I stood in the empty street outside the Helios Building while all around me people scrambled. Two small front end loaders capable of scooping up a car in their buckets moved the trash being delivered around in piles. We set roadblocks up at first and then piled rubble behind them to close off the streets and take over this section of the city. Not that there was a lot of traffic, or any.
I claimed four blocks of the city. One of which was almost complete rubble from the first incursion and much of which was damaged in the latest.
I ended up with a Class Three printer. It was called something fancy, matter reconfiguration and structural something something device. The point was it could print tier two tech. I didn't have much in the way of tier two blue prints, but I reached out to The Family and asked around. I received several as they related to photovoltaic power and heat management. It seemed my ship wasn't the only one that had heat issues as a limiting factor and other Samurai had spent points to overcome it.
I watched as the front end loader approached ,stopped, and was waved through by one of the All Bright PMCs. It dumped it's load on the street, and then pushed it forward into the pond of filth where the street had been.
A huge cable snaked from the bus-sized tier three printer up to the Solar Flare, which once again looked like it had just been purchased. Black and sleek and bursting with guns.
The Solar Flare had a class two fusion power source. It also had the ability to dump a lot of heat. So it floated a few hundred feet above the street, connected by an umbilical cable. Power came down and heat went up.
The pool wasn't even part of the printer. It was in fact a sorting pool. The printer was connected to the pool by way of tubes and pipes and cables. Garbage and scrap metal and even concrete was pushed into the pool. Larger submerged robots cracked and split and ground up everything into smaller pieces. Machines the size of thumbs down to those nanite sized, dealt with the ground up waste. Most of it was sorted and identified in the pool and collected when needed by the printer.
Under the street the pool was expanding over time. Growing slowly. It snaked down into a sewer line and into the sewers itself. I didn't let it spread, just dangle from the ceiling like the roots of some huge plant. It was able to pull from both the air and the liquid waste in the sewers.
I turned my head as the audible alarm went off.
Another crate, packaged and wrapped for shipment appeared slowly in the spray painted area. The teleportation was actually instantaneous. But the hologram of the soon to materialize object was a sort of warning that matter was teleporting in.
The alarms sounded a second time and this time lights lit up as well.
Then there was a sort of pop sound. It was faint and gone before you could wonder if you heard it.
The lights stayed on for a moment longer then turned off.
I slowed the production rate down immensely. I could likely suck organics up from the sewers and print meal bars faster than the fork truck could clear the teleport area.
The All Bright men in uniform moved the temporary fencing out of the way so that an old man with a hand operated fork lift could go into the spray painted area, lift the pallet up, and pull it out.
Once out of the spray painted area, he set the pallet back down, and returned to the temporary shelter I had set up while the fork truck driver picked up the pallet and drove it over to the Helios building passing through the ring of PMC soldiers keeping everyone away from the printer.
While it might look like I was overseeing all the activity, my suit was rigid and I was resting in it.
I'd hired several of the people on the list over the course of a few hours and some would be arriving shortly. I meant to have at least a few floors ready for them.
The first thing we did with the printer was get the Solar Flare ready to fight. There were several armor plates that were discarded completely. They went into the filth pond and new plates were printed off to replace them. Mostly though it was providing the repair nanites within the ship with the material it needed. All of which could be done through the umbilical.
The plates were dislodged by the nanites and the plates fell off for the most part, though some had to be removed by the labor crews. Labor crews Sara outfitted with fitted black uniform with a large Golden Helios sun icon on the back. When I asked her why she had stopped work for that she'd showed me the feeds. Men and women climbing all over the huge bus-sized ship as it sat next to the bus-sized printer. Most of the comments wondered what was happening.
"You're paying them," she'd said. "They should be in uniform."
The printer teleported the new plates on to the ship. Then the umbilical was attached and material needed to repair the internals was sent up as needed.
Next it was keeping the building alive. Which meant printing off water pumps and batteries. Greg's people got the pumps switched out and the batteries went up to the top floor. Next we copied parts from the working elevators to get the others working though Greg only operated four of them on one side. The other four he left inoperative per my request.
