#cricket leg rebar

[futurebird]

Tube loitering

One of the downsides to connecting your nests using long tubes is "ant loitering" some ants like to just hang out in the tubes because they retain a little moisture and it's near everything. This will cause the tubes to get dirty and less attractive... hence my new invention of a "mid tube fan."

Getting ants to do anything is next level. They respond to every change and not in the ways you'd predict. They are sensitive to temp, light levels and air currents in ways that aren't obvious. I just need to find a small enough fan and 3D print a little holder for it. 

I recently cleared out a tube that the cone ants blocked with sand, using ... the legs of dead crickets like rebar to reenforce the structure. They had made this whole barricade to regulate the air flow to the nest (hence I'd never recommend a fan on a nest tube)

I guess building a wall out of cricket legs (as struts) with a sand slurry like concrete... isn't any more strange than those early humans with their bone huts...

though I still find both creepy.

[andmyvape]

In The Ruins...

This desert wind is harsh as it drives over and under a bridge suspended by rusted cables from equally rusted supports. Each gusty makes it sway and creak, and makes you wish there was another way into the Sanskin ruins. Then again, the treacherous crossing is what makes it worth coming here in the first place. Directly below the bridge are sun-bleached jagged stones sticking up into the air to skewer anyone who falls through the rusted metal or off the side. Larger groups don’t want to risk it giving way as they cross, and smaller two or three head teams can’t carry a lot out. You come alone except for your faithful mechabeast of burden, but you are far from unprepared.

You come to the end of the bridge and a view of twisted stone and metal stretches out before you. It’s one of the many ruins left after the Collapse. No one you’ve talked to knows what it could have been named before the locals decided to call it Sanskin. There are a few meters left of clear ground before the going gets rough. Since you haven’t eaten since sun-up, you slide down to the ground and dig into the bags hanging off the saddle for some food. You fetch out a flask of oil for your companion as well.

Peg is yours, has been since you found her chewing up part of your family’s water collector. You had been too stunned by the luck of it to really be too mad about the collector, you could repair that, but a mechabeast just falling into your lap? Now that was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It took whole teams to go out and wrangle a mechabeast and you got it for a few handfuls of scrap. The mechabeast horse had a few dings to it but with a little TLC and a little more scrap, Peg was outracing Tribe bikes at a short clip and outpace them any further.

No one was quite sure where the mechabeasts came from. You had asked every grey old geezer you could find, but all any of them could tell you was that when people came out of hiding after the Collapse, the mechabeasts were there right along with the animals. And not just animals either, from what you’d heard of the rumors there had been sightings of massive fish-looking mechabeasts near the coast, and you’ll swear yourself you’ve heard a few crickets whose chirps sounded just a bit too tinny. They didn’t eat anything but metal, wires, and the same sticky black fluid the Tribe ran bikes on, but otherwise they acted like the animals they were made after They even kind of looked like flesh and blood at a distance. So far no one had found one made after a person, though you haven’t really met anyone who’s known anyone who tried.

Quick meal finished-- bland pressed corn cakes and jerky, from the Tribe’s ration depot-- you grab Peg’s reigns in one hand and go into the ruins. You have to go on foot from here. Experience has taught you that Peg’s legs are good for bracing her on unsteady terrain, but not with someone in the saddle.

You search idly for pickings you can snag up as you go, anything valuable enough to take up bag space this soon in. Now that the Tribe has the kinks worked out of the water system pumping from the aquifer under their bunker and out to the farms in the area, they’re set on acquiring parts for a power generator they can run on wind instead of fuel. After all, they need it for their bikes and their mechabeasts. The big prize right now is a magnet, the biggest that can be found. The reward wasn’t specified but you’re sure it’s worth a few extra scrapes and bruises…

… Which is why you aim right for a part of the ruins you know has stayed mostly unexplored. Reason being, they’re mostly blocked off by fallen rubble spiked with rebar, and the only way into the tunnels are a small opening that threatened to fall in on itself any minute. If that wasn’t bad enough, the whole way and beyond is pitch black. You come prepared with a lamp lantern and a satchel to haul out what you can. Peg won’t be able to come with you, so you leave her loose at the entrance and tell her to wait for you to get back. She stares at you with deep, knowing red eyes that seem to wish you, “Good luck.”

With the lamp handle in your teeth, you grip a piece of metal sticking out of a chunk of rock, using it to brace your upper body as you slide your lower half into the tunnel. Your feet kick out for something solid to rest on, and when you find it you rest your weight bit by bit to make sure it doesn’t give out under you. Slowly, slowly, you reach down for another handhold and keep going. It goes on like that for several meters of darkness until you reach a place where the tunnel widens out further than the light of your lantern reaches.

You can see the ground though, it’s uneven and strewn with scattered rubble. You watch your feet as well as your surroundings as you walk further. With any luck you’ll find what you’re looking for without having to go too far from the entrance. In fact you’re well within sight of its dim glow when you luck out. You find a metal box nailed to a crooked brick wall, and just to the left, a sign with the letters “H rd  r”. It’s a hunch, but you get a good feeling despite the missing characters. You make a mental note to find out what the word could be and its meaning while you look for a way into what you’re sure is a hollow in the rubble. You tap your fist along the stone until you hear the dull thud deepen. Now to get in…

You glance around and your lamplight falls on a bent length of metal. Perfect.

Crash! The metal strikes through the brick, leaving a hole bigger than your fist. You smash through the wall to break an opening large enough to go through. When the dust settles you feel your heartbeat kick into a higher beat at the sight of scrap and wires just… piled inside. Wherever your light lands you can see the trade deals. How many ration tickets could you get for all this? Enough for months? Seasons?

