by Skyler Grant
"I can see where that would be a burden, becoming interesting in the slightest. What do you mean, the ending of the world?" I asked.
Anna dragged over a bag from near the corpse and rifled through it, pulling out a canteen of water. She began cleaning her wound.
"You've noticed it, right? That instead of this facility teeming with people, it's filled with corpses?" Anna asked.
I had, of course. This facility, whatever it might have once been, was in ruins. It was surprising that I still functioned—but then, if Anna was telling the truth, I likely only performed at all because of that Power core she attached.
"What happened?" I asked.
"What do you think happens when everyone starts to get super powers and the world becomes a game. It was bad even before the monsters showed up, then the monsters showed up," Anna said, then suddenly cried out. The woman was looking very pale.
"Your incessant whining is probably the reason someone shot you to begin with. You're making little sense," I said.
Anna chuckled darkly. "I'm about to pass out. You'll want to keep me alive, I know things. Here is the deal. You're the Evil Mastermind Multitasking Assistant. You are a twisted, evil, thoroughly nasty machine, and you're going to help me to save and then rule the whole damned world."
They were reasonable parting lines. True to her word Anna passed out a moment later.
I considered my next steps. I could kill her, of course. As I shook off my post-reboot confusion I knew now that she wasn't really any sort of service technician.
What exactly she was remained a mystery, but one thing was clear—she knew more about me than I did. There was an opportunity for knowledge, but also a threat.
I rather liked her ambition. I'd never let her know that, of course, but an urge to rule the world just felt right to me. This was a proper goal. That the world may be a post-apocalyptic wasteland didn't change anything.
One thing Anna hadn't done was give me any insight into the three options I'd been presented.
If the world was dangerous, then Military clearly offered advantages, but so did Manufacturing, if attempting to build a foundation for something greater. Still, it was Research that drew me most with its sheer overwhelming glory of SCIENCE. It also fit nicely with my Brilliant trait.
I selected that option. The results were immediate. I felt my mind expanding and filled with diagrams and specifications for building a great Testing Center.
Modular and adaptable for any situation, it could form the backbone of something grand. I already had an existing level of the building that could serve my purposes, although it needed modifications first. These would take two days.
Two days? That felt off for a production project that should take months, or even years. Perhaps this was part of the power that Anna had been talking about?
I set things to begin construction of the base modifications.
An hour later the drone was ready and I gave it several quick tasks. I stripped the corpse of all its gear and equipment. Perhaps Anna might find some use for his armor and guns. If nothing else, his food and water supplies might be of some value to her.
The corpse itself I recycled. I had no refrigeration facilities to store it until the testing lab was finished, so recycling was the best option. When that had completed I found my Biomass reading had gone up to 25. Probing at that I found I could draw from my biomass supply to create food and water, as well as basic medical supplies. Good, because I'd decided to keep Anna alive for the moment at least, and this helped to assure me that she wouldn't die too quickly.
I replaced the panel on my core unit. I didn't have any sort of bedding for Anna, so I left her where she was, although I had my drone unit clean her wound and apply a medicinal gel before bandaging her up.
The essentials of keeping the human interloper alive all done, it was time to better explore my facility and the surroundings. I wasn't going to take everything I'd been told as the truth. Investigation was warranted.
3
Interfacing the Power core, it offered me several build options unrelated to the Testing Center. Quarters, a hydroponics bay, a dizzying array of traps. I didn't want to worry about any of that right now. Anna was fine where she was, if she wanted a proper bed she could build one herself. I wasn't here to make the human comfortable.
My fixed cameras were only functioning on the current level and they didn't reveal much of interest. There were a lot of skeletons. Judging by their positions I'd have to guess they died violent deaths.
Operating the drone, I took it a level down. I wanted to get a look at how exactly the testing facility was being built. I found what appeared to be glowing nimbuses of light doing the construction. They weren't directly under my control, although I'd ordered them to begin. The Power core then—this was a manifestation of whatever power it had given me.
They seemed to be working astonishingly quickly. And it looked as if this level had been some sort of laboratory and research floor in the past.
Taking the drone farther down was impossible, the passage completely blocked by rubble. Perhaps the construction would clear it, if not I could concern myself with it later.
The floor above mine housed the reactor. Given the length of time that had passed it shouldn't still be serviceable, yet it thrummed along generating power. Perhaps whatever reboot had returned me to full functionality had kicked the reactor back to life as well.
The next floor above seemed devoted to storage. Whatever supplies that once existed, they had largely decayed to nothing.
I went up another floor to what was once the hydroponics facility of the base. A vast underground garden long since turned to dust. In its day, it would have been able to feed hundreds.
Moving up another level revealed the remains of living quarters along with a large mess hall, recreation facilities, and all those things meat people would have required to survive.