Next were radiators. These didn't use any tier two tech as that took far too long to print compared to simple tier one human producible tech. Instead we outsourced the design to the Operator network and then let Max and Greg hammer out the details. The radiators replaced the floor to ceiling windows and were mounted on tracks so they could slide back in for cleaning, something Max suggested be automated both for human safety and because the radiators could be designed differently if humans didn't have a chance to damage them during cleaning.
The first twenty printed had six different designs. Rapid production was more important than long term development. If there were problems we could just swap them out later. If one type worked better we could just swap them later.
They replaced the windows on the upper floor and Greg's people began converting one of the elevator shafts into a utility corridor.
It seemed like the machine printed nothing but metal grating and ten foot sections of pipe for days, though it was only hours. The small welding machines that had been printed as well as welding rods allowed more men to work. Men we had to put on the payroll. Men who needed uniforms, and supervisors and personal protective equipment. Which meant other employees to track equipment like welding rods, gas canisters, grinding wheels, tool batteries and chargers. Sections of the building were turned into worker's quarters, mess halls, and warehouses. Which of course meant we needed plumbers and electricians and those people needed more uniforms and paychecks and material and tools. We were very inefficient with the printing in the beginning, but I continued to learn and get better about it.
If people needed steel toe boots, or leather gloves, it was easier to print off a thirty pairs of various sizes and give them to the warehouse. They could store and track them and keep Max and I updated. I could, in theory, then print more of a thing if the stock got low.
As I watched another pallet of solar panel windows appeared, teleporting into the painted area. These were sized so that three panels could replace a single floor to ceiling window. We had to break up the total window space so that the panels could fit in the elevators. Something else we had plans to replace much later with the correct items. There was a lot of work involved with getting the lift systems and cranes on top of the building to work. They needed new cabling, new supports, and the current anchorage was suspect. Likely the Solar Flare would do the work at first. Right now though it was needed to provide power and dump heat to help speed up both the printing, and more importantly expand the filth pool and the machines and devices hidden within it that broke down the waste so the printer had access to raw materials.
The printer could of course teleport items into it, take them apart down to their atomic level, and then use that material to print. It was so much more efficient to use larger objects. Even things like cotton or wool, or synthetic threads. They could be repurposed without having to first be remade.
Eventually, when I had time, I'd print off a tier two fusion power source. But that would take almost twenty days to print. In twenty days I could have the building covered in tier one solar windows.
"It works," Greg said continuing a conversation I was barely following.
"Good," I said. "How long to get the piping down to the lower floors?"
"Doing it right? We should just go from the top on down," he said again.
"And we'd have riots," I said.
"Honestly boss," he said flatly, "we won't. Everyone will know about this in an hour, no matter how hard we try to keep it under wraps. We tell the building they are getting AC, but that it takes time, and they'll surprise you. I promise."
"Keep on like you want then," I said.
Another pallet of food popped into existence.
I checked the printer list, then adjusted the speed up just a bit on the food stuff.
Two pallets of water bottles came next, then a pallet of canned fish, and then two more of the food bars.
I was selling the food at discounted prices to residents, but had no doubt it would make its way out into the world.
Everything was healthy in ways people wouldn't be able to identify. Each bar was packed full of vitamins and minerals as well as other things the medical staff on site said was lacking in most of the poorer people.
When Greg's people said they were ready for more solar panels, they were printed off and shipped inside.
I looked over the various queues and printing lists. Then pulled up the cameras overseeing the warehouse space. It was just a gutted floor mid way up the building. Men in the red and green of the building's gang kept people to the elevator and staircase area while other people stood behind tables. For a few moments it looked chaotic, but the order soon became apparent. People arrived via a single elevator, got off if there was room, or waited if there wasn't. People taking the stairs were allowed to walk up or down but not enter that floor. Men and women in black uniforms with a golden Helios Sun on their backs carried jugs of water and boxes of food bars. Credits were presumably transferred. Every now or then someone pressed a thumb to a scanner and was lead past the workers to a section were new employees were being measured by what looked like tailors.
