I made the suggestion of installing a Food Warehouse and Food Service Station to Jacob and, while he didn’t like the idea, he knew that it was our best hope at being able to deal with the ever increasing number of visitors to the kitchen. I added the two devices to my shopping cart.
Once I was back at the camp, I ordered the two devices and checked what had happened today. The Market had actually earned a considerable amount of money today. In addition to bringing in more trailers, the group of men had found an only half raided liquor store and brought back everything from there to feed the warehouse. Much of that had been sold to the people at Saint Nicholas Outpost. While the System had no way to accurately measure the age of a person, the large amount of biometric information it gathered for security purposes allowed it to assess every user’s physiological development. As a result, some nineteen and twenty year olds might have been able to purchase the alcohol, while some twenty one and twenty two year olds might not have been able to, but at least he prevented anyone younger from buying it.
The female salvagers had sold even more. While the only things from the clothing store that sold were some of the coats, hats, and other warm clothing, they had also gathered things from the sporting goods store beside it. Some of outdoors gear, as well as all of the bows, crossbows, and firearms had been sold. They also sold most of the bolts, arrows, and ammunition they had salvaged. Apparently, there was quite a demand for weapons and camping equipment.
When all of the sales were added together, the settlement had made 2790 zerka, and paid the men and woman at the restaurant 100 for their work. It was a good amount for now, though he doubted they would be able to repeat it for long. Hopefully they would find something new that would sell well.
Though, that gave me an idea for things we could sell. I talked with the men. While none of them were actual gunsmiths, one of them had worked at a gun store several years ago and knew how to do proper maintenance on them as well as knowing much about the different models. I looked through the Market and found two pieces of production equipment that could help with that. The first was a Chemistry Station. It would take various elements from storage and reassemble them into whatever chemicals you needed. The second was a Factory Station. It could be given a wide variety of schematics for items which weren’t too complex and could assemble them when given the proper materials. They cost ten thousand each. Now that I had a source of income my rapidly falling funds weren’t of as much of a concern, but they still needed to be watched. I was down to less than fifty thousand zerka, so I would need to be careful what I purchased. These seemed like they would be necessary, though.
I ordered the two devices and set them up in the sporting goods store. It was on the edge of the restaurant outpost’s field of influence, with the field not covering the far wall, but it could still connect. There I told the chemistry station to absorb a cotton t-shirt and some scrap wood as a source of cellulose, and to turn it into nitrocellulose, or smokeless powder. There would need to be other things added to it for it to act as an ideal powder for manufacturing ammunition, but it was a start. I downloaded all of the schematics for weapons and ammunition that the System had and, after sorting through the millions of schematics, found the ones for common ammunition types. I fed it all of the fishing weights in the store as a source of lead, and several sports trophies and metals for bronze. It wasn’t brass, but if it mattered I could find some zinc and let the chemistry station convert the bronze. I wasn’t quite sure what the primer of a bullet was made of, but just having those components prepared would speed things up when someone who knew what they were doing started working.
I found the guy that worked at the gun store and offered him a job making weapons for us. He agreed, and I set him as the manager of the two new stations. He laughed when he saw that I wanted to use bronze instead of brass. Apparently he didn’t think that would work. He did, at least, find the recipe for primers in the factory and start manufacturing them. There was some brass items in the warehouse, mostly scrap metal, and a few bits of zinc, so I allowed him to transfer them here. I also sent him several hundred kilograms of steel, so that he could make guns. Hopefully this would prove profitable.
My car was almost out of gasoline, so I drove it next door to refill it. Someone had placed a sign on the one pump that was rigged to pump gasoline. “Gas is running low. Please only take if you really need it.” I went over to the tank, removed the cap, and fed the measuring stick down into it. When I pulled it back out I noticed that the fuel barely went a few inches up the stick. Maybe 10 centimeters. I checked the other tanks and they were all as low or lower. Only the Diesel had more left, but it only climbed twice as high.
I would have to figure out how to fix this. With all of the electric cars being burned out, we needed the fuel. I only knew how to make biodiesel, so I considered switching everything to diesel. For now, though, we needed to conserve it. We didn’t have enough vehicles to completely switch.
For that matter, we would probably need fuel for heating as well. Or, at least the people who didn’t have System generators to run electric heaters would. It was the middle of January, after all. It had been unusually warm recently, but it would get cold eventually and they would be using every type of fuel they could get. They might even burn gasoline or diesel if they had too.
Another chemical factory might be able to fix that, but it would simply be storing the excess energy from the generators in chemical form. It would be best to step up efforts in salvaging fuel sources. Which meant they would need a way to store the fuel. I was too far from the settlement to use the market, but I could add things to my shopping cart. I looked through the warehouses and found something that could help. A Chemical Warehouse. It was like the food warehouse, but sacrificed the time dilation for a greatly increased range in temperature and pressure. Also, while the standard Warehouse and Food Warehouse allowed things to move through the edge of their field of effect, the Chemical Warehouse didn’t, allowing it to store liquids and gasses.
