The day after the battle the minds began to implement their plans, the maker was spending the day working alone to decode and reverse engineer the ships parts so they could act with relatively little supervision.
Byzantine had previously noted that the maker's passive awareness of their actions lessened when the maker was focused on a complex problem and little was more mentally challenging for the maker than working on his crashed ship.
With the bulk of the makers attention elsewhere the minds could divert their own attention to their projects, Bulwark and Labyrinthine were working together to retrofit and improve the makers nutritional processor, designing artificial flavorings and colorings to enhance the makers meals, while also allowing the processor to incorporate fish and sea monster flesh into the meals, rather than being separately cooked.
The minds were not built for large scale innovation nor were they built with creative thought in mind so designing a new machine from scratch was a tall order, and designing an efficient one was even harder, still while the minds were not meant for a task like this that did not mean they would not succeed, the maker had built them well and they would showcase this by overcoming their own limits to build him the best machines they could.
While Bulwark and Labyrinthine handled the food processing machine, Byzantine and Labyrinthine worked on food production, while they only needed to feed one organic it was still becoming increasingly problematic to find reliable sources of uncontaminated fish and tree for the maker to eat, the somewhat obvious solution to this was to begin running an underground fish and algae farm to produce the food the maker would eat everyday, this would ensure the makers food supply stayed controlled and stable as the factory slowly poisoned this world, Byzantine was even planning to selectively breed the fish with desired traits and to further modify them to improve flavor and size. They would produce the best fish on the planet for their maker, as he deserved nothing but their best.
While an ordinary organic mind could only focus its attention on a single task at a time, an inorganic mind had no such limitation, so even with the standard running of the factory and the addition of multiple new projects the minds were not suffering an significant decrease in performance, this meant that each mind could handle more than one project and so while Bulwark was handling defense, designing a new food processor with labyrinthine, and coordinating the construction of additional defenses with Labyrinthine and Byzantine the mind still had processing power to spare towards writing new code for the courier bots.
Still Bulwark wasn't handling the coding alone, besides itself Bulwark new only one other mind that had a near enough idea of how organic minds behaved, while no mind knew buildings and construction as well as Labyrinthine and no mind could understand statistics and throughput like Byzantine, the combat oriented minds understood life better than any other, after all must first understand their enemies to plan around their actions and so the mind Bulwark would be working with was Balistraria.
This unique understanding of life shared by Bulwark and Balistraria made them the ideal pair to deal with designing a machine that would act like an organic, a machine that thinks is simple, any computer qualifies for this and the courier drones were no exception, creating a machine that can reason is more complex but still not insurmountable, you just need to code in priorities and have it change its actions based on that.
No, the true challenge was making a machine that could feel or at least seem to feel, you cannot code in concepts such as love and hate, they are chemical reactions in an organic bodies nervous system, and so a machine cannot feel them, but Bulwark and Balistraria were relatively confident they could get the fire breathing cat drones to act like they did, even if it would be a lot of work.
With the minds and the maker busy the day passed quickly, and as the sun fell below the horizon the maker went to sleep in his bunker.
The maker did not truly dream anymore, as his brain still received the information from the factory in his sleep, instead his dreams were full of feeds and statistics from every corner of the factory, with his mind no longer focused on actively thinking and controlling a body it was free to notice everything within the factory, and so the minds could not work on their projects without the maker seeing, even if he wouldn't truly remember what he saw while he was asleep, he would still have impressions of what had happened and would wake if anything major happened, and while the maker knowing of their projects was not truly a bad thing these tasks were not essential to the survival of the factory, nor were they helping with the makers goal of building a rocket, so the maker would order them to divert the resources and time to more “useful” projects.
This meant they were in more danger of discovery while their maker was asleep, and so had to stop any overt action till morning came and his mind woke from his dream.
As the sun rose on the next day and the maker finished up his daily checkup and maintenance he began his daily inspection of the factory, after ensuring that nothing currently needed his personal attention and eating a marginally improved breakfast he went back to work, allowing the minds to continue their projects.
As Byzantine was currently the mind with the least urgent tasks it was their job to monitor the maker, this was not to say that any of the minds were ever unaware of the maker, they all knew his basic condition and location, no it was currently Byzantines job to monitor the more complex parts of their maker, they were monitoring the makers thoughts and mental state, how many calories he burned and how many he ate, the stresses placed on his bones and muscles, his actions and assumed plans, and the makers augmentations, ensuring that nothing was even beginning to go wrong, and acting if it was.
