As time crawled hours, blending onto days. The cavern slowly morphed before Alissa’s eyes. The plan was coming together, aaannnddd she was bored. There was nothing to do, she had books and even games on her implant, but actually using them would cost her power. It was miniscule but at this point even a small draw it had could kill her in the long run.
Sooo, all she could do was sit where she was, she didn’t really have the energy to pace. It was all she could do to go rinse the grime off herself a few steps away. Between that and drinking as much water as she could to attempt to offset some of her other needs, that was all she did all day long physically.
Wake up check the plans because she had nothing else to do, push the anger down, wash off, stare at the ceiling, keep pushing the anger down and ignore it existence.
She didn’t have time to get angry, or more specifically she had too much time, while she waited for the first step to finish. That would decide if she lived or died. If the test circuit failed she was going to die, period. No do over just her starved to death.
This came with some small, miniscule really, anger problems. Oh, who was she kidding, apparently she had serious anger problems. She didn’t consider herself unreasonable on most things, but… well there it was… an overwhelming, amount of anger ready to be unleashed on some poor unsuspecting thing. Her lifestyle seemed to have distanced her from the types of things she was unreasonable about. That was a surprise, shouldn’t have, but it was.
To say Alissa had lived a sheltered life was just a bit of an understatement. Calling her rich while technically true, didn’t cover the full spectrum of what that meant. Rich was a vast understatement, she wasn’t part of the one percent. She was the one percent, of the one percent, of that one percent. Capable of buying things like superdreadnoughts with pocket change, she was at the point where she didn’t even think about cost. If she wanted it she could buy it and never even needed to think about the cost. This of course meant that she was not used to things like sleeping on a cave floor, not having a hot shower, no servants bringing her food, keeping her clothing clean, and not having someone else ready to deal with shit like the current situation.
This was not to say that she was weak, or incapable, it didn’t even mean that she hadn’t had to deal with these things. Places like her school, during the training she participated in. At those times and places she had tolerated it, but that was from within a safety net. A now non-existent safety net.
Here and now all she could do was think, while being uncomfortable, and compare where she was to both where she used to be and where she wanted to be. This was in terms of immediate living conditions, and even the situation.
How exactly did she end up here. It should have been nearly impossible in the first place. The Empress’ Own, paranoid bastards that they were, had gone to unheard of expense and trouble to prevent the precise situation she was in.
When they had figured out that a normal survival kit wouldn’t work for her, they replaced them. All of them. With equipment tailored to her needs. Any ship, station, or facility that she was in as part of her duties or that she frequented or owned had these things replaced with new versions. One that had been in some cases custom made for her. The marines that made up the contingent she traveled with had their equipment list updated, loyal people who could be stuck in the situation with her had them.
She knew beyond all doubt that the debris in the walls was from her ship, one of the bulkhead doorways facing her had her personal seal on it. So how did she manage to end up in a regular stasis pod, she knew that her protectors hadn’t been careless and missed one.
She also knew that regardless of how it had happened she was going to absolutely ruin someone’s day over this. Currently she didn’t have much hope of returning home, she wouldn’t allow that to become a focal point only to be disappointed later. She also didn’t have a good way of working out her issues as there were no options to relieve the stress. Basically, Alissa needed to take her mad out on something, but she was unable to do so. This did not bode well for the next whatever that walked into her home.
It was also stifling as even having conversations with Nova had become to much trouble to deal with. At least until she could do something with the toxic energy that was killing her. Ok slight exaggeration starvation would kill her but the toxic energy was preventing her from making any progress towards feeding herself, as it would also kill her and was a constant long term problem. Much like food, but if she could get it under control she might be able to do something about food.
Focusing on what she was going to call corruption from now on, as that toxic energy seemed to be screwed up ‘normal’ energy, only made sense. Both tasks would require a tremendous effort to correct.
Focus on food, die to corruption. Focus on corruption and maybe die to food. This was the logic she used to make the plans being enacted.
