Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.14 (Patreon)

1.14

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I was approaching my fortieth hour awake, and I still wasn’t tired, yet. My arrival in this world had, as near as I could tell, occurred so close to beginning of the new year that it might have matched it exactly, down to the planck time, and despite all the things I’ve gotten up to in the hours since, exhaustion had yet to sink its claws into me.

I could go for quite a bit longer if I had to, but I had a feeling that Chozo weren’t immune to long-term sleep deprivation.

There had been food stored here, but most of it was flavoured nutrient bars. Not... awful, but there was definitely room for improvement.

The entirety of the last day has been especially productive, thanks to the hack-job mind-machine interface that I’d thrown together.

The very first step, of course, had been to replace it entirely. Producing the optronic design that I’d created to replace it had taken until midnight, owing to its sheer complexity. The nanites of the biovat had been pushed to their limits to achieve it, and I’d set it up to do a batch of five just in case.

All five functioned perfectly, to my entirely Human surprise. My Chozo half had more assurance in my work.

All five were now clipped into my clothing. Two had been attached to the interior of my robe’s collar, while the other three had been attached to the clothes underneath them. They all functioned perfectly, and they required so little energy that my body heat was more than enough to run them.

Immediately after that, I’d followed through on getting better nanites, which, I had to say, worked out great.

In the interests of not potentially causing a Grey Goo incident, I had opted for a central control and production mechanism, creating a nanofactory that produced and maintained a swarm. Without the central unit, any given swarm would become inactive, as the nanites themselves had no means to handle the processing requirements of their own operations.

The central units were small, an eight centimetre square that was only a single centimetre thick. Visually, they were exceedingly uninteresting, merely smooth expanses of silver-white metal that lacked any ports or indicators. It would be very easy to mistake them for a solid block of metal, with the truth only being revealed by looking at them upon the nanoscale.

There, it would be possible to glean the true nature of it. Access points for the nanites existed across the entire surface, handling both intake of external matter and output of the processed materials. Its primary purpose, of course, was production of nanites themselves.

These, too, were limited by the standards of Chozo, but they were faster and more accurate than anything of the same category that existed anywhere else on this planet.

The very first thing I’d used it for had been simple, but morbid.

It had been slightly after three in the morning when I finished the first, and by then, it had been sixteen hours since I’d found this building. It was January, so it was the middle of winter for America, but it was also the west coast of California, in a city that was extremely dense both vertically and horizontally, surrounded by desert in every direction that wasn’t surrounded by water, on an incredibly polluted planet that suffered multiple ecological collapses.

Weather, in this day and age, was both hotter than normal, and worse than that, volatile. Winter averages had lows of two degrees celsius, and highs of fifteen. The last time snow had been seen in this city was twenty eight years ago. Recently, Night City had been seeing an unseasonably heat wave, bumping temperatures up to fluctuate between twenty two and twenty nine.

I had eight corpses back in the corner. If they stayed there for much longer, their decay was going to start accelerating quite quickly. Since I didn’t feel like having the entire building smell like decomposing Human bodies, I needed to get rid of them.

The first test I did was entirely pre-programmed. I programmed the newly created nanofactory with zones that overlapped the corpses, another zone that was going to overlap some scrap metal that I moved into place, before I left it in the center of the lift and told it to get processing.

It had worked exactly as I’d wanted. Lacking the suitable environment of the biovats, the initial stages instead focused on building the necessary infrastructure, thin, barely-visible silver-white streaks slowly stretching out from the nanofactory, which were in truth superhighways of nanomachines and atoms. The first streak reached the scrap metal, and from there, it seemed to grow over it.

It had seemed to decay in realtime, the far, unsupported edges of the metal dissolving into nothing. The nanites had torn it apart on an atomic level, and the matter streamed back across the superhighway towards the nanofactory, where it was processed into more nanites. The processing accelerated rapidly, until the nanofactory’s energy source had reached its limit powering the swarm and its own computation, at which point it shifted tracks entirely.

The scrap metal, instead of being used to make new nanomachines, was instead reconfigured. If the element in question could handle being made into pure blocks, that’s what happened, small cubes appearing on the ground and growing as the scrap metal was consumed. Liquids, gasses, and elements that weren’t stable pure instead had material canisters constructed for them. The scrap metal itself was mostly rusted steel and aluminium, with other trace elements, which in turn meant iron, carbon, oxygen, and aluminium were the primary result of that, though a few extra cubes of other elements appeared alongside a general container of elements present in such trace amounts they weren’t worth separating from the rest.

When it was done with the scrap metal, I’d had a nice bunch of cubes and canisters, and the nanofactory had more things to get to.

It did so one-by one, not trying to expend resources handling everything at once. It targeted the closest zone that hadn’t been processed already, streams of nanites stringing towards it.

What happened next was not the same as what had happened to the scrap metal. The difference was that I’d given the zones two tags, the most relevant one being ‘Decaying Organic Matter’, and so the operations differed.

First, the nanofactory scanned the zone for what it was working with. Robust definitions of what it was meant to be doing ensured that it didn’t try to process the atmosphere, and also didn’t try to eat the ground. When it found the corpse, it commenced investigation of size and dimensions, and used that to proceed.

Silver streaks had begun to crawl across the body, over clothes and skin both. The streaks branched from there, forming a lattice, before that lattice filled in, wrapping it up in thin layers of nanomaterials. The point of this was simple; ensuring that gasses produced from the corpse’s own digestive system didn’t escape.

The cubes from the scrap metal shortly began to deplete, as I’d expected them to. I’d marked that zone with ‘Resource Stockpile’, after all.

