Unbidden, the word “STOP” tore itself from his throat, infused with the power he felt inside his body. Instantly, the six wolves froze, even their eyes unmoving as they slowly toppled over onto their sides, presumably dead. He sat it shock, feeling drained from the usage of a power he didn’t even know he had, and slowly the pain from his broken wrist penetrated his consciousness. Cradling his injured wrist against his chest to prevent it from moving, he slowly got up and moved toward one of the purple wolves. Kicking it – and hoping it wasn’t faking death – he was relieved when it didn’t move.
After taking a couple of moments to catch his breath and gather his frayed nerves, he turned to leave, cradling his injured wrist to his chest. He was somehow relieved and at the same time confused by what had happened. Brint knew that he couldn’t talk or command creatures since he had been tested for that when he was younger, and he hadn’t heard of anyone with the power to command something with just their voice. Shrugging it off for the moment, he resolved to contemplate it more when he got home safe – he didn’t want to spend any more time here than he wanted.
He had taken a couple of steps back down the path when he heard a voice screaming inside his head, “WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SCALY PYGMY WOLVES?!”
The shock of something talking to him in his head – along with everything else that had occurred – was too much for his fragile mind to accept all at once. He watched the ground rushing up to his face as his vision slowly turned dark. His last conscious thought was, Pygmy Wolves?
Part III – Revelations
Chapter 28 – Automation
The last century had been at times exciting and at times frustrating, but most of it had been boring. After the initial exciting discovery that there had been people here – at least at one time – he had been eager to explore farther, hoping to learn more about them. Even with his expanded neural communication limit he had access to after finishing his exploration quest, the only thing he discovered regarding people was a small abandoned village just at the edge of his range. From high above, it had looked like it had been vacated recently and hurriedly, with discarded personal items left all over the ground. He wondered at what had made them leave so abruptly and endeavored to find out later when he was able to explore the village and surrounding areas from the ground.
While he was out exploring, he noticed a change in the creatures inhabiting the forest outside of his influence. Most of them looked like the “normal” creatures, but they also had some additional features that made them different. For instance, his bird was attacked and killed once by flying monkeys, a variation of the Glider Monkeys that he had discovered years ago that could actually fly. On the ground, he could see Lollipop Snakes the size of an Anaconda, Jackalopes that were covered in scales instead of fur, Pygmy Wolves that were smaller but were a lot more numerous, Ombre Jaguars the size of what he assumed Sabretooth Tigers used to be, and a whole plethora of new creatures he had no experience with yet. It began to look more and more like he had crashed down in the “newbie zone” and everything further away was for higher levels.
ALANNA, when confronted, expressed not to know what had happened to cause it to be that way. She speculated that when Milton had crashed down, the mysterious sound and impact may have scared off the most the wildlife and only those too dumb to know better stuck around. She figured – and Milton agreed – that given enough time, they would be back, and he would be screwed if he didn’t prepare for it.
To that end, he began exploring the newly-opened ground, searching out additional places to mine for ore. He was pleased to find a massive concentration of ore to the South, just in range of his drones’ reach. With his limited number of drones – and the distance away from his Core and Ore Refinery – it took over 10 years for him to accumulate enough Basic Metal Units to upgrade his Structural Integrity/Constitution and Reactor Power/Strength enough to build something that would increase his productivity by leaps and bounds.
The Drone Assembly Plant only took a day to build, but the unanticipated learning of a new skill knocked him out for a couple of months.
Congratulations!
You have acquired the skill: Basic Technological Engineering (Level 1)
This skill expands on your knowledge of engineering, allowing a tiny glimpse at the vast technological knowledge of The Collective. Power systems, Artificial Intelligence, nanites, and neural communication are just some of the Basic Technological Engineering subjects you now have a near-passing knowledge of.
Basic Technological Engineering (Level 1) was a whole new world to him. While he was tangentially aware of the knowledge that was imparted with his Basic Mechanical Engineering skill, the technological advancements of The Collective were so foreign to him that it took so much longer to absorb the information. So that he could understand even the small snippet of knowledge that was initially uploaded to his mind, the main Core system had to fill in the gaps in his knowledge-base. It was like trying to teach a caveman how an automobile worked – you could show him how the engine operated, but if he had never seen a wheel then you would have to explain that first.
Once he was back up and running, however, he immediately started repairing his broken drones. The Drone Assembly Plant was – to Milton with his new knowledge – a marvel in engineering. It was a giant enclosed cube, 20 feet long on each side, made primarily of metal and durable plastics and had a small assembly line that would convert raw materials into a finished product. Like when he constructed his facilities, he was able to substitute other materials in place of high-grade materials that were much more expensive in terms of BMUs.[28] Each of his drones or sensor orbs required a small amount of power from his reactor to keep them functioning, which put a stop to his fanciful plans of having thousands of drones swarming the countryside. The cost to repair his drones varied, depending on the damage that they had sustained. All in all, it only cost him 365 BMUs to get his two broken ground drones back to full-functionality – and he sent them straight to work mining more ore deposits.
