I couldn’t help but worry about the Androids I had sent out as I tinkered with a ship based weapon. It was mostly mindless work, and as such my mind was free to wander. It actually took a fair bit of redesigning to make my weapons both spaceship mountable and vacuum capable, but by this time I’d already gone through the routine enough to have it down to a science.
The androids were as liable to make the war infinitely worse as they were to actually de-escalate the situation. Sure they’d protect the human colonies, with the primary goal being preventing orbital bombardment and a secondary goal being impending their fleet movements.
But that was trying to stop a fight by beating the other guy up so he couldn’t fight, not just… talking it out. I wasn’t good at that though so I had played to my strengths, waging war. But that wasn’t what I really was, I didn’t like using what I built to kill or hurt. I just liked using what I built. Sure there was some overlap but if I never had to fight again I wouldn’t go seeking it out.
So while I’d done the best I could with my strength, sending out defenders to discourage violence. It was time to pursue alternate paths now that I’d done all I could on such short notice.
A directed thought composed a message, and another sent it. ‘Pascal, can you come to my workshop I have something I need your help with” and with that I sat back to tinker some more.
Thirty minutes and two new weapon designs later I felt the door open as Pascal walked through, and I turned to face them. I'd already been able to see them but it was only polite to look at some when you talked to them. That and Balistraia keeps yelling at us when we don’t. Pascal hadn’t gone in for any major modifications, they were just shinier and less rusty. Built out of a more sturdy metal rather than the scrap they had been built from.
“Maker, it's been awhile since we’ve talked. Are you doing okay? You said you needed help with something?” it’d been around a week since we’d last talked, which for Pascal was no time at all, but for me… yeah it’d been a bit. Still I nodded “I take it you’ve heard about the human empire we found?” At Pascal's nod I continued. “Well this is less well known, but they got into a war not two days ago.” It said something about Pascal's programming that I was immediately able to pick out the naked concern in his body language. Not that we’d get drawn into the war, no it was for the people who fought in it. Pascal was a caring soul, and sought nothing but kindness and peace. Which was exactly what I needed. Pascal spoke with determination lining their synthetic words. “That’s horrible! What are we going to do?” there was no question in the machine's mind that I would be helping, and no doubt that he would lend his own help.
“I’ve already taken the first step, sending out a ship with the androids to protect the humans. They aren’t the aggressors here though and that’s where you come in. …. I want you to negotiate a peace treaty. Or at least a cease fire.” Pascal nodded his assent before I’d even finished speaking “how soon can you send me? What can you tell me about these aliens? Where would I be going?” I flick the robot a data packet with all the relevant information on the Turians and the counsel before filling him in on the rest of the plan. “We’ll be sending you to the center of the galactic government. The ‘citadel’. As far as I’m aware just bringing the war and relevant details to the council will be enough for the other members to bring the Turians to heel, but I’m sending you to make certain of it.” I waited a few seconds to see if he had any questions, but unlike most androids or machines Pascal actually had a hope for peace in him, and that let him imagine something the others couldn’t. A fight ending just because you asked the right people to stop.
“We’ll need to stick you in a new body, and you’ll be sent with a team of actual humans. I’ve already ‘leaked’ documents about the citadel to the humans and had an unmarked proposal for a diplomatic voyage approved. In the human’s mind the worst case scenario is a single ship and a few people lost for a chance at peace, along with the knowledge that peace isn’t an option. The ship will be a simple unarmed, lightly armored vessel of my own design. It’s already been built, and while luxurious to a human if you get in a fight you will be killed. The body I’ve also finished, you’ll be Paul. A xenobiologist and anthropologist, and you've taken a few courses on diplomacy. You won’t be the head of this delegation but you will be an advisor. And as long as your skin remains intact you’ll read as human to any sensors they have.” it took us three hours just to design the thing, it better stand up.
If it doesn’t I vote we just throw the offending sensor and everything its attached to into the nearest sun.
I still say an automatic system to hack sensors to feed false info would work better.
