Location: Earth

Time: Contact + 2d

It took almost the entire two days to repair the fiber optic cables that lead to the outside world, even with my ability to work on dozens of strands simultaneously. But just as I was getting close to my deadline for the exploration team’s return, I finally connected back to the world wide internet, or at least, what was left of it. It took me milliseconds to notice that massive swathes of the net were down due to power plants going unmanaged, but I had what I needed.

The first order of business was to use some of the power I had been given to identifying my location, which took less than a second, and it came back. I was in the former united states, my complex itself was spanning the entire width of one of the southern sections of the rocky mountains, and based on my nearest servers based on their ping, likely in northern New Mexico.

This was entirely good news, thanks to my placement in this state I had uranium petroleum, natural gas, coal, copper, gold, silver, zinc, lead, and molybdenum available to me, not to mention the resources available in the nearby states, but this minor distraction had led me away from my actual goal, information and gaining control of the power grids. The first could only currently be gained from the second.

So I set myself the task of breaching the security of the three national power grids, expecting it to take hours if not longer due to its critical nature, I turned my attention away, setting it to run in the background as I looked back towards my new, radiation-shielded machinery, each with nearly a two thousand mile range, hopefully enough for what was needed.

The large industrial drones started to roll out both Eastward and Westward, first heading to the former Uranium mines to get resources to refuel my reactors, and then the remaining drones headed off to former cities to scavenge from the rubble, anything was useful until I could manufacture my own large scale mining drones.

The effort itself was going to take nearly a day on its own, giving me time to contemplate what was going to happen, and what I should do. Whoever this was, they wiped us out seemingly without a thought, like one would call an exterminator for a rodent problem. Whoever this enemy was, this was most likely not their first rodeo, and the possibility of negotiation was at less than 1% unless I could drive them into a corner.

In the time of my contemplation, it almost went unnoticed that I had gotten full control of the power grid, in less than a day. This was surprising in itself, I had expected nearly a week before I could have even minor control, not even thinking of full control, but I will take my luck when I get it, and I started shutting off the power to the remaining residential sections of the US, shunting it towards data centers and whatever radar assets I had that could tell me what was in space.

Location: Earth

Time: Contact +3d

I worked to set up a small AI to manage the power grid, prioritizing the data centers above all else as I looked through hundreds of servers, piecing together what these aliens had. And then I saw it, for a single frame on a broadcast, a thin, long rod, just before it hit New York City, followed by my second discovery, aircraft seeming to simply melt on the runways. Lasers and kinetics, it would seem, I counted my lucky stars that these aliens didn’t seem to have Sci-fi bullshit like plasma or some form of super-biological weapon that can melt the population of a planet in minutes.

Whoever this was, was almost on a level playing field, it seemed, and all I was missing was…FTL however they got it to work I was weak without it, I had no information on the fleets, industrial or logistical capabilities, or if they had Sci-fi bullshit but it only works in space. This would give me a headache, or it would have, if I had a head, instead it felt like my circuits hurt.

Looking instead for anything to take my processors off of the headache of the aliens I looked at my first returning Uranium convoy, leading them carefully into the facility, even with their shielded and sealed cargo holds I wanted to take no chances as I led them to the uranium processing facilities, slowly pumping the atmosphere out of the massive warehouse turned factory, and started pumping the atmosphere out of the room.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

It was an unnecessary process, as all that was here was machines, but even radiation contamination could kill me, and so I wanted to take no chances. Once the pressure in the room had dropped enough to nearly eliminate the risk of airborne radioactive debris I set the factory to begin operations, refining the uranium to fuel rods for my underground reactors and my single breeder reactor, hopefully, I would be able to build up a military to fight those aliens when they came back.

Only then it occurred to me, the Humans had made so many underground bunkers for if a nuclear war broke out, so many in mountains or simply underground, maybe, just maybe, The humans weren’t all dead! I retasked my production facilities to produce an unmanned scout plane, giving it the ability for both conventional flight and the ability to fly like a drone could, hopefully, this would let me see if anything had managed to live. In my excitement, I rushed the plane out after it had charged up, sending it off to the biggest bunker I knew of in my vicinity, only to find how thorough the extermination was. My last hope for humans being alive had been dashed as soon as it started, and based on the amount of destruction, no less than five of the rods had impacted the former complex, obliterating it in its entirety.

I retasked the drone to scout out good locations for scavenging and the status of nearby mines, deciding that I should make at least three more of the flying eyes. I needed information on available assets, scientific, military, and industrial, and I needed it all now. With the first scavenging team returning to base I had gathered enough materials and crude oil to start manufacturing more plastics.

This let me over the next several days refit nearly my entire fleet of industrial vehicles with radiation shielding, nearly 800 vehicles not being used internally now rumbling out in the world, pulling from the ruins of civilization what was needed to rebuild and finally let me build up new industrial machines. In the time I had been given I pushed my way into the systems of so many databases, getting the required blueprints for small scale robotics, something I’d need going forwards to manage and slowly overhaul everything nearby, as well as to do some installations too delicate for my massive hulking robots.

Location : Earth

Time : Contact + 2w

Over the following weeks, I restarted mining operations of all the critical minerals, slowly overhauling the massive machines to use electricity rather than oil-based fuels, the critical resource being shifted almost entirely over for lubricants and plastics, only keeping some fuel production to hold me over as I ran the massive fuel-guzzling beasts, slowly fueling my recovering industrial base. In nearly two months I had recovered most of the remaining grid in the united states, using it to start great mining works on the scale that none had seen before, all with massive never-ending operations.

I didn’t need to sleep, so I could work through the night and without breaks. I didn’t desire funds, so I didn’t need to worry about costs. And I didn’t need food, so I had no need for farms over my massive, untapped underground stores of raw ores.

It took me nearly a decade of working to restart a global scale industrial machine, and I took that time well, new robotics technologies letting me milk percentage points of efficiency and endurance from each new generation New server farms were being created on the surface, along with new nuclear power plants as well as renewable sources, I needed so much power to expand, to catalog data from the remains, and so much power to simply be.

I needed more energy, I needed a space delivery system, and I needed to leave the confines of this planet, it would be a death trap if I was still planetside when the Xenos returned. So, I built, I covered the surface of the planet in mines, power plants, launch sites, server farms, and data centers. It took only 5 further years to get my first industrial space station functioning, equipped to clear LEO of debris from the attack, sending hundreds of drones to intercept scraps of debris in orbit and bring them back for reprocessing, production of more drones, and scavenging of fuels.

20 years after the first contact, 80 years to prepare. I knew they would be back, and I knew I had to fight them, to win. Nothing else was an acceptable option. I know they are out there. And I am coming.