“What, don’t want to go across star systems by yourself?” Malsour grinned.
“Fine, if you don’t want to come, don’t.” Dave rolled his eyes.
“Screw that—I’m coming. If Bob says that he’s figured something out, then I want to see what that crazy gnome’s done. Also I want to see just what has happened to the different bases in the Nal system,” Malsour said.
“Someone wants to get mining,” Dave teased.
“Hey, so what if I like rocks and asteroids?” Malsour shrugged.
“Uh huh.” Dave exited the Mirror of Communication and once again appeared in Pandora’s Box. Next to him, Malsour also opened his eyes.
“To the ice planet!” Dave stood and headed out of the room for the portal that connected Pandora’s Box to the ice planet within the Nal system.
There were even more carts moving through the various portals that connected the ever-growing network of bases that they had created.
Dave and Malsour expanded their shields, capturing the air around them in a large area, and stepped through the portal. They exited, coming out to find the industrial complex and apartments made from the ice planet.
The industrial complex was taking in carts filled with ice blocks that were stuffed into the refinery, which then spat out purified resources that were stored in specialized storage chests. Off to the side, there was a heavily armored building where the fusion reactor powering all of this hummed away.
Past it, there were massive greenhouses that took up most of the room within the ice city.
Then there was a small-looking laboratory; off to the side of it, there were storage areas. The rest of the ice city was filled with apartments that didn’t look too different from those within Terra.
The ice was being quickly replaced by a soul gem construct. The progress was visible as they walked down from the portal and through the defensive structure covered in trap runes.
“We’re going to need to make our own automatons to man these places,” Dave said as they walked through the city. With the power output from the fusion reactors as well as the new heat exchangers that had been prototyped with the flying citadels, the soul gem constructs were growing at a speed visible to the human eye. Plants were being harvested every few days, quickly converting the different gases that had been released into the greenhouses into a combination that could be inhaled by people from Emerilia.
Factories pumped out miners that continued to widen the city or move through another portal at the other side of the city. This portal led to the asteroid belt.
The area was lit by strip lighting that came from the soul construct buildings.
“Well, you’re the factory man—that would probably be best for you to look into,” Malsour said.
“I’ll tinker with it, but I’ve been thinking on that whole hiring thing. We need more people to manage all of this—there are just a few of us to manage everything here. Do you think Ela-Dorn would be interested?” Dave asked.
“I think so, as long as she can bring her pup and husband.” Malsour nodded. “I think it might be good to get quite a few of the Aleph. They’re more open to new ideas and they know how to keep a secret. Plus, here with the new technology, they love that stuff, so adapting over won’t be too hard. However, I still suggest creating contracts with them.”
“Trust but verify.” Dave nodded. “Some people aren’t going to like that, but feelings don’t matter as much as trying to keep this secret does.”
“Exactly.” Malsour nodded.
They stepped onto a runed circle that pushed them upward.
“These repulsor lifts are pretty awesome, though the version that goes down isn’t as much fun,” Dave said.
“That’s just because you’re afraid of heights,” Malsour said.
“I was. Now that I can fly, it isn’t too bad.” Dave stepped off the runed circle that was pushing upward, into a hallway.
“While they’re interesting, I still think that having elevators on the different ships and in the bases make sense,” Malsour said.
“I agree. Steve must have put that one in.” Dave opened a door into the one laboratory on the floor.
Malsour walked in and came to a stop.
Dave nudged past him, and then also halted. His eyes went wide as he looked at the contents of the room.
It was three stories tall. The floor they were on merely overlooked the first floor, with panes of see-through soul gem cutting them off from the area inside.
On the first floor, several stations faced one another along either side of the wall. They looked like medical wards from some futuristic video.
There were pods in each of these bays. Most were lit up by internal light while others seemed to have gas converging inside them.
Bob stood at a console on the second floor, overlooking the first. When he noticed that the two had entered, he turned to face them.
“Welcome to the first growth laboratory, gentlemen!” Bob waved his hands.
Dave’s eyes fell on a pod that was raised up from the first floor by metallic arms. Inside there was a woman. She looked as if she were asleep.
“You did it?” Dave looked to Bob.
“I did it.” Bob smiled. Malsour and Dave moved up toward the glass; Bob turned around to look on his creation as well.
“It was harder than I thought it was going to be. Not being able to pull apart an Altar of Rebirth makes things a little harder. However, I helped to make all of the original races that made up the population of Emerilia. I had to get some information from my old notes back then and make a lot of the machinery from the beginning. It took me trial and error like crazy and while I’ve made bodies, I’m not yet sure if they’ll be ready for a consciousness transfer. And if it does work, then we’ve got to think of just what the hell we’re going to do,” Bob said.
Dave and Malsour looked at the fourteen pods—some lit up, others not. In each of them, a person was being born. Their true body.
“So you’ve been able to make your own version of the Altar of Rebirth?” Malsour asked.
