Monday I realized I had a problem. I wanted to build something. Not a concrete plan, just build anything.
You may comment that I am building things all the time, but no, it is not the same thing. I did not want to design something in VR, using a CAD program and a physics simulator, followed by watching a NADA churn it out.
I wanted to build something. Use my own two hands to create something new. Physically. This… need had grown over the last few months, and by now, it was to the point where I had to actively suppress it. And I was tired of doing that.
I did not even have an idea of what to build. I just wanted to build something.
Now that was not the problem. Heck, as Michael had told me, I had given Enki enough tech already to keep it busy and profitable for decades, without anything any of the other engineers and scientists came up with.
So I had the time to invest in this, well, hobby.
No, the problem was that I had no room.
It is insane, the fortress was a five-story high building with an outer side length of 100 meters.
Think about it, 100 by 100 meters, five floors above the ground, two below.
And I had run out of space. Sure, the inner 75 by 75 meters was the atrium with the pool. Leaving ‘only’ 4375 square meters per floor except for the second basement, which had the full 10k square meters.
All in all 36250 square meters. How could that not be enough?
Simple really. Around 5% of that was walls, doors, and so on. Or nearly 2000m² give or take.
Then there were the four f33 fusactors that, along with their fuel storage, took up another 2000m².
10% is already gone just like that.
Then the whole north wing, or around 5500m², was given over to living, and recreational areas. Another 15% gone. By now, we had a quarter of the space already allocated.
The west wing was mostly lab space, another round of living spaces, and the kitchen. Unfortunately, the lab space was in large parts filled with various cloning devices. Meat vats, vegetable cloners, a few rigs still reserved for research… you guessed it.
So, another 13% no longer usable. By now we were at 38% used for other things.
The south wing had a reception area, as well as a plethora of little office spaces. Should be no problem to rip out those offices and convert all that to a new shop area, right?
Wrong. The offices are taken over by my armada of server racks. Think about it, I had a super Grendel, with 157 double-wide server racks, each 1.5m by 1m. With enough room to actually work on those things and enough cooling in the room to keep them working… well, the super-Grendel alone took up 1600m². Oh right, and because the reception area took up virtually all of the ground floor, that was another 1000m² out of 5500.
Leaving 2900m². For the rest of my computers, and whatever cloning rigs we could not fit into the lab space anymore.
That left the east wing. The one with the garage taking half of the volume. Where my industrial fabbers were located, as well as three of my four NADAs, including the big one.
In theory, there should be more than enough room in there. In reality, the crew of the Carnotaurus had taken over most of it for their maintenance equipment. There was literally no room left for my projects. And I hated it.
I wanted to keep the server racks in my home, but all that food cloning stuff? For that, I needed to find a better place. Pronto!
And in all honesty, most of the labs were suboptimal for my needs.
To sum it all up, I needed more space.
Yes, technically, I could just commandeer one of the workshops in the Enki research annex. That was probably what I should have done. The problem with that was that I did not want to do that.
I… still had a problem with too many people being underfoot. I just could not really relax when too many people were around me. In general, I vastly preferred to work on my own, in my own lab.
Did I understand that I just needed to ask Michael and get a private lab slash workshop in the science annex?
Of course. However, the daily commute would be a drag. Getting underway with my security team was always a massive production. And let’s be honest, I am a tinkerer at heart. I sometimes have the urge to research something or build a thing at the oddest of times.
Right now, with the small projects I could do in what room I had left, I could just walk there and work. Maybe 30 minutes, or two hours. Who knows.
Unless there was an emergency, getting to the Enki HQ was a matter of at least 45 minutes, despite it being less than 10 minutes away by skimmer.
And frankly… I just wanted my own private shop and lab. Not that money was a bother, mind you. I still had several a mostly liquid reserve in the tens of billions of dollars. And frankly, the land was cheap, I could use the Eitri and Brokkr as workforce, and the materials are… less than the interests of a month on just my reserves.
And not a single cent taken out of Enki either.
Heck, just as a security precaution, Lt. Thomson had convinced me to buy up the three-by-three blocks with the fortress in the center.
Yes, there were still a few other inhabitants, but I had already organized for them to get new, fully functional, and modern accommodations for the same price they were paying now.
To do that, I bought another block and started a new apartment building there.
The fortress, with its adjacent, and generally unused, parking lot, took up the center block, though I had already decided to eliminate the lot anyway and build the barracks for the platoon there.
After some consideration, I decided to build my new workshop slash laboratory on the block west of the fortress. Using the whole block for that.
But to get that done, and the barracks, in a semi timely fashion, I would have to virtually design something first again.
