I was reading through and trying to understand the upgrades in the nodal network tree. Some seemed obvious enough. Enhanced Targeting created a system to help target moving objects. Thermal Vision allowed seeing into the infrared. Both of them were under a component called Bionic Eyes, which itself was under a component titled Cyberware Control Node.

Both Cyberware and Bionic eyes had a whole list of prerequisites and material lists including missing schema. Even if I had the material I wasn’t able to build something without a schema.

Three more co-processors and a system called a SMSP - Simple Material Storage and Processing would allow me to access to a replacement Redundant Power Distribution System. Many descriptions were listed as ‘enhancing’ some other system. Co-processors enhanced the implant’s parallel processing power. A few of the systems used different words, including, ‘replacing’ and ‘hardening.’

The redundant system would actually replace the current system. Not that I understood anything about the current system. The implant system couldn’t help me understand either, except to tell me what words meant.

Ted believed the two systems might not be part of the same system, that they didn’t speak to each other. Which seemed like a good guess.

After the Redundant Power Distribution System was built I would have the ability to create Energy Storage Reserve Nodes.

Currently I used the rail gun as an external energy storage device. It could be charged up in the trailer without any issues if people noticed. In private I could run wires from the utility port on the weapon to the port on my hip. While the weapon could hold a large charge, it could not transfer it to me with any speed.

My current plans were to focus on the co-processors, then the SMSP. Then redundant power, and finally energy storage.

The next bottle neck would be the Cyberware Control Node but to make that I needed schema I didn’t have and nine miligrams of acausal material.

The issue was that co-processors required hundreds of implants each. Technically they required fourteen micrograms of acausal material A, eleven micrograms of acausal material B, and four micrograms of acausal material C, and trace amounts of acausal material D.

To gather enough material to create a Cyberware Control Node, I’d need to harvest tens of thousands of implants. And that was assuming Ted’s math was correct, which he continued to inform me was unlikely.

While I didn’t talk to Gary about the implants, he confirmed the math.

The implant systems explained that there were only four types of acausal material, and the naming convention was cemented behind forty-billion hours of computational history before humans were informed of the discovery.

“May I speak with you,” Ted said interrupting me.

I looked up and around. I was wedged between crates near the batteries in the trailer. Gary was driving.

“Yes,” I said.

Ted winced as he knelt. He shifted as the trailer adjusted with a slow spring as we rolled over some ditch or fallen tree. Gary like driving, but the rest complained. He didn’t often slow, even for larger obstacles.

“This things got impressive shocks,” he said once at dinner, “Might as well use them.”

“Oooff,” Ted said as he sat down hard.

“I wanted to talk to you about what you said yesterday,” he whispered.

While there were people in the trailer, they were near the other end processing nuts, sewing, cleaning weapons, or processing scrap and feeding the ammo printer.

I waited. Ted often brought up a subject and then got quiet as he thought about things. I didn’t understand why he didn’t do his thinking before he spoke, but he was smarter than I was so there was likely a reason I couldn’t think of.

“When you said the implants were worth one hundred credits, where did you get that number from?”

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“My implant evaluated it.”

“They were system credits?” he asked with wide eyes?

“Yes.”

“And you eat them?” he asked.

Except maybe he wasn’t asking. He had seen me eat them. Sometimes he asked questions about things he knew the answer to. I said nothing.

“You’ve sold these before?” he asked.

“No.”

“Oh,” he said with a smile, “I knew there was-” he was shaking his head.

“Prices change,” he said slowly, “and you never know what they are unless you buy a price list from a trader or a scrapper, but that information is old when you get it ans not system information.”

“What does system information mean?”

“It’s a note someone took. System information is verifiable, it can’t be faked. A trader can put anything in his notes.”

“The big recyclers have been around for hundreds of years. The kingdoms that control them have hundreds of storage cubes of iron and other common materials. Prices are rarely expensive based on material components, and are instead expensive because of built time and energy costs. If you want to build before other people you pay for the privilege. If the printer takes longer, you pay more.

