“Statistics aren’t biased, they must be biased. If you don’t trim data accordingly, you won’t have a census of the average human height, but rather than the median number of testicles and boobs per human is one, and that the average human eats 3 spiders a day. There needs to be some foresight.”
-Gangesh Babu, 2113, Comment on the Dwindling Human Natality.
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Contrary to Gloria’s many innuendos, nothing happened in the back store. We removed our clothing without much shame, though Gloria had a screen to give some privacy. If it was Mérida and me, that wouldn’t have been needed, but Makoto was shyer than most. And it wasn’t like we stripped naked, only to our underwear.
I highly doubted this was really needed for taking measurements, considering the current camera tracking technology. She already took my approximate measurements yesterday. But the seamstress clarified that this was more of a ‘feel’ thing than a qualitative one. There was no shame in getting your measurements taken, so I didn’t give it much thought. And I was the one who accepted the deal.
Makoto too by proxy, but she could have refused in every step, a thing I very much reminded her. But the idea of a matching outfit – possibly free – made her too happy to back down.
Gloria was swift with her hands, and also professional, a quality I hadn’t really expected from her. She didn’t try any funny business. Mostly because that would have constituted sexual assault against a student. The instant Makoto evolved; I have no doubt Gloria would be more… open. But I doubted she would do anything that would make Makoto uncomfortable. Not that I would allow her.
In no more than two hours, we were done.
The whole measurement thing didn’t take more than fifteen minutes, but we took the chance to try everything in the store as Gloria let us. Or rather, Makoto tried clothes whilst I was being played like a doll by two women with unfocused eyes and dripping mouths.
We left the store and continued strolling across the space station for a while. I wanted to go back to my tycoon as fast as possible, but I also couldn’t leave Makoto alone. Once she said she was tired from the walking, I escorted her to her quarters – that unlike mine was shared – and bid our farewells.
I felt partially bad for leaving Makoto this soon after her many outbursts, but she reassured me that she was totally fine. If she said so, I was no one to talk her back.
Sandra greeted me the moment I entered my own quarters, but I didn’t pay the VI much attention, I only mumbled back a hello and bye. I undressed with haste and donned my pajamas and in less than a minute I was already lying on the bed connecting to Project Tycoon.
In the darkness of my closed eyelids, the interface flashed with life. The logo of the Project Tycoon with its nondescript ship and planet appeared for an instant and before I noticed I was already inside.
The first thing I saw was the video feed of the QEC, overlooking the cosmos with Centrum and Tolaya in focus.
“Welcome back, Doctor Lorem.” The QEC AI announced.
Welcome back to you too. As always, some basic courtesy. Can you switch my feed to that of the colony ships in Centrum?
“Affirmative.” Before the vaguely female voice ended her word, I was already back at Centrum.
Status report. I commanded whilst I opened the many menus of the tycoon myself.
“The salt mining rover is almost here, less than 30 minutes for arrival.” The rover in question flashed yellow on my map. “Steel and concrete operations are finished for the geothermal plant; all local iron miner rovers have been placed to copper instead for the circuitry. Limestone ones continue operative as there’s not enough of a surplus to justify ending operations.”
The spreadsheet of data, timetables, and stockpiles washed in my nonexistent eyes. I hadn’t given the AI exact orders besides focusing on the gathering of materials of the central and then continuing the mining operation once that was done. I didn’t want to leave the tycoon without supervision once the actual construction began. Perhaps these robots were perfected after decades of spatial exploration, but Centrum was far from a calm place and there could be unexpected events that would jeopardize the operation. A low-level AI couldn’t manage extreme environments out of its routine.
I was happy to see the automatic choices it made regardless of my opinions. We had a bit of copper, but I doubted it would have been enough for the plant. The fact that it decided to mine it without any further initiative made things way easier than expected.
The salt rover is almost here, you said? It was a rhetorical question, but the AI responded with an affirmative nonetheless. We’ll have to heat smelt the salt, but first, we need to start building the installations of the power plant.
Construction would be the part that would take the most time, I already knew it. But there were some advantages to the tycoon. Construction codes didn’t follow safety rules if your planet was a wasteland. No humans, no nature. Nothing to protect. Sure, there were codes so the buildings didn’t collapse the next day, but because no human ever needed to step a foot on the plant meant that a lot of space that would be allotted for human pathing could be removed. Not only saving time and resources but making the building far more compact and robust.
Certainly a desirable trait in a geothermically active area.
