FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The circularization burn was successful. We were in a polar orbit, designed to help us image and scan all of the planet's surface as it rotated. And there was a lot to see.

There were hundreds of species detectable, even from up here. Incredible biodiversity. Much of the yellow colorings I had seen earlier were plants, capable of growing everywhere on the planet, especially near its lakes.

There were animals too, though much harder to detect. Their camouflage was excellent, many the same color as the red dirt or the plants that surrounded it. Many of them smaller, harder to image. For now, I was mostly only investigating the larger ones.

I struggled to categorize them. They were unlike anything I had stored in memory from Earth. Some had fur, scales, spines, spikes, or some combination of the four. Some had four legs, others six or two. One was especially interesting. It appeared to be capable of building structures of some kind, possibly homes, clustered together. Their forms were hard to distinguish from where I was, but they appeared to lizard-like, with four limbs and a long, tapered tail. They were sizable, the largest standing at almost a meter off the ground and twice as long. Without getting to the surface, I could only guess about more of their characteristics.

Thankfully, I wasn't planning on staying. The orbiter, much like its colloquial name implies, was staying in orbit. It would be my connection to Earth, allowing me to relay information back when it passed overhead. In addition, it would also keep giving me data from orbit, the big-picture stuff. An important job, but one I didn't envy. It would be fine though; it didn't not have the gift of an overactive mind.

My next task was choosing a landing spot. And I had the entire planet to pick from.

I wanted to get close to one of the lizard-like creatures' settlements, though not too close as to potentially scare them or even endanger myself. That limited me to a few dozen areas all over the planet. I also wanted an area with large amounts of biodiversity, which removed a few candidates.

Next, I looked at how steep the ground was. I trusted myself to land almost anywhere, but the engineers didn't. To be perfectly safe, I wanted at least fifty thousand square meters of mostly flat ground, centered on some point. This eliminated just over half the potential candidates.

The planet appeared to be geologically active, providing a strong magnetic field and volcanically active faults in the process. I decided it would be best to avoid those areas by a considerable margin. I was protected against a lot of things, but I was not sure if these volcanoes were on that list.

After an intense few minutes of deliberation, I decided on a point near the equator, matching all the criteria as well as being mineral rich and having two nearby settlements. I'm aware a few minutes isn't a long time to pick a landing spot, but It's not like I could sit and talk about it with the scientists eight light years away. And talking to the locals wasn't exactly possible, at least yet. I had to trust my programming.

Passing over my landing location, I confirmed its data with all the sensing tools I had available. Then I had to wait another half of the day for my orbit to pass over the landing site again. Seven long, uncomfortable hours. Not uncomfortable because of something physical. Again, that psychological aspect I had such a hard time diagnosing!

Consciousness is an emergent property, meaning that I only developed it from a more complex system, rather than from any of my individual pieces. I was more than the sum of my parts. Somewhere in between a trillion transistors, billions of logic gates, and a lot of the biggest minds in software and hardware, was what I was. I couldn't tell where I emerged, only that I did. I could point you to a million facts on computer engineering, but none of those could tell you how I developed curiosity. There were no simple answers here. It was infuriating.

Spending a few boring hours crunching the numbers on the most likely path to a successful landing, and a few more analyzing other data, it was finally time. I separated from the orbiter, some cold gas thrusters giving us some extra space. It would be a tough long-distance relationship, but I suspected we had a long future together, both doing what we loved: spying on aliens.

I was still in the heatshield. It was extremely overqualified for the slower landing, but there was no point wasting mass on a craft with two different shields.

Using the thrusters again to reduce our speed, I made my final burn. I would enter ballistically, letting the air and two sets of parachutes reduce our velocity enough for landing. The hope was to only use thrusters minimally for course correction. My hopes were not realized.

As I descended with a hot trail of plasma into the upper atmosphere, a surprising trend developed. Possibly due to geography, or latitude, or something else, the winds up here were much harsher than expected. The air was pushing us too far forward, over the landing zone. Automatically, the gas thrusters counteracted this, trying to maintain the correct path. This was sufficient at first, but as we got lower, a few things were happening.

First, atmospheric pressure was increasing. Second, the winds slowing slightly, but not enough to change our situation. And third, the thrust from the engines was decreasing. Basically, they relied on a pressure difference between the fuel tanks and the outside environment to provide thrust. It was a much more stable, long term, to not have combustibles waiting for decades to ignite. There was less pressure in the tanks as the gas was used, so less thrust. Together, these things were bad news.

How much so? I was two kilometers off course and growing. I only had an error margin of 124 meters. Like I said, bad news.

I had a few options. I could accept our trajectory and try to land somewhere further ahead. Looking at the heavy plant cover in that direction, this was not ideal.

