You may recall that last week, as we set off on an Arctic exploration mission, we asked a deeply philosophical question.
Who needs Zaph?
It was the kind of question asked by people who have recently survived a hostile alien planet, several bad decisions, and at least one journey through the frozen murder-latitudes without a proper appreciation for professional competence. The sort of question that sounds bold around a campfire and then, one week later, is found written on the official incident report under Cause of Delay: hubris.
It turns out — we do.
Zaph provides a very important function to the group: fast, phobia-free scouting. He goes where the rest of us do not wish to go, reports what the rest of us do not wish to find, and does it all with the emotional range of a man checking whether the bins have gone out. This is not glamorous work, but civilization is built on such foundations. That and the ability to not stop every three minutes because Craig has seen a cliff and would like to negotiate with gravity.
Just to compare progress: last week we completed 95% of an operation.
This week, we completed three operations.
In our defence, last week the devs screwed us over. This week, Myles made better choices.
These two facts may or may not be related. The official minutes remain inconclusive, mostly because Craig drew a ladder over them.
As we rejoin our intrepid adventurers, the party is gathered at a small lake shack. A temporary lake shack. The word temporary is important here, because Craig had to be reminded that not every structure requires three storeys, massive wooden pillars, all the tall trees in the forest, and a ladder system which appears to have been designed by an architect who had heard of stairs but considered them a moral failing.
Craig listened to this patiently, in the manner of a man who accepts feedback, absorbs feedback, and then immediately begins mentally pricing the timber.
Operation Arctic Exploration Concludes
Having blasted a hole in a rockfall so we could return to the Arctic region and explore it for exotics — which, as several people pointed out with the tired bitterness of men who have already walked through the snow once, we could have done the first time we were there — we cursed the corporate fat cats sitting around in form-fitting recliner couches, drinking coffee we had harvested, processed, packed, and shipped to space.
This is the true Icarus experience. Humanity has conquered orbital logistics and terraforming, but somehow still requires four men and several emotionally exhausted zebras to ride through a frozen deathscape because a spreadsheet in space has developed an appetite for minerals.
The zebras also had a few choice things to say about being made to travel through the snow again. They did not vocalise them in any specific human language, but their posture carried the unmistakable tone of a strongly worded workplace complaint.
Patch kept a sharp eye out for any sneaky oxite deposits that might have inimical intentions towards Myles. This was not paranoia. This was lived experience. Somewhere out there, among the icy rocks and glittering snow, there was probably an oxite deposit with Myles’s name on it, waiting like a geological assassin.
The rest of us kept an eye out for more likely threats: wolves, bears, bad weather, Craig discovering a ravine, Dave spotting harvestable reagents, and the general state of being on Icarus.
We rode to the spot on our map.
The mission completed.
That was it.
No grand confrontation. No dramatic last stand. No blizzard duel with an alpha predator. No desperate extraction under fire. Just arriving at a place we had already nearly arrived at last week, apparently pleasing the orbiting corporate gods sufficiently that they threw 600 dollars and an achievement at us for the brave act of being geographically present.
Sometimes there is an achievement just for showing up.
This, frankly, is the sort of game mechanic that encourages management consultants.
Dave suggested Myles dial up a new mission on the portable contact device.
Myles claimed he had left it back at the house.
There was a pause.
It was not a long pause, but it carried the emotional weight of several decades of friendship, compressed into the shared understanding that someone had forgotten the one device that lets us talk to space.
So it was back to Winchester to unload everything we had gathered. Dave and Craig took a side trip on the way back to unclog the waterwheels and collect resources, because even during retreat there is always infrastructure, and if Dave can find a moving part that needs maintenance, he will nurse it back to health like a tiny wooden patient.
Eventually, Myles dialled up another operation.
The previously mentioned corporate fat cats wanted materials to extend the space station.
Probably for coffee storage.
Operation: Space Station Upgrade
The operation clearly marked the drop-off locations on the map, which seemed promising. A map with marked objectives is normally a sign of progress, clarity, and a faint belief that the people designing the mission had met humans before.
However, the operation refused to inform us what we needed to deliver until we physically visited the location.
This is the Icarus devs’ idea of fun.
It is a philosophy of game design that says, “What if logistics, but with unnecessary mystery?” It is the sort of thing that looks sensible on a whiteboard until someone has to ride across three biomes to discover that the shopping list says fifty thousand oxygen, please.