He noticed that his Drone Assembly Plant menu had a new option – an aquatic drone. This was the first time he had heard of it, so he asked ALANNA why he didn’t come pre-equipped with any.
“For the Station Cores that were heading to water-rich environments, they were included. However, since the outpost you were heading to was basically at the ass-end of nowhere, they were left off your initial allotment.” Makes sense – though I could have used one when I was exploring that underground lake.
As for his flying drones – which he had never even seen functioning since they were damaged when he arrived – each of them took between 435 to 625 BMUs to repair and Milton thought that was more than acceptable since a brand-new one would cost him over 6,000. Once they were operational, he found that they looked exactly like his ground drones, with the only exception being that they used the same method of flight as his sensor orbs; his new knowledge told him that it was some sort of gravitational repellence system, the exact functioning of which he wasn’t quite sure of yet.
Since they acted just like his ground drones, he sent them to work in the mines, using their flight capabilities to speed up the retrieval process since they could ferry the ore at a faster rate. With the additional drones, the resource gathering process was four times faster than it had been and the BMUs were rolling in huge quantities. Within a year, he had gathered about half as much as he had in the last ten. Milton, and by extension ALANNA, were expecting the whole process of repairing his Core and building a spaceship to take a lot less time than they had initially thought. If the pace of the drones’ mining kept up like it had been, they would be out in decades instead of centuries as they had theorized. And then, inevitably, when things tended to go well, they hit a snag when the large ore deposit they had been mining ran out.
Quickly utilizing his badgers to search for more, Milton was disappointed when there were only very small deposits found scattered all over the place. Instead of being done
in decades, it looked like he was here for the long haul – unless they found another ore motherload, they were destined to be here for centuries.
When this sad fact was determined, ALANNA started to retreat into Milton’s shell before he stopped her. Before this, she had stayed out, talking with Milton or wandering the hallways of his dungeon. Most of the time, however, she was on the surface, playing with his Greywieners and generally enjoying the sunshine. Milton missed the sun a little bit, but he had spent so much time indoors playing video games that he had no real urge to get out-of-doors. Besides, the time he spent flying around in the mind of his bird more than fulfilled any need to get out into the sunshine.
“Where are you going? Are you just going to leave me to do all of this myself? I don’t really have anyone else to talk to, you know.” Although they weren’t constantly chatting, it was still nice to know that someone was at least near if he felt the need for conversation.
“Don’t be such a whiny little bitch, just put yourself into sleep mode. You can automate your mining processes and be alerted if anything gets fucked up. The time will pass as if you’re asleep, although you won’t dream or any shit like that. If you need me, I mean really need me, call me and I’ll come out – otherwise fuck off…please?” He had grown numb to her name calling and language years ago, but lately she had been making attempts at being polite after he had grown sick of her barking orders and called her out on it. Hey, at least she said please—wait, how do I get to sleep mode?
It was too late to ask her, since she had already escaped to the confines of his shell. He didn’t want to disturb her already and figured he at least had the time to try to figure it out on his own.
Three months later, and after lots of experimentation, he had learned how to automate all his units. He already knew how to give general instructions to his scouts on alerting him to anything out-of-place, but he knew he would be disturbed every few weeks if he left it like that. Instead, he set up a series of if-then processes in the minds of every single unit, from his squirrels to his drones. He also discovered that they could “talk” to each other using his Core as a central distribution hub for neural communication. For instance, if his squirrel saw something unusual, it would send that information back to his Core which would then bounce it to his Combat Units on the surface. If they determined that a threat was incoming, they would prepare for one of 17 different scenarios and formations that he had developed based on the random creature attacks that he had experienced over the years.
So that they could keep an eye on the incoming hostiles, up to three different sensor orbs could be deployed to follow their progress, which would send that information to his waiting Combat Units. If the threat was determined to be too much for his above-ground units, they would be assessed on whether the traps inside his dungeon were enough to take care of any potential threat. If it was decided based on their multiple assessments that more help was needed, then and only then would he be “woken” up to determine the best course of action.
His drones and badgers he put on a constant search and mine pattern, the latter’s only job was to sniff out more ore deposits. Only when his drones were needed to reset a trap, repair a section of tunnel that was damaged, escort new recruits out to the surface, or drag a dead enemy down to convert into Bio Units would they leave their mining operations. He was initially worried that he would have to replace aging Combat Units over the years, but then he remembered that ALANNA had told him that the nanites in their systems automatically renewed and repaired any damage caused by again. Because of this, he only had to automate his own Core and Molecular Converter to monitor and replace any non-functioning (dead) Combat Units over the years, so that they would be fully prepared for potentially any threat – large or small.
