Tweaked yesterday’s writing till I hit the 9 o’clock mark. Still not finished.
Morning wind kept the smoke from their abandonned campfires low to the ground. Generations ago we hunters may have worried about upwinding prey or having been detected before arrival, not so now. Thermals peppered my semlam one signature for each for the small trees, pairs for the larger trunks.
I brushed away the semlam’s meta regarding radial poz-prox and again the mean trunk diameters for both groups. Those data aid targeting but they don’t assist me…much. Since position and proximity calculations are easy and relevant to our suits’ general elimination directive they complete and appear first. Once those two lamina cleared, bio meta faded in. These I could use. These better describe the character and readiness of the encountered aboriginals. Each enco’s heart rate percolated onto the semlam and hovered above their thermals.
“Foster?”
:Where’s our cake?: crawled across the bottom of my semlam.
Moore, Leathers, and Hisey’s me2s chased off Foster’s question. Heart rates weren’t high enough on average to indicate fear as much as readiness. We’d caught the encos off guard, no question of that, so it couldn’t be an ambush. Surprised or not, these enco’s were more or less waiting on us.
“Place your bets.” Four win-place-show thermal rankings appeared on my semlam. As ‘gram leader—having first access to our computer’s results—I abstained. When I released the meta I knew Leathers had a shit-eating grin and Moore was pissed. Moore contributed most of the logic used to determine the likely ranking of encountered aboriginals—who to shoot first and who to ask questions of afterward.
Day 375