Being ever so adept at avoiding time-wasting activity, we sent Zaph off with vague directions to ride across the desert and Riverland to find out what we needed and report back, while the rest of us spun up the industrial complex, stoked the forges, harvested coffee, and generally behaved like a deeply troubled start-up founder trying to scale production before the seed funding evaporated.
Also, if Zaph could sell our visage collection on the way, that would be helpful.
With no fanfare, no fuss, and no hour of preparation involving emergency sandwiches, spare walls, moral debate, and Craig asking whether the horse could climb that, Zaph hopped on his horse and headed out.
Before you could say “What is Craig up to now?” and get a coherent response, Zaph reported in.
We needed to deliver:
350 glass
250 concrete mix
60,000 biofuel
50,000 oxygen
There are moments in life when a list arrives and the human spirit lifts. This was not one of those moments.
We had 300 glass already, so that was almost civilized. We just needed silica for the remaining 50. Two hundred and fifty concrete was also manageable, in the way that moving a small hill from one place to another is technically manageable if you possess the right tools and have made peace with mortality.
So Craig was sent off to collect stone and silica.
This would have gone faster if Craig knew what silica looked like.
Hint: it’s the white stone in the sulphur cupboard.
This is the kind of sentence that only makes sense after many hours in a survival crafting game, when a group of grown adults can debate cupboard geology without embarrassment.
Myles asked how we were supposed to transport that much biofuel and oxygen. It turns out you can make a large biofuel tank, and we can simply order more oxygen tanks from the station, because apparently the corporation is stingy with information but happy to fire pressure vessels from orbit.
Myles made the biofuel tank and ordered nine extra oxygen tanks from the station.
Zaph was quiet.
Too quiet.
There is a particular silence that descends when Zaph is not reporting hostile movement, resource counts, or the tactical uselessness of the rest of us. It is the silence of a sniper who has gone off-script. When asked what he was doing, he made some vague mention of artwork.
Artwork.
It was like Craig was operating Zaph by remote control.
The thought was unsettling. Somewhere, perhaps, a tiny Craig sat inside Zaph’s tactical brain, pulling levers and whispering, “What if we made something unnecessary?”
After an hour spent fuelling the composter to make biofuel, plus some careful micromanagement to ensure we did not oversupply oxygen or biofuel — because nothing says heroic planetary frontier like inventory compliance — we were ready to go.
Patch sighed.
Myles had packed all the goods on Patch, clearly a sign that he understood the risks of trusting essential delivery to the easily distracted Dave and Craig. Dave might stop to harvest something useful. Craig might stop to improve a cliff. Neither is acceptable when one is transporting enough oxygen to briefly disappoint an accountant.
This led to Myles asking why his zebra was so slow.
It was only carrying a ton of cargo after all.
Patch did not answer, but there are silences in the animal kingdom that translate perfectly.
Craig took the opportunity to stop and mine every silica deposit we passed.
This was, technically, useful. It was also very Craig. A man can be sent for stone and return with half a biome, several questions, and possibly a new outbuilding.
We finally arrived at the first shipping site, and Myles loaded the biofuel and oxygen into the pod. The pod departed.
Myles watched it go and pondered if we would ever see our shiny green 150 litre biofuel tank again.
Nope.
Hasta la vista, baby.
The corporation had consumed it whole, like a vending machine that accepts equipment but does not dispense refunds.
Zaph arrived, relieved Patch of the glass and concrete, and set off on that delivery. No drama. No fuss. No poetic crisis. Just competence, which is deeply suspicious in this group and should probably be logged.
Bored, the rest of us hit up a nearby cave for some mining fun.
Which leads us neatly, and with all the elegance of a buffalo cart reversing into a wall, to the next operation.
Operation: Mining Mission
It turns out you cannot make a station extension without additional raw materials. This came as no surprise to anyone who has ever met Dave, who regards every object in the universe as either a building component, a future building component, or something getting in the way of a building component.
The fat cats dropped us some mining gear, along with a request for raw materials:
250 iron
300 copper
350 gold
Whilst Zaph went to recover the mining equipment, we shut down our mine-smelting operation before all the raw iron had been converted into ingots. This required a level of restraint not often seen in our household industries. Somewhere, a furnace cooled. Dave probably felt it in his bones.
We had the iron ore we needed.
Zaph installed a gold extractor and fuelled it.
We set out to join him. With a few side trips along the way to mine copper, we gathered the remaining resources. It was almost efficient, which made everyone nervous.
The delivery pod was perched atop a small rock mesa. Naturally, Craig had arrived earlier and made a small hut in case of inclement weather.
