On their way back Nerva looks over the data they have gather. He looks at his tablet and reviews the flight path.
He scratches his head With what do I start? Abandoned and green, or abandoned and frozen to death?
He flicks through the images and stops at one that depicted a desolate place, covered in deep snow. The building he could see were only the faint remains of what was once a blooming city. He sighs War is always affecting the weaker ones... civilians had no business in such a theater of war. He remember what the Governor told him, about how the Crayterians fought the Gallic invaders. He looked back at the screen This was once someones home.... Nerva, it's time to focus, everything that happen cannot be reversed.
Ok, then. We have two options here: 1. Use this as a skeleton to build the city. | 2. Raze everything an star anew. I really have to think this through. I don't want to give them false hopes. He swipes to change image. This time it was a snapshot of one of his cities.
The buildings were all shining in the sunrise's rays. Broad streets were connecting the several town neighborhoods. Each of them as big a smaller city. There was underground transports, cars would move at extreme speed on board vactrains. The cars would be loaded onto a platform at one end; then they were accelerated to high speeds, and they started decelerating when getting closer to end of their journey. This vactrain idea is not something new. They will think I am mad when they will see what I have in store for above ground transportation.
This one is a city in the heart of a jungle. And not any jungle, it looks like some sort of Ecuatorial Jungle. He acesses a file with more data that was compiled from the scans.
The equatorial rainforest supports the greatest biodiversity (number and types of living organisms in an area) on Borneo. This is the result of abundant moisture and sunlight. Average daily temperatures are around 28ºc with a low diurnal (variation in temperature that occurs from the highs and lows during the day) temperature range.
Temperatures rarely fall below 22ºc and cloud cover restricts temperatures to 32ºc during the day (as the result of cloud cover caused by high levels of evapotranspiration). Rainfall levels are high throughout the year as the result of the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ). Convectional rainfall results in annual rainfall levels of around 2000mm.
Storms typically occur during the late afternoon as the result of intense heating during the day. Both high levels of rainfall and temperatures contribute to a year-round growing season. High levels of evapotranspiration create an incredibly humid environment.[/color]
Looking at the new image that appeared on his screen, Nerva starts pondering again. These buildings might look really bad...yet after closer analyses we've determined that these ones are feasible to be used as a building base. Not being convinced about, Nerva started to think about ways in which he could explain to the Governor the pros and cons of using the existing buildings.
40 minutes pass and Nerva seems to have found the best way to explain his idea regarding this settlement. he quickly scribbles down some of his train of thoughts and start swiping again.
This time he stops at not one, but two images. These were the new grounds that he, and the team of scientists decide that should be feasible spots to raise smaller colonies. We could start with a self-sufficient village in both of these areas. Unfortunately for the first habitats of this settlement... life would be a bit hard until we finish everything.
Nevertheless, the ground analysis shows that these two spots will be the best ones to start developing sustainable agriculture. Nerva smiles as he is looking over the soil analyses. He smiles because for the first there were some good news. Moving a large mass of people to from place to another is rally hard. Repopulating a planet with people from another planet is even harder. First thin we need to do is find out what of our existing crops can grow here; which of them will flourish and which of them will yield sub-par harvests. The cogs of ideas were sniping in Nerva's head like a well oiled mechanical clock Then we see what animal we can introduce to ecosystem. We need to get a functioning biosphere as fast as possible. But what about the existing fauna and flora thought Nerva. Indeed, he did not think about this. Believing that everything here would be just like a war-zone, desolate and lifeless, he did not take in account an already existing an functioning biosphere. This will need more thinking, and even more careful planning. I would not like to make a species go extinct because i brought the wrong type of wheat to the planet.
Several hours pass and Nerva finally gets overt the biosphere issue and start looking at more images.
I insisted on surveying these types of buildings because I believe that they can be used as means to test if the area in which they were build could be habitable. The military staff was not that happy when Nerva wanted to survey what looked to be military outposts. What sane army would give away, to a stranger, details about their buildings. Neverthless, Nerva managed to convince them that he was here to help, and not to steal any of their secrets.
Ok, i think we should.. Proffesor, we approaching the Governor's mansions. Please get ready to land. said the pilot.
Nerva put down the table and the instruments he was holding and tightened the straps that were holding him into his chair.
The sky was clear and the sun was shining over the fields in which the mansion was build. The lake's water was shimmering moved by the cold summer breeze. Nerva started imagining how would his life be living on such an estate. But in the end.... he realized... that the emptiness of space was calling him out.