Well, this site is meant to be a monument to my life or whatever, so I really ought to mention that I got robbed at gunpoint for the first time yesterday.

I was, as usual, working my restaurant job and it went like this: Someone orders two large pizzas and a two-litre of pop for delivery, so I drive to the location. Pretty normal so far. There were no lights on in the place, so I call the number I’d been given and, after a few failed attempts, get through to the guy. He says something like “Oh, it’s actually 61-B, around back” so I go around back and there are still no lights on. But there are woods behind the place, and a man steps out of them. I’ve seen weirder on the job, so I just assume maybe he’d been over there smoking or something. He approaches and asked if I have change for a hundred dollar bill. I have a little bag with the money I use as a float, but I had taken in no cash that night, so all I had in there was what I bring at the start of the shift, which would have been just enough to give him his change if I used a bunch of coin. I ask him if he minds getting the coin, he says he did not, so I put the food and drink down on a patio chair in that back yard and I start counting coins to make the change.

As I’m trying to count the cash in the dark, he says “Hey” and I look up and he’s got a gun pointed in my face. I’m obviously flustered, so he I give him the money and leave the food (the pizzas still in the warmer bag I brought them in), and he starts yelling at me “Now get away from my house!” so I start leaving, but he notices I have a phone in my hand, and he makes me give him that as well. I remember giving an exasperated sigh when he asked for the phone. In fact, I don’t think I was at any point as scared as he hoped. Taking the phone, he again starts saying “Get away from my house!” and maybe “You have two seconds!” or something to that effect and there was something in his voice that made me assume he was trying to frighten me. I figure a man in that situation is probably himself scared, so I feel like he was maybe trying to get me more visibly scared as a power trip.

In any case, there’s no way that was actually that guy’s house. If it wasn’t just some sort of weird rambling, I feel like his repeated insistence that it was may have been some sort of “criminal mastermind” plan to make me assume he actually lived there to, I guess, throw us off the scent or something? In any case, this guy was an idiot and bad at robbing me. He got about forty or fifty dollars (largely in coin), sure. And I’m assuming he took the food, even if I didn’t see him do it. And, of course, my phone. But you know what he didn’t get? My effing wallet, which had at least twice that amount of money in it plus credit cards and whatnot, was in my pocket untouched. I don’t know what his transportation situation looked like, but if he’d taken both my phone and my car, he’d have left me stranded on that street and would have had a lot more of a lead for a getaway (not that he’d know I’d refuse to awaken the occupants of the home and would instead have walked to a gas station or whatever to get help). What I’m saying is he’s bad at his job.

I’ve got to say, I’m also kind of annoyed because I aim to live my life as a very boring person, and being able to honestly say “I’ve looked down the barrel of a gun being aimed at me with ill intent” is not as boring as I’d like. It’s probably more common in this world than I’d prefer, but it’s not boring.

But you know what I can say now that I actually have looked down that barrel and thought I might die in a moment and not even have time to mentally register that it happened? I can say this: I miss my phone! I have not gone five waking minutes since this happened without reaching for my phone. I am addicted to my phone and I don’t regret it. But what’s worse is the loss of photos and notes and text messages that were on there. I’ve been stubborn for too long about figuring out how “cloud storage” or whatever it is works. I’ll definitely bother to figure it out on the next phone, because the amount of stuff I’ve lost hurts.

For posterity, I did have that Google “Find My Device” thing on that phone, but I got my laptop even before I gave my statement to the police, so within a half hour of the robbery, and it could not detect the phone. I can only assume he destroyed the phone or something. I miss it so much.

I’ll never be able to detail all the life in Gurx’s vast oceans, but here’s some more of it.

A hungry pair of Thimmagg try to capture an Ayllek, ignoring the much easier potential meal of Klisheri among a swarm nearby.

Thimmagg

Among the apex predators in the Gurxian oceans, Thimmagg are intelligent pack hunters. When not hunting or travelling, Thimmagg packs will rest by tangling their tails together, both to help them stick together and to present themselves as a bigger target to deter larger predators.

Ayllek

Aylikk are an aquatic Vootuph species with a unique defence mechanism for planet Gurx: they can generate a shock that stuns or even kills creatures that are trying to attack them. It’s usually very helpful, but some smarter predators, such as Thimmagg, will take turns making the Aylikk discharge, not allowing them to recuperate. Eventually, the poor Aylikk will be unable to muster any more of its charge, and can be picked off. But usually, it works.

Klisheri

Though considerably smaller than the Thimmagg, Klisheri are also predators. These little swimmers prey on the smallest animals in the oceans, the Yena and the other tiny creatures that make up the bottom of the food chain down here. Klisheri are notable for their ability to tense up and then release that energy at once to fling themselves quickly right where they need to be to snatch a meal.

Strondovarian culture is all about keeping up to date on the latest information from the Knowledge Base, so it is important to have a constant connection to that source. While every home and building on Gurx would have built in terminals and relays that are active at all times. But what is one to do when not at home? What if you’re walking down the street and you need to get in touch with the world? That’s when you’d use a portable device, like this one:

Almost every Strondo you see out and about has a small portable device like this one, which they keep in a fold inside their mouth when not being used. By any door in a Strondo building you’re likely to see a shelf with several such devices to be taken by anyone who needs one while they’re away. And because their hearing organ is also in their mouth, it is not uncommon for them to keep an audio feed on, at low volume, just to stay up to date.

But what’s most important about the technological Strondovarian connections to the Knowledge Base is that they have to recognize the user. It would be inconvenient if a Strondo used the terminal in some public building and couldn’t access their own personal information. It would be unthinkable for one Strondo to pose as another and make fraudulent reports to the Knowledge Base. To prevent such things, all technology that connects to the Knowledge Base is reactive to the user.

If you are working on your portable device, but then want to use a wall terminal, you just put down the portable and use the wall terminal. It will instantly be displaying the same information you were just looking at on the other portable. And if you hand your portable to your child, it will instantly display that child’s information. A combination of biometrics, and just the fact that the Knowledge Base keeps pretty constant track of who is doing what, means the devices know who is using them and knows what it is supposed to do for each and every user.

(Incidentally, on the topic of Strondo technology: One of the ways humans would be confused by Strondovarian culture is their attitude toward possessions and belongings, such as their portable reactive devices. Strondos just don’t share our human attachment to physical stuff. If a Strondo isn’t actively using a thing, they see no reason that someone else shouldn’t be allowed to walk up and take it. This attitude has been present in Strondos to some extent since they came to be, but it has truly been cemented in the last ten thousand years or so, with Strondo culture and technology coming into its present form. A Strondo has no need to hold onto a physical copy of a book or a piece of artwork when the Knowledge Base has all the content safely stored and easily shared.)