Log #65
I have had an awful few days and what exactly happened is complicated and I;m not even sure I actually know what happened at all, so some apologies if my explanations are lacking, let's start with the catalyst of this whole thing.
The first thing that went wrong was the appearance of a new type of bug, at first it was a bug that would disappear before a weapon could hit it before reappearing near where it had vanished, it couldn't teleport often and faster weapons like lasers could still kill it, same with things like landmines and surprise attacks. Then it kept getting stronger, teleporting at greater distances and at faster rates, it wasn't a red alert or anything, the giant bugs were a greater threat and these guys were not common, so the minds and I probably didn't give them the worry we should have.
I mean it's not entirely our fault, there have been some bug variants that defy all sense, one was even utterly impervious to anything we could dish, not that we had tried nukes or any of the other high yield weapons on it, and the invulnerable bug died before it could reach the base because its cells couldn't absorb oxygen, a rare short range teleporting bug was noteworthy but not panic worthy. I just had the hive that produced them added to Balistraias extermination list at a medium priority.
I even dissected a few and figured out how to emulate the teleportation, if not how it worked in the first place, by implanting an artificial version of the bugs teleportation organ into a few drones, I even had plans to add it to myself after some more through testing and refinement, I had figured out the things restrictions and the teleportations weaknesses and devised a few counter measures just in case.
Then once I had put the teleporting bugs out of my mind one of the bugs teleported into the outer layer and grabbed me, ignoring its previous range and sight restrictions, along with its inability to teleport through solid matter. Without the slightest pause the bug was lit up by both my armor and dozens of drones and turrets, shredding the thing within milliseconds, but not before its broken body managed to teleport again.
I don't know if it was the wide variety of exotic energies and materials that were unloaded into the bug, or if it was the stress placed on the organ from teleporting so far, or even if it was the things intention to do it in the first place, it could even even be a combination of all three, but regardless of the how and the why the bug teleported with me and flung me far far away.
The suits chronometer says I was between spaces for 13 days before it spat me out in some random cave system, I guess that 13 days spent in a space between spaces left my mind and body in rough shape as I only have a vague memory of mind numbing pain, instead of remembering what exactly happened myself I have the suits logs of the events.
The first notable thing I saw in the recordings were the energy readings throughout the caves, the walls pulsed with an unknown form of energy, and the energy seemed to be scanning the armor, it didn't actually get through anything but the outermost layer but it does imply either an intelligence or automated system within the caves. This energy also limited some of the scans my suit had available, and blocked signals.
Now my suit is essentially the most advanced drone I can produce, even more advanced than the spider tron, (the command tank is more of a mech than a drone it would not work without Balistraria to run it) so it figured out pretty quickly that the cave system was blocking its transmission, and with its little machine mind decided the best way to solve that problem was to leave the caves. This was a good decision and even one I can agree with, no the issue with the armor not having true intelligence became apparent later, you see the minds programed the armor with a series of parameters and actions to take if those parameters were met, this situation was entirely unpredictable though, and no specific actions were present for the armor to take.
Instead the armor took a few parameters and tried to do all of them at once, which is okay as none of them were mutually exclusive, the first parameter met was my own incapacitation with an active threat trying to kill me, which led the armors programing to assuming direct control of the armor and incinerating the threat. This first parameter is what allowed the others to be followed in the first place, the second one met was being trapped in unknown and hostile territory, which caused the programing the attempt contact with the minds with long range comms, when this failed it triggered a third parameter, trapped in hostile territory with jamming preventing assistance and reinforcement, which led the programing to adopt more active measures, increasing its attempts to hide and beginning attempts to escape the jamming without being spotted.
This was all within the first 10 seconds of my arrival mind you, and so far no true mistakes, sure it didn't notice that it wasn't a bug chewing on me, but it was programed with only 2 foes in mind, bugs on land and fish in water, I was on land so it must be a bug.
Honestly I only have nitpicks with the armors automatic performance, or ways it could have gone wrong, for an untested system in an entirely new situation it preformed astonishingly well, it's just that things could have gone so much worse if things went just a little bit differently, so a few changes will need to be made.
With the armor having activated parameters that prioritized stealth and escape over anything else it soon began making its way out of the caves, avoiding large concentrations of "biters" and taking the quickest route up and out of the cave that it could.
Shortly after the armor began its journey upwards the energy scanning me got even more intense, still my armor is shielded to protect me from near point blank blasts of radiation, and from fairly high yield nukes at that, so the strange energy didn't succeed in getting any deeper, this part is just conjecture, with the failure of its more passive scans and the suits avoidance of any of its other forces the cave decided to teleport in, or maybe just produce, a few beasts to fight my armor, presumably to test my capabilities.
What I do know for certain is that those creatures were decidedly not friendly, the creatures looked like a modified variant of an earth rabbit, and were seemingly composed of something that was not quite matter, granting them greater speed and durability than should have been possible.