Sara was handling almost all the hiring of locals for labor crews, construction crews and everything else. I cut the feeds as five pallets of food bars appeared and five men with push lifters slid into the pallets before jacking the pallets up and pulling them out of the teleportation area.
Four dump trucks arrived all at once. Their beeping back-up indicators created a cacophony of noise that made the city feel alive again, if just for a moment. They dumped their loads on the street before pulling forward to let the front end loaders begin to crush and smash the trash before pushing it into the pool. The local garbage companies were happy to drop off here. It was free, close, and we didn't give a shit if it was medical waste, radioactive, or residential trash.
A flatbed tow truck arrived in the distance. I watched as the driver released the grapple arm as the bed raised up. Several young men in black uniforms put their car jacking and car scrapping skills to work as they dismantled the hover car. It's massive super-capacitor batteries wouldn't go into the goop but would instead be placed next to it. They'd be teleported in, reconfigured and refurbished, and then teleported back out. Then they'd be taken inside and get slotted into the huge grid being built on the top floor or the sub grids going in at various temporary locations.
The hover rods, the only tier two tech in the hover cars would go into the crate near the printer. They'd either be used in other vehicles, or possibly used for printing equipment or drones or whatever else needed to float.
"We have received communication concerning a suitable scanner blueprint. They are offering to buy it for you, it would cost two hundred and twenty-one points."
"Holy fuck," I said out loud.
One of the PMC men began to turn his head and then corrected it. Whatever issues a Samurai had he was wisely keeping his nose out of it.
"Why so expensive?"
"It can scan multiple people in real time, as well as deal with countermeasures attempting to block it from doing so."
"Where are we with points?"
"Six hundred twenty-one counting todays ten free points."
"So I'd be down to four hundred points?"
"Four hundred points, no tokens," she reminded me.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
"How long to print it?"
"It depends on size," Max said. She put several sizes up on a display as well as the size and power needs for the entrances to Helios Tower.
Nine days to print the size we'd need.
"What about what we'd need to interface with it."
"You would need more advanced hardware, but you already have a blueprint for a tier two surveillance drone. It's processor could be harvested and repurposed."
"Let's buy the scanner blueprint."
I saw one of the lists I had open change and I focused on it to bring it up. They were ready for another bed.
The printer got to work and thirteen minutes later a very expensive hospital style bed with all the bells and whistles teleported in.
I saw a shift go through the crowd watching from behind the most distance fences.
"What's going on Max?" I asked.
"They've received word that the upper floors of the building have AC. That the radiators everyone can see jutting out of the top of the building are in fact for cooling."
"And rioting?"
"There are very few calls for violence. Most of the discussions seem to fear they will be kicked out for resident who can pay for climate controlled apartments."
"Keep an eye on the conversations."
I began cycling through the video feeds. Men in harnesses removing the floor to ceiling windows and replacing them with three solar windows were the first to be displayed. They were working on two different floors but only on one side of the building.
The ground floor on that side of the building was cleared and the area fenced off. Even being as careful as they were one window had plummeted to the street and shattered not less than an hour ago.
The front end loader unloaded a mess of wires, transformers, and cabling. The printer must need more copper or whatever.
Minutes later a huge spool of thick cable appeared in the painted area as well as more piping and another pallet of grating.
"Mister Wu has submitted his list," Max said.
She presented it on screen and I looked it over. Pumps, gaskets, thread lubricant, gloves, safety glasses, face shields, grinding wheels. The list went on and on. There was nothing fancy, just stuff you could buy at a hardware store, assuming you had the credits. The most surprising were the boots. I doubled the order of boots to give them spares and did the same with much of the other PPE.
I tripled the fuses, and LED lights he was requesting, as well as adding food bars, a small water processing unit, and instant coffee packets.
Then I discussed options with Max until we had a sort of closed crate deal to hide the contents.
I walked towards the fork truck as the order began printing.
The equipment operator noticed me, turned the engine off and hustled down out of the vehicle.
"You guys have a flat bed truck?"
"Yes sir," he said.