“To get system credits you have to buy them from other people with settlement credits or earn them from recycling scrap. Except that the price for scrap is low if the printer has enough of that material. So scrappers work harder and harder getting less and less for their loads while printing still costs an arm and a leg.

“The only people getting rich are the kingdoms that control the printers and there are only a limited number of those, unless the rumors of the Empire are true. If they are we are, all of us fucked.”

“Why?”

He turned to look and me then shrugged.

“The stories say they were driven across the scar and survived. That they vowed to wipe us out upon their return. They say they are printing printers.”

“Printing printers?” I asked.

He shrugged, “I don’t even know if it can be done. Everyone official says they can’t of course. But perhaps we no longer have the schema for it. More than likely they don’t want to share the power they have. Anyone with a printer knows the value comes from the fact that no one else has access to one. How long ago were you at a printer?”

“I don’t know.”

He glanced at me as he patted his jacket pockets looking for something.

“How long since the system price list was updated?”

I asked the implant.

“Three hundred eleven years,” it replied. That meant I hadn’t updated prices since I’d been at the Terminus Arcology settlement, wherever that was.

“More than fifty years,” I said thinking it would be unwise to tell him the true number.

“Nine gods!” he whispered as he shook his head, “I forget- though I don’t know how. Now with watching you heal and the like but- nine gods,” he said in another whisper as his hands went back to exploring his pockets.

He produced a hard leather case from one and his pipe from another. The leather case was two thin leather cups that fit tightly together. Inside he had a shredded leaf he began to pack into his pipe.

“My mother thought printing printers would just take too long. The more complex the item being printed the longer it takes. She figured something that printers had to be the most complex things to print, since they can print everything else. Printing printers must also take a lot of time in the testing phase.”

“The what?”

“Testing phase. Some items with thinking parts print, but sometimes fail the tests. Those components are recycled and printed again.”

“Why don’t-” I shifted toward the front of the trailer as we slowed rapidly to a stop. This wasn’t someone easing off the acceleration lever, it was them jerking it back to a stop.

“Six others,” I said when I checked the map. I thought I had set an alert to warn me when-

Oh.

I’d asked the implant to warn me when hostiles were on the local feed, not unknown pings. Another lesson to be learned.

I ducked under the rail gun’s strap and began winding through the stacked crates and people for the back of the trailer.

I shifted my grip on the hatchet and mace as I began to jog forward.

I was expecting a huge swarm of zombies, if six of them still had active pings. Instead I saw a tiny vehicle like one of the burned out scrap pieces we sometimes saw. Except this was clearly built from scrap.

It was a tenth the size of the huge vehicle 4. It had no sides and four seats. There were three men kneeling behind it with weapons.

Two men in front of it were holding a long pole with a bit of cloth on top and a sixth man was laying on the ground hands over his head as ropes trailed behind him to a downed piece of lumber he had been dragging along.

I was noticed, but I stopped and retreated to the back of the trailer, jogging around behind it and up the right side.

I had the rail gun in danger mode, ready to fire, so climbing up the side of the vehicle was difficult enough. The fact that who ever was driving shifted from drive mode to docked mode, knocked me off the side as the vehicle’s suspension dropped the six or so feet until the massive frame was sitting on the ground. I heard the trailer shifting as I got off the ground. The hatch above me opened and John was backing out of it.

When he turned he saw me, and said, “He’s here.”

He reached back in and then produced the slim gas mask.

I pulled the strap over my head, and then stretched the bottom out until it fit over my chin. I felt the material adjust for my face size before a small ding informed me it was complete.

The weapon was ready again a moment later as I eased around the front right.

Six dots on the map, and six in front of me. I aimed above their heads and pulled the trigger.

The boom-crack shattered the silence.

“On the ground!” I called out as I took aim.

Ted said you were supposed to give people a change to surrender before you shot the ones who wouldn’t listen.