Basically, I needed some big construction equipment. Yes, I could buy, or even rent something. Standard sized of course.
And I would have to take the standard building times with that. I thought I could do better. Way better.
The bots helped, naturally. But not enough to make a significant difference.
So it was time to think outside the box again.
Taking a hint from the modular building principle, I wanted to use prefabricated parts to bring the buildings up fast.
Unfortunately, nobody produced building parts with the qualities I wanted. Namely thick, armored, well-insulated walls and floors.
Heck, even if somebody would produce those types of parts… they were heavy as heck, and the only way to economically transport them would be to ship them in small parts.
Defeating the advantage of prefabricated building parts neatly.
Sure, a grav ship could easily transport them to the building place, but then what? There were not all that many cranes able to lift several hundred tons of armored wall.
No, what I needed was a way to not only get the prefabricated parts, cut to spec, to the building site, but then to get them lifted precisely into place.
I always thought that using one big, multi-functional tool was better than several small and single-purpose items.
And so I designed. It was not a simple, straightforward thing, as several side projects were necessary. Most of all, with Warden doing the heavy math lifting I designed a new fusactor, the new type of course. Thinking about it a bit I made it the same dimensions as the f33. Sooner or later, I would replace the Yasoshis with my own design, and as I knew myself, sooner was more likely than later.
The interesting thing here was that instead of 33GW per fusactor, the new design reached 572.
No, I did not need the fusactor for the new buildings. Well, not directly, I would integrate a few of them into the plans naturally.
But no, I needed it for the tool to make those buildings.
What I was designing was for all purposes an extremely specialized grav ship. In my typical fashion, I did not care about how this thing looked. It would work, and that was all I cared about.
So the base form was a large, flying rectangle. 200m long, 100 wide, and 50 high. Why bother with some crooked numbers?
The underside was mostly a big mass of tractor beams, with a single 120m long, 15m wide opening. On the sides were a total of 16 telescoping outriggers, eight on each side, that held another, stronger tractor beam.
On the inside, it did have a cockpit, to house a pilot, even though I planned to use this thing mostly under computer control.
Then two of the new fusactors, giving it more than a Terrawatt in power. A large cargo storage area.
The heart of it though was the big NADA and an array of disruptors. Then it had a storage bay for the bots and some big conveyors.
Finally, it had several platforms that could be moved with the tractor beams and could lift teams of bots into positions where they could then work on a building.
The whole idea was that this one, single grav ship could raise a building in a few days, a couple of weeks at most.
With the disruptors and tractor beams, it would excavate the ground to the desired depth, or remove any previous building first.
Then with the tractor beams, it would pull the raw materials up into its storage bay and feed it as needed into the NADA, which then would create the structural elements or even technical elements from the raw materials. Then, still hovering above the building site, anchored by some of its tractor beams, it would move the newly created parts into place, put a platform with bots alongside it, and the bots would nano-weld it to already existing elements.
In short, it was a factory building the prefabricated elements and then acted as an all-in-one construction machine.
Not quite as convenient as using magic to let a building appear literally out of nowhere, but who did that anyway? A good second place though.
And thanks to it being essentially fully automated, there would be no human error either.
The only thing not perfect about it was the fact that it would take around two months to build one. Even with NADAs and all the resources of Enki. Well, not quite right. With all the resources of Enki, I guessed that it would take two to three weeks to build it.
But that was not… quite what I had in mind. No, mostly I needed an old warehouse and electricity, as well as a few bots. A NADA closer to the place where I would build this thing would not hurt but was not necessary. I had my own after all.
That reminded me… I think I should build a mega-NADA beside the new shop building… the full 100 by 100 by 100m. Could be useful.
Heck, If I designed it right, this thing would be able to grow this new constructor in one go, by using layers and practically growing it. But those were dreams of the future.
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That of course meant I had to go hat in hand to Michael again. Oh, I know, not really. But it felt like it.
That, however, was how I spent my Monday. Designing something so that I could design something that let me build something. Nice, huh?
Tuesday was the same old. Meeting of the C-suite. The new thing was that we had guests again. Nate and a few of his people were present in Incarnates.
And I had to be there in person, because of ‘moral’ reasons… whatever. At least the coffee was good, although the obligatory greetings were a tad more elaborate.
And then Michael opened the meeting:
“As you can see, we have guests again. All of you have met at least Nathan Vandermeer. I will let him introduce his people.”
“Thank you, Michael. At my right, we have Susan Inverness, from Vandermeer Legal. On my left is George Evans. He is the head of Simpson&Proctor, and responsible for our fusactor and fusion reactor program. Lastly, beside him is Estefania Burrows, my personal assistant.”