"These next crates have parts for Mr. Wu who runs the sewage treatment plant. Get them loaded up and get a driver to take them down there. Max will send you the location. You guys," I said to the All Bright PMC soldier that walked with me, "send a few men with them."
"We expecting trouble?" he asked.
"I would think not," I said. I hoped that was a standard question. Or was a crate you couldn't see in, too much of a prize to resist?
I shook my head. I couldn't deal with everything. Either the lawless gangs that were forming up would try to hijack the truck or they wouldn't.
Max informed me another window was dropped, as well as one of the men, though his safety harness saved his life. I pulled up the video and watched it. The man made a mistake, slipped and was holding onto to the window when it started to fall outward. That momentum caused him to slide over the edge.
"Greg," I said as soon as we connected, "I'm calling it for your work crews on the windows. They are too tired."
"I've got another list. Is it possible to redo all the toilets as well. Just strip them all out and replace them?" Greg asked, not even acknowledging what I said.
It felt like I was intruding into another conversation, but when I waited, thinking he was talking to someone else, silence stretched.
"I don't have a blue print," I said.
"Can you make one?" he asked. "If I get you a new toilet in a box can you like desyntheses it or whatever and then print clones like you did with the safety gear and grinding wheels?"
"Yes. Bring it down."
Greg wasn't the only one who took any opportunity they could to talk to me. Since I couldn't speak to everyone all the time when they had the opportunity to speak it was about what they needed. Even Paula, who was working with the medical staff we'd sort of collected, had requests when I spoke to her.
Greg pushed a list of items to me. Mostly it was more wiring, light fixtures, lights, switches, and that sort of thing. Most of the floors that had been gutted were stripped of valuable metals like copper wiring or anything else that could be carried off or reused elsewhere. While we were buying cars brought to us without concern of their origins, we were also buying copper at higher prices than the scrap yards. Most it came in the form of stripped out wire and cut lengths of pipe. Some of it was internal to huge power transformers. The city was being stripped and gutted and we were willingly feasting on the slaughter.
"Let's go over the-" I yawned, "over thee- umm- The vending machine situation. And get me another one of those pills."
"This will be your fourth," Max informed me.
"You said they were not habit forming."
"You body still needs sleep."
I opened my mouth with the helmet still on. The pill was teleported into it. I sucked at the thin tube and swallowed the pill with a mouthful of water.
Post bio upgrade I didn't sweat any more. Not that I couldn't just that I had no need. I wasn't going to overheat at a hundred degrees, even a hundred and ten. Sustained wet bulb temps around a hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit (55c) would eventually kill me. It wasn't that I could cool more quickly, it was that my biology itself had changed.
All of which meant that with less sweat, there was less need to drink water. Which was a habit more than anything else. As such, I found myself drinking way too much water and having to piss way too often.
Designs popped up for the vending machines. They would be installed into the deep doorways of one of the elevators. They were about eighteen inches thick. Enough room to hold a few commonly purchased items as well as storage area to hold specialty ordered items delivered by the elevator and an automated system to load the vending machine with anything it was lacking as well as the specialty ordered items.
As I looked at designs and read over notes I was once again overwhelmed.
Was it better to have more capacity in each vending machine or less capacity but allow larger parcels to be delivered and stored.
I swiped the information away and realized I'd done so without moving any body parts. My control of the system even without eye movement or subvocalization was still improving.
I went back to the daunting task of going over the printer's documentation. Max had conveyed the need to know things so we could get started and then we'd printed the things like the umbilical that linked the Solar Flare to the printer to transfer both power and waste heat. The printer could, with more power, overcome the heat issue by teleporting superheated water into exploding super-steam bombs far above it in the atmosphere. It sounded interesting, and I wanted to see it eventually, but the city didn't need any more heat.
In fact...
I had Max pause her explanation of why printing printers took such an extreme length of time and dug around my various lists until I gave up and asked Max to bring up the list the charity organizations overseeing the refugee camps had provided.
There were several updates. I switched to the last update, then read the one before that.
"Max can we compile information about the refugee camps?"
"Yes."
"Have the Flare drop two of the long range reconnaissance drones and get aerial footage as well."