Soon your satchel is full of components and old machines you don’t know the use of, but figure the Tribe can repurpose. Scrap is all well and good, but not everything can be made from bare parts. You never know when something you snag on a hunch could net you a hefty pile of tickets, but so far your instincts have been real keen.

Then, your eyes fall on the big prize. There’s a lump in one of the larger piles of scrap; when you pick it up, wires and metal bits fall to the ground, but plenty stays stuck to whatever you’ve picked up. You brush the pieces away and where your hand touches its dully shining metal surface, you see grooved carves you can feel under your fingers start to glow. It’s subtle at first, but soon its nearly half as bright as your lantern.

What kind of pre-Collapse technology is this? You’ve heard some of some fantastic things being dug out of the Sanskin ruins, but nothing half as strange as this. Whatever it is, you’re certain it’s what the Tribe, and therefore you, need.

Now you have a choice to make. Your satchel is barely half full, but when you try to tuck the magnet in as well, you realize there isn’t enough room. After dumping out everything non-essential, there’s just barely enough, and you won’t be carrying out much else with it. You drop to your knees on a heavy sigh and start digging through what you dumped out to sort out what looks worth the most. As long as you’ve been scavenging for the Tribe, you should be able to guess values enough to take the best pickings with you.

At the end of it you’re left with a handful of broken parts and one piece with wires sticking out at all ends. You leave the rest and head back to the entrance, half-regretful already.

Just out of the light of the entrance tunnel you came through, your instincts clamor at you loudly enough that you pause. As you do, Peg screams a warning from above, and you catch flashes of glowing red in the corner of your eye, to the right, in the darkness. Reacting without thought, you swing your satchel so it rests on the backs of your thighs, drop your lantern, and pull a black stick double the width of your thumb from your belt. You flick the switch and it buzzes and crackles with blue light. Zappers, the Tribe called them, and they were one of the few and best defenses against some kinds of mechabeasts.

When people came back up out of the bunkers, there were plenty of plant-eater mechabeasts to be found, as far as mechabeasts went. They didn’t eat the plants themselves, but if a herd of deer had one that thought it was one of them, that herd would happen to graze where there were plenty of pieces of pre-Collapse technology. In return, the mechabeast would keep the herd safe from flesh and blood predators. That said, it wasn’t free of being prey, and there were of course mechabeasts modeled after things like wolves and mountain lions, and those were nasty to run into if you were machine or man. You were lucky enough to avoid them before today.

Out of the shadows creeps three such mechabeasts, low to the ground. They look like rats, if rats were three feet long and had grinding gears instead of mouths. The sight sends a shiver down your spine, knowing flesh would stand less of a chance than metal, but if these things get to Peg it’s all over.

Without warning, you leap at the leftmost mechabeast, the one closest to the entrance. You manage to take it and the rest by surprise as you drive your baton end-first into the base of what would be a rat’s skull. Shocks run through the length of its chassis. Its tail and paws spasm and twitch until smoke rises from its head where the baton has it pinned to the ground. When you yank the baton free and spin out of the way of another rats leap, the first crumples to the ground.

One down, two to go.

As you turn on the other two rats, one of them opens its gnashing gearhole and lets loose a shriek that makes your vision blur. When the ringing clears your ears, you see both rats dart for the light-- Peg! You grab for one of the whipping tails disappearing up to the surface and your hand closes on air. Desperate, unthinking, you throw yourself back up the hole to the surface, catching your shirt on a bar as you go, and you manage to scrabble out onto the rusty red baked earth in time to see Peg fleeing over a pile of rubble.

What a smart not-horse.

The mechabeast rats turn back around on you with twin menacing, metallic hisses that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. You raise your baton and charge, thoughtless, the rush of fire in your blood making time rush by like thick nectar. It catches the rats off guard again-- they really don’t react as fast as normal animals and it works against them well if you don’t give them any time at all.

Whack-crack! You send one sprawling and whirl in time to strike the jaw of the other one as it leaps at you. It drops, momentum and face broken, and you follow up the blow by driving your boot into its head. It drops in jerky motions while you spin on its stunned partner. Last one, you can finish this…

So why aren’t your legs going forward?

You look down. Oh. The red stain on your shirt is spreading-- now you remember, it’s from where you caught it on the bar a minute ago. It seems like such a long time now. You feel your hands tremble, your arms go slack and droop toward the ground. Above the dirt, your baton, crackling with blue light as it dangles from your suddenly weak fingertips. You feel your heart shake in your chest as you look at the mechabeast with its gnashing teethgears gathering itself to strike-- is this it?

You can’t help it, you giggle. It’s a little funny.

Then like the bugle of one of those angels old Klelan talks about, you hear a noise from a rise of rubble. Your loyal companion, Peg, thunders down the pile without stopping until it tramples the mechabeast rat, started by the horse’s sudden appearance.

With a sigh of relief, you let yourself slump to a knee and let the baton fall out of your hand to the dirt. You let your head hang while Peg devours the mechabeast corpse. Horses are funny like that. You could make more tickets from the parts it has, sure, but she’s more than earned it. Just for a second, you rest your eyes…

Falling to the ground jostles your now very obvious side wound, shocking your lungs into pulling in a gasp of air. Peg, at your side, looks down at you with wide red eyes. You think she looks worried.

“I’m alright gal,” you mutter, waving your hand in her face.

She nudges your hand with the end of her muzzle, then turns deliberately so your hand brushes the straps of her saddle. You tangle the leather in your fist and lock your arm, pulling yourself up without straining your side so your legs are under you. Braced against Peg, you’re able to haul yourself into the saddle. Dimly, you notice your satchel bumping against your back. Huh, you think, what luck.