{"id":757,"date":"2025-03-22T21:46:40","date_gmt":"2025-03-22T21:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/?page_id=757"},"modified":"2025-03-22T22:02:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-22T22:02:31","slug":"exchange","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/exchange\/","title":{"rendered":"Exchange"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Once safely aboard his own little starship, he reviewed the distress beacon and confirmed it was only a short flight away<\/a>. It was a ruggedly beautiful planet, when not being attacked by fauna or atmosphere. Dawn was cresting the horizon; the trees had a surreal appearance even for an alien planet, with their elongated glowing pods, massive trunks, and few enormous leaves. Herds of strange dinosaur like creatures roamed the open areas between the forest clumps, themselves appearing almost like shambling plants. Giant flying creatures, superficially like dragonflies, glided along with him occasionally- they were unsettling at first, but offered no threat, and once he’d scanned them he found they fed only on the sap from the pod trees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Flying onward, homing in on the coordinates, being overly cautious in case its either a trap or the danger is still present, he saw it rising over the treetops- smoke, with flashes of dim light. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Coming to a hover a short ways off, he scanned the location visually as well as with the ship’s sophisticated sensors. No sign of life anywhere, except some kind of larvae to the northwest. He landed about a five minute walk from the downed craft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Approaching at a steady pace, alert to every movement or sound, he arrived at the crash sight. Showers of sparks cascaded outward from ragged open wounds in the hull, and thick black smoke billowed from one particular rough gash, but otherwise the ship was mostly intact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Searching for survivors or victims in the cabin, he found none. No trace of anyone. There was a last recorded distress signal, but it didn’t provide any clues as to the cause of the crash, or the whereabouts of the occupants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surveying the surrounding area, he found a few supply crates scattered around, seemed to be dropped in a hurry and still held some items he could make use of. As far as he could scan or see, there was nothing but alien pod plants and enormous plant-bug-dinosaur creatures ambling casually. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He spent several days there, once he was sure the area was secure, coming and going to the site from his main camp. The damage to the wrecked ship turned out to not be severe, and for the most part seemed to be repairable with materials he had on hand or could easily generate. Soon he had the sparks out, the smoke stopped, and even the holes in the hull sealed up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once he gotten all the wiring either re-soldered and insulated or ended with terminator caps; all the piping wrapped; and was sure the cabin windshield hatch worked, he pressed the ignition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The engines roared to life. This was a nice ship! He identified it and looked up the values…it was listed at 10.5 times the value of the one he’d been flying!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was was clearly much nicer, the more he studied it. Far more cargo capacity and speed. Sure, the hyperdrive was going to take some work to get running, and he didn’t know where to start on repairing any of the guns, but it certainly had potential. He decided to fly it back to his camp, then return on foot for his old ship and fly that back. He would just work on it as he could, maybe sell it someday, who knows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The damaged ship floated upwards with ease, glided into the correct altitude, and he sped off towards his camp. It would take some work, that was evident. But the more he was in it, the more he liked it; he hadn’t noticed how cramped his old one was, and just the look of it- he definitely liked this one better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landing at camp, he made sure things were in order then opened his navigator to begin the hike back to the old ship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Only there was nothing there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He’d forgotten to mark it. When he started flying the new vessel, his suit had linked into it and accepted it as the new vehicle, deleting its association with his old one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Completely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

‘No problem’, he thought to himself, – “I’ve made the trip a dozen times at least. It was…east. Definitely. Wait or did I go east on the way back to camp?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made several flights over the rugged landscape, trying to recall how long it took, what direction he went, what landmarks there were- but it was useless. He had been following the nav beacon to the distress signal and the beacon back to the camp, on the simplified dashboard screen, and been lost in thought every single trip. He didn’t even had a concrete memory of a single landmark, rock outcrop or peculiar tree. He tried circling outward from his camp, but no sign of his old ship for as far as he cared to fly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, after weeks of searching, he was forced to admit it- he’d lost his own ship, stuffed to the brim with items he’d collected, and there was no chance of finding it again. He was forced now to get the new ship up and running or he’d be trapped on this planet till the end of his days, or likely die in endless hikes to find his old vessel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it was a good ship after all. A few more weeks and he had it in space<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once safely aboard his own little starship, he reviewed the distress beacon and confirmed it was only a short flight away. It was a ruggedly beautiful planet, when not being attacked by fauna or atmosphere. Dawn was cresting the horizon; the trees had a surreal appearance even for an alien planet, with their elongated glowing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-757","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=757"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/757\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mleyartanddesign.com\/state\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}