System log: The Bunker, Site 3
Solar Calendar: Unknown, 2???
Current status: Active
Log 7
The resolute group of humans were gathered in front of the records room’s terminal console. Their relatively short walk had provided Gamma enough time to parse through a list of repair plans before settling on the one that satisfied the greatest number of needs and priorities. Once it was satisfied, and once the humans appeared to be ready, the program activated the screen above the terminal and the speakers in the room.
“Emergency repair crew detected,” Gamma said in its fake robot voice. “Displaying repair priorities.”
With a simple command, the program loaded up the map of Site 3 onscreen. The humans were able to see a large complex mostly covered in shadow before the image zoomed into the one area that was clearly visible. This included the entrance, entrance hallway, mall lobby, the small corridor leading to the record room on the left, the small hallway leading to the medical center on the right, and the unvisited second floor of the mall lobby. Allowing the humans a moment to analyze and understand the map, Gamma then highlighted the easiest of the most problematic issues the humans could fix on the map. The program included each problem with a description of the issue, and the corresponding results once fixed.
The boss of the group, Donaldson, focused first on the most obvious and most critical work order on screen. “Repair hardline connections to the entrance,” he read aloud. “This will restore critical power to facility defenses at the entrance, including door closure. That seems, pretty straight forward. What do you think Sloan?”
The younger man, who had once again plugged into the terminal to read the data, nodded slowly. “Depends on what the damage is,” he mused as he read through the more detailed information Gamma allowed him to see. “The defenses worked when we arrived, so at least one cable should be mostly intact. If we have to replace the entire line though, we won’t be able to without ripping out every surface to reach the wires. And that applies to a lot of these other ones too.”
“Like here,” Sloan indicated one of the blinking dots on the map. “There’s an issue with the air circulator for this part of the ruin, but not much besides a general location of where the problem is. It could be anything from a clogged pipe to a demolished part of the ruin. The other one, which I think is a little more critical, is over here on the second floor.” He pointed at a different dot. “It’s another power issue, but this place seems to be for part fabrication. If the doors stay open, we risk dying. If we get the doors closed without the air running, then we’ll suffocate. But both probably require new parts to repair, meaning we need the fabricators working, which also might need new parts and still exposes us to danger from the open doors.”
“Sounds like a bad game of rock, paper, scissors,” Ryan noted.
“It does,” Sloan agreed. “And the part requirement is basically adding ‘gun’ to that mix. Everything else here is minor, but still critical: checking gas and water pipes for leaks, restarting the waste recycler, moving the stalkers remains to the fabricator room after fixing the elevator-”
“Wait, what?” Dina blinked.
“That’s what it says,” Sloan shrugged. “Logically it makes sense since, after all, there isn’t an easy way to get raw materials for the fabricators. The facility wants to recycle the bugs, though . . .” Gamma wondered what the issue was as the human Sloan trailed off. Like he had said, it was a perfectly logical use of the resources on hand, much like how Gamma planned to recycle human waste into edible foodstuffs, and eventually the hydroponics. What was the issue?”
“I know what everyone’s thinking,” the boss finally cut in with a chuckle. “In an ideal world, selling the rare earth metals from those scrap heap bugs would have netted everyone a good deal at the guild. It sucks, but think of it as an investment in fixing this place to not only keep us alive, but enrich us later.”
Reluctant nods came from all around, and Gamma quickly adjusted its H.I.P. parameters to include a level of human need, want, and greed in future calculations. Evidently, not even the end of the world could eliminate capitalism; this was a reference joke from Dr. Plummer, obviously it was impossible for life to exist without resources and the ability to acquire said resources. Gamma disabled its self-justification programing temporarily and focused more processing power back on the humans.
“Anything else we need to know Sloan?” the boss asked.
“I’m reading that a lot of the infrastructure we’ll need access to is hidden,” the man revealed a moment later. “Whether its false walls, switch activated doors, or trapdoors I can’t tell, but there are maintenance tunnels that’ll make our jobs easier if we can find them. No guarantees of their condition though; just start poking around the general area where the problem should be.” At his direction, everyone plugged into Sloan’s exosuit to download the work order data. Unlike him with his scanner and small terminal reader, everyone else had to rely on a small screen built into their exo-suit arms to read the map data.
“Okay people,” the boss commanded the attention of the group once the data transfer was complete. “Here’s what we’re going to do. There are three major objectives, so we are going to split into three groups of two, check out each place, and regroup to discuss each situation. Sloan, check out the fabricator room, and Dina the entrance. Twins, split up between Sloan and Dina, doesn’t matter who is with who. Ryan, you’re with me, we’ll check out the entrance. Regroup in 15 people, and keep an eye out for tool lockers, fake walls, or anything else that may make our lives easier. Move out.”