And so it was Byzantine who contacted the other minds when they felt the makers anticipation rise, it seemed the maker was approaching a breakthrough in decoding the ships flightpath and Byzantine new this information would affect all future plans and so all minds should be aware and present for when the information was finally decoded.
This is why all the minds were listing in on their makers thoughts when he learned that the nearest known world was 6 years away
This is why all the minds felt as their creators mind finally broke from the fear, pain, and stress
This is when their maker died in a hostile world, with a shattered mind and fear in his heart.
This is when their maker was reborn on a hostile world that he knew wanted nothing more than his final death
When their maker learned he could not run
When their maker learned he could not hide
They felt as their maker's mind changed and shifted, his psyche ground into dust and rebuilt anew
When their maker truly became something that could survive on this world
When their maker became something that could conquer this world
And when their maker knew he must fight a world and win to survive
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Waking up was always a disorienting experience, the shift in perspective from dream to reality always took me a few minutes to process, and today was no different, still I woke up and was ready to leave my cubby within 3 minutes, and a drone came up to clean my body while another drone began to brush my teeth and comb my hair.
the construction mind seemed to include my daily hygiene under factory maintenance and it was easier to just let it continue than to spend a day changing that, also it meant I didn't need to comb my hair, it was long and curly and loved getting tangled overnight when it was free of the suit, in the nights I left the suit so it could be maintained anyway.
Still with daily hygiene handled I went to go get food from the processor in my bunker, it looked like the construction mind had done some maintenance on it overnight, it wasn't scheduled for a tune up but maybe a part had broken or something, still it seemed to be working now and I got a load of what i'd hesitate to call sludge because it wasn't actually that liquid, more of a paste really.
I sat down on my bench and began to eat “breakfast” and was immediately surprised to find that the paste tasted sweet rather than bitter, maybe the try it had came from had a higher sugar content in its sap? Still it was a welcome change and I made a note to find out how to have each meal continue using the same tree type, the logistics mind could probably handle that.
Now that breakfast was handled I was free to put on my armor, my armor only needed maintenance every few days and I tended to sleep in it, but one of the shield generators was on the fritz and I’d taken it off to let the construction mind perform overnight maintenance, so I was stuck sleeping without the armor last night.
I used to have trouble sleeping with the armor on but now I struggle to sleep without it, and last night was particularly bad. The bugs had attacked overnight and partially destroyed a part of the wall, and the defensive mind had detonated some explosives to stall the attack, The explosion managed to wake me up in the middle of the night so I got an even worse night of sleep.
Still my armor had been repaired overnight and the drones dressed me in my 7 foot tall safety blanket, and with the air filtration and shields running to protect me from the pollution I was ready to go out of my safe little bunker and begin my day.
The heavy steel doors to my bunker slowly slide open, allowing a thin layer of smog to float into the clean air of the bunker before being pulled out by the filtration units.
I stepped out into a cloudy day, with the local sun only barely peeking out from behind the clouds, it was probably going to rain later but I didn't have any meteorological equipment set up so I couldn't know for certain, still it was a nice enough day, expecting that rather than the sound of birds in the morning the ambiance was the distant sound of gunfire and bug screeches. Which honestly was probably more relaxing by now, if I heard silence it would mean the defenses were not working after all.
My visual inspection of the factory went well, there weren't any clear paths for place to place, and I had to dodge and avoid all the moving machinery as I crawled past it but if I had one thing it was practice crawling through this mess, and with how hard it was to move through it technically served as a sort of defense, if you didn't know were to crawl you'd be pulped by all the moving bits.
I made it through the inner factories inspection with all my limbs still attached and hadn't found anything damaged, the construction mind did good work, especially now that the inner factory was just now 10 feet tall all around and multiple layers thick, you couldn't even see my bunker from on top the wall and the only ways out or in were underground belts that you'd have to crawl through, it was my own personal jungle of metal.
The middle layer was much simpler in organization, with everything separated into little blocks and main buses of materials moving everything in a central location, the logistics mind did good work, even if its designs didn't serve dual purpose as base defense
Everything in the middle layer was running smooth as could be though and I soon moved onto the brain of my factory, the mind's mind if you wanted to be funny. Each mind was encased in a concrete bunker with shields to strengthen it so I couldn't do a visual inspection of the minds without disabling the shields and breaking the concrete but I could check on their code through a terminal at each bunker.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
There weren't any obvious errors, thankfully as I wasn't sure I could actually fix them, with the inspection done excluding the reactor and outer wall and around an hour spent just walking about looking at things I was beginning to get antsy, still I couldn't just not look at the massive nuclear reactor running my base, even if being close to a giant ball of invisible poison made me uncomfortable.