Michael nodded and then began introducing our side as well.
“Now, Nathan, you asked for this meeting? What do you want to talk about?”
Nate tilted his head and grinned.
“What else could it be? Vandermeer wants to buy the exclusive rights for the neutron trap Vivian has invented.”
Michael nodded, though Naveen frowned, and commented:
“Sorry, but I think that would be way too risky for us right now. If we show such blatant favoritism all the other fusactor manufacturers will try to get at us. The best we can do is a timed exclusive. Maybe six months or so”
That was clearly not what Nate had wanted to hear, and he frowned as well.
“I had… hoped for a bit more.”
I snorted, and he glared at me. I took my time taking a sip before I answered:
“Why do you need an exclusive?”
Nate was not the only one who rolled his eyes, but he was the one who answered:
“We are in the business of selling fusactors. And this technology will essentially wipe out any competition that doesn’t have it.”
“And ensuring that those same manufacturers will come looking for the weak link, namely Enki. But if you think you need an exclusive to gain a competitive advantage your designers are rather lazy in their thinking.”
George’s face darkened, and I could see anger burning in his eyes, but he calmed down again, before he asked, through clenched teeth:
“Why do you think that?”
I sighed before I answered:
“Lazy thinking. Enki sells only a certain lineup of grav coils. We will also sell only a limited lineup of neutron traps. Or of EM dampeners. A few standard sizes each.
And every fusactor engineer creating a new model will have to work around those standard sizes.”
I took another sip from my coffee.
“That is, every fusactor engineer not working for Simpson&Proctor. You have not only access to Warden, who can give you non-standard grav coil, neutron trap, and EM dampener designs, but you have the technology to make them yourself.
That means while everybody else will have to essentially bring out rebranded, interchangeable versions of one and the same fusactor design, you can tailor your fusactors to the actual need.
Oh, and of course you are the only ones who can build the conveyors either.
So, on the one hand, you have a few dozen corporations building cookie-cutter fusactors that the customer has to design around, and on the other, you have one corporation that can give the customer a fusactor tailored to their specific need.
A corporation whose cookie-cutter designs are even a step above. So, why do you need an exclusive?”
“And Enki will be content to just sell standard packs of components?”
George’s snarl made Michael snort.
“Yes, of course. Do you think it makes any financial difference to us? All the others have to buy our components, and it doesn’t matter if they are exactly what they need or just close enough.
Guess what, you get components that are exactly what you need, and it doesn’t matter if they are part of our standard catalog, or not. More so, you get it for a relatively small licensing fee, instead of a big markup.
Your fusactors will be cheaper and more effective, without us getting clobbered by all the other fusactor manufacturers.”
“But you could…”
George was stopped by Nate raising his hand.
“Let it go, Evans. I understand them. They are not militarily strong enough to give us an exclusive, and we have to respect that. I just hope that nobody else will figure out how to do it.”
I shrugged.
“There are several safeguards against that. First, it is pretty hard to design specific four-dimensional structures. As far as I know, only my VI Warden and I can do that, and without that capability, there is no way anybody can create their own components.
We are talking about three components that together make the new fusactors work that are all four-dimensional.
After that, you need not just a NADA, but a NADA with a special device that enables it to create four-dimensional objects. We don’t sell that. The only people besides Enki who have that device are you. Nobody else.
And not even Enki has the plans for this device. Only Warden can create them, by remotely controlling the NADA in question.
We have taken every precaution we could think of to make it impossible to reverse engineer it either. The very fact that this device is four-dimensional as well alone is a virtually insurmountable barrier.”
While George looked at me as if I had grown another head, Nate just nodded.
“So, it is extremely unlikely that anybody else gains that ability. Good. Though, what if we need more NADAs with this ability?”
Michael sighed.
“Then you call and we have Warden make you some. Remember, we have to ask Warden as well, so you are no worse off than us.”
During all that, Susan increasingly furrowed her brow, and now, obviously unhappy, commented:
“Is that not a tad paranoid? I get protecting industrial secrets, but come on, that goes too far.”
Before I could light into her for her naivité, Naveen commented calmly:
“Do you know what happens if somebody manages to create a simple one-kilometer-long grav coil? Something that, with the data and the 4D device is relatively simple, mind you.”
Susan tilted her head in confusion, but then shrugged:
“I guess they will have some strong grav coil.”
Naveen nodded.
“A one-klick-long coil has a power of around 400 Gigakeppler.”
Nate winced when Naveen brought up the number, but the rest, even most on our end of the table, were looking at him confused, so he continued:
“You have, of course, heard about gravity pulse warheads. Those work by increasing gravity to around 50g for a short pulse. To achieve that, the coil is overloaded and burned out way beyond its capacity. Those new grav coils can’t be used in such a pulse.”
