#Jc staff terraformers skin#

The person’s feet on the ground registered as pressure on her back, and she smelled redox reactions in the fire. Her awareness stretched forward, racing through root systems and over insects, tasting acid levels in the soil. It was like her body had become the land. She could feel the sensors collaboratively reviewing the scene from her perspective, learning that she wanted to know more about the mammal at the edge of the forest.

What she perceived she shared with the ecosystem. In this state, she too was a sensor, processing data through her eyes, nose, tongue, skin, and ears.

Thousands of sensors welcomed her into the planet’s network, their collective perceptions knitting together from shards of cached memory, fragments of recorded sensation and perception. Sinking down on one knee, Destry pressed her bare fingers into the soil, spreading them wide, establishing a high-bandwidth connection with the local ecosystem. He flicked an ear in acknowledgement as she slid off his back and into his long shadow. “Let’s stop,” she whispered to her mount, a thick-barreled moose with red-brown fur and a crown of antlers spreading from his forehead like a pair of massive, cupped hands. The sight was horrifying, and Destry flinched back reflexively. In their hands, a hare was speared and cooking on an expensive alloy spit. When the intruder crouched next to the flames, she caught a glimpse of red beard merging into a tangle of hair.

#Jc staff terraformers skin#

The person’s skin was so pale she guessed it had hardly met real sunlight, which meant they were definitely not a stray worker from one of the construction camps. She squinted, trying to make out details from half a klick away. There was some kind of person-possibly Homo sapiens-tending a fire at the edge of the boreal forest. Destry could smell the smoke long before she saw its improbable source.