Project Coming Soon!

Uccello hasn't been posting much here lately so I've staged a coup and taken over her blog (at least until she notices) so I can tell everyone about more of my explorations. Since the Isle of Lesbos closed I've had a hard time finding a job as a Junior Assistant Gardner (3rd Grade) so I've had plenty of time to roam Our World.

An interesting place I ran across today while following some railroad tracks is called Project Coming Soon! in the Owens Beach region (SLurl). What makes it of note is not the complete lack of beach or anyone named Owen (they might have been away), but rather there is construction litter that bears marks characteristic of Squishy Mole of the Linden Department of Public Works (LDPW). Based on the dust I examined the materials have been here a while so that puts the "Soon" in the parcel name in some doubt. Rome wasn't built in a day, and all, I guess.

The land has all the basics you'd find at a Second Life construction site. If there's a builder in SL that doesn't have Carl Metropolitan's basic grid then there's a builder I haven't met. You'd think that the Moles might have something more sophisticated like with frickin' lasers or something. I knicked a laser-based orientation gadget from Uccello once. Maybe I should send a copy to Squishy to make this site look a bit sexier (the lasers merely look good ... Uccie often builds stuff with little real value).

Hard to tell what these components will form. They look more like raw materials that need to be shaped or otherwise transformed before being used. I don't see a CNC machine (Web) around to do the work so I'm guessing that Squishy will resort to old-fashion prim torturing (Web). You'd think that The Lab would have cutting edge options such as a Maker Bot device (Web) for custom crafting. I think the Moles are worth the expense.

What, Ho! A mine of some sorts? And next to a railroad spur. Me thinks someone has been ore-ing around. Like the construction area, this seems to be old and not used recently. Someone should tell Michael Linden that security could be better here.

I magicked a torch and started my descent. Right away I could tell that this is a very old prim mine, probably unused since the ANWR prim-drilling rig went into operation (Web). Still, with modern techniques prime prims like these could be mined for a profit when the economy improves.

Often, mined prims show a variety that prims from a drill field don't. It's almost like barn wood. There's an sense of heritage when using mined prims, even the cubical ones, that make prims from drilling seem rather artificial. I prefer the more organic nature of mined prims when making landscaping items.

After a few hours of going down, down, down into the tunnel I finally found the terminus. An old mine car sits, rusting and lonely. It's hard to imagine early builders bringing up one prim at a time. No wonder there was a prim tax of in the early days of Our World (Web). This had to be an expensive undertaking back in the day. This deep one is likely to find Heritage prims, the cream of the crop when it comes to prim quality. I could almost smell the potential once I got past the smell of decaying critters.

Without tools and what little that pixy magic could do to help, I did no more than look over the mine car. There was no way I'd be able to use it to get back up to the surface. Good thing pixies fly.

Being crushed under the weight of earth above since an era long time out of mind can do amazing things to a prim. When this baby was first formed it was probably cubical like fresh prims, but the combination of pressure and time makes a prim do strange things. I can imagine that given enough time this prim would eventually become a rhombicosidodecahedron.

The journey back up the mine seemed to take much longer than the journey down. Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much time looking at the amazing prims further down the shaft. At this point I was getting very hungry and berating myself for not bringing a snack. It never occurred to me that I could have eaten the camera-wielding butterfly following me this whole time and taken my own pictures.

Back outside the mine and it was clear how long I had been down in the hole. The sun had set and I was glad I had my jacket against the chill. A quick flight back to near by Bay City for some food then a quick nap before more exploring. Unless Uccie catches me, maybe I can post something here again tomorrow.

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Editor's Note: Maybe I should give Zyx publishing rights on this blog. Currently only I can press that button. Thanks for the story, wee pixy, and feel free to submit another at any time.