At least, that was the official explanation.
Craig had recently made one of those important life decisions: to replace Dave as group architect.
This was perhaps because Dave’s constructions — house, farm, factory — were retained, expanded, maintained, and generally treated as useful parts of the world, whereas Craig’s were often scrapped for resources with the ceremony of a man quietly putting away a folding chair after a village hall meeting.
Craig, never one to exceed the requirements unless verticality is involved, had built a small footprint hut.
To meet his grandiose plans, he built up.
It was three storeys high, with a ladder adding another ten storeys.
This was a hut in the same way that the Tower of Babel was a community shed.
One imagines Craig standing at the bottom, gazing up through the ladder shaft and whispering, “Needs another floor.” Somewhere overhead, the game engine adjusted its posture and prepared the smiting paperwork.
We loaded 95% of the ore onto the pod, then called the station to extort more mining equipment.
Zaph began the performance.
“Oh woe is me,” he regaled the corporation, “my horse sank in the river and we lost all the mining equipment.”
The corporation promptly shipped down another set.
They really wanted the ore.
Myles was amazed and looked lovingly at the exotic-infused pickaxe they delivered, which could recover 33% more ore from a deposit.
Zaph sheepishly muttered, “I should have been using that on the gold.”
Patch sighed.
Craig added another ladder on the roof.
Myles added a beacon so Craig could find his way back to the house.
This was not mockery. It was safety infrastructure. There comes a point where a man has constructed so much vertical nonsense that he needs navigational assistance to leave his own bad idea.
Myles called the Corporation again.
“Oh woe is me, my Zebra ate the extractor…”
Patch gave Myles the stinkeye.
The corporation dropped another load of mining equipment.
At this point, it became clear that the corporation has very strong views on raw material delivery and very weak views on fraud prevention. Somewhere in orbit, a procurement officer was either asleep, automated, or called Craig.
We put the last 30 gold in the pod and shipped it off.
Another operation complete.
Morale rose. Confidence surged. The dangerous illusion of competence began to settle over the group like a fine dust.
Naturally, we decided to do another operation.
Operation: Locate Exotics
Things were going so well that we decided to press our luck.
Apparently, defying gravity requires exotics.
Lots of exotics.
It is like the devs have watched Avatar and concluded that unobtainium was a little too subtle.
For simple resource extraction, the corporation will happily drop equipment from orbit. Need a mining rig? No problem. Need oxygen tanks? Certainly. Need replacement gear because a horse allegedly sank in a river? Why not, brave employee. Need another extractor because a zebra supposedly ate the first one? Plausible enough. Enjoy your pod.
But for challenging work, we have to build everything ourselves.
This is because corporations believe in self-reliance, especially when it saves them money.
We needed to make a radar to find an exotic deposit, then make an extractor to mine said exotics. Luckily, everything we needed was at Winchester.
All the way back at Winchester.
Across an Arctic landscape filled with scary oxite deposits.
The word luckily began to feel less accurate under scrutiny.
“Or we could just make it here,” explained Dave, rubbing his hands with the gleeful cheer of a man contemplating another industrial outpost.
This sentence landed in the camp like a match in a fireworks cupboard.
Dave continued. “We can start with a crafting bench, which just needs some fibre, wood and stone. Then we can make an anvil, with 40 ingots, then a machinery bench, which will need iron nails and concrete. We will need a concrete furnace to smelt gold, which will need a concrete mixer, and the mixer needs refined wood, so we need a carpentry bench…”
The list went on.
And on.
And on.
This is Dave in his natural habitat: standing beside a temporary hut, calmly explaining why the logical solution to one missing radar is the construction of a regional manufacturing hub.
“That sounds like we need an extension,” said Craig, rubbing his hands together gleefully as he noted Dave’s distraction.
There are few sights more dangerous than Dave planning industry and Craig hearing the word extension. One sees inputs and outputs. The other sees height.
Still, it was better than a trip back through the Arctic, so we set to work.
Myles checked the map and noted we were not that far from our original base. This raised the possibility that we could shortcut the process by reclaiming some machinery from that base rather than rebuilding the entire industrial revolution from pebbles and ambition.
Zaph made the trip to investigate.
The work began.
Myles put out two MXC furnaces and started converting copper and iron ore into ingots.
Zaph recovered a concrete mixer, which saved a whole lot of intermediary steps.
Dave installed the machining bench.
Craig expanded the outpost.