As the humans left the records room, Gamma turned the majority of its attention back to the more pressing matters on hand. While the group of humans had been distracted, it had taken the liberty of using the 10 construction drones summoned to guard its core to secretly take away the body of the stalker brute and one of its lesser. While it would have been easier in the core room, per safety standards it had commanded the bots to take both bodies up to the fabricator room by one of the paths hidden by facility damage. Using the still operational scanners once they were hooked up by the drones, the program had been hard at work analyzing both types of machines.
Its inner report went as followed:
I.M.S- Type 007: Stalker
Functions: Scout, Combat, Assassination, Anti-EW
Design: Mantis
Creator: Unknown
Strengths:
Stealth, Pen. Medium Armor, Wave Detection, Sound Detection
Threat level: Small
Weaknesses:
Light Armor, Isolated CPU, Limited Range, Short Battery
i _ i
\V/
/\_|_|_/\
/--\
_/ \_
Description:
Small combat invader machine loosely based on Earth fauna. Used during the invasion to locate hidden defenses and strongholds and eliminate resistance. Each unit is connected to a single hive base and swarm squad.
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-Usage ceased upon achievement of main objective due to low energy usage efficiency.
I.M.S- Type 007a: Stalker Brute
Functions: Defense Penetration, Combat, Anti-EW
Design: Peacock Mantis Shrimp & Mantis, Battering Ram
Creator: Unknown
Strengths:
Brute Force, Heavy Armor, Wave Detection, Sound Detection
Threat level: Medium
Weaknesses:
Low Maneuverability, Slow, Isolated CPU, Limited Range, Short Battery
i _ i
o\V/o
/\_||_||_/\
//--\\
_// \\_
Description:
Small combat invader machine loosely based on Earth fauna. Used during the invasion to dismantle enemy defenses, strongholds, and resistance. Each unit is connected to a single hive base and swarm squad.
-Usage ceased upon achievement of main objective due to low energy usage efficiency.
Thanks to the damage done to the machine’s computer core from combat and age, Gamma was almost effortlessly able to pierce through the weak digital defenses to scan, copy, and analyze all available data. Even if it hadn’t used a dummy core to tank the digital countermeasures, including two rather insidious self-replicating viruses (-error- hyperlinks blocked), the five other dummy cores on top of Gamma’s quantum encryption firewalls, to say nothing of the other defenses, would have been enough to overcome any issue.
Of course, the program did have the dummy core dumped into the recycler incinerator automatically once the job was done. Better safe than sorry had been heavily encoded in its programming, though not as a core personality module as its designers had acknowledged Gamma likely would be required to take some level of risk to accomplish its mission. It was digressing again; somehow topic drift had never quite left human A.I. development even after two centuries.
Returning to the main topic, Gamma took the liberty to classify these new machines as ‘invader machines’, or I.M.s for short. Without access to its other memory banks related to the topic (-error- data not found), the program was starting over from scratch to build a new memory bank. Both the stalker and the stalker brute were made of local earth materials it turned out, judging by the half-life of certain atoms in conjunction with the timeline of their creation. This was reinforced by the apparent desire of the I.M.’s desire to use local earth fauna as the baseline form, which Gamma confirmed was also followed on the design of each’s insides.
According to its scans and subsequent dissection of the I.M. form, Gamma detected several odd design choices in the stalker body that lowered efficiency in its purpose as human killers. Had it been the one designing a machine for express purpose of killing humans silently, it wouldn’t have allowed the design of the stalker to be limited by the form of a preying mantis. This was the main reason why the stalkers suffered power storage issues, as the battery size the body held was insufficient for the complex machine’s needs. This had to have been an intentional choice by the designer and, judging by the human’s repeated reference to ‘bugs’, had been and continued to be a theme. While it didn’t make sense logically, creatively, it hinted at a dark humor in the intelligence behind the I.M.’s: an unleashing of pestilence and famine on the world of humans by an endless swarm of ‘bugs’.
That didn’t mean there weren’t other types of I.M. machines based on other earth fauna or flora, to say nothing of alien forms, but given the current data on hand Gamma expected it would see more bug types sooner rather than later. The unknown ‘worm’ I.M. mentioned by the humans to have been the cause of their entry into the crater, a forbidden zone no less, and how it had ‘lit up the crater in thermal-grade fireworks’ while likely being the cause of Site 3’s accension, did not provide the program any comfort.
In the background of its processing power, analyzing the I.M. designs invoked new core modules in Gamma: Creativity.exe and Design.exe. The former had been headed up in development by Dr. Forsooth, the other co-creator of Laugh.exe besides Dr. Plummer, the latter by Dr. Dilbert, who’d also lead work on Logic.exe. Dr. Dilbert had the fewest recorded logs in Gamma’s memory banks, and appeared exactly the same in every one: neat, professional, office attire. Dr. Plummer’s records were (-error-, data not found), but the friendly-faced woman had popped up in some of Dr. Plummer’s recordings. Her red hair had gone from fiery to very light by her last appearance. This fact invoked the Sadness.exe program in Gamma momentarily before it shifted its attention back to the fabricator room.