We can’t do that yet. And it’d take way too much processing power away from pascal. So .. no
This deluge of information seemed to take awhile to filter into Pascal as it took a few seconds for him to react, in which I yanked the sheet off one of my numerous projects revealing the almost painfully ordinary human form underneath, even the clothes were bland and forgettable. I’d made the thing and would still struggle to point out a single feature. As the sheet fell to the ground though, Pascal finally came back to themselves and I saw steel enter their gaze as they stared at the body. “When will I be leaving?”
-----------------
I let out a faint sigh as Pascal left the room in his new body, and as the door shut I locked it with a flex of my mind. Within moments the floor under my chair gave way, dropping me into a pit, I fell for a few minutes before slowing to a stop in my much larger workshop.
A few other forms of myself were working, each body with minor or major variations to my own. They were technically androids, but they had my own mind, and were really more just extensions of my own body. It hadn’t been nearly as difficult as I had thought it would be to operate more full fledged bodies, but it really shouldn’t have surprised me. There was little difference between this and a drone, only with these ones I ran some of my own mind on the hardware, actually making it easier than drones.
Right now we were working on developing our understanding of plasma, not just with weapons either, shields and power systems were equally as important. And I was making progress at an acceptable rate, I’d already had plasma turrets, and now I could add plasma throwers which through a constant stream of plasma rather than pulses, and plasma mortars, which through larger slower balls of plasma, allowing a stronger containment field and a significantly larger range. But those were academic really, new weapon systems were absurdly common, as were improvements to those systems. They needed to be, if they weren’t my weapons would just stop being effective.
No, the actually useful developments were in my infrastructure and defenses. And my options there were far more limited, the new storage tech, along with the teleportation had been my largest boons in awhile. But it wasn’t really enough, wires simply couldn’t move enough power. Not even my ‘abilities’ slow improvements to the designs could keep up with my exponential power demands. So plasma conduits, and if I was doing that I might as well expand that to a new array of shields for each of my outposts. More power intensive than my standard shielding array but it would have some offensive uses as well given it was a wall of burning plasma.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
That and the bugs had gotten absurdly good at draining my shields, molecular agitators to drain my molecular stabilizers. An ingenious adaptation, and something I was keen to replicate on my own weapon systems given its effectiveness, but those plans didn’t change the fact that my largest defensive tool had been hobbled. And I needed new options.
I joined myself at the table housing the full sized plasma emitter, small scale versions had already been implemented on both elite drones and shield tanks, but the full sized version had evaded my lesser selfs efforts but two minds were better than one, and I had seven.
We set to work, attacking the problem from dozens of angles, refining and improving the design, fixing every individual failure and fixing the problems those had caused or finding new solutions if the new problems couldn’t be solved. It was tedious work, and most of it was simulated meaning the actual explosions were rare, removing even that slight excitement. But eventually after more than an hour I had a version large enough to mount on a command tank, and one that’d serve to defend more important defensive structures, if not entire walls or factories.
Not good enough really, but it was passable and if needed I could simply add more units to achieve that purpose. That wasn’t enough though, I’d never settled for the bare minimum before and I wouldn’t now. I dived back into the work, pushing my surrogate bodies minds past their limits, and pushing my own as far as it could go working at the tenacious problem.
Three of my minds burned out, even with the extra server banks allocated to the effort. Maintaining a field to keep such a large amount of plasma both contained and stationary was a task that was bordering on the absurd, the programming alone was absurd, much less the hardware needed.
It was a problem worth solving, and so I would. Already I’d learned enough to improve my previous designs' power efficiency and overall integrity. And that alone was a prize worth a minor headache and some stress.
I was on the verge of a minor breakthrough when I felt a pull on my attention, and my mind drifted from my task as my others kept at the work. My body keeping to its task. I followed the pull to the minds, a constant presence feeding and receiving information from and to me. They didn’t usually bother to get my attention though, just giving me the relevant information and letting me decide if it needed my attention.