The reactor took up a fair portion of the middle wall, and the area it sat was boiling, literally, there was steam everywhere and the air was over 125 degrees celsius at its coldest.
With condensation forming on my armor I began my walk. I began my inspection, taking care not to step on any of the heat transfer pipes. I only needed to lose one shoe to learn that lesson, and even if my newer armor would handle the heat fine I had little desire to test that. The actual reactor was practically glowing with heat and the steam was so thick I wouldn't even see it without the armor, and the steam would have boiled my skin off before I got this close without the suit anyhow.
The Reactor was fine though, it still had fuel and none of the components seems damaged and I didn't really want to be here any longer, making a quick escape to more hospitable parts of the factory I began walking towards the outer wall.
I knew the outer wall would be chaotic, I could still hear the turrets, still there wasn't anything essential in the outerwall, it was mainly simple components and ore processing, anything delicate or complex was farther in where the bugs couldn't get.
The outer wall was well defended, but bugs could and did get through, usually smaller flyers or diggers, but it happened so in the outer wall I needed to keep my guard up, making sure my armor was sealed and that the shields were operational I opened the gate to the outer section, the smog was thicker here, pouring from the rows of smelters and rising over the outer wall and into the wilderness, like a giant fog machine, smog machine? Still the belts taking in metal were full and that was all I really needed to see.
The ore intake station was more lively, with trains and courier drones unloading before heading back out for another load, there wasn't anything in particular I needed to check here but I felt the need to walk over here anyway.
I saw the refueling ports for the courier drones, being the only drone to run on gas rather than electricity they needed special ports, but had less refueling time, and I’m pretty sure I saw a bunch of the refueling courier drones just chewing on bits of rock, or bating it around like a yarn ball.
Well I wasn't pretty sure, I was certain that it was either happening or I was hallucinating and it got even weirder as I watched one of the construction drones throw a rock for a courier drone to fetch.
I’m just gonna assume that the construction mind is running tests on the courier drones dexterity and durability and move on, and ignore the two courier drones that are play fighting in the corner of the refueling station. It was going in the folder.
Still with everything crucial in the outer wall running, and no unusual occurrences at all in the factory I was free to go to the ship and begin my day's work, with only 2 hours wasted checking up on everything and no maintenance needed, the construction mind was the best idea.
The first task for the day was examining the new bug types, or rather their corpses, when the defensive mind killed a new bug type it usually gathered a specimen to examine, but it did mean I had a gallery of bugs, ranging from under a foot to over 40, although the 40 foot specimen wasn't actually kept long, and all the notable variations of bugs.
While the changes on a day by day basis in the bugs was minor, over the course of weeks and months it became notable. The first small bug corpse, biter variant had a notably weaker and thinner shell than a current small biter, with numerous other improvements to leg structure and mobility present.
This isn't even getting into the more wild variants, the camouflaged ones just have colored shells and heat dampening to make them harder to spot, simple enough, still dangerous but simple, it was the digging and flying variants that got me, they wouldn't be able to survive, the flying ones had hollows in place of a digestive system and the diggers would melt from their own acid after a day, they were only born to attack me.
It says something when an entire ecosystem wants you dead, I don't know what it says but its something.
Anyway there weren't any notable new variants, just faster, bigger and tougher. Worrying but nothing I needed to make a new weapon for yet, which was the main worry as I can't really escalate more besides making the turrets bigger, I do have nukes in reserve for larger hordes but they aren't wipe out a city nukes just more wipe out a block or 3 nukes.
So I’m still good for now but some of the bugs are hitting 65 feet long and 30 feet tall, they aren't common but they are terrifying, still targeting them with artillery before they even get near the wall seems to work for now.
With the examination and worrying done for now I'm free to move to my second task of the day
Ignoring the slowly fading sounds of screams, chittering and gunfire I began to walk back to the middle layer. I had dragged the ship here when the attacks started getting worse so I would have somewhere safe to examine it.
The ship has been the source of numerous breakthroughs, in new types of metal and the rare bits of machinery I can reverse engineer, so spending a day just trying to puzzle it out is a good use of time when there is nothing urgent that needs my attention.
What isn't necessarily useful is trawling through the ship's logs to find out more about myself, but that's what I’m doing today. You can't have a book in front of you that explains where you come from and why you were born and then not read it, it's impossible.
So rather than doing something definitely useful with my time, I’m spending it instead doing something maybe useful if I'm lucky, and considering that I am on this world in the first place, I am probably not very lucky.