“Kind of. This can create people in a dormant state. It takes uploading their consciousness afterward to make them actually people. However, I do not have the capture and processing systems that the Altar of Rebirths have and can use in order to make people respawn. Also, with most people re-spawning after dying, their minds are broken and they can’t do it. With the players of Emerilia, it is different as they don’t linger on the fact that they’ve actually died as they don’t know that they have. Basically, their psychological stress is so reduced it doesn’t have a detrimental effect. But, someone knowing that they’re going to actually die and can only rely on the Altar of Rebirth to save them—they can be forever changed by the psychological stress, turning catatonic and even dying.”
“Lovely. So what are the chances of this working?” Dave asked.
“I’d put it at seventy to eighty percent. I still need to do a whole bunch of tests and I can get that rate up to ninety percent. At the same time, I am working on creating an AI program to take over the person’s life within the Earth simulation, much like how the AI took over as you became a bleeder,” Bob said.
“Sounds rather complicated,” Malsour said.
“Well, the AI just run off information data, which is easy enough to fake. The problem is going to be the other players within the simulation starting to notice people acting weird. We can only pull out a small population of people from the Earth simulation. Hacking through the simulation isn’t too hard as I have admin rights. Though I’m having to hide my tracks as I find the more isolated people who are only surrounded by non-player characters,” Bob said.
“How stable are they going to be, finding out that they’ve only been surrounded by characters made up to try to get them to game?” Malsour turned to Dave.
“Well, that is the question, isn’t it?” Bob shrugged.
Dave was wrapped up in his own thoughts as he looked over those players.
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br /> They all looked into the lab for a few minutes before Dave broke the silence.
“It’s weird. In a way, we’re all brothers and sisters—us players, that is.”
“Most of your genes are really similar to one another. The argument could easily be made that you’re brothers and sisters. Every player pool is very similar in genealogy. It is only really the people of Emerilia who have a more diverse genetic background. I went a bit mad with making sure that they had multiple parent couplings, to make sure that there wasn’t regressive genes to come out. Some of the elves are closer in genes to the dwarves and orcs than they would ever think to guess,” Bob said.
Dave made a thoughtful noise as he looked over those pods. Before, they had just been brains in vats, people that he felt sorry for as their entire being and existence had been made and fabricated together by the Jukal Empire.
Now, however, seeing their bodies, he wasn’t all that different from them. They had all the same genes; they had gone through the simulation of Earth at the exact same time period but just in different simulations and the majority of them were gamers.
They could have just as easily been Josh, Suzy, Cassie, Esa, Dwayne, or any one of the millions of gamers on Emerilia right now.
Dave let out a shaky breath and cleared his head. “When will you start trying to see when you can shift their consciousness to their real bodies?”
“About a month. Then, if it goes well, I can pull out all the outlying people, have Jeeves cover it over—then I have to pull people in groups from across the Earth simulation. These groups are going to be thousands to tens of thousands big, ripping out entire networks of players before reviving them here, inserting in Jeeves immediately. For that, we’re going to need facilities much bigger than this, but then hopefully some people will be willing to help us and can learn through the Mirror of Communication school to improve their stats and skills,” Bob said.
“Damn, that’s a lot faster than I thought.” Malsour shook his head.
“Our plans are slowly but surely coming together,” Dave said. Suddenly he clapped his hands together. “Okay, so we’re going to be trying to hire people on to help us out with all of this and are from Emerilia. Let me know any names you have for people to help us or be hired on. Suzy will do her best to get them to join us. In the meantime, Malsour and I need to go check on the asteroid facility.”
“I haven’t been able to look into the asteroid facility much. I re-positioned the portal within the asteroid, as you know, so that no one might see the light coming off the portal. There are also drones moving through the thing and eating through everything. As you’ve requested, half of the soul gem base constructs created by the industrial sector here have been sent to the asteroid facility, with the rest going to Emerilia and through Pandora’s Box.”
“Awesome. What about those portal materials?” Dave asked.
“I’ve also placed them out there. Be careful, though—need to test it all first,” Bob warned.
“We’ll do our best,” Malsour said.
“All right, well, stop keeping this old gnome waiting—go and get that asteroid base sorted out!” Bob shooed them out of his laboratory with his hands.
“Very well.” Dave sighed. He snapped his fingers; a spell formation appeared around Malsour and Dave in an instant, orbs floating around them.
One moment, they were in Bob’s laboratory; the next, they were in front of a portal that seemed to look into the abyss, with occasional beams of light.
“Was that teleporting?” Malsour said in shock. It had to be understood that only the gods and goddesses could teleport on Emerilia; they used the AI and their massive divine well power in order to do it.
However, Dave didn’t have an AI and nowhere near the power that they did.
“Well, I told you that I’ve been working on my teleportation.” Dave laughed.
“Yes, but I thought that was in relation to the portals, the teleport pads, and the onos. I never thought that you were going to do it to yourself! And to me! Have you even tested it out before?” Malsour’s voice went higher and higher with every moment.