This is one of my first nitpicks, the creatures appeared with a burst of energy similar if not identical to the energy the bug used to teleport me, they were made of an unknown material, and I had no records or information about them. If I had been conscious I would have captured a few specimens to study, instead the armor just disintegrated them.
The few rabbits the armor destroyed did require it to use weaponry though, and the intelligence within the walls certainly took note of them, this success is presumably what caused the next creature to appear, actually for all I know that was standard behavior and had nothing to do with my immunity to its scans, this new beast was some bipedal bull, and it did not even have a few seconds to do anything before the armor had reduced it to ash.
By this point the armor had caused quite a ruckus, and had drawn a bit of attention to us, as a few people (yes actual humans) were following us. The armor had noticed the people, but with its limited intelligence assumed they were bugs, the only reason it did not attack was the fact they were moving at a slower pace than it, it assumed that was their max speed and so disregarded them as it knew it could outrun them.
I should probably go into more detail on the humans, they were a mix of standard human and a few with modifications, though all visible were biological ones, they moved at a pace more than keeping up with the armors own, which even slowed by the lack of my piloting and the difficult and unknown terrain was still well in excess of what an augmented human could reach. The only exterior modifications any of them had were animal features or modifications to size and ear shape. The additional animal features seemed functional so I can't judge….. much.
They had no examples of advanced technology on them, save the augmentations, and with the biological nature of their known modifications those could be inherited, there were examples of metallurgy in the armor but said armor was seemingly made of more unknown materials.
Weirdest thing though, only one of them was actually 'adequately' armored, the rest either wore armor that covered little of their vitales or they were wearing cloth, though the cloth was made of a sturdy material, which could be considered armor if one stretched the definition, still only one of them were a helmet! One! At least one of the unmodified girls was walking around with only 2 small pieces of cloth covering her!
I know I have enough subdermal armor to pull that off but based on the smooth and unblemished nature of her skin there can't be any significant armor under her skin, or at least not any armor I know of.
These people were following me for at least part of my journey, staying around a hundred feet behind the armor and killing any of the creatures that they encountered with enough ease that they had to have some significant augmentation, one of the pointy eared ones even possessed an ability to manipulate some of the energy in the air and within her body to cause effects, which is something I did not expect to see and almost caused the armor to engage, it was only the fact that my escape had a higher priority than fighting dangerous variants of bugs that stopped it.
They left my radar range after a fair while, so they presumably stopped following me at some point, though they could have entirely tracked me through the whole cave system and to the basement I am now in.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Aside from the humans with a disturbingly high strength to weight ratio there were a few other things of note, first, the creatures were weaker the closer I got to the exit from the cave, and the cave showed signs of frequent human habitation, with bits of refuse, trash, armor and weaponry scattered throughout, and even some torches in the higher parts, though the torches are seemingly fueled by the energy in the walls, probably bait now that I think of it.
The second thing of note is once again about the creatures, it seems there are crystallized concentrations of energy within them, constantly being fed and powered by the energy from the walls, presumably how they are powered and animated, and presumably from that presumption they may be a weak point.
That's about it for the cave system, I don't really have any confirmed theories, nor do I know why people venture into the caves in the first place, but I imagine I'll find out something eventually.
Outside the dungeon is a fairly large metropolis, and even though the passive scans did not make a very detailed map of the city during my "jog" they still gave me a decent idea of the size and structure of the city, which is primarily composed of "rustic" buildings, wood and stone being the primary building materials, with cobbled roads in more traveled areas while a few areas are just packed dirt.
It is cleaner than one would expect from a city of this size and development, but everywhere with less traffic shows signs of decay and dirt just under the outer glamor, meaning there are still slums and run down parts of the town, I'm actually in one of the run down buildings now, even if its not derelict, yet.
That's about all I learned from the city, not much considering the suit was considerably more concerned with tracking living creatures and plotting a route out of the city than staying to investigate it, at least with the hostile creatures and non hostile humans it scanned them to determine weak points, with the buildings it just noted that they existed and were not in its way.
Now we get to my… I want to call her my rescuer but that Implies I was in immediate danger, host would probably be a better term. She, if I can even call her that, is not a human, even if she was at some point a human she cannot be considered one any longer. Her body absolutely thrums with power, and it's not just something my sensors can detect, no I could feel her power even in my broken state as a pulse of home and hearth, a soothing flame that made everything better.
She genuinely contains power comparable to multiple nuclear reactors, I think, the sensors can't seem to decided and the feeling she gives off remains largely constant no matter what fluctuations the sensors detect, and I have instituted constant neural scans to insure no lasting changes, though with the damage my mind has already taken none of the changes that could happen can be directly pinned on her anyway.