He made a pause, and many of the people around the table relaxed.
“Not that they need to. A 400 Gigakeppler coil is strong enough that it can generate a 50g field from here to Mars. Without overloading. So you have to excuse us if we have decided to make getting one of those as hard as anyway possible. The very fact alone that we give Vandermeer the way that far into that process should tell you how much we trust you.”
Susan, along with most of the people who had not understood that little fact before, turned pale, and Nate nodded again.
“I think you are right. I… did not realize how powerful you can make those new grav coils.”
As an answer, I softly said:
“There is no upper limit as far as I can tell. Not that there needs to be, the 400 Giga one is enough to exterminate humanity. But with enough time and malicious intent, we could create a 50g field over the whole galaxy. From here.”
Talk about ruining the mood. It had to be said though.
After a few moments, Nate sighed.
“Well, that is that. But to get back to the topic, while I would have liked to get a bit more exclusivity, I fully understand your position. So, six months of exclusivity, as well as access to Warden and the 4D devices are fine. Susan, I let you negotiate the details, but keep in mind that Enki and Vandermeer are real allies.”
That made Susan jump a bit, but she nodded.
“As you wish, sir. Who will I negotiate with, and when?”
The last part was asked of Michael, who nodded to Eli.
“Eli here is our pendant to you.”
Eli graced Susan with one of her rare smiles, though it looked a bit forced to me.
“I would say this afternoon? 2 PM? We should do that in VR though. No need to waste too much time for something this straightforward.”
Susan nodded again, and Nate looked into the round.
“I am sure you have other things to talk about, so… I think we should part here for now.”
Before Michael could release him, I spoke up.
“One moment, please.”
That turned Nate’s attention to me.
“Yes?”
“It’s about Jason. He… I fear he is becoming a problem.”
The frown on Nate’s face told a clear story. It was obvious that he was not all that happy with Jason either.
“How so?”
“He is becoming increasingly hostile towards me. I… understand it in a way. The things he based his self-esteem on… I pulled the rug out from under him there. But if nothing is done, he will cause trouble sooner or later.”
Nate sighed.
“I will look into it. Honestly… I am not so sure that he is worth the trouble. He already has gone through four complete teams in the two years he has been working for me. He is abrasive, and the results he produces are… less than I had hoped for.”
I shrugged.
“That is your decision. I know he is smart. But he is also creating problems for himself and others.”
“As I said, I will look into it. Is there anything else?”
When I shook my head, he closed his eyes, and then spoke:
“Then we will take our leave. It was nice talking to you. Goodbye.”
And just like that, the Incarnates shut down their holoprojectors and moved under their own control to their charging stations on the floor, leaving us Enki-execs alone.
What followed was more or less the standard Tuesday meeting.
Profits had gone up, again.
Production had gone up, again.
Our employees were increasingly productive as well.
The pregnancies for the Folly Treatment were going along. Jessi and Arnedra had managed to convince several of the ex-Panacea geneticists to create a new corporation and hired them to fix the genetic damage.
In other words, nothing too interesting. Oh right, Jessi and Naveen announced that several members of the security team were undergoing cyberization. Not all to the same extreme extent as Mark had, but at least a couple dozen or so wanted to go that far.
That brought up new business. Alena and Eli had contacted the state government about the subway system but had not yet received an answer.
I decided to go last.
“I have two things. First…”
I reached into my briefcase and placed the prototype for the brain quantum field scanner on the table, shoving it toward Naveen.
“This is our new biometric sensor.”
Naveen took the box the size of a pack of cards, with the Q-link taped on top of it, and turned it around to look at it.
“I.. was not aware that we had new biometric sensors in the works. Or that we needed them, honestly.”
“To be honest as well, I did not think about it either until Sunday. The problem is that while there is just one Cyborg at the moment, that will change in a few weeks. And in maybe half a year, we won’t be the only ones who have them.
And a full cyborg body has scantily few biometrics to look for.”
Naveen nodded.
“I… thought about using a transponder and/or neural signature for that.”
“Won’t work. At least not reliably. A transponder is just a signal that can be copied. Yes, we can make it complicated, but in the end, it is just a matter of throwing enough compute at it to break it.
The neural signature is better, but not really secure either. With enough work, knowledge, and computing power, it is possible to falsify that as well. It is not possible to squeeze enough computing power into the head, but a full cyborg body has enough. Or if they use Q-links they can have as much computing power as they want.”
Still looking at the completely seamless box in his hands, Naveen asked:
“And this is better?”