I saw the people around me glance up. There must have been some noise as the larger matter compaction drones attached to the Solar Flare produced two of the fixed-wing high altitude reconnaissance drones they stored.
"Let's swap over to some sort of water tank as well," I said. Max understood me to mean the printer and brought up that interface.
Some of the tanks were huge.
"I thought the printer makes the item inside it and then teleports it out?"
"It does."
"Then how can this tank be larger than the printer?"
"Matter compaction and-"
"Enough," I said shaking my head slightly. I was doing it again. I was attempting to understand the nature of a Class Three printer. Class Three! Tier Three technology was so far beyond human understanding of physics that we used words like 'teleportation' to encompass a whole range of different things. It was like saying an online merchant 'shipped' the package I purchased across the world. Mailing a package could encompass trains, planes, trucks, ocean faring ships, and a whole host of logistics and sorting along the way. In much the same way saying the printer teleported things was encompassing a whole world of things I couldn't understand.
It could print things larger than it was. It was better to go over the limitations of that and not ask how it worked, but how I could I use it within its limitations.
"Is it based on mass, since the tank is mostly empty it can print it and unfold it?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.
One of the aspects of teleportation had to do with some sort of matter folding that didn't make any sense to me. The matter wasn't folded, but the space-time it existed in was- Or something like that.
"No the-" Max began and I listened for a while until I stopped her with a thought, again so overwhelmed there was no place to even begin picking apart my lack of understanding.
"Print this tank next. Then I want pumps in the sewer and filters and some sort of UV light thing that will-" I paused.
"What is the best-" I began but I stopped again. The nature of the word 'best' in these sorts of conversations was growing more and more muddied. I couldn't imagine how stupid Max had to think we humans were. How would you answer a child who looked at you and asked, "What is the best tool in your tool box?" They were all best at different things, it was why there were so many different variations of tools. 'Best' was one of those contextual words that only had meaning in relation to some metric you could measure.
Was the best water filtration system the most efficient? Or the one that was easiest to repair with parts humans already had? Or the one that didn't ever break? Or-
I let out a long sigh. Sometimes I just wanted to punch something.
I turned my head, my suit giving me control without having to ask for it.
The private military contractor beside me stiffened. Not stiffened, came to attention. I somehow looked at him while also concentrating on the name Max displayed. It opened a window with information about the man including a section with information on where I met him before or might remember him from if things weren't so chaotic. That section was blank.
"You go by John?" I asked.
"Yes sir," he said turning to face me.
"John we have some um," I shrugged forgetting the politically correct terms I'd been using for them.
"We have some car thieves going around picking up damaged or abandoned cars. See if they've seen any tanker trucks in their journeys."
"All Bright has a petrol fuel truck we use to refuel our larger ground assault vehicles."
"I'm grinning John, you just can't see it," I said.
As I began swiping things aside and bringing up the printer's interface I stopped.
"Have them bring the tanker truck here," I said realizing I hadn't told him what to do with it.
"Max give me fuel depot style tanks as well. And the fast charger stations compatible with most hovercars."
"Get me the guys working the fork trucks," I said without dropping out of the menus or checking to see if John complied.
I skipped 'Best' or 'Perfect' and instead went with simple. Below ground, in the filth pond where nanites roamed and below in the sewers I'd put some sort of pump that could move a lot of volume and then a system that could filter and clean it. I'd take a longer print time for something that didn't need any maintenance or filters swapped out. Then above ground the tank would fill with drinking water and I'd need equipment humans could use. I had Max look over the feeds. she came up with several systems of interlocking hoses and couplings that would fit most tanker trucks. If we needed something else we'd print it. I pushed everything to the list, then took a few seconds to place the items. I did that with a sort of top down video game system where the object was green unless it intersected some other item or Max thought the positioning was incorrect for some reason or another. We had experimented with various methods that were much closer to reality but this was simpler and quicker.
When I next dropped out of the menus eight men an a woman were waiting beyond four armed All Bright soldiers. I had to look at them and pull up their information before I realized they were the fork truck operators I'd asked for.
