“Never mind the dead guy,” she said remotely to me when I reached the bottom of the pit. “That’s another story — we know that one already. Like Philip’s. Instead: focus on the hand.”
I looked around, turned on the thermal level. Grasping obviously, since the hand had been severed from its owner for, what was it, *67* years. Nothing detected except for the nearby, much fresher flesh. Silly to try. But there were rumors that the hand was alive separate from the body. Thanks to the ring. I tried another tack, a more sensible one. Gold detection through my Midas Ability mod (Thanks Rosebud1941!). Handy for creeks up in the hills, handy for here pardon the pun. I’d made a small fortune in combination with my exploring skills. Surprised more people don’t try their hand at it (sorry again!). But no gold detected in the area. This was all so much trash. I’d run out of my few options. Except, hmm, for one other long shot…
1/2way back to the top, we met up in person again across a dangerous, last gap. “Did you find it? We lost contact when you started digging around the bottom. Probably damaged the receptor on some metal or something.”
“Probably,” I said back. Radiation. Who would have thunk except for someone with a uranium ring already in their possession. Me. I stashed it up the only safe place I could think of at the time, pretending to have a sudden itch in that area. My bunghole, ow ow ow. “Uranus” for uranium, I thought with a painful, secret smile.
Saying I’d found nothing while clinching my sphincter more tightly than ever, I took a final leap…
Made it!
Sunklands 