These records were known as the base logs.
Li Xinyu was twenty-three and unmarried, a pretty girl with long, straight black hair in the eyes of men.
She was cheerful and lively, responsible for the base's intelligent system and hardware and software maintenance.
Whenever she cooked plain rice porridge, she made five or six bowls.
Aside from her own portion and those she shared with her female friends, the rest went to whoever got there first.
It was fine at first, but as more people began scrambling for it, conflicts arose. Plenty of single men wanted porridge made by a beautiful girl.
So cooking porridge became a game of hide-and-seek for her, and she even had "Dad" help her within certain limits.
That way, she broke no rules while giving the men who wanted her porridge a headache.
"You're welcome. Pain and weakness can rob you of your enthusiasm for work."
Luo Qi offered his usual words of comfort, electrical signals turning into sound through the speaker.
A compartment opened on robotic vehicle No. 1, and its mechanical arm took out a slim tablet fifteen centimeters long and nine centimeters wide, placing it beside the bed.
"Helping staff recover their health is included in the planned tasks."
"A personal control tablet. A robotic vehicle found it while clearing the rubble."
"You can use it to access the base server or check the base's current status."
But Stendhal's eyes were vacant again, and he had sunk back into his own sorrow.
"Lately, I seem to have been seeing my wife and daughter. They're standing right beside my bed."
Luo Qi was speechless. Trying to rub it in for a single guy stuck inside a computer, huh?
Luo Qi explained, "A prolonged high fever and physical weakness have caused you to hallucinate. Please return to reality. Our situation is still grim."
"...I pray they're safe."
Stendhal came back to his senses and turned to look at the bowl in his hands.
He tentatively tasted the rice porridge, and a light seemed to flash in his eyes.
"It tastes very good."
"Please recover as soon as possible."
After speaking, the robotic vehicle left through the door and joined the base construction work.
Day 15
Stendhal was still recovering, and he could no longer put the tablet down.
Sometimes he looked at the tablet and talked to himself, grinning foolishly one moment and sobbing the next.
Luo Qi could not help worrying that Stendhal's mind was still muddled. The construction plan was just a matter of taking from one place to patch up another. All he had to do was follow the sequence; there was nothing Stendhal needed to worry about.
The floor and walls of Factory No. 1 were complete, and preparations began to install the columns that would support the roof.
Day 16, light breeze
Stendhal could get out of bed and move around, though he still broke down emotionally and whimpered from time to time.
But he no longer needed a robotic vehicle to care for him.
Installing the ceiling progressed slowly. It took two robotic vehicles working together to assemble a single section.
Day 17, wind died down
The robotic vehicles cleared accumulated dust from the solar panels.
Stendhal said he was mostly fine now, though he occasionally grew teary-eyed and had emotional outbursts.
Roof installation continued.
Dismantling the old base also progressed quickly. Sorting salvaged waste was a habit of Luo Qi's.
Within the digital world-
Using the electrical feedback from the robotic vehicles, Luo Qi viewed the latest images of the base. Chaotic vehicle tracks covered the red ground.
Several large piles of recovered items stood there. Soon, only a fifth of the base would remain undismantled, while the battered solar panels continued stubbornly supplying power.
Day 18, night
Stendhal stretched and did a few push-ups, confirming that he had fully recovered.
"Dad, get ready to give me some work!"
Stendhal requested to return to work, then prepared his dinner and put it in the microwave.
Next, he went aside, dampened a washcloth with water, and briefly wiped his face and neck.
Then he wrung it out as hard as he could, letting the water drip into a lidded container.
This water still had to be used to irrigate the crops, or it could be filtered and reused. Not a drop could be wasted.
There were large chunks of braised beef and mashed potatoes, with the gravy soaking into the white rice. After eating, Stendhal put on his protective work suit and helmet, checked his independent oxygen supply, and stepped outside with the tablet in his arms.
The door to Room No. 1 opened after recognizing his face. It was an intact module taken directly from the old base and installed here; even its data had needed no rewriting.