“It is a happy offshoot of my research into the mind blocker. Early on in that project, I noticed that all brains generate a, as far as I can tell, unique, complicated quantum field.
I have since looked into it, and rat brains, cat brains, and guinea pig brains do it as well, though not the brains of research clones. In other words, it has to be an active brain.
And while I could receive and analyze this field, I haven’t found a way to emit or influence it.”
That made Maynard perk up, and he reached out to take the box from Naveen.
“And this thing can read this field? Interesting.”
Tiffany furrowed her brows.
“Does that mean you have proven the existence of a soul?”
I… recoiled a bit.
“Ugh… no, I don’t think so.”
“You so did!”
I sighed.
“Anyway, this thing is a completely sealed black box. It is powered by the Q-link, there is a layer of X-ray blocking material, and if you cut it open a blob of thermite will destroy what’s in there.
I would suggest that we create a separate security network, just for this system. Airgapped from the matrix. Though I would like to have Warden access to it as well, to prevent any tampering.
As this is designed, it can be only accessed by that single Q-link. There is no way to get more, so if the Q-link is lost, we have to recycle the box.”
Naveen nodded slowly, gabbing the box back from Maynard.
“That sounds reasonable. What is the reach?”
“Around five meters.”
“Good. And good thinking. We should be able to get ahead of the curve here.”
Michael rubbed his chin.
“Yeah, that sounds good. I trust you will implement it as soon as possible?”
“Of course. I think we should keep it as a need-to-know for now though.”
“Very well, and the second thing, Vivian?”
I shrugged.
“I wanted to ask if I could borrow a warehouse or something like that, and a few Eitri and Bokkr for a little project of mine.”
Michael raised an eyebrow but shrugged.
“That should be no problem in general. What is it this project if I may ask?”
I shrugged.
“I want to build onto the fortress. I have promised the guards a barracks building, and I need a new, bigger workshop as well as room for all the computer racks I have cluttering up my home.”
Maggie’s confused:
“But why do you need a warehouse then? That makes no sense.”
I shook my head.
“The warehouse is not for the buildings. Directly that is. It is for this:”
I activated the holo projector and showed them the blueprints for the constructor.
After a few seconds, Marcel exclaimed:
“Urks, this thing is ugly. Why do you want it?”
Kenneth on the other hand looked at the plans for a bit longer and then snorted.
“This is brilliant. If it works, I want a dozen of them.”
Jessi was just confused and then looked from Kenneth to me.
“Not to say that I can’t understand this plan, but… I can’t understand this plan. What is this thing.”
Kenneth answered before me.
“If I have that right, it is a one-stop building constructor. A specialized grav ship that uses an ungodly amount of grav coils as tractor beams, as well as a replicator and some disruptors.
With a couple of those things, I could pull up any of our standard factories in a week or so. With enough of them, we could get a medium-sized arcology in half a year. Or a mega-arc in one to two years.”
Jessi looked from Kenneth to me, and I shrugged.
“He is right. Right now, the buildings I want to build would need around a year to raise, even with the bots. This will reduce it to a couple of months.”
Michael rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“I see only one problem here. It is way too big. For one of our warehouses, I mean. Even the ones waiting for demolition. The biggest we have is 90 by 150m.”
That… was not what I wanted to hear. But it was something he could do nothing about, sadly.
Kenneth chimed in:
“It should be no big problem to build the first of these things in the open. Well, we might want to put up some blinds, but other than that, it looks hardy.”
Interestingly, that gave me an idea. I could build it on the parking lot of the fortress. And… with a bit of ingenuity, we get protection from the elements as well as nosy neighbors. But Kenneth was not done yet.
“But if that thing works as Vivian thinks it will, and with Vivian’s track record I tend to believe that, we should look into making a place to build them. Maybe buy one of the old shipyards in Brooklynn.”
Michael looked at Kenneth and sighed.
“We will look into it. Do you seriously think this thing will be such a help?”
This time, I was faster.
“Right now, our buildings have the walls fabricated in 15m chunks in some location, then moved by a tractor-trailer to the building site, then lifted with an old-fashioned crane, and then connected by the bots which have to build scaffolding first.
The transport over the road alone is a significant time sink.
The constructer replaces all that. It excavates the basement with the disruptors, puts in the foundation, builds the basement, and assembles the walls in location, and the walls can be significantly bigger, with a length of 100m. It needs no scaffolding as it uses its tractor beams to hold the pieces in place and move the platforms for the bots around.
Along with its bots, it replaces the whole process, every single construction machine, and the factory making the parts.
Heck, if it works, we can probably sell it as well.”