As it turned out, the stalker bodies were perfect targets for recycling. Not only did they contain much needed metal alloy Gamma could use, but many analog parts could easily be recycled without incineration and used on other projects and repairs. Once the fabricator room was working at full capacity again, breaking down each stalker body would take about five to ten minutes-
Real life time finally caught up to Gamma’s time as it detected the incoming arrival of Sloan and one of the twins (the program seriously wondered when it would be getting any names for the duo) to the fabricator room. The ten construction drones had left a little while ago once their services were no longer required and returned to work on the foundation with their fellows. However, that left two large and leavy metal alien bodies on the floor when the two humans walked in. Needless to say, they were quite taken aback.
Sloan and the twin exchanged bewildered looks before finally shrugging. Evidently, the nature of ‘ruins’ like Site 3 allowed for such weird events to occur, to Gamma’s relief. Not that it had made a mistake or lost track of real time.
While the twin examined the stalker bodies curiously, Sloan walked around the room with his weak passive scanner, relying on the data he’d ‘taken’, thanks to Gamma, from the terminal to examine the room. In truth, due to the damage to the facility, Gamma itself wasn’t quite sure of the degree of damage to the room, and many other parts of Site 3. Many of its active hardline and wireless sensors had been disabled in the ascent, though that may have been for the best given the I.M.’s sensitivity to wireless signals.
“Hey, can you give me a hand here?” Sloan called out a few moments later. The twin walked over and helped hold part of one of the fabricator’s walls up while Sloan removed screws with a multi-tool. He helped the twin lower the metal sheet to the ground when he was done, before poking inside with a light and his sensor. When he was done, they did the same to each fabricator, and then the wall outlets each fabricator was connected to.
“Okay, I think this is enough for now,” Sloan said when they were done. “Let’s head back down and meet with the others.”
The twin gestured at the stalkers curiously. Sloan shrugged.
“We’ve seen drones moving things,” he said. “Getting a head start on moving them up here isn’t strange.”
Simultaneously, Gamma watched the other human groups investigate their areas. The boss, Donaldson, and Ryan had managed to break into the broken security room that looked into the entrance hall and find the Jeffries tubes that allowed maintenance access to the wires and other hardline connections. Gamma didn’t have access to the unpowered cameras in the hall, and had lost sight of the duo after they entered the maintenance tunnel.
The same had happened with Dina and the other twin, once the duo had finished knocking against the walls of the general location for their work order after finding the false wall. Once they’d climbed into the Jeffries tube, Gamma could no longer see them. It could still hear them though, as the echoing sounds from the tunnels made it out into the lobby where the program’s sensitive microphones picked them up.
As it turned out, the group of humans needed 20 minutes to regroup in the lobby instead of the initial 15, a failure to meet deadline Gamma noted for their records.
“Okay, so Ryan and I think we found the issue,” the boss reported first. “It looks like when we forced the door open, we accidently pushed it into a damaged bundle of wires that had fallen from the ceiling. I think we can fix it if the door is moved enough for the wires to be shifted out of the way if we have some welding tools and insulating tape. Dina?”
“The air circulator system seems to be a complete mess,” she admitted with a frown. “If we go by what size these ruins actually are instead of just what we have access to, the job is impossible. But, I think if we plug up the connections to the unknown parts of the ruins and focus on repairing just the needed section, we could maybe get it working. We did find a way to enter the vents, but they’re not built large enough for our exo-suits. I didn’t want to risk over-exploring, so I don’t know how doable my idea is.”
“We didn’t find a maintenance tunnel in the fabricator room,” Sloan finished up the conversation. “After examining each fabricator and their power connection, I strong believe they’re all usable. It would appear something kept up with their maintenance, and they’ll built to withstand damage better than other machines. I couldn’t get a voltage from the sockets, so it would seem the issue is deeper inside. We’ll need to crawl the tunnels to find the problem area.”
“So, all three problems are in the tunnels huh,” Ryan mused aloud. “Sounds like a poor setup for a horror film.”
“Since you mentioned it, something moved the brute and a stalker up to the fabricator room already,” Sloan revealed. “So, we aren’t alone in here.”
Donaldson snorted after seemingly enjoying the awkward look on Ryan’s face. “Considering we’ve seen three drones active, and that the ruin’s computer talks to us, that’s not exactly a surprise,” he pointed out for everyone. “Now, unless someone is dumb enough to do something they aren’t supposed to, like stealing food, I think we can safely assume that our presence here does not constitute as trespassing. Should the situation change, then we evacuate as per standard ruins practice and wait for the rescue team. Until then, we should go back to sleep and get some rest.” He raised his arm to read his terminal. “According to my timer, the stims we all took should be wearing off soon, so like it or not we won’t be getting much work done. Should we survive the night, we’ll commence with repairs in the morning.”
“We’re just going to go to sleep?” Ryan blanched.
“Of course not,” the boss rolled his eyes. “I said earlier we needed to move the door to the lobby, right? Obviously, we’re doing that first. That should give us at least a few seconds of heads up now that our sophisticated alert system is used up.”