Luckily, she had managed to contain her rage towards what was happening and the dark thoughts it brought, long enough for the test circuit to be built. She had attached the energy to matter converter to it in the hopes that it could use this to solve her food problem.
Now she called this a circuit but it was really the central processor for what she was going to do. The focal point of what would be a room wide network. Placed in the center of the ledge both she and the core were on, it had several lead-in branches going to where the highest concentrations of corruption emerged. For the moment she only went to those nearest the core as they seemed to be doing the most damage. These were large rough ‘pipes’, 15 centimeters in diameter, leading to the ‘processor’ in the center of the ledge. Each one had the top cut off both to allow her to look inside, and so that the symbols she copied from the core could be etched, just barely within the parameters of the crude nanobots that dug them out. At the top of each was a flat surface on each side of the opening where she had etched the cores control symbols to keep the corruption inside the pipe the same ones that were periodically placed in the interior to prevent it from leaking out. As far as letting this seep into the air, the symbols were ‘looser’ the further it got from the core forming a grid rather than a solid barrier on top. At the funnel like mouth near where the corruption was oozing into the room she had place the symbols related to gathering.
All that was left was to prime the system with a bit of her own energy and it should start to function. If she was lucky the E-to-M converter would start using the corruption to put out organic matter that she could feed into the nutrient paste dispenser.
Honestly she wasn’t hopeful but… it would be nice if at least one thing went right here she was feeling a little overdue in the luck department. She had already set up the dispenser with her last container in the superstitious hope that being prepared would make it more likely to work. If it did the converter would create organic matter needed to sustain her, which would then be fed to the dispenser to make that into something edible, to be stored in the final container. The system should draw needed maintenance from the room once primed as it would be a part of that power ecosystem.
“Well, here’s to hoping Nova.” With these words Alissa fed the system the power it needed to turn on. She wouldn’t be able to do this again if it failed, an all or nothing moment.
Holding her breath and monitoring the corruption as it seeped through the walls and ceiling towards the core. For a moment she thought she had failed, then glacially slow the streams that had been hitting the core first bent as they were pulled to the funnels. Then for a few seconds after touching the openings were drawn in breaking the connection to the core as that energy was absorbed into this new system. With the core no longer drawing in the steady stream of corruption it should be able to clean itself over time.
As the corruption creeped it way towards the processor, it first hit a deep pool carved into the rock at the bottom was a small blocked opening, controlled by one of the gates she had seen in the core. When the reservoir was full it would turn off using that pressure to force the corruption into a smaller channel only 10 centimeters in diameter, but further recessed to allow the nanobots to carve in the controls.
Twenty minutes later the reservoir had filled and the gate at the bottom had opened. Alissa danced a jig, unable to contain her excitement, after seeing that corruption followed the same rules as fluids in a similar situation. It was moving faster than the slow boating she had been used to seeing rom it.
Traveling through the system small amounts of the corruption flowed into the air above these channels being absorbed by the core through and processed into useable energy (Alissa was not sure what to call this energy as she hadn’t really had a chance to study it with the crystal stalled). That flowed into another reservoir next to the first and followed the same process to the converter. Luckily, this new stuff was more energetic and rapidly filled its container while the corrupt crap was still working it way through the network.
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Alissa collapsed in relief as the new energy hit the converter and it activated beginning the process that would save her life. It would be annoying if she couldn’t use this corrupt crap to power things and had to rely on the clean energy, but that would be solvable ,if neither worked she was doomed. Happily not the case.
With that out of the way she waited hoping beyond hope that the corruption would have similar results. As it touched the converter what she saw made her shriek for joy. There in the corner of her HUD, the converter was asking for power source preferences. She immediately set it to use the corruption, activating the gate that caused the clean energy to flow into the true test portion of this set up.
