"Let's head to Tau Ceti," you tell Erin. "It'd be easy to find habitable spots on a place at Alpha Centauri, but on this hot planet I'll need to do a little exploring. Sounds like a perfect place to start."
"Great! I'll be there before you can say 'purple monkey dishwasher' five times!" Erin tells you, and you hear the engines gear up. With the feeling of thrust pushing you back into your seat, your craft is blasted out of the atmosphere and into the blackness of space.
You give your computer a confused look. At least, you look in the direction of a control panel and speaker, technically Erin is all around you. Or perhaps her 'place' is in the computer matrix below your feet. Either way, she is an odd computer. "Purple monkey dishwasher? What--"
The jump into hyperspace is jolting, to say the least. It interrupts your question, and by the time your eyes can focus again, they see an alien world. There are lush green of jungles at each pole, with the equatorial regions a mix of barren rock and desert on land, and stormy hurricanes over the sea. You see a tentacle of land reaching southward from the arctic continent. "Erin, set us down on that peninsula in the north. The poles look fine, but I want to check out how hot it gets that far towards the equator." Your AI obediently steers the space craft down through the alien atmosphere, and before you know it is landing gently where you instructed.
"We are at approximately 64 degrees north latitude, which would put us in Iceland back on Earth. The current temperature outside is 122 F / 50 C, with high humidity." Erin tells you, reading out the sensor data. "The northern hemisphere is in early summer, but the oscillation is mild, so it shouldn't get too much warmer at this spot. I'm detecting dense plant life all around, but the humidity and vegetation are interfering with some other readings. I can't tell if there's animal or animal-like life here."
"Thanks, Erin." you tell her, as you head towards the hatch. "But I'll have to figure that much out on my own. Time to start exploring!" The hatch opens, and you step outside into the heavy heat. It's immediately oppressive, and you suck in the hot, sticky air, beads of sweat already forming on your brow. "Wow, it is definitely hot here. I think humans could live in this, but probably not any closer to the equator."
As you begin walking into the alien jungle, you hear Erin's voice in your ear. "I can communicate with you through the translation device. Um…" she pauses for a second, oddly. "The only intelligence on this planet seems to be you and me, and I'm a computer, so… you're welcome to strip down to your underwear if you don't want to sweat up the suit. I can't say I'll look away, but it's not like you won't already be changing in my view."
"Noted. Not a bad idea, Erin." You take off the suit and throw it in the hatch, which shuts behind you. Now wearing just your underwear and a sensor device at your wrist, you head into the forest. "Hmm, I'm not detecting anything dangerous. Nothing bad in the air, no allergens in these plants." You look at the large plantlife, which apparently does well in this heat. Large leafy fronds in blue-green stretch eagerly to the sky, and provide some much welcomed shade. The trees resemble giant flowers, with leaves far bigger than you, and giant buds high up. "Erin, any good spots nearby I should check out?"
"There's a source of freshwater about a kilometer south of you, it may be good to get some readings on it. The plantlife appears to be densest east of the landing site, so you could get your botany on. Or, you could head north. I'm getting some odd readings that don't make any sense. It's probably some kind of interference like magnetic rock, but maybe it's something interesting.." You nod wordlessly, and think about what to check out first on this hot, sticky world.
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