She clicks the tasks.

Initial Inventory

Confirm that all listed inventory items are present. Familiarize yourself with your supplies. Report any discrepancies in the daily report.

Inventory checklist is located in the Site Manual in locker 1.

 

Daily Report

Each daily report should include: A summary of work performed that day, indication of approximate overall progress on all tasks, daily weather report, work plan for tomorrow, any issues or concerns, and an assessment of your mental state and performance. A daily report template and weather station instructions can be found in the Site Manual.

Click here to type Daily Report.

 

Hydroponics Setup

By day 16, Hydroponics System should be operational. Task will then be replaced with Hydroponics Gardening. The Hydroponics Manual is in locker 2.

Sub-Tasks include [...]

 

Esoteric Sculpting Simulacrum.

Since the advanced energy manipulation equipment the position uses is not available on Earth, a simulated task has been created instead. Complete all Esoteric Sculpting tasks by day 30. The Esoteric Sculpting manual is in locker 2.

Sub-Tasks include [...]

Site Manual in locker 1, you say?

She fetches the manual, takes her spiral-bound notebook around to do the inventory check, picks up the hydroponics and sculpting manuals along the way, then flops on her bed to read all three of them cover to cover. She might skim a bit if time is tight, but she wants to be familiar with where to find all the information available even if she doesn't have context on all of it yet.

Site manual has an inventory list and a bunch of basic tool manuals. Here's how to operate the water system. Here's the thermostat controls, be mindful of the battery bank's charge level. Etc. Everything seems to be present, though she doesn't have enough semi-nice food to last the whole month.

The hydroponics manual sticks pretty close to the line-by-line factual instructional level. Set up the racks like so. Plug the pipes in like this. Set up the mixer like that. Check for leaks here and there. If plant A has discolored leaves, check solution nitrogen level. Et cetera.

The esoteric sculpting manual lists a series of mind-twisting logic rules for how to arrange various colors of gravel. The thickness of the bands, the arrangement of different colors, the exact radii of curves, all changing the alpha, beta, and zod levels. There's a few simple examples of valid arrangements - concentric circles, a weird Celtic cross sort of thing. The goal is to figure out valid designs for a bunch of different desiderata. And then actually go make said designs with gravel, outside. (If she actually reads it thoroughly, there's a slightly hidden note about how to bring up a sim/design testing tool on the instructions computer.)

They can't really expect her to be dicking around with gravel all day in that heat just to prototype things—aha, nope, there's the trick. Okay. Leaving that aside for now...

First she goes over the weather stuff, because that's actually supposed to go into today's daily report. Once she has a weather report prepared, she heads over to the hydroponics garden, figuring she'll prioritize that because if she manages to grow her own food sooner rather than later she'll get to dodge the distantly looming deadline of running out of the good cans of baked beans. Esoteric Sculpting can be playtime, at least until she outputs her first vegetable.

Without trying to hook anything up to full functionality just yet, she consults the manual heavily and starts in on getting the racks all physically assembled and in shape for future use. It's soothing, like putting together IKEA furniture. If she has enough time, she'll proceed to actually try getting things to the point of growing plants in them, but she's not necessarily expecting that to be possible on day one.

As the sun starts to descend past the horizon, she heads back to the computer, logs the weather, writes up that she read through all the manuals and started on the hydroponics garden, reports her work plan for tomorrow as "fuck around and find out", assesses her mental state as "you're not paying me enough to assess my mental state", has a can of baked beans for dinner, double-checks her daily report to make sure nothing's missing or out of place, sends it, then plays around with the Esoteric Sculpture design software until bedtime.

Report Sent

And no further acknowledgement than that.

She can just about get most of the structure and racks assembled on what's left of day 1. Still has to put them in place and then run all sorts of pipes and wires, it'll take a few days at least. The design software is still finicky and annoying to use, less like a game and more like a CAD program. But it'll run the rules and tell her if she has an illegal configuration and the alpha/beta/zod levels. She has to meet certain targets while making certain shapes or using only some colors for each task. Zod is really fucking annoying. It goes up really fast when she does almost anything interesting, and almost all the tasks have a very low zod limit.

Her bedtime is entirely up to her. It gets dark quickly out here, and the wind whips at the walls somewhat. They don't flap, but they do flex slightly.

Hey, CAD software is totally a game if you approach it with the right attitude.

She's pretty cheerful when she goes to bed. In the morning she wakes up, has breakfast, goes to the bathroom, and heads out to the hydroponics building to keep setting it up. After spending the morning on that, she takes a lunch break, makes some notes for her daily report on how the morning went, spends a couple hours dicking around with Esoteric Sculpture and manages to get a design finalized for the easiest task on the list, then heads back out to the hydroponics garden until a little after sunset, when she has dinner and writes up her daily report. Her work plan for tomorrow includes at least one actual detail this time—setting up the Esoteric Sculpture she designed—and if she got far enough with hydroponics over the course of the day she might add an entire second detail, "finish testing hydroponics rig and plant something". Her mental state self-assessment is still that she is not being paid enough to assess her mental state.

She's perhaps sixty percent done with the hydroponics now. Some of the pipework is really finicky and getting each individual plant bed hooked up can only be done so fast. She could probably start planting things with the ones that are set up tomorrow, and finish the rest later.

On the morning of day 3 there's another short-term task: Take the ATV to these coordinates and take soil samples according to this manual. No specific time limit mentioned.

She'd been vaguely wondering why that was there. They know she doesn't drive, right? Whatever, it's walkable. She'll do it right now before it starts getting light out.