When all of this was set up, he was able to finally get some “sleep”. Activating Sleep Mode, his direct connection to all his Combat Units, drones, and orbs shut down one at a time until he was left adrift without any outside stimulus. It felt as though he was trapped within his own mind, like he had gone blind and deaf, but it wasn’t an unwelcome feeling. He had been tapped into so many different things simultaneously that it was comforting not to have his attention pulled in so many directions at once.
It felt like mere moments later when he was “woken up”, leading Milton to think something had gone wrong. Connecting to the squirrel scout that had alerted him, he took a quick look at the date inside his “mind” and saw that more than seven years had passed! It felt more like seven seconds to him, but when he thought about it he realized that without outside stimuli it was hard to assess the passage of time.
He realized what had gotten his scouts’ attention – something unknown. It looked like a large grey wolf but had four black legs protruding from its back, long hairs reminiscent to a spiders’. Long fangs dripping green venom completed the package, enough that Milton felt comfortable calling it a Spider Wolf. There were seven of them running in a pack near the edge of his territory, but fortunately not heading for his dungeon as far as he could tell. They stuck around the area for a couple of days while he watched them through various squirrels, but they ultimately left the area without being drawn to his Core. He was interested in seeing what they could do, but he didn’t want to provoke them unnecessarily – no need to invite trouble.
When that interruption was taken care of, he reactivated his Sleep Mode after determining that progress was being made with his mining, albeit slowly. He was maybe halfway from being able to fix more of his Core and reactor, as well as being able to build another facility. The next time he “slept”, he was down for almost fourteen years this time, which again felt more like fourteen seconds. This time, when he woke up, there wasn’t an emergency. He had actually hit the threshold of BMUs he had set more than two decades ago, with more than enough resources to build his next facility – the Bioconversion Lab.
Chapter 29 – Bioconversion Laboratory
The Bioconversion Laboratory was a big step-up for his defenses and he was excited to start improving his army. Essentially, the lab consisted of only one super-large hollow metal cylinder filled with water and nutrient solution. When he placed enough resources inside, the lab would automatically create whatever he wanted, where it would rapidly grow to full-size within hours. When it was complete, it would flush out the newly-created creature into a large collecting pool underneath it, where it would rapidly recollect the liquid to be used again. After a couple of minutes of adjusting to its surroundings, it would be ready to do whatever he wanted.
It was only when he looked at creating his first large creature that he hit a snag – he didn’t have enough available Processing Power/Intelligence to effectively control it. That was when he noticed that he had increased his Combat Level to 8 over the last few decades from the random attacks by stray creatures. When he put 5 extra statistic points into PP/I, he was surprised by a prompt:
Congratulations!
When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 20 points in Processing Power/Intelligence, the Bio Unit limit is effectively doubled. Whereas you could previously control 2000 Bio Units, you can now control 4000 Bio Units.
Nice, now I can almost get whatever I want! Or, at least, one of whatever I want. After placing his remaining 3 points into communication[29] – so that his drones could range farther for resources – he decided to go for broke and purchase his very own Quizard for 2,500 Bio Units and 350 BMUs. After just under four hours, his new Quizard had been “birthed” and was ready for action. Even though he was confident in its abilities, he didn’t want to send it out into the forest quite yet – he wanted to add some extra protection to his dungeon.
Since it was comfortable underground, as evidenced by where he initially ran into them, he set it up as a sort of “boss” near the entrance. He wanted to put it further down, but he ran into the problem with feeding it – he ended up needing to shut down every trap
just to get it out of the dungeon. He wanted it to be able to leave the dungeon to feed, and he didn’t have enough Bio Units to keep feeding it indefinitely with converted Combat Units.
With that done, he checked up on the progress of his other units and, satisfied, went back into Sleep Mode. This time, with the additional protection in the form of his new Quizard, he wasn’t disturbed for another three decades, when all the available ore deposits – down to the smallest amount that could be found – had been mined and his badgers had to find food outside of the range of his drones. He knew that there was more out there, but he couldn’t reach it yet. With his accumulation of resources, he was forced to build a Communication Amplifier, enabling him to extend the range at which he could send out his drones. He hadn’t built one before now since there hadn’t been any pressing need and the cost was staggering, running at about 100,000 BMUs. He had a little more than that saved up, and the power cost was only 0.5% of his Power Output – affordable, but he would be left with very little in the terms of BMUs and Power Output available.
The Communication Amplifier acted almost as a Wi-Fi hotspot, one that had a range equal to his Communication/Charisma skill; being at only 23, that meant that he could reach another 2300 feet. Placing it at the extreme edge of his current communication limit to the Northeast, his flying drones were easily able to transport the parts to the location when Milton created it. His ground drones started assembling it as soon as they got enough parts, but the distance from his Core meant that it took a couple of days to finish the entire structure.
The Station Core: A Dungeon Core Epic (Station Cores Book 1) Page 20