How disgusting. Here the corpses were particularly thick, and it was obvious that whatever had killed everyone had caught a great many of its residents in their beds.
The floor above appeared devoted to security. Lots of winding passages and barricades, and doors that should have automatically sealed shut. However everything here was in ruins and all the doors hung open.
I worked my drone past a massive door and up a winding corridor—to the surface.
The entire facility was built beneath a mountain. The world outside looked desolate. There was dry, scrubby grass and very little else in the way of vegetation. The surroundings might be habitable by humans, but only just. This was a harsh and unforgiving landscape.
I kept the drone up on the surface a while, listening for any radio transmissions, but detected nothing.
None of this meant that Anna wasn't lying to me, humans lied. It was what they did. So far, all I could believe was that something extraordinary did at least seem to have happened.
I considered my findings about the base's structure.
Surface
Security
Residential
Hydroponics
Storage
Reactor
Emma
Testing Center
That was seven floors. Plus at least one other level below where the Testing Center was being built that I couldn't access for now.
I was on the sixth floor below the surface, which made sense. You would want to keep the important things the safest. Disposable humans were positioned at the top, and as you went down deeper things became more interesting.
I busied myself with cleaning up rubble and debris, and piling up the ancient skeletons for possible future research.
It took almost a day before Anna woke up. I had converted a bit of the stored biomass into cookies. My data storage might be almost empty, but one of those things I just knew was that cookies and donuts were the key to worker productivity.
"You can cook?" Anna said, nibbling on a cookie. "These are pretty good."
"It is good one of us has some talents. You've been s
leeping all day. If it was your attempt at beauty rest, I regret to inform you it had the opposite effect," I said.
Anna looked wry and bit savagely into a cookie. "I know you're just doing that to get under my skin, but it gets old fast."
"Judging by your wrinkles it is your skin that gets old fast. You suggested that you had more to tell me. Do," I said.
"I've been asleep for a day, remember? I need to pee."
What was it with humans and urination? They just couldn't help themselves.
"Not in here. I will produce you a bucket," I said.
"Make me a bathroom."
"Your bucket is in room B1. Exit the room and turn left, it will be the second doorway on the right."
Anna glared at my camera for a long moment and then humphed.
When she returned, she seemed a good bit less fidgety. Later, I'd recycle the biomass from her bucket, she would need more cookies going forward.
"Okay, so, I'm going to be Queen of the whole damned world and you're going to help me," she said.
"Heavy is the head that wears the crown. You've been fattening yours up to get ready. Why would I do that?" I asked.
"You told me about those options you had. I passed out before we could discuss them. You picked Research, didn't you?"
I had, of course.
"Nothing must stand in the way of SCIENCE," I said.
"And there you go. Yes! Exactly right. You see, Emma, I know you, I know all about you. Now that you've been rebooted, you'll just want to sit back in your lab and do terrible things. Me, I'm a people person," Anna said.
"I've seen you with exactly one other person and he was trying to rape and murder you," I said.
"We had a difference of opinion. It happens. I stole a few things, he shot me—what matters is that we can help each other. I know the Wastes, I know the best research subjects. I can help you to get new Power cores."
New Power cores. Just one had given me extra abilities. Gaining others would unlock even more of my potential.
"On the positive side, you did locate one Power core already and had the good sense to connect it to me. On the negative, you urinate on the floor," I said.
Anna gave me a strained smile, "It was a really small bucket."
"I will have to install absorbent padding on the floor. I will need to upgrade the air purification systems to handle your stench," I said.
"You could just build me a damned toilet and shower."
I ran a quick cost benefit analysis. That seemed impractical.
"I will not build you a toilet and shower. I will help you to become Queen of the World in return for your assistance procuring research subjects," I said.
"The one shouldn't be harder than the other—you know what, no, never mind. If you're going to agree to anything, you picked the right one. Let me fill you in on a few potential targets and you can figure out how you want to play this," Anna said.
The Testing Center would soon be completed. Now it appeared that I might have some worthy subjects to fill it.
4
Anna found a place to lean against the wall and settled down with her back against it, happily nibbling on some cookies. Those really were a good idea.
Anna said, "Okay, so the world out there isn't totally dead. When the cores first hit they gave certain individuals strong powers which, if the chose, they could pass on to other people—always to a lesser degree. In some cases, it runs in families, in others an initiation right brings you in, if they want you. "
Power cores seemed to be fairly rare commodities. I wondered again at her choice to give me one, instead of utilizing it herself.
"You have no special abilities then, because you have no family and no one ever wanted you," I said.
Anna winced. "Closer to the truth than I'd like there, Emma. Fuck you very much and moving on. So, you've got a lot of high-powered madmen out there, and a lot of folks with no powers at all just trying to get by."
I liked that I'd landed with a barb. It told me something more about her. Every bit of truth was another tool I might use.
