the absence of news from others as a positive thing. If I don’t hear from them in a long time, then things must be going well for them. Either that, or they’re dead, in which case things are going well for them, just at a slower pace, without pain.

I forget that some natives on this planet don’t subscribe to that approach. They get irritated with me when I don’t check in with them for a long time. I can understand their point of view, although I don’t internalize it, or feel their irritation. They are perfectly able to contact me, they just don’t. Yet somehow, they think that it’s my responsibility to contact them. They become aggrieved when I don’t. I apologize to them, but I don’t change my behavior. Either they accept it, and they check in with me when they feel it’s time, or they don’t accept it, and they stop talking to me. Either way. Free will, I say to myself.

Lately, the adaptations that were made to this body to enable it to breathe this planet’s atmosphere have not been working as well as they used to. I’ve done some work to make it simpler to breathe, and those modifications are effective, though not as much as I would like. The remaining gap has to be filled with medication, which is available only via the occasional Martian courier run. I don’t like being reliant on medication, because at some point, the supply will always run out. At that point, either I’ll need to restrict what I do with this body, to avoid damaging or destroying it, or I will need to return home. Of course, I’ll do the former, as long as is possible. I like it on this planet. The moisture, the flora and fauna, the colors.

I am planning to travel to the desert a couple of months from now. I expect to take lots of pictures, some of which I will share here.  I have new equipment for that. Barring any catastrophe with storage or transmission, it should be interesting viewing. Interestingly, when I take pictures, I seldom look at them again, because I remember the act of being there and of taking the picture. Until local technology improves radically, photographs will never replace memories.

But they’ll have to do.

A slow start

My new mission is getting off to a slow start. I am working remotely from my bunker, servicing customers around the world. I have no face to face contact with anyone, which is helpful, for an alien, but I do like to practice my interactions with humans, so I don’t get rusty. It also helps me keep current on what their social practices are, their argot, and their culture.

It is spring in the northern hemisphere of this planet, but because we live in the jungle, the growing season is now, and then stops in summer because it gets too hot. Only the grass grows, with the endless rain. I have chopped out more fallen trees from the ground, and more stumps, to safely keep the grass mowed without damaging the lawn mower on a stump.

I have a newer camera, with an amazing telephoto lens. Now I just need to get outside to use it.

 

A new mission

My previous mission is complete, and none too soon, because I was sorely tempted to start killing some of the more annoying natives. I have left their strange cannibalistic tribe, sealed up my Forward Observation Post bunker and returned to my regular bunker, from which I will foray on new assignments around this little planet.

I will have more to report soon.

On hold

I am suffering from sleep deprivation. I am working quite a lot, and I have no real new experiences to document here. I work, I eat, I sleep, and I rarely leave a box consisting of a few cubic kilometers.

It’s been grueling. And it will continue to be grueling for awhile.

For now, I will need to put this mission log on hold. My access to communications gear is too limited, and I have so little to discuss, that it’s not worth a weekly update.

I will resume the mission log either when I have something to report, or the mission parameters change and I have more free time to think.

Meanwhile, take care of yourself and be safe.

Compression

I feel myself squeezed by the constraints of my current assignment. I like the work, and I like some of the people, but I despise the organization, its culture, and its “values”. They treat workers like disposable cogs; they squeeze every drop of effort out of them that they can, until the worker quits. Most of my comrades are at the edge of quitting. I am looking for some other assignment as well. I can work other places, where I can get paid more for less stress.

Meanwhile, the season grows cooler in the jungle. Soon we will be able to work outside for an entire day without leaching away every drop of moisture in our bodies. This is a good thing, for the jungle is ever-encroaching. It must be hacked back, vigorously and relentlessly, lest it take over everything.

No change

Conditions are the same, no change. I have access to communications gear only once a week, so this is the only window of time in which to post.

If only I had something to report. The mission continues, no news other than that.

Equilibrium

I am finding something of a balance, an equilibrium, at work. It has been a very stressful environment, with a group of humans who are nice, but who are immersed in a corporate culture of lack of direction, blame when you don’t know something (“well, you should have known that”), lack of recognition when you do something right, and general negativity and hatefulness.

Still, it’s a mission, and it pays enough to maintain the main bunker and the forward observation post. Remember, the Martian Empire expects its agents on this planet to pay their own way in local currency. It forces us to immerse ourselves in the culture of the locale to which we are assigned to observe, and it helps ensure that we do not attract attention to ourselves if we were seen to exist in the local society “without visible means of support”.

I am counting the local days until I can switch to another mission. Meanwhile, I am taking what pleasure I can in the things I enjoy. My body’s health is good. I am not currently subject to the ravages of war, disease, famine, or pestilence. All of my basic needs are met. I cannot ask for anything more. All I have to do is wait.

In other news, I spoke with an acquaintance about prosopagnosia (most humans look alike to me – I mainly distinguish them by hairstyle, stature, movement patterns, and voiceprint). She said she also doesn’t recognize people, but it’s because she does not look at them unless she has a reason to interact with them, and then she will only recognize them if they are in the context of her normal interaction with them, such as at work or at school or in the neighborhood. She told me a story of how she was at a library with her children, and the elderly female security guard walked over to her. The guard said that she was retiring at the end of the week, and she would miss seeing my acquaintance and my acquaintance’s family on a regular basis the way the guard had seen them for the past 15 years.

My acquaintance said that she was taken aback by the security guard’s remark. My acquaintance had never even noticed the security guard, yet the security guard was quite familiar with my acquaintance and her children. My acquaintance found the security guard’s comments disturbing and unsettling. I would have found them flattering, because I specialize in not being noticed. I would also have expected the security guard to be aware of the people who frequent the library – that’s her job. Finally, I would have felt badly if the security guard had noticed me and watched me for 15 years, yet I had never noticed her. I try to notice the staff of buildings or organizations that I frequent, and I speak with them and try to learn their names, and I thank them for doing their jobs. Humans like to be recognized, and I try to humor them. It’s good practice for moving through society, and you never know when you will need their help, so it is wise not to ignore them.

The story my acquaintance told reminded me that we all have an impact on the lives of everyone we encounter, in small ways or in large ways, and often we never even know it. And I inferred something about my acquaintance: she had been stalked, attacked and/or abused in the past, which would explain her negative reaction at being noticed by someone.