Stendhal had the pressure chamber, large enough for six people to stand in, all to himself.
The isolation door locked, and the machinery ran for around ten seconds as the air was pumped out. The final door opened, and he stepped beyond Room No. 1, his soles pressing into the soft sand.
He gazed across the red desert.
Various scraps were piled nearby, carefully sorted into metals and nonmetals, along with storage boxes and canisters of all sizes.
A light coating of dust covered these little mountains, making them look weather-beaten. This was a goddamn alien scrapyard.
"Did I walk onto the wrong fucking set? Where's the base? Where did the base go?"
Stendhal swept his panicked gaze around, and a regular patch of white amid the barren landscape caught his eye.
It was a structure more than a hundred meters away.
He slapped both hands against his visor, having intended to rub his eyes.
"Dad, what's that?"
Luo Qi spoke through the tablet connected to the base Wi-Fi. "A light-duty factory under construction. It can recycle scrap, carry out repairs, and manufacture the various parts we need."
"We cannot establish contact beyond Orange Star. Attempting production and manufacturing is better than sitting here waiting to die."
"A light-duty factory? Does that mean we'll have medium- and heavy-duty ones later? We really can build a spaceship and return to Mercury?!"
Wearing his heavy protective suit, Stendhal left a trail of footprints in the sand.
He approached the light-duty factory and touched its hard wall panels with his glove.
"You really took the first step...Dad."
Images churned through Stendhal's mind: one factory becoming another, expanding again and again into a vast mechanized base, and that base building a craft that would take him home.
Luo Qi said, "The factory's roof will be completed tomorrow morning. After that, we will attempt to manufacture the relevant equipment."
For now, this cobbled-together factory was a roofless shell, and Luo Qi did not have the vital production machinery.
"Mr. Stendhal, use all the inflatable shelters to grow crops. The robotic vehicles can handle installing the roof."
"Once the factory's roof is finished, I will need you to lay the wiring."
Stendhal replied, "Understood, Dad. I'll do my best."
"Thank you. Please do not fall ill again."
Orange Star had only sand and blowing dust, with no rats.
There was no rain, nor any extreme weather that could affect the server in the main base, so Luo Qi simply could not be bothered to deal with relocating it.
Water existed as solid ice at Orange Star's poles. At the equator, small amounts of water flowed underground only when temperatures rose during Orange Star's summer.
The planet's surface was dry and its climate stable. It might not rain even once in a thousand years.
As for a meteorite striking from above, that was like winning the lottery. There was no reason it would come looking for him every day.
Learning that he had no immediate assignment, Stendhal was happy to go check on the potatoes he had planted.
As he headed toward the old base, something suddenly occurred to him. "Dad, besides the plant seed containers, what about those living embryos that survived in the research labs?"
Luo Qi said, "The protective embryo capsules are specialized components, kept operational by microbatteries."
"The embryo capsule sensors are connected to the base's monitoring network. If they need charging, I will notify you in advance."
"Is that so?" Stendhal asked no further questions.
Each embryo capsule looked like an oversized pill, with a capacity of roughly two liters, secured in a fitted slot inside a white impact-resistant case.
An embryo capsule could not be opened with bare hands. It had an internal locking and protection mechanism.
If forcibly damaged, the device would discharge electricity to kill the embryo.
Researchers needed to submit a report to Dad and undergo a research review. The base intelligence would assess the study and grant authorization only after approval.
Stendhal left the soft red sand and stepped onto the base's foundation-panel walkway, which had not yet been dismantled.
The white walkway appeared and disappeared beneath the red sand, ending at the tightly shut main base door.
Four mountains of "sorted rubbish" stood beside it, with two small inflatable shelters nestled together on the other side.
Two robotic vehicles were still busy in the distance, removing foundation panels from the sand.
Holding the tablet in his arms, he approached the base and returned to the constant-pressure inflatable shelter where he grew potatoes. A lush green layer covered the ground before his eyes-
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