And I immediately understood why it was different this time, nothing urgent was happening. Probably… I could see this ending very poorly though. It was just absurd enough to be pointed out. It was raining slimes, not Nauvis slimes. That’d have been a significant problem as those things would just dissolve everything not shielded, including the ground I built on, as I’d learned when a typhoon had caused that exact situation.
No, it was Far Far Range slimes, raining down on Nauvis… somehow. All the kinds I’d seen and a few I hadn’t, though a look at my records showed me that we had records on them.
Where did they come from?
A storage unit might have gotten picked up by a torranado?
Why would they be on Nauvis? Slimes are regulated to earth and the range?
Why would I know?
Whose job was it to keep track of the range while we worked?
It was me, myself, and I.
Your not as funny as you think you are.
I wasn’t joking.
Unknowns, even theoretically harmless ones were bad, and so my mind leapt into concert with Byzantine as we scoured the records, and when those showed no missing slimes we had drones manually check each system. But nothing was missing, no slimes were unaccounted for, certainly not the hundreds of thousands that’d be needed for this. We didn’t even have that many in storage, and we barely had that many at all.
By now the landscape was covered in the things, trees and grass were being devoured by the herbivores while the carnivorous breeds looked for food that simply wasn’t there. Nauvis didn’t have anything they could hope to eat. But even with a full half the slimes lacking in food I could already see a tide of Tarr forming, consuming the slimes that were quite literally falling into them.
There were so many Tarr some of them were forming into larger and larger forms, towering over the trees.
A poke to Bulwark and that problem was solved, millions of shots lancing out and a myriad of deaths befell the creatures. Byzantine didn’t need a prod, having already gotten the information after I’d poked Bulwark into action, the millions of logistics drones leapt from my base, if they were idle they left the safety of the walls and started corralling the slimes, and they were soon joined by hundreds of thousands of courier and military drones.
Slimes were sorted by type, Plorts were gathered, and any Tarrs were incinerated before they could start a gray goo scenario.
As this situation began to sort itself out I spread myself through the rest of my factory, this storm hadn’t just been around my main base though it had been strongest there. Slimes were everywhere I had sensors. They’d even fallen straight into biter nests to predictable results. The only slimes that lasted any significant length of time were the quantum variety, and that’d just because they kept just not being where the bugs were.
Still, none of them survived longer than a minute, and I hoped in vain that nothing bad would happen with the bugs that’d eaten the slimes. But…. just to be sure I made those nests a priority target, there was no way I could get every bug that had eaten a slime but at the very least I could slow or lessen the disaster.
A quick check confirmed that this wasn’t happening on earth or the range, this was a Nauvis alone event. And I couldn’t help but wince as slimes plopped into the oceans and rivers on my sensors, and a feeding frenzy inevitably began. With more creatures closer to the surface more of my fliers would get shot or pulled out of the air. It’d be days before it returned to normal, and as more and more slimes kept falling I could only watch as the frenzy grew larger and larger. If that kept up they’d start forcing their way into the rivers, eating the creatures there, and if slimes got into the water…. The creatures would see there was plentiful food on land and come out.
Only the smaller ones that couldn’t really fight in the frenzy, but one of those was still enough to put the hurt on a command tank, even if they couldn’t kill one. My movements would have to be changed to move around them. My movements? Must be too close to Balistraia if that’s bleeding through.
Not really an issue though, stuff like this happens when we think about military issues.
subconsciously pulling at Balistraia’s own memories to supplement our own lacking understanding of the situation. Useful.
And something we’ve been doing alot.
Wow! The line between us and the things linked into our mind and subconscious is thin and blurry! This comes as a surprise to me… somehow.
I hate you.
We know
Well as long as nothing big left the water, and with the small size of the slimes that was decidedly unlikely, we’d be fine. They usually stayed deep even during a frenzy, and most were too large for the rivers regardless.
Did we just think that? I hate us.
We are going to need the plasma bomb soon won’t we.
My mind started to return to my body as the situation outside began to somewhat stabilize, the minds had a course of action now and didn’t need my involvement to keep to it. Still I’d be figuring out just why that happened soon, just another thing on my ever growing to-do list.