If it hadn’t worked up to this point she was screwed so she had built the working version of the processor and a temporary set up for diluting that energy that looped back to the processor. That reservoir had three chambers in it a clean, dirty and a diluted chamber. The clean and dirty stored these energies in their pure forms and released amounts she could control into the center, she would test ratios to see what the core could handle.
After a couple of hours of observation, even though the clean energy was a trickle she could already see some visible stability happening in the core. That flow was increasing slowly over time as the core dealt with what was going on inside it. It would take at least a few days to see visible progress. It seemed she owed Nova an apology.
You see prior to this moment Alissa hadn’t considered the corruption as a useable energy source. This was due to her being unable to detect much less manipulate that energy. So for good reasons both she and Nova had excluded it as a possibility in the beginning. BUT, if they were correct she was now in a functionally limitless energy environment, she was limited by the flow rate not the total amount. Unless she was wrong this corruption would continue to flow like an endless river, until this demand was surpassed she had endless power. While she couldn’t use this energy directly she could use it to power the base stations and eventual defenses she was going to build. And a house… definitely building a house as there was no possible way she would continue living like this for one moment longer than necessary, it would be bad for the health of other sentient creatures if she continued to be unable to relax a bit.
All of the base stations that she had created had been set to draw from the M-to-E converter for their power, dumb machines that they are. They followed these directions and only pulled power from that source, and so a glaring blind spot had been revealed.
It only came to light because Nova was searching somewhat desperately for an answer to their power problem, they had been looking at it somewhat backwards, Alissa couldn’t pull in energy she couldn’t manipulate, and she wouldn’t pull in more of the corruption due to not knowing what it could do. Additionally the core was already dumping it on her, with no benefit, she was something of a storage place for corruption. She couldn’t use it, and was in her mind it was unnecessary baggage.
If it wasn’t for the nano-swarm Nova wouldn’t have noticed it, you see each individual nanobot was absorbing some of the corruption present in the air along with the normal energy it powered itself with. Therefore that energy could be used to power the tech they were using and creating. Nova had noticed this while redoing the power calculations, they needed accurate numbers to plan for how many base stations the M-to-E converter could support. Each nanobot would add its excess energy to the base station upon return, and while minimal it did create an oddity in the calculations as the stations were not using as much power as they should. This might not be surprising for the new stations but when the advanced one started showing this Nova began to hypothesize that the bots were using more than the latent energy for their power.
This led to a somewhat nasty fight, Alissa couldn’t confirm it, she couldn’t see the power an individual nanobot used. And was unwilling to divert based on possibilities at this point. She had been getting angry and somewhat depressed seeming to just want to get it over with. Nova had to admit that her companion wasn’t totally wrong, as on its own it wouldn’t save her, it would be remarkably useful going forward but that would be immaterial if they died in a few days. The most it would do was slow them down, not a lot, as they wouldn’t approach the limits of the available power until after the test was run. If that failed it wouldn’t matter much what they could do with what’s around.
“So that worked, and now we can begin the real projects.” Commented Alissa as she switched up the designs in the room overlay to include the base stations in the network. Hopefully they would use up more of the excess corruption giving even more time to work.
~ * ~
As time went on Alissa felt that she was beginning to understand not only the purpose but the function of the core. It was a lifeform and it was naturally occurring, how that happened she neither knew nor particularly cared about for the moment, that meant it had a purpose in the ecosystem.
The nanobots absorbing energy from that system told her that maybe the core wasn’t meant to solely absorb the corruption. Yes they were underground where this corruption settled however she couldn’t imagine how many of these things there must be for any clean energy to be left in a planetary environment. It wasn’t like a river of this crap was constantly falling down and through the open areas, even the air on the outside of the field was mostly clear of it, so this couldn’t be the only one of its kind. Well… to be honest the corruption could be new but it seemed to happen naturally as a part of the ecology of this place, the clean energy in the air getting dirtier over time.