"Okay. Starting with you Leroy," I said looking at the man on the left. He flinched as I used his name.
"What heavy machinery can you use?
"Umm, like Cats and Deers?" he asked.
Max helpfully informed me with some infographics that he meant heavy machinery developed by Caterpillar and John Deere Corporations.
"Yes."
He began listing things off, sometimes by their common names before he'd scrunch up his face as he tried to remember the formal designations.
By the time we got around the circle I was pleased to learn we had people who could operate fork trucks of various sizes, front end loaders, back hoes, carry decks, smaller cranes, semi-trucks, cargo haulers, tow trucks, cement mixers, and a whole list of other things. We didn't have the hardware but we had the operators.
Remembering the argument about brother-in-laws from the Operator Resume hunt I asked them if they knew of anyone else. Then I stopped them as they all began speaking at once.
"Send me links to this address," I said. I was confident that Max would generate a link and send it to them.
"Max send those resumes to Sara, tell her I need equipment operators, laborers, and-" I paused, "We need to build Mylar shade tents, cooling fans with misters, water tanks, piping, the whole nine yards for the two refugee camps. And we need to start hauling water and empty tanks yesterday."
I brought up the credit reserves. I didn't even look at the disgustingly large number of actual credits. That number no longer mattered. Instead I looked at the time remaining until I was out of money.
"Okay thanks everyone," I said by way of dismissing them.
A moment later there was a significate *POP* as the large tank materialized displacing all the air in the space it took up.
Then other items began to appear beside it. A heavy duty metal rack with shelves that held hoses. A cabinet with semi-portable pumps. Tools and connectors and various other things began to pop into existence.
I realized I'd fucked up by selecting so large of a tank. It couldn't be moved and it ate up real estate that could be used to teleport other things in.
Regardless of the refugee situation I had to leave to secure more credits.
Unless?
"Max can we tap into the fiber network and get a sort of base station set up here so I can just hack the corporations from here?"
"No," she said.
That was rare. Often there was some nuance. Almost everything was a 'Yes, but you need to' sort of answer.
"I can help?" Sara said over coms.
I hadn't exactly forgotten about her, but I hadn't checked in on her in a long time.
"Where have you been?" I asked.
"I took a nap," she said. I heard something in her voice. Perhaps shame? Though that didn't make too much-
"How long has it been since I've slept?" I asked Max.
"Too long," she said.
I'd popped the no-sleep pills whatever those things were called. I could feel the fogginess even now, but it was pushed back, held back really.
"Refugee camps have been mapped," Max said, interrupting my thoughts.
"Right," I said putting off the very idea of rest.
I only had to glance at the aerial pictures to realize these camps were the worst of the worst. Refugee camps post-inclusion got help based on several factors. Most of those factors had to do with how valuable the area was, how little damage there was to the city, and how educated or valuable the people were. Phoenix's mega-city was no doubt receiving lots of help from companies looking to hire indentured employees who had lost everything or snatch up skilled workers on the cheap.
We were a city not-yet-recovered from the previous incursion. We had higher than average homelessness, crime, and unemployment before the incursion. Now whole areas of the city were-
There weren't even reflective Mylar tents up. The naked sun would kill and people were out in it, dying in it with no place else to go. When it came to facing the lawless gangs or heat it wasn't a hard choice.
They were dying in the sun, if the updates from the charities could be believed. And there was no reason for the charities to lie to a Samurai who could easily check the facts.
"God Damn it!" I shouted as I clenched my fists and shook with the rage of an impotent man! It didn't seem to matter how much power you had to affect the world, there were always things out of your control.
I was focusing on air conditioning and vending machines and people were cooking under the sun!
Then I was suddenly back on the train, the man next to me working himself up before he'd kill himself and paint me with his blood and brains.
"It's all triage all the time," he'd said. And it clicked even then. I felt it viscerally now. I flexed my hands again. Fingers and thumbs that had regrown, a body reshaped and transformed. The power to build and create wonders humans couldn't imagine and people were dying because they didn't have shade and water.
"Max I'm going to need you to send out a message to everyone," I began as I forced my hands to unclench.