Log #14

Year 1 day 34

Well things have gone to shit pretty recently. You'd be surprised at just how much can happen in 8 days when you don't need to sleep and your enemies don't even have the concept.

First the work on the moon proceeded without many issues, turning it into a fortress better than any other I've built just on size and number of turrets alone. I got a new substance that can grow and turn material into more of itself as well, and that'll slowly replace the lunar surface until the moon is a giant metal sphere. Then with more energy I can keep the moon growing into a larger and larger thing, though I might need to run simulations on how that'd affect the tides and the earths rotation. Might need to move the moon further out or figure out gravity tech on a scale large enough to ignore the issue.

Could also just have the moon 'shed' excess material and use that to make defensive rings around it or the earth, I don't want to completely incase the planet, that'd be wasteful and expensive, not to mention the androids wouldn't like it even if I simulated a sun.

Thoughts for later, ready made space-infrastructure that the moon or any converted mass of sufficient size can produce seems highly useful and like the kind of thing Byzantine would enjoy.

The moon working turned out to be an excellent thing, covering it in more turrets than I know what to do with kept the bugs from lasting there and allowing it's factories to support the war effort on Mars and The Range.

Also note, my ability to effectively counter the bugs in urban environments without removing the urban environments is minimal. Find solutions for that or find ways to reduce living collateral. Likely a unit dedicated towards evacuating and protecting individuals or providing first aid/repairs.

If I'm going to be doing more work in such 'fragile' areas I'll need preparations, and while my medical facilities are good they aren't exactly mobile. A well armored tank with said medical facilities and drones with medical supplies and programing would be useful. I have some healing serums and the drones can be equipped to monitor vitals. It'd also help to prevent Plagues from crossing dimensional boundaries and let me make and distribute vaccines on site.

I can't see the situation in which I'd need that, but I'd rather be prepared than not.

Honestly it had been about as relaxing as it was possible for things to be for awhile, just making new weapons and advancement after advancement. Making progress on having the androids form a proper society and having enough spare time to actually spend time 'socializing' I.E having my body in the same room as my android squad and talking about some of the new hobbies 13B and her squad got and working on my own 'hobbies'.

I also went ahead and made a proper flagship, The Steadfast Recompense. An absolute beast of a ship made to arrive and end fights before anyone else even knows what's going on and an utter departure from the design of the other combat ships. They were basically made to be mobile weapon platforms, sitting and taking fire and forcing enemy ships to face my static defenses. And now they can serve to hold off the enemy long enough for the Steadfast to show up and kick in the enemies teeth.

Add in a proper dedicated air/space superiority fighter to supplement my bombers and ground support planes and my military is starting to shape up into something not tailor made for pest control and containment. Really though most of my stuff, tactics included, has been made with the bugs in mind and a fair portion of that stuff is either overkill or not effective against more 'human' foes, another fair portion is perfectly effective. Balistraia had been telling me what exactly she'd need or want and I'd been making it, along with things I'd figured would be neat.

With all this in place and the new units being made I had decided it would be a good idea to send the Steadfast Recompense and a few construction ships over to the Quarians to let the androids open contact once they were done with the human's meeting, perhaps even letting the humans and Quarians meet and give them some much needed supplies. Partly because the Council wasn't stupid and had figured out the human's had help and partly because I'm not the kind of bastard to let a species slowly go extinct because it'd be cheaper, they have to annoy me first and even then I'd probably just tell the androids to replace or subjugate the government that annoyed me.

Making a sterile world using machines for a race that hates machines seems like an absolutely hilarious thing if I end up doing it. Also note to self, look into the Geth some more and maybe make contact.

Preparations for said trip had begun at exactly the worst time, as the bugs figured out multiversal teleportation, the bugs. Figured out. Multiversal. Teleportation. Not just hijacking my network and using that to get about, no proper tunneling into places I haven't even been. How the hell did they do that you may ask, aren't the bugs only supposed to adapt to direct dangers or threats to survival? An excellent question, I have no damn idea.

Bug adaptations while fast on an evolutionary scale are still gradual, they don't just start hovering or become fireproof and well, they only adapt to counter direct threats like plasma or flying enemies. So not only should they not have started developing it in the first place, they also shouldn't have been able to have so many bugs with that level of effectiveness. It goes against all other known trends.

So something happened, and I can't really afford to just be pissy about it. I need to start multiversal containment measures, both stopping new portals from being opened and hunting down and exterminating bugs on said other worlds.

The good news is we have at least a week or two before the bugs make all life on the worlds they invaded extinct and some places can probably fight them off. If the bugs invade a medieval world the bugs will spend most of their time building hives and slowly spreading, only hunting down nearby settlements. The danger for those worlds comes when the bugs finish their initial nest and start sending out 'colonizers', they'd likely want to build nests in places ideal for life and well that's where the people are. But the bugs would be unlikely to actually bother with a mass extermination, only many local exterminations.