Once I had felt her power my mind and body both reached out to her in some desperate attempt to ease the pain, and with the lessened pain my mind managed to put together enough of an order for the armor to stay near the woman and to not harm her, before I once again fell into the haze of pain and lost lucidity. Still the armor managed to follow her to her home, being guided by her, I don't want to know what would have happened if she had tried to run or fight me because the armor tried to follow her, another flaw in the suits program but not one I can think of a way to solve.
She lead me to a ramshackle church, the church part makes sense as I could imagine people worshiping her as a god, the ramshackle part makes less sense, investigating why she is in such a decrepit building is definitely on the to do list, once she lead the armor inside she took us into a deeper portion of the church, into what was presumably her bedroom based on the cosmetics and evidence of the bed having been used and not made after. She then looked at the bed and looked at me before dragging the armor over to the wall and sitting down, leading the armor to following her to the ground.
After a fair bit of finagling she managed to get my head resting on her lap, why she dragged a fully armored person she did not know into her bedroom just to give them a lap pillow remains a mystery, but I am just going to assume she felt that if I was actually a threat she could incinerate me or something.
She just sat there rubbing my head through the armor for 62 minutes before she seemingly fell asleep laying across my armors torso, where she shortly began to shiver, how a being with that much energy became cold from a 60 degree room is beyond me but the armor took allowing harm to come to the woman as harming the woman and activated its exhaust ports to purge heat into the room, not something I would do unless actively on fire or submerged in lava, and raised the rooms ambient temperature until the woman stopped shivering, at which point she wrapped her arms around me and pulled herself even closer.
As the armor was not wasting power running constant brain scans I don't actually know if this is the case, but based on the fact that even now being near the woman hastens my bodies and brains recovery, I assume that her glompling my armor for a few hours is what allowed me to finally return to some semblance of consciousness, at which point I saw a woman hugging my torso while snoring, my current location, and hundreds of alerts and alarms from my armor, along with a deep gaping emptiness where the rest of the factory should be.
I have been outside the factory's comms range on numerous occasions, at least in the earlier days before the constant bug attacks, so I know what merely being far away feels like, this was not that, if before it felt like the factory was just out of site, something I could see if I just focused hard enough, now it felt like I was standing in a crater where the factory used to be, it was just gone and nothing was left but pain. It was and is indescribable but if I had to try I would say it is like having the majority of your brain removed and having all of your limbs and muscles removed, while simultaneously every nerve you still have and every one you used to have scream at you as loud as they can, filling what remains of your head with waves of agony.
It was not like I could do anything with that much pain, I could just finally remember that I used to be a person and that there was more than the agony, which allowed me to look out into the world and see. This stimulus of something that was not pain allowed more and more of my mind to pull itself from the pain and eventually I gained enough of myself back to form a plan.
That plan was essentially "figure out what happened and where I am then move and figure out how to stop this pain" it was admittedly not a very through plan but it did give me cause to go through the records of my suit and to put together a few theories, and with more distractions came more and more awareness as each piece of me began planning and working together.
It was after another few hours of review and planning that I gently pried the woman's arms off of me, before I picked her up and set her on the bed. She was my only contact and had already shown herself to be at least outwardly kind, and I would need a guide of some sort for this world.
Then I began to clean up and reinforce the building, the thing looked ready to fall over with the slightest bit of damage and there was rot in half the wooden walls, I thankfully still had wood on me, which is interesting considering I haven't personally chopped down any trees for months, but considering I just don't clear my cache it makes some measure of sense. So with the help of a fair few drones and taking from my own personal stockpile, along with the broken wooden furniture in some of the rooms, I began to renovate the building.
The outer facade of the building, and a fair few of the walls were stone, which I had in even more abundant than wood and it was significantly tougher and less flammable, if still brittle, so I spent a fair bit of time renovating the outside myself, the drones handled the interior as I did not want them to become common knowledge or for anyone to see them at all really.
The bedroom the woman slept in was already in a hidden bunker of sorts, so not much needed to be done on that front, It was just a matter of quietly reinforcing the whole thing with some fairly durable metals while she slept, then putting the stone facade back with another hidden door, this one would eventually lead to a bunker under the bunker, the bunkers bunker if you would.
There were two reasons I was renovating this building, well two main reasons, the first is I needed something to distract myself and mind numbing building was a ready option, the other was I had some vague plans to stay here if the woman would let me, and even if she didn't leaving a building in that state left my entire body feeling itchy, which while not as bad as pain was still not pleasant, especially considering the pain did not cease with the itching, they just stacked.
The glass was the only significant hurdle, I had some clear metal I could have used for it, and I even had a few sheets of durable crystal that would have worked, but I didn't just have generic glass and I did not want to spend my more valuable resources on something that was really just a structural weakness, so I just bricked in the windows.
The building still doesn't have power or climate control, I don't want to add any obvious signs of my tech, and I definitely didn't want any tech that could have been left behind if I had to leave, and something inside a building definitely counts as something I could have to leave behind.