The Nature of Scrap
A Terracore Story, Part 1 ⛏️
Tayde strained to listen above the howling gales. Sand swished, pattered, clinked, rustled—it was a never ending backdrop on this dry, ugly planet.
Bimp. There it was. A single low pulse from the scanner Nikurskyy wore on her left armband.
“That’s it? That’s good?” Tayde asked.
Nikurskyy removed her palm from a rusted curve of half-buried metal. Sand rushed in to attempt to reclaim it. “Yuh-huh. It is in there,” she said. “We should dig out a better surface.”
Tayde bit back a skeptical reply. Nikurskyy had been Scrap mining for a while now, and Tayde was there to learn. The Consortium sponsors had made it clear that they wouldn’t tolerate anything but an exemplary report from the cranky old tutor. Politics, evidently, were a priority.
With that in mind, Tayde reformed her doubt into a question: “A better surface makes it go faster, I suppose?” She unclipped a telescopic sand shovel from her utility pack.
“Improves the yield in many cases,” replied Nikurskyy.
Tayde began to scrape sand away from the metal. Her hole refilled itself almost perfectly each time. They needed better equipment. She also kept this to herself, deciding to probe a little further.
“How’s that work again? Molecular pathways or something like that?”
“Hell if I know the science, tot. It just does.” Nikurskyy had retrieved some flat, flexible panels. She drove them into the pathetic holes Tayde created, which helped keep some sand from flowing back in.
It looked like the technical conversation with the miner was going to be an uphill battle. Tayde was certain that Nikurskyy knew more about how it worked that she let on, but the Consortium was paying her for the practical tutelage, not the theory. That part was on Tayde to figure out.
What they did know was that the so-called Scrap was anything but what the nickname implied. It was likely some sort of self-assembling nanochip tech, laced throughout the metallic ruins on the dusty ball known as Terracore. Extracting the stuff was slow, dangerous, and lucrative work.
Scraping out a hole against the desert’s will was, unfortunately, the fast part. After fifteen minutes of sweaty, silent work, they’d managed to expose about half a square meter of the metal. Nikurskyy pressed some buttons on her belt, and a hatch on it popped open. She reached inside, and pulled out a full meter of thick cable. Another button tap, and the end of the cable shimmered.
Tayde closed her right eye and twitched her winking muscles twice, counting a second between each. A soft pulse on her temple indicated that her full spectrum scanning software was online. She focussed on the end of the cable as it became fuzzy and indistinct.
“What’s happening to it?” A fair question, she thought.
“It is getting ready to extrude.”
The end of the cable began to stretch into a thin square. When it was roughly the size of a sheet of paper, Nikurskyy pushed it forward onto the metal surface. The sheet took on the color of the metal, and in an instant the cable and surface were one.
“Now we wait,” said the miner. “And-uh, hide.”
Tayde ended the recording by repeating her closed-eye winks. A subtle display bar in her helmet’s lower vision reported that the short scan had eaten up 78% of her scant storage capacity.
If this stuff is so valuable, why doesn’t our budget seem to reflect that? she wondered, for probably the fortieth time since she’d landed this accursed assignment.
With Nikurskyy tethered to the metal, Tayde went about camouflaging them the best they could. A sand colored drape was already over their vehicle, and another one made for a crude tent above their find. Nothing a simple infrared scan couldn’t see through, but at least it kept the gritty wind off them.
“Given that you resort to sheets to hide under and non-nuclear propulsion for vehicles, can I assume that your civilization did not create that extruder technology?” Tayde asked, after they’d settled in under their flimsy shelter.
“Oh, but we did, in a sense, mhm” said Nikurskyy.
“Instead of—” Tayde caught herself. “If I’m to learn how to mine, I’d very much like to build my own extruder.”
“You will not build it, but you will-uh, be able to see how they come to be.”
Tayde let that little nugget marinate, while she fiddled with her system’s settings. She wanted to review the scan she’d taken, but wasn’t sure if her suit’s onboard displays were up to the task. No, too basic. She sighed.
Scrap had to be nano based. Self assembling computers of some sort. If these extruders supposedly “came to be” and were capable of gathering more of the Scrap, things were operating down at the wacky atomic level for sure.
After several hours, another sound came from somewhere on Nikurskyy’s gear.
“We done?” asked Tayde.
“There is still more in there to extrude, but we are done-fun for now.”
“Are you all full up or something?”
“Nuh-uh. But you may want to get a look at the extruded Scrap. Quick now.” Nikurskyy pulled herself out of the sand, rolled to expose the boxy, pack-like structure on her back. A soft light illuminated a cylindrical chamber on one side.
Confused, Tayde peered into it. Floating in some clear, viscous gel were several small bronze flecks. They reminded her of the stuff they put in expensive drinks back home.
“So what’s the next step?”
Nikurskyy blew out a breath. “Normally, I would attempt to evade. But with you here, it is safer to, hm, jettison the yield in hopes that we can recover a percentage.”
“Excuse me?”
The miner gestured to a soft, pulsing light on her wrist. “Raiders are here.”
🚀 Publishing schedule
This story will be released as the Terracore community reaches the collective goal of contributing 500,000 Favor in-game (thus burning the $SCRAP tokens). Exact publishing times will vary, but will (generally) adhere to the following table:
| Part (working title) | Community Favor Needed | % of Goal |
|---|---|---|
| Part 1: The Nature of Scrap 👈 | 13,000 | 2.6% |
| Part 2: A Harsh World | 19,000 | 3.8% |
| Part 3: The Guild of Mirages | 29,000 | 5.8% |
| Part 4: Desert Magnificence | 44,000 | 8.8% |
| Part 5: Mud, Dust, and Steel | 66,000 | 13.2% |
| Part 6: The Heat Never Sleeps | 99,000 | 19.8% |
| Part 7: Paths amid the Dunes | 148,000 | 29.6% |
| Part 8: Sunspear | 222,000 | 44.4% |
| Part 9: With the Light at our Backs | 333,000 | 66.6% |
| Part 10: Oceanic Dreams | 500,000 | 100% |
Learn more about the Terracore Game
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