Sal 793 Feldspar

In  '8113', Dr Sal Feldspar is a senior ecumenoanthropologist whose lifelong goal is to rejuvenate life on Earth, millennia after its abandonment.

Basic info
Impurity name: Sal 793 Feldspar

Basic name:  'Dr Sal' Feldspar

Formulaic name: 793.KALSI3O8

Mineral stats: Common, 6.0 hardness, yellow-brown

Orbital age: 144

Dr Sal Feldspar is a Colonist born on Gaia, who became a prominent scientist and lecturer in the rare field of ecumenoanthropology. He ran a laboratory and greenhouse on Earth, somewhere near Garden City, where his primary goal was to grow legumes in the unfavorable soils. When the Martian invention of human printing became a cheap and usable resource, Dr Sal proposed Project De Novo to the UFC government and was granted a large sum of funding to carry it out, using UFC scholars and a Martian factory workforce. However, the project was shut down after the Talking War, when human cloning - and anything similar - was outlawed. Dr Sal blamed his old friend, Senator Storn Gibbs, for getting the program shut down, accusing him of putting politics and diplomacy above the future of the human race. His personal relationship with Gibbs turned sour as a result.

The mysterious disappearance of Dr Sal initiates much of the plot of the story, when the scientist calls up his old friend, Gibbs, from Earth with a simple request: ' Take a photo of me!' Gibbs' photograph over the small square of desert land where Dr Sal's legume greenhouse was located reveals a bizarre sight: the top-down view of a gigantic pyramid, built by hand, which was not positioned there a few decades prior.