Subnautica

Chapter three

Jason took the sack he had fashioned out of one of the spare survival suits from the locker on his life pod and began scooping sand into it. It had been a month since he had crashed onto the ocean-world of Subnautica and he had learned from his few encounters with aggressive creatures to keep his head on a swivel, even when he expected no danger. This week had been difficult for Jason, the day and night cycle of the planet had caused him a lot of problems. He found himself constantly over extending the amount of time he actually had and would have to rush around endlessly in order to complete the tasks he had set for himself before the inevitable darkness of night would blanket the underwater world.

Jason was working too hard during the day because he refused to be in the ocean at night. Two weeks ago, while skimming through the programs in his 3-dimensional construction module he stumbled upon an RAV, a sophisticated aquatic drone, which he could use to explore and scavenge at night. He needed to begin the planning of reaching the section of the Aurora that contained the rescue beacon, but had no idea how to approach the monumental task. Each night, before eventually becoming too frustrated to think, he would pour over the 3-dimentional construction module searching for something that could help him.

After filling the sack with sand Jason struggled to swim upward to the life pod to drop off the material. The hatch on the life pod's belly opened as he approached and he heavily lifted himself and the bag of sand into the pod. After standing over the hatch letting the sack drain of water he smacked the button to close the opening and dumped the sand into the area where the extraction module would take up the materials he needed.

His life pod was in a much more disheveled state then it had been when it landed on the planet. Jason had stripped some of the wall panels in order to use them for the RAV, he had set up a giant holographic clock on the ceiling, and there were several names scratched into one of the walls of the pod. The names were all of the names of the people he could remember working with on the habitation vessel Aurora. One name, however, was scratched onto the outer shell of the life pod.

"Valentine." Jason said, going to the storage locker and grabbing the composition scanner.

"At your service." The computer answered.

"Could you get this extracted for me? I want to be able to start the construction of the RAV tonight." He asked idly, flipping through the composition scanner's settings quickly.

"Affirmative." The computer replied as the extraction module extended down through the holographic clock and began scanning the sand.

"Thanks, Val, when do you think it'll be done?" Jason asked, closing the composition scanner and watching as a beam of light began moving from one sand grain to the next.

"Approximately forty minutes." The computer replied.

"Alright, I'm going back out, I'll be back." Jason said, moving back to the bottom hatch of the life pod and hitting the button to open it.

"Night will fall in three hours." The computer informed Jason.

"Don't worry about me, Valentine; I'll be back before then." Jason smiled, slipping back into the water.

Over the past week he had gathered the materials he already knew he had available and had been exploring to find some form of copper. From the start he knew it was going to be the most difficult component to find. Most of the metal scraps that were around were made of the very outer shell of the Aurora, which was mainly comprised of steel. Although it was conductive, he specifically needed copper. Yesterday he had searched as far north as he could afford to travel before night. Now he began making his way south, waving the composition scanner over the underwater landscape as he went.