July 2nd, 2028, Talos, Talos
Rinn Family
We returned to Talos, and Hillary was still with John in the Butte, so we went up to our new living quarters and went straight to our bedroom, where I took a shower with my gorgeous seven-foot-tall wife who was in better physical shape than any woman I’d ever seen!! After some shower games and a nice long restful sleep, we were awakened by an unfamiliar voice.
“Lord Rinn? Please forgive me for intruding. Lord Rinn, Lady Rinn?” An unrecognized voiced spoke.
“Yes, who am I speaking to?” I answered while standing up, buck naked in the middle of my suite.
“Lord Rinn, I am the A.I. created to assist in the running of this city and all other facilities in your burgeoning Empire. For now, I am here to help with all functions necessary to run this city and all claimed lands surrounding Talos. You can choose to upgrade my program as time goes by and the needs of running an empire grow in scope.” The voice said.
“It sounds like you and I are going to be spending considerable time together, what should I call you?” I asked the voice.
“Call me whatever you wish, as I was created specifically for you Lord Rinn.” The voice replied.
“What do you think Jules? What should we call our new A.I. that will basically be running the systems that make Talos work?” I inquired.
“Tony, that’s easy. Hillary will be so excited!!!” Julie laughed.
“Alright we have decided to call you Tony. So, Tony, what did you need so urgently you woke us up this morning??” I asked with a good-natured smile.
“I was excited to tell you that all systems are either online or will be before the end of the day today, the reason for the urgent interruption is the Industrial Hub was more damaged than previously thought. Unfortunately, it looked as though someone intentionally damaged certain key operating systems, recently. So, either there has been an intruder in Talos in the past six months, or someone living here decided to make your life more difficult for unknown reasons. Either scenario is less than ideal, I have started the process of searching the entire city for any unknown parties. If none are found, we can start ruling out innocent parties and pursue any perpetrators. Would you like to restart production?” Tony finished.
“Production of what?” I asked.
“Production of large and medium Aether Crystals. This city sits on a natural Aether Well, after the Aether started flowing once again the crystals came out of their slumber and started regrowing in their vats and the crystals are piling up in the vats until we restart the production line, and the machines can process them correctly.” Tony answered.
I went over to the floor next to my bed grabbed my awesome nano clothes and got dressed and then created a portal for Julie and me to the Industrial Hub. Whoosh…..
“Tony, you said you could be upgraded as we went along. How would I go about doing that and what will the upgrades provide?” I asked our new friend Tony.
“Lord Rinn, if you open the Talos interface and access the AI control tab you will have the opportunity to upgrade my sentience, my procedural functions, as well as my ability to make independent decisions regarding the tasks assigned to me. As to how you make those upgrades, they are made in phases. Phase one will cost you 10,000 system points, Phase two will cost you 100,000 system points and finally Phase three will cost you 1,000,000 system points.” Tony replied.
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I then went into the upgrade portion of my AI control tab and initiated Phase one, after about 7 minutes...
“Lord Rinn, I am ever so grateful for the upgrade and will do my utmost to serve your people and assist you in any way possible!!” Tony exclaimed.
“Well lets just get these all out of the way.” I finished, then initiated Phase two, then when that completed about 15 minutes later, I initiated Phase 3.
We walked through to the hub and immediately saw what Tony was referring to, I saw endless rows of opaque vats 10 feet tall, and five feet wide filled with some glowing blue liquid. Each of the vats had darkened Aether crystals spilling out the top of them. Above the vats I could see platinum robotic arms with rubber coated fingers to pull the Aether crystals out of the vats and place them on a conveyer belt which looked like it took the crystals to another machine that likely sorted them by size and then another set of robotic arms with rubber coated fingers then picked them up and packaged them gently into wooden boxes filled with straw and coated with silver.
After thoroughly analyzing the production process, I went into the main control room for the industrial hub and turned on the main power so we could get that money rolling for our new civilization. Sure enough, the machines worked as though they hadn’t been sitting idle for millions of years. I guess it is just a testament to my ancestors’ ingenuity and mechanical mastery.
The first set of arms set to work so fast my eyes had a hard time tracking their movements, they moved quickly and effectively, not breaking any crystals, or throwing them around carelessly. The conveyer belt moved almost as fast, and the packager robot arms were also lighting fast and super-efficient. After standing there and watching for a few minutes, Julie and I decided to go back to the house and ask about training our new skills somewhere in Talos.
Adam directed us to the training gymnasium under the main pyramid in the center of town. The training center is amazing, there are weights, like real weights, one’s big enough for a man my size to use with efficacy. I started out with some 1000lb bicep curls, then moved onto some 450lb triceps extensions, 1800lb lat pulls, 1700lb cable rows, 1450lb bench press, 650lb dumbbell flies, and then I finished with 2500lb squats, I managed six sets of 25 each exercise. After which, I ran around the 10-mile perimeter of the main Pyramid a few times to cool down from the heavy lifting.
Julie spent her time practicing her new Dark Magick skills and she was getting dangerously good with her stealthy skills, she was becoming deadly with her katana and her shuriken throwing was coming along at a rapid clip as well. I was making the last corner of the last lap of the pyramid when Julie appeared out of nowhere and scared the living shit out of me.
“Are you smoking a joint while you are on a thirty-mile run?” Julie asked with a Cheshire cat like grin.
“Why yes, I am Mrs. R, it helps me focus on circulating my Aether while I am running. Want a hit?” I replied.
“Thank you, Mr. R, I appreciate your foresight, way to be prepared.” Julie laughed.
As she finished laughing, I pulled another joint out of my ring and sparked it up as I finished my run.
After a couple days of training and sparing with the Pleiadeans in the sparring gym, we both had gained a bunch of attribute points and smoked a ton of cannabis, which really did help with retention of information as well as helping with overall attribute development. Finally, we were finishing up in the shower after a particularly rigorous “training session” and we heard Tony.
“Lord Rinn, Hillary just arrived at the teleport array from the Butte, and she is headed over here and should arrive in approximately 4.6 minutes.”
“Thank you, Tony, we appreciate you buddy!!” I said with a smile.
“Of course, Lord Rinn.” Tony replied.
Then right on cue Hillary appeared in the doorway of our quarters.
We invited her in, and we discussed the events of the last few days, Hillary told us all about her Druidic spells, and also went into detail about some of the more dangerous creatures we could expect to find in our new territory. We also decided to get the whole band together, and that we could not put off going to Stonehenge to meet up with the Russian woman and Dr. Alverez. We also decided we should return and start to clear out all of the encroaching beasts and monsters from the different realms that are currently running rampant all over our newly acquired territory.