Eventually, my monotony was disturbed by a message from the spider drones working down at the mole colony. Shifting down into one of their perspectives, I see that they had just finished the repairs on the reactor and were now awaiting further instructions. Currently, I had no place which I needed them for so I simply ordered them to start dispersing themselves across the outposts and to generally improve their new stations.
Swapping back to my vessel at the factory, I made my way back down into the colony. Once reaching there, I could immediately spot that the various floodlights were glowing significantly more bright and that many of the buildings were now powered on. Walking down to street level, I saw that the mole residents seemed to be energized and active, presumably because they were now fully charged.
Soon enough I reached the now fully operational reactor which hummed contently. I could make out where the elder mole made their haphazard repairs and where my spiders had fully refurbished it with the former being marked with a mismatch of scrap metal and the latter shining with a glint only a freshly installed metal plate could possess. I reach out to the generator with my left hand and caressed the lining between the two distinct marks before a voice speaks up behind me.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" The old mole says in a reverent tone.
"Indeed, it is," I respond before giving the reactor a little love tap with my hand which causes the reactor to reverberate with a satisfying gong sound.
"You know, I would have never thought I would see the day where they," the elder mole gestures to a couple moles playing in the distance, "would ever get to experience the joys of not having to worry about power or maintenance. Back in the early days of my awakening, I barely had enough power to move a few feet at a time and every dent and loosened plate was a permanent disfiguration."
The elder mole paused for a moment while looking at one of the buildings where a few of my spiders had decided to set up shop and who were currently welding a replacement thermal plate on a mole. Then the elder mole turned back towards me and bent down into a bow. "I thank you, with all of my being, for the opportunity of a stable life for me and my kin."
I was quite taken aback by the display, for I had ordered the repair of the generator so I could see if there was anything useful in that server room and so that the tribute from the colony could be lifted to the surface for easy access. I did not fully know how to respond to this so I simply resorted to the tried and true method of humility.
"Please, stand. I was not the one who fixed your generator and saved your cavern. If there are any whom you should be praising it should be drones who braved the ever present danger of cave ins and rock falls." I say while gesturing to my spiders who were scattered around the town repairing things or people.
"While you are correct on who I should be thanking, you should not disregard the effect your decisions had made on my home. You could have simply left once the support pickers were repaired however you stuck around and actively supported and protected my people when it would have been easier to simply let us fend for ourselves. Whether or not your decisions were made with profit in mind, you still made it so my kin's lives are better and so I thank you for it."
I could not think up a response fast enough to respond before another mole ran up to the elder and spoke something in their ear. The elder excused themselves and ran after the other mole before I could get another word in. In the corner of my vision, I saw the notification that the mole colony has now pledged vassalage to me.
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This left me simply standing around alone in the street so I began moving to my intended destination, the server room. Upon reaching the small deed which housed the various server blocks, I found a little access port that I soon plugged my finger into. Then a screen appeared in front of me which contained about a dozen files all waiting to be explored.
Many of the files were almost completely corrupted and most of the uncorrected files were just progress manifests which was to be expected. The last of the mostly uncorrupted files however proved to be interesting as it stated that some of the non-drone workers had been discussing the new health codes on a new virus named the rot which has recently been infecting some residents from a few districts over.
This had some disturbing implications on why there were no, well I would say people but that would be insensitive to all the robots I have met so far, living and breathing beings asides from a few random critters I saw a while back and the rot infestation. I try not to think about what something named the rot would do to an infected person.
Before my mind could conjure up more disgusting images of mutilated corpses, I got a notification from one of my scout teams located over by the water treatment outpost. They were requesting permission and reinforcements to begin searching for the reason for the abnormal amount of feral drones in the region.
Not seeing anything wrong with a little bit of extra reconnaissance, I gave the go ahead and floated over to the small drone works to order up two squads of scout rats since they are dirt cheap to produce. However, upon ordering the drones, I get a notification stating that I should upgrade my core or construct a server network in order to compensate for my growing number of drones, directly and indirectly controlled by me.
Switching back to the factory and checking the price to upgrade the core, I found that I was missing some specialized components which while I could fabricate it would require some base materials that I do not yet possess. This could be fixed once the first shipment of tribute resources arrives from the mole colony but that would take at least a few days. That is not to mention the fact that the upgrades would take up a considerable amount of time before completion.
Switching my gaze to my new option of constructing servers, I see that they are relatively cheap to make, compared to the core upgrade, but it would not be able to administer control to many drones and would require multiple server clusters to reach the computing power of an equivalent value AI core. This however meant that the server network would scale much better as each server would support the next, then those two would support another two and so on.
The servers would also require a sufficient power source to allow for it to continue operating which meant I could not place servers wherever I wanted. Now the only question was, where do I have a reliable power source and a bunch of unused, preferably roofed, areas which I could shove a bunch of servers into. Eventually, I settled on my far off and almost completely barren outpost.
Drifting over to the warehouse outpost, I see that almost nothing has changed from when I last visited. The occasional feral raid was repelled which also gave the outpost enough metal to repair injuries and other such damages, then storing the leftovers. The outpost only had a small garrison of less than a half dozen medium sized drones as well as a small contingent of spiders who were only there to keep up maintenance.
Seeing the abysmal state of the outpost, I ordered my caravan of moose, which I should expand soon, to run a few supply missions to drop off enough materials to start the construction and for store spiders and their accompanying guards. It feels kind of nice to have finally found a decent use for the outpost as it has been left to the wayside as I was much more focused on the ever present threat that MAI posed.
My thoughts were cut short however as a notification arrived from my scout rats who were supposed to have been beginning the investigation on the feral drones numbers at the water treatment outpost. Checking the reason for the notification, I could see why it was sent as the scout rat had reported that they had found at almost a half dozen autonomous drones works which were pumping out ferals near constantly.
Worrying news indeed.