"It sure does check out, but I had hoped that this humanity had fucked up less than mine."  She sighs.  "I should've known, eh?"

"Yup!"

"So... I still want to know what is 'nuclear'," says a Henry, the one that needed some away time.

"...eh?  Do you not have that word?  Weird.

"Well, it's to do with how everything ever is made of really tiny particles.

"...Except light, but light, being one of those universal constants, is really weird.

"Anyway, nuclear is an adjective derived from nucleus, the core of the atom - which was supposed to be indivisible, but then we broke it, so now the ghost of Democritus, who originally hypothesized atoms some squizillion years ago, is glaring at everyone for naming the thing that's really indivisible - so far - 'quarks', but I have taken that metaphor way further than it was ever intended to go at this point.  Anyway!  Atoms!  There's a lot of them!  They're really tiny!  Sometimes you can smash them together or break them apart, or they break themselves apart, and that often releases energy!  Also most of the time they bond with other atoms to make things called molecules!"

Henries and Claudias pay bewildered attention to it. Gabes have completely zoned out.

"Okay... I am not entirely sure how any of that works. Or if the part about the ghost was a joke. But it's interesting."

"There are no actual ghosts on my home planet, no."

"And anyway, the crystal growths are light years away, and even if we manage to get back there. It doesn't sound like something that easy to solve?"

"What's the reason them being that big is a problem, anyway?"

"It's harder to manipulate anything that big. And even if it isn't, we are talking about mountains sized things here," a Henry explains.

"And some are the kind that is hard to modify," a Claudia adds.

"I see.  ...Well, anyway, that's something for much later.  We have shelter sorted-enough-for-now until that rock spits out more people; we should, however, probably start planning for defenses and working on food-security."

They all glance at the giant 'rock'. The sky is dark enough for a faint glow to become noticeable from the crystal.

"Food-security first. We can more or less easily scale everything else with more people to work," says a Henry.

"Maybe we should actually test to see if animals don't approach the thing? We haven't seen it anything to say the contrary. But I wouldn't want to make a dash to escape a wild boar and bring the whole herd here and the find out we were wrong."

"Ugh, anti-wild-boar defenses.  ...pit traps.  Okay.  We can do pit traps.  That would work."

She idly hums a few bars of a song making this plan reminded her of.  ...It's surprisingly catchy.

"...right, I need to figure out the strength of these crystals...or should it be spring-loaded?"

"You mean their resistance to pressure? Impact?"

"I mean how much crystal would be needed to safely hold up a fleeing human but not a rampaging hog."

"I don't know for sure. I guess we could figure out a way to test it, but I would prefer... I don't know, walls that we could climb up? At least rather than something that could easily end up hurting us."

"I am all nicely sculpted lean muscle," says a Gabe while the other flexes, "so I am not as heavy as the heavier ones, but I guess some of the hogs are around my weight?"

"...no, you really are not the same weight as a full-grown hog, and the smaller ones...well, there's more than one reason I made these spears, y'know?  Seriously, my tentative assumption on this is that there'll still be a factor-of-three safety margin.  And yes, obviously walls too.  But pit traps mean we get more food."

"Oh, good point."

"Walls first? I am still a bit iffy about traps, sound like a likely way to hurt ourselves?"

"Not if they're done properly.  But yes, walls first isn't a particular imposition."

...Yeah, this would be rather simple, in the end.

"Anything I should know about setting this up for continuous updates?  I do recall it needing blood contact, initially, but does that requirement continue, or is it once-and-done-forevermore?"

"I am not sure what you mean? When you detach a crystal, it stays like it is until someone picks it up and does things with it? Or I guess until it's damaged in some way."

"I'm not sure what I mean, either.  Just that I think there was some sort of condition necessary beyond touching it, to do things?"

"Just having it connected to you, partially in your flesh, with blood contact being the default threshold unless you want to do some flesh reshaping. Don't do flesh reshaping."

"...Yeah, not until I actually know what the fuck I'm doing.  And on animals first."