A world at the start of the steam age however would likely have two weeks, people are moving enough and have enough of an information network for fleeing humans to lead bugs to other settlements and they'd likely mass armies to try and fight off the bugs. Add in the sheer number of people and it'd be a disaster as the bugs actually divert forces towards pest control.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

A 20th century world would actually do okay, they wouldn't win mind you but if they have sufficiently built up militaries and can contain the bugs to the continent they arrive on well a cruise missile will hurt a bug, and nukes are still an effective weapon. Even tanks and anti-armor weapons will work on smaller variants. If the governments of the world handle the situation with either care or what they'd believe to be excessive force they could hold the bugs off for months. If the bugs starting numbers are small and the bugs are constantly harassed at least.

Space age civilizations will be in roughly the same situation but not at any risk of going extinct if they have FTL, or if they are more advanced they can contain or wipe out the invasion.

These are admittedly optimistic scenarios based on the bugs being cautious and caring more about preparing for my own containment measures than they do rapidly taking over the world, and the fact that most worlds with life have water and probably oceans the bugs would need to circumvent.

This is quite literally worse than anything I had imagined the bugs were capable of. Sure my imagination came up with worse ideas, but I hadn't considered those or this possible, and now? Well I'll have to rethink.

Log #15

Year one Day 35

Okay, I haven't been able to figure out how to track where the portals went, but I have designed a system that should theoretically let me send a small group in the 'wake' of the bugs. And when I say small I mean it, too much and I risk disrupting the 'wake' and having the group sent on an entirely unguided dimensional hop.

I should be able to send the 'elite' tanks I'd made; however, the prototypes were made for urban combat and about half as tough as a command tank, while being twice as expensive. A small assembler in the thing for ammo production but it could be used to start a factory in a pinch, slime-tech stored resources were limited however as stuff in storage still has dimensional weight. Meaning resources will need to be gathered, and rapidly, in order to ensure the bugs can't out attrition me.

I'll need to send an android-me to actually build new factory tech and make new factory tech as needed. They aren't good at it, but with an assembler they could. With the tanks having limited AI and my android selves power armor sending android seems a tad… unneeded, but it has been encouraged in case I end up needing to interact with the locals in a significant manner. That and the androids can be intelligent and delegated to other issues I discover that aren't building the factory and opening a connection back to Nauvis.

That's just the force I need to send to unknown locations; however, I also need to deal with the bugs in locations I'm already at. The fight on the Far Far range seems like it'll be the most difficult front, Mars has nothing on it and I can just the bugs up from orbit once I get there, Earth has the androids and alot of static defenses, and the bugs died on the moon within moments.

Mars also has the advantage of lacking a breathable atmosphere and nutrient rich soil. It's not enough to stop the bugs but they are currently optimized to get energy from oxygen and hives draw on the soil and the life around them almost as much as they draw on the sun and probably other sources for energy. Even a half percent reduction in energy efficiency and production will be noteworthy on the scale the bugs fight at and this is likely more than that. Though my knowledge of how the bugs work is still very limited, given they don't work the same way for long.

I still want to help the Quarian's with their issues but I think they'll have to wait a year or two longer.

The humans are also finally in talks with the androids, now that the fighting has been forced away from critical infrastructure, and said critical infrastructure has been rebuilt. It is a bit of a shame that most of the talking has been the humans wanting to know about the bugs and the threat they pose rather than more formal relationships with the androids but enough of the latter is still happening for the venture to be a minor success.

It does bring to mind a potential issue however, it's more than likely I'll end up putting the androids into contact with other dimensional nations, and that said nations are also going to interact. And using the earth as the primary meeting point is… suboptimal. Unless I turn the entire planet into metal and control every factory there is the risk of disease, storms, invasion, civilian android and machine stupidity.

So I'll need a dedicated place for the various civilizations and dimensions to meet and intermingle without any complications. And building a… small world, would be a fairly decent option and make a statement. I could give each polity a section of it to build/live in/ operate out of, grow it as needed, and use it to house refugees if a world becomes uninhabitable or already has an end of the world thing going on. Adding a greater degree of separation for the androids as well, with them setting up their own enclave there for me to deal with the same as the rest and allowing them to do their own stuff without my direct help.

Balistraia had played a fairly large role in the background for the first diplomatic meeting, keeping it operating smoothly and priming the humans to bring up topics we wanted brought up. The bugs fucked that up sure but we have no plans on playing such a role again unless its critical.

I also have a plan to do something I said I'd never do, the android copies of me are good, they have brain power and ingenuity comparable to mine but they are mundane even though their consciousness is at least partially magical. Every blueprint and design they make I need to go over again and make compatible with the factory, every test material made needs an assembler or my own hand to infuse it with the factories effects, more complex machines outright break, which is why I have so many of them just building more durable materials for the factory to enhance.

They are good, but they are limited. In order to fight the bugs however I can't settle for 'good but limited' . I needed perfection, but I'd simply have to settle for 'better'. And I was better, the flesh me was better than the android versions, so I needed more flesh Me's.

I need to clone myself. Really making android versions of myself had already been breaking my promise, as had letting my disposable machines become sentient. I'd already made life and consigned it to my fight, making an organic isn't that much further and if I give them my memories it's just like another android self. More justifications to condone what I believe to be wrong, but that's just human nature isn't it.

I've already begun the testing.