That last bullet point contains multitudes.
Some men see a functional worksite and think, “Good, this will serve the mission.” Craig sees a functional worksite and thinks, “What if it had another room no one asked for?”
With the radar made, Dave suggested we set up hedgehogs around it to protect it from wild animals attacking it.
“What hedgehogs?” asked Myles.
“The hedgehogs from the adventure cupboard I asked you to pack,” replied Dave.
“You said someone should pack those,” Myles responded. “You didn’t ask me to pack them.”
Dave sighed.
Stripes sighed.
Dave made a note: Craig is not the only person requiring explicit instructions.
This was an important moment of personal growth. For years, the group had assumed Craig was the operational weak point in any instruction-dependent process. But Icarus, like all great teachers, revealed a deeper truth: ambiguity is the enemy, and “someone” is not a logistics plan.
Dave turned on the machinery bench to make hedgehogs.
“Craig, I need more wood!” he yelled.
Craig, who had presumably been waiting his entire life to hear those words in the context of an expanding outpost, sprang into action.
With the radar installed, Dave set out the hedgehogs and switched it on.
Animals attacked.
Craig died.
“Never happened,” said Craig. “Could someone rez me.”
Dave took a photo, because sometimes you need photographic evidence.
This is especially important with Craig, whose relationship with causality is often adversarial. If there is no screenshot, Craig considers the incident theoretical.
Dave made a masonry bench for Craig so he could upgrade the outpost to stone. He did not have the heart to tell Craig we were never coming back here after tonight.
Also, a masonry bench is a fairly safe distraction.
This is an underrated leadership technique. Some people respond to praise. Some people respond to structure. Craig responds to being given a bench and a material palette, whereupon he can be safely contained for several minutes like a raccoon with a puzzle feeder.
The radar identified a nearby exotic deposit, so Myles made an extractor, then he and Zaph went off to install it.
Myles returned to make a second extractor and collect the orbital exchange board to speed up delivery. He then jumped on a zebra and headed back to Zaph.
Dave noted his oxygen tank was only 70% full, so he installed an oxite extractor in the house and headed out to do some mining.
Dave paused.
“Stripes?”
There was a silence.
“Where is Stripes?”
He looked around.
There were two people at the outpost, and two zebras in the yard.
Dave did the math.
This was not difficult math, but it was emotionally loaded math.
“Myles — which Zebra are you riding?” he asked over the radio.
“Patch!” Myles responded.
Patch looked at Dave and sighed.
“Check again,” Dave suggested.
There was a burst of suspiciously convenient radio interference.
“Pshssht, fizz@#t, Psshh you are breaking up,” called Myles.
“BRING BACK MY ZEBRA!!!” yelled Dave.
“In my defence, they all look the same,” replied Myles.
Patch sighed.
There are many accusations one can level against Myles. Bad mission planning, perhaps. Occasional fire mismanagement. A dangerous willingness to trust corporate logistics. But zebra misidentification is a new low, and Patch took it personally on behalf of the entire striped community.
Finally, the exotics were mined and shipped.
We packed up all the useful things and headed back to Winchester.
We still didn’t tell Craig we were never coming back.
There seemed no need to hurt him. Let a man believe in his stone outpost. Let him imagine future generations of prospectors sheltering there, admiring the craftsmanship, wondering why there is a ladder reaching toward the indifferent heavens. Let him dream.
Tonight’s Campfire Song: The Circle of Icarus
Gather round the fire, assuming Myles has not set it to the house again.
Tonight’s campfire song takes inspiration from the noble cycle of existence on Icarus: arrive, build, overbuild, ride through danger, feed the biofuel machinery, steal the wrong zebra, and eventually discover that space management would like another shipment of things they could absolutely have told us about earlier.
The Circle of Icarus
On the morning we land in the drop pod,
Blinking hard at the murderous sun,
There are rocks to be mined,
And cupboards to find,
And three more jobs not yet begun.
Zaph says, “Shoot it before it gets closer.”
Dave says, “This needs a bench and a flue.”
Craig says, “That cliff looks structurally interesting.”
Myles says, “Please no, we have things to do.”
It’s the circle of Icarus,
It’s the wheel of coffee and pain,
It’s the zebra that’s stolen,
The ladder that’s swollen,
And the trip through the snow once again.
It’s the biofuel treadmill,
It’s the oxygen grind,
It’s a pod taking off
With our best shiny tank
And leaving no refund behind.