As more energy was produced by the core and released into the domain she now inhabited the core began to rotate. Granted this was like glacial levels of movement of a millimeter a month, of rotation but it told her that they had been closer to the complete collapse of the domain than she thought. It had been what felt wrong about its stillness. The core was locked in position at a quantum level, probably projecting into other dimensions. That would somewhat explain why it could not ‘move’ in this reality in terms of her picking it up and walking out of the cavern, it simply couldn’t be moved, locked in place by anchors in places that she didn’t interact with. It could however rotate, why this was important or even possible… she had no idea, it didn’t matter anyway. All that mattered was that the rotation allowed it to perform its function.
She suspected that that function had to do with making things that cleaned out the corruption, and possibly drew in outsiders to clean them as well. A symbiotic organism that cleaned energy and attracted living creatures that needed to dump that energy, by providing several benefits. She knew that some of this could be her imagination or wrong, although she felt like it was more the details she was mistaking and not the fundamentals. Like how a treatment for a medical condition might work, but the beliefs on why it worked were incorrect.
First, the core wasn’t the ‘organism’ it was an organ like a heart. The domain it projected was the organism, and it was currently aside from her defenseless. Not just physically but in terms of its defenses against the corrupting energy that nearly killed it. The advanced nano-swarm wasn’t just pulling more energy from the room it was also releasing some back like the crystal it absorbed and stored this energy, and slowly made it theirs. Each nanobot was being improved by operating in the domain. That energy was the free energy the core was releasing the parts it couldn’t keep after it finished cleaning, and it was becoming a part of the inhabitants.
Second, Alissa had a nearly eidetic memory when both Nova and her implants were involved and the way the domain’s energy acted around the bots was different from how it interacted with the goblins and she didn’t think that was a coincidence. When she had activated the base station she had done so using her personal power, which was indistinguishable from the core’s personal power. That the power was stored in separate containers was not relevant, those nanobots were a part of the core and its domain now.
The next part was that she had an odd feeling that if she could direct the energy stored in both her and the core she could make things. Like her very own goblins… YAY… not so much. At the moment it was pointless because she couldn’t direct that energy but if her ‘creations’ (those touched/activated by her power) were the inhabitants of this domain then she could make the guardians needed to defend her new home.
Since she could power the stations with corruption and direct the rest around the room as planned. She moved on to the next stage of her plan, the room would eventually take care of itself. Walking over to the large open area to the left of the cavern she designated the bulging room as a workshop, and while not excluding it as part of the network she was making, she did actually want these surfaces covered. Moving to an open area there she laid out the three designs she wanted.
One was a micro-bot base station. That station would take up about twenty-seven cubic meters of space and she put it in the corner. At three meters a side it would be the largest station she had built yet, producing larger and smarter versions of the nano-swarm the bots would be about half a centimeter in size and while less precise they could do more from the bulk creation standpoint. They were still able to manipulate nano-materials utilizing the nano-arms on the underside, and long legs to move around. She was going to use these to help out in the cavern. Even with the larger size of micro-bots the station could hold tens of thousands of the bots and build more if needed.
This was a step towards a build-up, nano-swarms were all well and good but she did need bigger tools to make any significant progress in making this place livable and defended.
The other two designs were what she was going to use to defend her new home from things like nasty goblins, and anything else really. One was a bare-bones skeleton with articulated joints and a blank face that only had eyes. The second was also a skeleton but it had everything you would expect from a primitive robot. Both designs were primarily made of rock, for their structure. The first was made only of stone and she wanted to see if it could be animated solely by this energy in the room. She didn’t have a lot of hope for this, however it kind of felt like it might be possible. The second was the most basic design available with the materials she had, it was more complicated and would be barely possible to create. However it would certainly work as it was the internals of a basic security bot with no armor, the stone couldn’t handle the weight. Both also required a seed to operate and were basically crap, but it was really all she could do with what she had.
Other designs required too many different materials to be feasible or were too complex to build.
“Nova queue these up for production start with the micro-bots I want at least one swarm focused on this. It’s time to start kicking ass.” Alissa said with a renewed bounce in her step.