“Well, I’ve done some tests with small objects, mostly when I’ve been off Emerilia. I’m not sure how sensitive those sensors really are and if they might pick up a foreign signal and link it to teleportation,” Dave said.
“So not really is your answer. Do you know what could have gone wrong?”
“Oh, don’t worry so much. I pulled it from what I have seen of Fire, Water, and Bob’s teleportation spells. Then I mixed it together with the knowledge that I have from working with the teleportation array, onos, portals, teleportation pads and all the rest that you just mentioned. If I am not qualified to do it, then I don’t think that there is anyone else on Emerilia who is,” Dave said with a confident smile. “Now let’s go and see this asteroid, shall we? I want to practice it some more.”
With that said, Dave appeared in front of the portal in a flash and stepped through it.
Dave looked upon the pure darkness that was all around him. The portal gave off a faint light as he looked around. The faint light was enough for his high-leveled night vision to pierce through that inky darkness, revealing that he was in a portal control area, just like the ones on the ice planet. These centers were made to control who came in and left through the portal.
Malsour appeared through the portal, right behind Dave.
With a wave of his hand, once again Dave and Malsour disappeared from their spot, finding themselves on what looked like a balcony.
To their right and to their left, there were golden lights that were eating into the walls of the asteroid. These were the miners that had been created in the ice planet’s factories. They moved as one solid entity, creating a tunnel through the massive ten-kilometer-long asteroid. Other miners that had come from the ice planet later were cutting in straight ahead before angling to follow their fellow miners.
Dave’s senses spread out through his Touch of the Land spell, finding the different areas of the asteroid. There was a fueling station for the miners, as well as three fusion reactors that had been laid down along the side of the asteroid Dave and Malsour stood on. There was no gravity within the asteroid yet but Dave was unconsciously using gravity magic so that they didn’t go flying away.
“Okay, looks like the reactors are just running at around five percent of their total output. Do you want to get with the soul gem constructs? We’ve got that shipyard plan from Sato and his people—we can use that in order to create this place faster and modify it as we need to. Then we also need to make soul gem factories. I’m thinking not the normal soul gem factories, but rather we take something from the citadels—see if we can’t create hybrid soul gems, linking together multiple vault gem-sized soul gems and then interlinking them with magical coding. If it works out, then it can create the kind of soul gems we need for our current power requirements.”
“I can do that. What are you going to be working on?” Malsour asked.
“I’ll get some of the soul gem constructs and I’ll start them working on making asteroid miners and spaceships to move material within the asteroid fields. Also I’m going to hook up some more powerful sensor units so we can figure out what kind of materials are hanging out around us. Then I can start working on the warships, proper warships, not just the arks that are within Emerilia and the moon,” Dave said.
“Aren’t you building battleships on the moon? Don’t they count?”
“They do, kind of. I modified them a bit. They’re not really true battleships but more of missile boats. If this goes down, we have a lot of targets to hit at once if we want to survive. Those missiles can take out a fair amount of the Jukal’s infrastructure in one shot,” Dave said.
“Okay. I’ll put down the soul gem constructs and have them run power lines out to the berths first,” Malsour said.
“Thanks. Well, we better get started then.” Dave was standing there one moment; the next, he disappeared, tak
ing with him the artificial gravity.
Malsour had to hurriedly reach out to the wall, willing the stone there to create handholds. “And we’re making gravity and inertia runing after that so everyone else isn’t spinning off into space!” Malsour yelled to Dave, who was at a berth a few hundred meters away.
“What did you say?” Dave yelled back.
Malsour was about to yell back but instead waved his hand, giving up on it, and pushed himself along the wall toward the fusion powerplants, as he passed, ladders appeared along the walls and the rough outline of the walls firmed up, looking like polished stone.
Dave turned to the cart next to him. He opened up the storage crates, finding soul gem base constructs inside. He pulled them out one by one. As he touched them, a three-dimensional picture of what they were set to appeared in front of him. As he cut and pasted in different plans he had into the base construct, these images changed.
There were two types of automated asteroid miner. One had a simple drill bit that was covered in Dark Mana that would disrupt the bonds between inanimate objects like rock and metal; the drill section would grind these apart. Gravity scoops on either side would pull the materials into storage containers to the rear of the asteroid miner, which could be switched out.
It was covered in a variety of repulsors that would allow it to move through space and through asteroids. There were sensor units that would be built into the body of the miner so that it knew where it was at all times and, as it was mining, it could pick up the different materials that were in its path.
This miner was meant for two things: to open up asteroids for the second miner to get into it and to also be used outside of asteroids to cut into different ore veins. This miner used Dark Mana instead of Light so that it would be harder to detect. Unless someone was specifically looking for the miner, then they would have a hard time finding it, between the Dark Mana drillbit and the amazingly effective stealth runes that covered the exterior of its hull.
Of Myths and Legends (Emerilia Book 9) Page 16