Zaph rides over the horizon,
Reports back before we can swear,
Craig builds a hut
With a ladder on top,
For reasons best left in the air.
Dave makes another outpost,
Myles pretends this was in the plan,
Patch gives a sigh
As the cargo stacks high,
And Stripes gets borrowed by the wrong man.
It’s the circle of Icarus,
It’s the path where the good sense goes,
Through the snow and the sand,
With a pickaxe in hand,
While the corporation harvests what grows.
And when the night falls on Winchester,
And the zebras are finally fed,
We count up the loot,
Argue over the route,
And ask what Craig built overhead.
It’s the circle of Icarus,
It’s the wheel of fortune and strife,
Till we find our place,
In the corporate disgrace,
In the circle, the circle of life.
Did We Learn or Achieve Anything This Week?
We learned that things operate faster when Zaph is around.
This should not have been surprising, but some lessons need to be repeatedly beaten into the group with a stick labelled evidence. With Zaph on scouting duty, missions become shorter, objectives become clearer, and there is significantly less wandering about while everyone debates whether the thing on the horizon is a threat, a tree, or Craig.
We learned that if you need an exploit, ask Dave.
This is not to imply that Dave is dishonest. Dave simply has a refined understanding of systems, incentives, and how to phrase a fictional disaster involving a drowned horse in such a way that an orbital corporation sends replacement mining equipment without asking awkward follow-up questions.
We learned that Myles should not be trusted with fire.
This lesson appears in the notes without much elaboration, which is perhaps for the best. Some incidents are best left as smoke damage, a cleared throat, and everyone quietly moving the flammable items away from Myles.
We learned that Myles thinks all zebras look the same.
This was not well received by Patch. Or Stripes. Or, one suspects, the broader zebra community.
We learned that Dave thinks Myles’s name is Someone.
This is because Dave said someone should pack the hedgehogs, and then later appeared surprised when the hedgehogs had not, in fact, packed themselves. From this we learned that in Dave’s operational vocabulary, “someone” means Myles, unless the task involves mining stone, building vertically, or finding danger, in which case it means Craig.
Last week, we said to tune in to see if Craig reverts to normal.
Nope.
He has morphed into an almost helpful team member.
This is worrying in a way that ordinary failure is not. We know how to handle Craig being chaotic. We have procedures. We have warning signs. We have ladders we refuse to climb. But Craig being helpful introduces uncertainty into the system. What if he becomes reliable? What if he builds something that remains useful? What if he reads instructions? The mind recoils.
Last week, we asked whether Myles could redeem his operation-planning reputation.
So close.
If only he had not left the contact device behind.
And the hedgehogs.
And the water filter.
A near-perfect recovery, tragically undone by small details such as equipment, preparation, and remembering the things one needs.
Last week, we asked whether Dave could stop cracking oxite jokes.
Nope.
Come on.
You knew that was never going to happen.
Weekly Achievements
Dave achieved: Fast Talker
Convince Myles that an industrial outpost makes sense.
This is a significant achievement, because Myles normally reacts to Dave saying “we can just build it here” the same way a finance department reacts to the phrase “minor scope expansion.” And yet, there we were, building an industrial outpost in the wilderness because apparently crossing the Arctic was worse.
Myles achieved: Thief
Borrow Dave’s zebra.
Patch is not impressed.
Nor is Stripes.
Nor, apparently, is Dave.
Myles also achieved: Fired!!
Set the house on fire.
There are many ways to leave a mark on a community. Some people build. Some people scout. Some people mine. Myles chose heat.
Craig achieved: Bob the Builder
Build an outpost.
More accurately, Craig built an outpost, expanded the outpost, upgraded the outpost, prepared the outpost for a future no one intended to have, and possibly laid the spiritual foundations for a tourist attraction called Craig’s Mesa of Questionable Purpose.
Zaph achieved: Time Saver
Reduced mission time sinks by 80%.
Zaph’s contribution this week was simple: ride out, discover what the mission actually wanted, report back, deliver things, and generally remove the need for the rest of us to make five separate trips under increasingly bitter circumstances.
It was efficient.
It was professional.
It was deeply unlike us.
And that, in the end, is the circle of life on Icarus.
The corporation demands. Dave builds. Zaph scouts. Craig expands. Myles plans, forgets something important, and steals the wrong zebra. Patch sighs. Stripes files a complaint. The pod takes our best equipment into space and never returns it.
Then we gather at Winchester, warm ourselves by the fire, and prepare to do it all again next week.
Assuming the house is still there.