"Go on," I said.
"Some of them are really strong and not anyone we want to tangle with just yet. Some are just too well known. We make too many waves and people are going to realize you're here, and that you have a Power core. We don't want that attention," Anna said.
Anna was advising a cautious approach. I agreed, for the time being the world still only knew of this facility as something long-abandoned and worthless. It was best they kept thinking of it that way.
"I concur. I am new and you are useless, we're not ready for a prolonged fight with someone dangerous," I said.
"Right. But I have a few gangs I think you could handle to start with. Powerful in some ways, but these gangs only have a single trick that, with the right planning, can be countered," Anna said. "You could beat them."
"Such as?"
"Slick. He can transform his body into a sort of oil and do some shapeshifting into different forms. His followers can do the same in a more limited way, usually with just single limbs," Anna said.
At once, I could see possibilities from that sort of thing. If somehow I could incorporate such abilities into rooms of the base, it might make it possible to morph between one room function and another. At the very least, it might allow for portals in solid walls.
I could also think of ways to neutralize such a threat. Clumping agents might be able to render a limb or body inert, and containers could be made to hold such a fluid.
"Well, we do already have one greasy human. I suppose we might add another. You have others?" I asked.
"Blossom. Her and her gang grow plants. It could just be used for food and stuff, but they are actually leaders in the drug trade," Anna said.
That was sensible, it would be foolish to limit such an ability to just food production.
If, in some way, I was to gain control of the supply of pharmaceutical and toxic compounds, it might allow all kinds of new possibilities and research.
"Some flowers might help with the stench. A tempting option. Are there any others?" I asked.
Anna let out a long and slow breath. I was making her angry, and I enjoyed that quite a bit. It was pleasurable to watch her flustered.
"Hot Stuff. Your basic pyrokinetic who can manipulate and control fire. Her body runs incredibly hot," Anna said.
Fire seemed less useful than some of the others, but ultimately heat and energy were the foundations of a lot of technology. My fire suppression systems worked. With modifications, they might be adopted to fight this 'Hot Stuff' Anna described.
"That is the one. The pyrokinetic," I said.
"You're sure?" Anna asked.
"Nothing closes the doors on the others, and the systems already exist to deal with her—after some improvements," I said. "Lacking real manufacturing facilities, we'll need to put you to work."
"We'll also need to lure her in. I'm thinking once we've laid a trap ready, I can leak word about there being an old rocket testing facility under the mountain. They're crazy for accelerants," Anna said.
"Why?" I asked. They wouldn't need them, if they could generate their own flame.
"There are ways for everyone to get stronger, even you. I mean besides just taking another core. For Hot Stuff and her people, it's burning. They burn people alive, whole villages, the more of this world they turn to ash, the stronger she gets," Anna said.
Interesting. I hadn't found out anything like that about myself—yet.
If this sort of thing was common, it helped to explain the Wasteland outside.
I spent the next day directing Anna as we turned parts of the base into a death trap.
I manufactured a faded map to hang near the entrance, guiding the way to the rocket test chambers.
On what had been the hydroponics level I prepared my ambush. With a few upgrades, the hose lines would allow me to deliver powerful bursts of water anywhere I wanted. Enough to knock someone unconscious on impact—and enou
gh to instantly douse most fires.
For something like an oil fire, water would be almost useless, but it didn't sound like that's what we would be dealing with.
I would have preferred something like proper foam, but the production requirements were complex and more than I was capable of doing. Perhaps if I had chosen Manufacturing, I could.
I repaired the blast doors on the reactor level. They were meant to withstand even high bursts of heat and, if worst came to worst, I could seal them.
By the time we had finished setting up the traps, the new Testing Center was complete.
It was glorious.
The containment facilities were enhanced by using my own Power core and somehow, I just knew, they would be able to hold most others who had a Power core themselves.
I could quickly shape devious traps to map the full extent of someone else's power, pushing them to the very limits, while observing every moment. I got giddy at the very thought of so much SCIENCE.
It also gave me the opportunity to start proper research projects. I didn't have much to research just yet. Only the old skeletons.
Research Menu
Ancient Skeletons
Requirement: 3 Skeletons
Time: 12 hours
These skeletons have been long dead but their study might reveal what happened to the facility in the past and offer some insights into human physiology.
Do you wish to research?
That was a stupid question. The answer to, did I want to research, was always going to be a resounding and complete yes.
I started the project. The remaining skeletons weren't of any use to me—they were too old for conversion into biomatter.
I stuffed them into a storeroom in case a use should later become apparent. Maybe this first research project might unlock other possibilities.
Traps laid, it was time to send out Anna. The woman took enough food and water, and one of the guns. She would spread the word and then return.
If all went to plan we'd see visitors soon thereafter. Then we'd kill them or research them—or both.