I went next door and spent another twenty five thousand Zerka on the Chemical Warehouse, an Outpost Core, and another generator. I set the generator and outpost core up in the station and expanded its field to overlap with the base’s. I then set the Chemical Warehouse over the fuel tanks in the ground and set the tanks as the area for its field. Once it was set up, I had it absorb all of the Diesel and Gasoline. They only had a few thousand gallons of each left.
I noticed something interesting while I was messing with the Chemical Warehouse. It could also absorb chemicals from nearby, including the air. I set it to remove water from the air and before long I saw that it was storing water. This could solve our water needs. I also had it absorb some nitrogen from the air, and send it over to the chemical station at the other outpost. That would help it make nitrocellulose.
The gas station was slightly higher than the base, so if I set up a tank here and connected it to the settlement’s water supply, I would have an endless supply. I might need to do that eventually.
Once I got back to the base, I asked the men to keep an eye out for any form of fuel. They could take it to the gas station and store it in the Chemical Warehouse if it was a liquid or gas, or to the base and store it in the warehouse if it was a solid. We could then sell it through the Market.
Speaking of the Market, I found that the System offered many raw materials, though they all cost more than you could sell them to the System for. I bought two hundred zerka worth of brass and lead, and sent it to the factory. Hopefully it would return several times that amount in ammunition sales.
The next morning I woke up and yawned. A white fog came out of my mouth. Strange, I had left the propane heater running last night. It wasn’t turned up high, but it should keep it warm enough that I didn’t see my breath.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I glanced over at the propane heater and saw that it was off. Well, I knew that it was running low on fuel, which is why I had stopped cooking in the mornings. Apparently it had run out during the night. I got out of bed just long enough to plug in the electric heater and turn it on. All of the windows were frosted over so I hopped back into bed to stay warm. Fifteen minutes later it was warm enough that I could get up and the windows had started to defrost.
I looked outside to see that everything was white. I took a quick shower, dressed in something warm, and stepped outside. I sunk into the snow on the steps of my RV by about an inch. Two and a half centimeters. I walked over to where the campfire was before and noticed that someone had replaced it with one of those backyard fire pits. I used telekinesis to knock the snow out of it and gathered some wood from where it was stacked nearby. It was mostly torn apart pallets and scrap wood from a construction site.
I didn’t have any matches on me, so I tried lighting it by throwing a firebolt at it. When the bolt exploded the firewood flew everywhere, including one piece hitting me. Thankfully my Virtual Armor kept it from hurting me. I regathered the wood and put it back in the pit. If that wasn’t going to work, I would have to try something different. I gathered a few thousand nanites and focused them on a small section of the firewood, and told them to start vibrating. It did appear to make the wood warm up, but it didn’t seem to be getting hot enough to ignite no matter how fast I made them vibrate. In that case, they should just fly into the pores of the wood and emit infrared light. As soon as I ordered them to do that, I got a notification.
Now that the fire was started I added more fuel and got it burning well before I got up. Other people were moving around now, so I cranked my car to let it warm up. I would have to leave early in order to drive slowly, so I sent Di a message. A few minutes later she came out of her RV and came over so we could leave.
I checked the Market before we left and noticed that all of the warm clothing, tents, and sleeping bags had sold last night at around 11pm. Another 1080 zerka for the settlement. I sent a message to the woman who seemed to be in charge of the female Salvager team and told her about that fact, suggesting that they make salvaging those things a priority.
We left and 30 minute later I pulled up to the kitchen. There were tents and burn barrels set up in the middle of the street so I pulled into a parking lot fifty meters from the distribution center and we walked to the kitchen. I carried the Food Service Station and had Di carry the Food Warehouse orb. Once inside the kitchen I connected them both to the Outpost Core and set the Food Warehouse up in front of the walk in freezer. It absorbed all of the food in there and the food that was stacked in the back office. Someone had even stacked the flour in the hallways, so I had it absorb all of that as well.
I then set up the Food Service Station in the kitchen and, after failing a few times, managed to get both a white flour and half-wheat flour loaf set up to cook properly using the partial bags that were nearby. I told it to produce four thousand of each and store them, and it notified me that it would be finished in two hours. Good, now the boring job of bread making would be eliminated.
Surprised that I hadn’t seen anyone else since I got here, I opened the door to the front of the building and noticed that the floor was covered in sleeping bags and blankets. The tables and chairs were gone and Jacob and the other people were walking around talking to people. Occasionally someone would get up and pack up a sleeping bag or set of blankets before handing them to one of the workers, who would then transfer them back to the distribution center’s warehouse.
I walked over to Jacob. “Good, you’re here.” he said.
“I got here thirty minutes or so ago, but set up the new equipment first. Did something happen? Normally we don’t have people sleeping here.”
“Yes, well last night the power went out for half the city. The city council managed to round up enough people to keep the coal plant outside of town running for one twelve hour shift a day, and have been running it at night, but last night a main power line went down. Seeing that we still had power, many people came here to try and stay warm. We’ve got people sleeping in the Distribution Center, here, and in the Church. Even then we didn’t have enough space for all of them, so we bought what tents and camping equipment we could from you and tried to help as many as possible. Still, we ended up with many of them not having a place to stay, and having to try and sleep sitting in the pews at church. Just to stay warm. We even had to rotate people through the sleeping bags.”