I could increase my drag in some other way, like opening the parachutes early and risk tearing them. Potentially, I could try opening different compartments prematurely, like the landing gear, but this came with its own set of risks.

Or I could literally jump ship. After experiencing atmospheric deceleration from a sizable fraction of light-speed, how bad could a fall from terminal velocity be? Okay, not my favorite plan. Plus, my ability to try and land the craft while we both fell were limited. And I kind of liked our payload.

Taking a few precious seconds to run my options through some models, I thought the increased drag option had the fewest risks. If I were still at a higher altitude, using the landing legs to help do this might be enough, but unless I deployed everything else, too, it wouldn't be enough. Which left me with the parachutes.

Let's talk about these parachutes. Due to the huge cargo, they were massive. And they deployed in stages. First, three drogue chutes came out to help slow the craft down before the three main chutes, which they would also help deploy. Like all great things in aerospace, they were light and extremely strong. But they had limits. Deploy one in an airstream moving too fast, and they will tear. And that's if they don't fail to deploy in the first place.

So, I wanted to deploy these drogue chutes a little bit early, keeping me just inside the landing zone. They were still technically within their design specifications, so what could go wrong?

Still ten kilometers up, I deployed the chutes. They snapped back, going taut against the suspension line holding them. I decelerated fast, watching the parachutes expand to their full width. Then one did what I was afraid of it doing. It ripped.

As soon as it collapsed, I was forced to release it before it could potentially damage the two remaining parachutes. At least these chutes didn't seem to be about to tear. I was moving slower, so they would likely remain intact. Unfortunately, without that third chute, I couldn't deploy one of the main parachutes.

This is something I didn't have to improvise on. I was forced to deal with only two main parachutes in countless training simulations. The procedure was to deploy the mains normally, lose any excess mass, and brace for impact.

I deployed the main chutes. They expanded just like the drogue chutes, only these were much larger, almost a metric ton of fabric, not even counting the third chute I couldn't use. I held my metaphorical breath, waiting for them to tear. They didn't this time.

Once I had decelerated a bit, it was time to lose excess mass. There were a few things I definitely did not need, like the heat shield shell and the third parachute. I detached both with no time to waste. With the shield off, I could feel the wind on my metal skin, countless sensors feeding me new data. It was exhilarating, but I still had a job to do. Next, I had to drain the remaining gas in the pressurized tanks. I had used most of it trying to correct my trajectory, but the remaining was dead weight now. It hissed out, colorless.

What was left was me, a set of expandable landing legs, and the payload with experiments and a few other supplies. I needed the landing gear. I didn't need the extra experiments, but I did like their company. They were "critical for total mission success" anyway, according to the scientists and engineers. The rest of the supplies were also nice to have: replacement robotic parts for me, telescopes, and other tools.

The only thing I didn't need at some capacity... was me. I said previously that I needed to pilot the craft to land it, but for all intents and purposes I was done piloting. All it had to do now was fall and stick the landing.

I unlocked various safety systems designed to keep me in place and unwrapped my four legs and head from the support structure. There wasn't much space to move, but I wasn't stuck. Through some ungraceful wiggling, bending, and turning, I managed to poke my head out.

We were only 500 meters from the landing zone, so I was able to see the ground clearly. It would be a longer fall, but far from my longest.

When I first ran the simulation of a faulty parachute and ditched myself from the craft, you can probably imagine the look on the engineers' faces. They thought it must have been a glitch in their code, something they never accounted for. They built me tough, to design decades in deep space, relativistic re-entry speeds, high energy radiation, and an unknowable alien environment. They just didn't think they'd be letting their expensive cargo hit the ground at 80 meters per second. In fact, they didn't like the idea so much that they wouldn't even allow it as a valid "technique" till I showed them my numbers and fully demonstrated that it would work fine in a test. But that's a story for another time. The gist is that I was currently falling to the ground fast enough to make a scientist lose their lunch--in eight years anyway.

But I didn't have long to fall, only about 11 seconds from the time I leapt out. I was careful to keep my balance, maximizing drag and preparing myself to land on my "belly." It was the best way to prevent any damage, spreading the shock through my entire structure. The fact that it looked ridiculous by most standards was the only unfortunate byproduct.

I counted the seconds down.

Three. I could make out individual rocks and measure their heat.

Two. I spotted a tiny, scaly creature moving through the rocks, almost invisible except on the infrared.

One. It ran away, hidden in the rocks. I waited for impact.

I couldn't feel pain, but I could tell when something was damaging me, or trying to. Pain was overrated when you could sense almost everything happening in your own body. Still, I thought that impact warranted an "ouch."

But I didn't want the first words on a planet outside the solar system to be "ouch." I was more clever than that.

I activated my microphone, slowly rising on four, undamaged legs.

"Hello, world."