How do I get home? I usually ask Petra for help with things. Nick took another look, and realized that Petra's appearance was just like it was back at the very beginning, before she had learned English. The only difference was the missing corner piece. Also, instead of a bare ten units of energy, Petra had over a hundred, according to the pink and green icon lines.

  Plus, my phone is over half charged, and I'm in shade, so really, I'm in much better shape than I was when I first arrived on BigBall. Nick was not convincing himself, and depression loomed, but he knew to push it aside for the moment. I can curl up and be miserable later.

  All right. What are our assets? What did I do first, last time? I printed a solar panel. But there are plenty of solar panels on Rockhunter's...roof. Nick carefully glanced at the roof beneath him. Shit.

  All right. Conserve power. No light down here, so no point in printing another solar panel yet. Next...what was next...?Nick was so tired. So tired. He shifted his body slightly, and the pain woke him up again. He gasped and made himself focus. You'll sleep when you're dead, dumbass. Get Petra working again before you take a break.

  No solar panel. Control panel. Print a control panel? But...no. I already have a tablet in here somewhere. Did it survive the crash? Nick hadn't seen it yet, which wasn't promising. Wait...Rockhunter's control panel. Nick aimed his phone's flashlight to the side... Ugh, it's on my left. I can't look left. By feel, then.

  Nick stretched out his arm, and couldn't quite reach the panel. Shit, I have to move. Dreading it, Nick tried to think of an alternative, and got an idea. He shifted Petra to his left hand, and reached out, using Petra like a blind man's cane. In moments, he found it.

  Ugh, I can't reach all the way to the far edge where the power button is. No. No, wait. I'm upside-down. The power button is on this end. Finally, a bit of good luck. What was it again? Oh right, of course...

  “We will...we will...rock you...” Nick croaked, and hit the power button with a short-short-long tap. Then he held his phone against his chest, momentarily smothering the light, and waited.

  A few seconds later, there was a new source of light inside Rockhunter, and Nick tried not to cry as he sighed in relief. He turned off his phone flashlight to conserve power. Then he took a picture of the panel, since he couldn't see it, and brought the phone to his right eye, blinking grit away.

  It wasn't a great picture, far from centered, but it told him enough. Rockhunter was very, very unhappy. Yeah, that makes two of us, buddy. All right...what was next? He'd used a display panel for this next part, but Petra had a tiny little one built-in. Nick brought it close to his face. He had to turn the phone flashlight back on for a minute to see what he was doing. With the tip of one finger, he carefully tapped and swiped until he got the main menu, and looked for the tiny cell phone icon.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  It wasn't there.

  Shit. My phone's busted, and Petra can't read it. He shuffled things in his hands, and for a moment Petra and the cell phone were touching.

  The icon appeared.

  Nick blinked and stared, then, very carefully, tapped the icon. Short-short-long.

  His phone rang.

  Nick breathed carefully as he struggled to answer the call. The touch screen on his phone was almost totally nonresponsive. Come on, come on, just a little longer...got it!

  “Hello?”

  “Hello?”

  What did I say back then? “This is Nick.”

  “This is Nick.”

  “No, I'm Nick, you're Petra.”

  “No, I'm Nick, you're Petra.”

  What else did I say? Something...

  It was enough. His phone screen started flashing and going nuts. Nick kept the phone pressed against Petra and waited, while Petra searched through all the menus, and turned on and off all the apps, just like she did way back then.

  It looks like Petra is mostly okay, but her antenna is busted, or something. She can't interact with another device unless she's touching it. That's going to make networking hard. Too bad she can't build herself a new antenna... Nick thought about it.

  He tapped through the menus on Petra's tiny built-in display. The keyboard was minuscule, but after about twenty tries, he managed to rename a couple of things. But he found another menu he hadn't seen before, and when he selected it, he got a drawing of Petra herself...with the broken corner highlighted.

  “Damage report, Mister...” Nick croaked, then stopped. He abandoned the thought because it was too hard to remember the names of characters in a TV show, and he couldn't spare the energy right now.

  Nick lay Petra and his phone on his chest and closed his eyes for a moment. I'm so tired. It hurts. Everything hurts. I just want it to stop. Reluctantly, he shifted a leg just for the pain spike, which woke him up again. FUCK, that hurt. He picked up Petra again and tried to concentrate.

  The damage report menu, or whatever it was, had a few alien icons that Nick sort of recognized. There was a picture of a weird shape, and when Nick selected it, Petra switched over to the build menu and started blinking. She was hungry.

  Nick picked up a piece of silver ore and fed it to Petra, who devoured it all over the course of a couple of minutes. He squinted at the icons, selected a couple, and mercifully, Petra started printing. He watched her power levels, worried about saving enough to make a solar panel or two if he couldn't recover any from Rockhunter.

  Fortunately, building the thing didn't take long. It turned out to be something like a soft, shiny metal mesh with big loops. There was one small lump near one edge. Nick turned it over in his hands, not sure what to do with it. He touched it to Petra, and slid the lump along the side. When it touched the damaged corner, it promptly stuck there, twisting slightly into place.

  Once that happened, it became obvious that the rest of the mesh was meant to wrap around Petra. It took Nick a minute, because his hands were shaky, but eventually it all snapped into place. “Good girl, Petra! You made yourself a sling. It looks a bit more like a fishnet stocking, but hey, I don't judge. How does it feel, huh?”

  Nick turned Petra display-up and watched the images change. The marking on Petra's diagram was still there, but had changed color. “Huh. Do you use blue for Red Alert, and yellow for Yellow Alert, or something like that, Petra?”

  A pulse of pain distracted Nick, and he closed his eyes for a moment, forcing himself to breathe evenly. Don't fall asleep. Don't fall asleep. You're not out of the woods yet. He gathered his strength again, but it was hard, so hard. Stubbornly, he opened his eyes again.

  All right. What next?