“In that case, my settlement could probably take some of them in. How many do you need me to take?”
“At least a thousand would be ideal. That is, if word of this place doesn’t get out and even more people show up.”
“In that case, I’ll head back and start setting things up to house as many as possible.”
He nodded and I went back into the kitchen. I explained the situation to Di, and she said she would help the people here while I was away. She could introduce them to the settlement later. “Huh. Look at that. My mission just updated to offering two zerka for each new person.” she said.
I smiled, nodded, and left. It took me another thirty minutes to get back to the base, despite how close it was. I wanted to drive faster, but ice had started to form on the road where various cars had driven, and it didn’t seem safe. I sent Tony a message that we would need him to bus people here once I had a place set up for them, and he responded that he would head back once they wrapped up the job they were on. They had found another gas station and were siphoning the fuel into everything they could find that would hold it. One of them had even found an old concrete truck that would run and were filling up the back of it while those that weren’t needed for the siphoning grabbed anything that looked useful from the inside of the store.
When I got back to the base the first thing I did was order Gary to expand his field. I would need to use the other two Outpost Cores to fix this situation, so I had him expand it to 300 meters. It would use nine times the nanites and power that the 100 meter field had used, but it covered everything the outposts had and more. With that done I picked up the Outpost Cores and Generators from the restaurant and gas station, and they automatically reconnected to the Gary. Now that they were on the same network the Chemical Warehouse and Chemical Plant could interact directly, but that didn’t matter. Even the slight increase in power usage caused by Gary needing to send power to all of them from further away didn’t matter that much. We still had excess power even with the other two generator being removed.
I went into the clothing store and started ordering the warehouse to pick up everything. That included display racks and shelves. Even the front counter and cash register went into storage. After that, I found the main power for the entire shopping center and disconnected it. I reconnected the Gwendoline's to the shopping center’s power grid and all of the buildings now had power. I went into the sporting goods store and absorbed everything that the Factory, Chemical Station, and my employee weren’t using, then went next door. I started absorbing more things in the shoe store when I received a notification that my warehouse was 99% full.
I opened up my Market Screen and walked next door to the sporting goods store. There I ordered a Warehouse 2 orb. At ten thousand zerka, it was a massive improvement over the Warehouse 1 orb, and could take an area of up to 200 cubic meters and expand it by a factor of 100. I probably should have started with one of these, but I didn’t think that it would be needed. A rush of energy left my body as the orb appeared at my feet and I designated the entire back of the store as a Warehouse. It wasn’t 200 cubic meters, but it was enough for now. I could have Tony’s crew wall off most of the showroom and expand it later.
With that, I had Gary transfer everything from the old warehouse to the new one, and got back to work cleaning out buildings.
The field didn’t reach the end of the shopping center, and I considered expanding the field once again when I had an idea. I picked up the old Warehouse orb and found Lawrence. I explained the situation to him and offered the Warehouse orb in exchange for all of the beds and bedding he had in stock. Seeing that we would need the room for people to sleep, he offered to let some of them sleep here in his store and accepted my deal. I transferred ownership of the orb to Olivia, as he still wasn’t connected to the System, and after she set it to use some of the back storage area, she started going around transferring all of the goods she could into it.
Lawrence took me to the beds and bedding section and I transferred all of it into my warehouse. Once he had cleared out a large enough area I would return to set up beds if I had any left. Lawrence also asked if I could connect him to the System, as he now saw how useful that could be, so I paused long enough to do that. It would take several days for him to fully connect, but at least he was on the path now.
Tony returned and I asked him to head into town to start busing people here from the Church. I then asked Tom and his crew to start setting up furniture. For that purpose I temporarily gave Tom the ability to pull settlement owned goods out of the warehouse wherever he was, and even bought him a bracelet like Olivia’s so he wouldn’t run out of energy doing that. I also bought one for myself. It was 400 zerka well spent.
I got back in my car and headed down the road. I saw one other place which might serve my purpose for now. There were two motels built side by side about a mile away, a Vacation Day Express and a Motel 86, which were in constant competition before the plague. I went inside the Vacation Day Express and set up the Outpost Core and generator, connecting them to the breaker box at the back of the building. I had to steal Bob’s charging station to do this, but that didn’t matter right now. Once I was done I connected it to the main base and transferred some electrical wire to the new Outpost from the Warehouse and connected the breaker box here to the one in the other motel. I named the Outpost “Motel Outpost” and started sweeping the rooms. Many of them had dead people in them and I even had to kill one of the guests that had turned into a zombie.
I transferred the corpses into the Warehouse at base. While it couldn’t hold anything living, their bodies were fine. We could deal with them later.
The problem was that this place was dirty. As it was an emergency, I connected to the Market and bought two of something called an “Automated Cleaner”. I set one up in each motel and ordered it to clean the place. A slow moving line came out of the devices and wherever it crossed over the surface became perfectly clean. Normally it would move much faster, but the Outpost Core hadn’t had much time to gather nanites for it. I ordered Gary to send over any it could spare, and the cleaning sped up.