After that, and breakfast, she works on the garden for the rest of the morning and then repeats yesterday's pattern of lunch followed by a few-hour Esoteric Sculpture break followed by more gardening. In the afternoon gardening session she does end up planting in a few of her completed plant receptacles, though she wasn't sure enough of this plan yesterday to commit to it in writing. Then dinner, report (which mentions getting more stuff planted tomorrow), and—dang, she almost forgot to go out there and set up a pointless arrangement of rocks. She goes out there and sets up her pointless arrangement of rocks, updates her report accordingly, sends it, and dicks around with her fun CAD game until she feels like sleeping. By the time she goes to bed, she's pretty sure she's close to getting a few more of the tasks designed correctly.

They have fast-growing variants of some seeds. Lettuce and various other greens, like spinach or kale, would be harvestable within a few days. If she plants the tomatoes, strawberries, or peppers she may not see any results until near the end of her stay.

Day 4. Day 5. More of the same. Are they blurring together yet?

In her first few plantings she mostly goes for things she'll be able to eat later, but does give in to the temptation of tomatoes and strawberries, once each.

In general, she refuses to commit any intentions to 'work plan for tomorrow' status unless the task in question is extremely imminently doable, like planting in a hydroponics bay she's already assembled or laying out an Esoteric Sculpture she's already designed. A general intent to work on a particular thing doesn't make it onto the page because she feels like that would be pointless. She does, in fact, work on things, though, and she's good at Esoteric Sculpture design. She's on track to finish all the Sculpture tasks well before the end of her stay, assuming the later ones don't get too insanely difficult and assuming she can find it in her heart to go outside and physically move all that gravel around - definitely the worst part of the process.

The days do blur together a bit, but with her task lists to consult every morning, it's easy to stay on track. She munches her way steadily through cans of beans and works her way steadily through outstanding tasks and promises herself that she will take a whole-ass bubble bath when she gets home. Water conservation is maybe the worst part of this whole situation, though the heat is a close second.

Day 6, Day 7. She's ahead of schedule and they're going to deliver an additional water tank. Ostensibly for the hydroponics rig, but it's way more than that needs. An SUV drives it up and simply unhitches a trailer and leaves, no human contact. She has to connect the hose and pump herself.

No human contact, just how she likes it!

She gets the extra tank hooked up and does not get too indulgent about the implications for her hygiene routine, just in case they're going to want her to drive half that water out into the desert in a vehicle she cannot legally operate. (Should she actually try it, if they tell her to do something she legitimately can't skip the vehicle for? Eh, burn that bridge when she comes to it.)

Her hydroponics progress continues to be fast and her Esoteric Sculpture progress continues to be very fast, but eventually she will have planted all the plants and that'll be that until her first harvest comes in, and she starts to slow down on Esoteric Sculpture as she approaches the last bunch of tasks. Occasionally she spends her break time scribbling in her spiral-bound notebooks instead of playing with the CAD, writing fanfic and drawing spaceships and dragons and weird little doodles. On the whole, though, she's still ahead of schedule.

Day 10, hydroponics set up totally complete. She can already harvest some small bits of leafy greens, if she wants. They don't deliver any more water but they say that her zod limits are all increased 50%.

Day 14, the computer is BEEPING LOUDLY. It warns her that a simulated storm is ongoing. She cannot leave the main building and can only go check on the hydroponics garden (and no further) if she's willing to wear a horrible padded suit.

She waits to harvest the leafy greens until they're a little farther along, but then has what is possibly the first salad she has looked forward to in her life.

On storm day, she trudges out to the hydroponics garden in the awful suit to complete the minimum necessary set of gardening tasks for the day, then sits down at the computer and gleefully knocks off her next five Esoteric Sculptures in an all-day design marathon. As an afterthought, she eats dinner and sends off her daily report. It lists her mental state as "downright chipper".

Storm ends on day 17.

Half of her dark blue gravel is gone. She'll have to refactor some designs to physically make everything.

That's convenient, because with little else to do except work on Esoteric Sculptures she has already given in to the temptation to go back and refactor some designs for materials efficiency. She wasn't optimizing for dark blue gravel specifically but it's not that hard to re-tweak things. She's very sarcastic in her Day 17 Report about the ~mysterious disappearance~ of her gravel, though. (Could she have been keeping it indoors this whole time...? Eh, she didn't have any reason to. And she would've been really tight on space if she had.)

They don't throw any more major curveballs at her, besides some additional "go here, do that" tasks, which can be accomplished without the ATV with some annoyance and sweat.

On day 25 she starts getting strawberries. They're growing fast.

On the morning of day 31, the locked-down terminal says 'Test period complete. Use the emergency phone now.'

Her strawberries are delicious.

When the computer tells her to use the emergency phone, she first has breakfast and goes to the bathroom and takes one last nostalgic tour of her hydroponics garden, then calls.

"Hello, April. I'm Yasmin, head of selection for this one. Keeping it short, you're selected. You're in if you want it. We can work out the details right now, or get you a trip back to the city for some luxury first, or get you some deliveries out there until the client's ready if you accept. Either way."

"I'll take that trip back to the city. I promised myself a bubble bath."

"Sure thing, I'll send the car out now. E-mail me for an appointment when you're ready. Congrats."

Click.

The car shows up a couple hours later. The guy driving it just opens the door silently.

April and her tiny purse full of spiral notebooks (and her phone!) cheerfully get into the car.

And she gets a silent ride to a room in a luxury hotel, closer to Phoenix. It has a hot tub and bubble bath stuff.

Ah, paradise.