By the way, how far is the closest aquifer?
“Around 500 kilometers.” The AI responded neutrally.
Damn. Rovers were slow and making pipes for such a distance would take a long time. Well, can’t say I tried making a normal steam engine. I failed as an engineer. Anyhow, mark on the map the suitable locations for the plant.
“Understood.”
The locations that were highlighted on the map were local, no more than 5 kilometers away. The AI compiled a brief for me besides the locations, but it mostly summarized having stable enough ground whilst not having deep magma rivers. Beyond that, there was not much difference between them besides the distance. Which made sense as we had picked this place for the mother base exactly for these reasons.
Start making the foundations in this location. With a thought, the location I had chosen lightened up on the map. Use free rovers to transport the materials. Once the salt rover arrives… I stopped for a moment. We need a crucible for the salt, is it part of the power plant blueprints?
“Affirmative.” The AI opened the blueprints for me.
Okay, have one of the smelters make that crucible with the ingots we have already processed. Then we can deposit the salt there once it’s over.
The following minutes were dull in the sense that the automated processes, not only of the AI but also the in-built ones of the rover did everything for me. Of course, not every human had the same knowledge I had, but it was a bit disappointing being this handheld. I had heard that the beginning of every tycoon was a mostly hand-off process, but I had found many optimizations already in the few choices I had made.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
There was always potential for optimization.
That was kinda my motto, and what led to the source of inspiration for my doctorate.
The construction progress was slow. So slow in fact that I thought if I should just send the last colony ship here or elsewhere to have something to do in the meantime. But I knew better. Even if the odds were low, all my progress could be eliminated by an eruption or an earthquake. I needed that backup plan.
That’s when I also discovered that the waterless concrete was yet not mixed. I eyed its workings and it basically worked like normal concrete, needing to be mixed on-site as the moment it settled it would be unmovable. However, instead of drying, it was more of an exothermal reaction. Something about acids. My chemistry knowledge wasn’t the best, but it reminded me of those exothermal reactions that would create a lot of toxic and hot foam from a single drop.
Just with extremely heavy limestone.
Well, I couldn’t call concrete heavy when it only had 3 times the density of water. It was nothing compared to elements like osmium or some from the isle of stability.
From what I could see from the blueprints and the 3D self-updating model of the construction’s progress, the foundation was the part that would take most of the time besides the engines. Which were already being constructed by smelters and assembler rovers. Whilst big, those machines were slow. The advantage was that they were mobile, all-terrain, and could basically manufacture everything.
The foundations, from what I could check, were earthquake-resistant. If the many steel rebars drowning on the concrete already didn’t tell me that. It wasn’t anything sophisticated, no gyrostabilizers or any fancy tech, but it wasn’t needed. If my early classes in engineering had told me something, it was that the simplest solutions were really effective.
As Archimedes had said millennia ago: give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world. Even basic levers had the potential to give a human tens of times their strength. Let’s not even talk about pulleys and their infinite increase in a perfect environment. Technically speaking, walls already protected against earthquakes because they dissipated horizontal acceleration. But I wasn’t an architect.
Here I was, quoting Ancient Greek figures on a planet thousands of light years away from their home because I was bored.
“The crucible is finished.” The AI announced even though it was already pouring the salt as I had previously instructed.
Is the salt pure enough? I asked, but I doubted that would present problems for the molten salt reactor. Engineering, at least on this scale, was basically eyeballing.
“The sand has already been treated during the transportation process.”
Oh, nice. I said with a mixture of excitement and sadness. Why were we even needed if the AI could do everything? I knew the Tycoon Initiative was more than a colonization effort, also a way to keep the immortal humanity entertained, but that was just me being pitiful. I wasn’t the average evolved student. Mérida will certainly have no idea what to do in this situation.
The rovers had local computers to communicate with each other, but the limitations of space – both the cosmos and the physical resource – made it so they weren’t that potent.
And it was obvious.
They could communicate, but without my assistance or that of the AI, they were far from optimal. No more than one rover could work at one thing at a time if I wasn’t overlooking it.
What resources would I need to build a control terminal? I asked the AI. Instead of verbally responding, it deployed a list of materials in my sight. Silicon, glass, copper, synthetic plastics… Yeah not feasible without more mining operations. And refineries, and smelters, and manufactories, and more power plants to power all of those. Wait, synthetic plastics? Do we even need them for the computers? I doubt there’s petroleum to build them here.