Decoding the ships logs is tedious and annoying work, It takes awhile to get any progress but I have been working on this for a few days now so I’m expecting to get something today, specifically the ships map base, or at least the nearby map, It seems to have multiple separate maps for different areas of the galaxy rather than one big one, still know where I am can only be helpful.
If I am lucky I will find out there's a colony just a system over.
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I finally manage to get the map file decoded and sit in anticipation as it loads, it's taking awhile and I feel my anticipation rise even higher, the culmination of a few days effort is finishing right before my eyes.
The map loads and I begin searching through it, checking each system for markers showing a colony, I don't see any colonies directly near navius none even a few months of travel out, but I wasn't really expecting there to be, habitable worlds are rare after all, but I had been hoping for a refueling station nearby at the least but I didn't seem to have any luck.
Still there was plenty of map left to search, and there wasn't a need to be worried until I got to the years of travel rather than the months. I still didn't find any planets at 1 years travel, then 2 years, then 3 years.
It was at that point my dread and fear reached a crescendo and I instead began to use the maps search feature to check for any planets at all in this sector, it was a portion of the galaxy that took 10 years to cross, there had to be a planet with people somewhere.
The index showed that there were 2 planets in the sector with people, and it was with great trepidation that I checked the travel time, one was 8 years out, straddling the edge of the sector and the closest was 6 god damn years out.
6 years, I didn't even have 6 months before the damned bugs were taller than my walls and I'd be lucky to even make it 3 months if the bugs kept up their growth rate. And that was 6 years at best speed, the average ship would take 12.
It was as this realization dawned on me that I realized another thing, I was going to die here.
Sure there were long shots, I could kill every bug on this planet before they killed me, or I could try and escape without FTL, maybe I could even whip up my own FTL ship and fly to the nearest colony myself.
But those weren't real plans, the bugs were not something I could fight in mass and kill, I had no cryogenics to make a non FTL flight, and I had literally no idea how FTL worked, and not a single blueprint for it.
Those ideas were prayers, and as my mind realized this, as it finished thinking up any plan it could, any idea no matter how ridiculous to survive, and as all of those ideas failed it would just try more and more.
The thoughts and panic stilled and I didnt even notice as the factory went silent with me, every belt, drone, train, and gun stopped as my mind snapped under the strain. As it was squeezed and squeezed till it broke into pieces.
My body took a slow breath and exhaled as the factory started again, and with it my thoughts, no longer tinged with panic and fear. Instead an odd calmness and certainty arose.
It didn't matter if help was 6 years away even after I had a distress beacon running.
It didn't matter if the bugs would have me dead within a year.
It didn't even matter that everything I had ever built and done would be destroyed before another human could ever see it.
None of the horrible relizations and theories I had come up with truly changed my situation, I would still fight, I would still struggle, and I would still die.
I was a clone sent to build a world alone, so what
The bugs were smart, so what
The minds I built could act on their own, so what
I had magic factory building powers that turned me into a living gray goo scenario, so what
I’d be dead 5 years before help could come, if help would even come for a mass produced drone, so what
None of those things changed what I was going to do, they just changed how hard it would be to survive.
It just meant I would need to step up my game and try harder.
With this realization in my mind my state of calmness solidified and I began planning and issuing orders
I set the minds to planning attacks, expansions and redesigning the outer wall in case it fell, and then I planned for more modifications to my body.
I had thought with the assault mind operational that I'd be free to slowly grow my factory, that was no longer viable.
I had thought that with my walls and turrets I would be safe, that was wrong.
I had hoped that I was a person, but I knew I was a tool.
And if I was a tool I was no longer enough, and so I must be changed and upgraded to suit my new situation, or at least my new understanding of it.
My organic eyes were weak, my human skin tore too easily, my blood could leak, my brain could stop.
If my current modifications lost power from my suit the mechanical ones would stop running, so I needed a power source in my body.
If a part got damaged and I didnt have a medical bay I couldn't fix it, so my body needed the ability to repair itself.
My shields couldn't work on my skin nor flesh, so I needed to weave metal and wire throughout to let the shields work.
If my brain lost blood or oxygen it would stop, so I needed an implant to supply oxygen to my brain no matter what.
There were many ways I could improve my body, there were many ways I could improve my factory.
I had 3 months before the bugs were stronger than me, so I planned to use them well.
If the bugs would grow stronger, if they would change their flesh and bodies just to fight me, I would do the same.
If my enemies evolve then so must I.
3 months to gain ground I could afford to lose, not so hard if you think of it like that.