“No petroleum deposits have been detected in Centrum, but that does not negate their existence.” The AI clarified. “Besides, there are natural gas deposits that can be used for the production of synthetic plastic. In the case of not having such deposits, carbon from mines and nitrogen from the atmosphere would be enough to create hydrocarbons that would work to make substitutes.”
Huh. I was speechless. I guess I should have studied a bit more chemistry. Not that they put it on my education plan. Considering I hadn’t shown much interest in the subject when I was young, it made sense. It was a means to an end back then, and even now. Only now I had the hindsight of age at my disposal. What if there’s no atmosphere like in Saxis or Gelida?
“Most rocks, whether sedimentary or otherwise, contain enough carbon and nitrogen to make hydrocarbons. Warning, such indirect methods tend to be wasteful, energy-inefficient, and time-consuming.”
Yeah, I thought that much. Modern chemistry was like medieval alchemy. If you had enough reagents, you could really go from hydrogen to gold with enough reactions. Not really, but it felt like it. Latex and grape juice were only a few hops away after all in their molecular structure. But I should fact-check that at some point.
If you really wanted to transmute some materials, fusion was the way to go.
But that was a bit far away at the moment. Maybe in the future, but not right now. This has nothing to do with the tycoon, but what would I need to do to transmute lead into gold?
“Lead has a higher atomic number than gold, it would not be possible to transmute it by normal methods.” The AI explained to my disappointment. “The opposite would be far easier. As simple as bombarding a gold atom with lithium.”
If I wanted lead, I would just have to pick any radioactive element. Like, any at all.
“My apologies,” classic AI response, “if you really want to get gold from lead, you should apply fission. Though the creation of elements through fission is a harder and less used alternative to the cheap and energy-exploitable fusion.”
Which elements should I fuse to get gold then?
“Any two elements adding up to 79 would result in gold. It would be as simple as bombarding platinum with hydrogen, or as complex as merging zirconium and yttrium.”
Yeah, good luck finding those and wasting them on gold. However, as far as transition metals went, those weren’t the rarest. It could be easy to look at the rarity of every element in the universe, but I decided to focus on the task at hand. A control terminal may be out of reach for the moment, but isn’t there something we could do to facilitate rover pathfinding and social behavior?
The problem with swarm robotics is that it requires a lot of computational power. Either in-built on the machines or through a proxy like a control terminal would be.
“The colony ships are currently unused. It could be possible to redirect their navigation computers to assign mergeable worktables to the drones. Warning, this will cause the limited energy supply to deplete even faster.”
Hmm… How much faster?
“No more than 2 hours.”
Then go for it. More computational power means faster building time. If the rovers finish faster the power plant, then that energy loss will be inconsequential.
“Understood. Powering on the colony ships.”
The ships were already on my projected map, but now that they were on, they registered on the legend like another drone. Estimated time to finish construction?
“17 hours for an operational geothermal plant.” The AI announced.
The video feed focused on the assembler rovers working on the engines and also the crucible full of white salt. I had no real sense of scale through the cameras, but the was a ruler function in the feed.
The crucible, though it would be more correct to call it the reactor core, was sizeable. 8 by 10 meters if the ruler was to be believed. It was a cylinder so basic maths told me that it had a volume of 2 thousand cubic meters, give or take a few. Even then all the salt wasn’t deposited on the reactor to be molten, but the thing about molten salt reactors was that the salt was also the coolant. Not that different from normal steam engines where the water is the coolant and fuel.
I guess this incorporates the added computational power for the rover’s behavior. I thought back to the estimation of the construction time.
“It does not. Recalculating.” Damn, lucky that I thought about asking. “Enhanced social structure and priorities bring down the estimated time to 13 hours.”
Do we have all the required materials already?
“Affirmative.” The computer flashed the whole stockpile of the tycoon before me. I could have done without the jump scare, but I didn’t protest.
Redirect all mining rovers to move materials then. Finishing the power plant is the top priority. How long until completion with all rovers assigned to the task now?
“10 hours.” The AI stated neutrally.
Not that much better, but this is a time I’m most comfortable with. This meant that if I disconnected now and logged back in after lunch, the geothermal plant would be operative. I don’t know when I will reconnect, but if the plant is already finished by then, start working on smelter buildings and conveyor belts. Transporting everything by rover is too slow, especially if the mining rovers are the ones that need to do the transportation.
“Understood.” And with that last statement, I disconnected from Project Tycoon. Finally getting a bit of sleep after these last days.