It only took a few minutes, but once the corpse was completely enclosed, the work continued.

Visually, the only thing that appeared to be happening was that the silver-white encasement started to shrink. Internally, though, the nanites started by piercing towards cavities, relieving internal pressure that would have otherwise bloated the corpses. From there, they simply started to pull molecules apart, reducing the corpse to an atomic slurry.

The stockpile zone had started to fill up again. That time, many new cubes and canisters joined the rest of them. The Human body contains quite a lot of elements, after all.

It would have vanished in its entirety, if not for that other tag I’d added to the zone. ‘Recover Useful Cyberware’ was its name.

The encasement layer had continued to shrink, fingers and toes fading into thin stubs, before receding into their parent limbs. The head lasted only slightly longer, but rather than vanishing without a trace, the encasement layer instead shifted around some pieces of Cyberware while the rest of the body was consumed.

A Neural Link and Cyberaudio Suite were left before, the wired connection of both continuing to be revealed as the torso continued to be processed, and then they were all that was left as the encasement layer began to collapse completely, already being shifted down the superhighway and towards the next zone.

The same had occurred to all of the bodies. It had taken an hour, but in the end, I had a pile of elemental cubes, a stack of elemental canisters, a perfectly functioning nanofactory, as well as a bunch of Neural Links, Internal Agents, and even a Cyberdeck. All of which I’d had to put to the side for a later, more thorough examination, because I still wasn’t quite ready to say that I’d achieved what I’d wanted.

I’d sent a command for the nanofactory to make another seven copies of itself, and had then worked continuously from there.

It was now four in the afternoon, and I was staring eagerly as the final set of creations for the day were taking shape.

Getting to this point had taken... quite a bit of effort. Across the tables around me, two new machines were placed on top, one of them relatively simple, and the other very much not.

The first was an energy source. More specifically, it was a microfusion generator.

Fusion energy wasn’t anything new on this planet, but the size, scalability, safety, and output of this one was, obviously, beyond exceptional. It had taken me all of two hours to put together, and it had served perfectly ever since.

The second ate up every single watt the first generated, and would still take more if it could get it.

I had made a decision, fresh off the feeling of victory from my new nanofactories, to do something that could be considered... pretty good, with the amount of resources and time I’d put into it.

It may have been a mistake, but by the time I first considered that notion, I was six hours deep in my sunken cost fallacy, and I’d decided to commit.

The thought process that led to all of this was simple.

It was pretty obvious to me that the people of this city clearly thought that I was some kind eccentric ultra-rich person doing things for their own purpose. Considering how much easier this assumption made things on my end with the complete lack of scrutiny, I wanted to keep things... sufficiently ambiguous.

Imagine, then, a three hundred and ninety nine point nine centimetre tall Exotic birdperson covered head to toe in fancy-looking clothes that were made of things they couldn’t even identify, and then that birdperson pulls out just a basic bitch Agent that anybody on the street has.

Unacceptable. The dissonance was one thing, but on my end, I had less than zero desire to rely upon hardware that was at all familiar with the megacorporations. That would just be asking for trouble when they inevitably came looking. Frankly, I also wanted something more convenient, and since I had no intentions of installing Cyberware into myself either...

Well, I’ve been making my own solutions so far, so obviously I’m just going to keep doing that.

Fundamentally, I needed a few things. The interface crystals provided no feedback in their current form, and while I would likely eventually change to something that did, none of the magic or technology I knew was going to get me that any time soon.

The nanofactories were good, but currently needed quite a lot of manual support. I’d need scanners, and moderately good ones, to automate a lot of what made them annoying. My size made some things convenient and other things very inconvenient, so the sooner I divorced myself of the need to do things with my own body, the better.

Also, an Agent really was just kind of convenient, and I did need the phone, messaging, and email on top of that. And, hell, if it was going to do all this other shit, why not cram even more stuff in there while I was at it?

Overdoing things is also a Chozo trait, and it seemed that I wasn’t immune to that, either.

What I’d settled on required more than what I could acquire from my environment, and so I’d made the other two machines first. The generator for power, but the second machine?

It was for material synthesis. A very primitive form of material synthesis where I bombarded molecules with particle beams and lasers until I incredibly inefficiently and inaccurately produced stable nuclides and temporary isotopes. Every second this machine ran made me long for a real matter synthesizer, but I knew I wasn’t going to get one any time soon.

The final device was a complex piece of equipment. Visually, it was a sphere with ‘sci-fi’ prepended to it. A fancy little ball that replicated my own colour scheme, with a central glowing blue optic, a mostly gold chassis, save for silver accents and highlights. It was exactly eight centimetres wide, and made of layered composite metamaterials infused with nanomachines that left it both very durable, and actively self-repairing on top of that.

Crammed into that little sphere was everything I could think of to make life convenient.

First, it had scanners, good ones, with two modes. First was a general environmental scan that was always occurring, invisible and unnoticeable. The second mode was visible, generating the kind of sci-fi light beam that everyone knew and, in this case, was completely misleading.

Was it more powerful? Yes. Dramatically. Was it limited to the range of the beam? No.

This solved the problem of scanning, and checking areas that I couldn’t reach. Two major annoyances out of the way just like that.

The second thing I’d given them were holographic projectors, again, good ones. A better-than-basic Agent could handle a full, head-sized, 3d projection with only slightly false colour, but what these devices could manage was much more than that.

That meant that I could have screens on command. I could have three-dimensional projections on command. Visual feedback for my interfaces, on command. Another major annoyance, gone.

To handle all that work, I gave it an outsized, general-purpose optronic processor, more than large enough to handle all the data that would be going through it. In turn, that meant that it was also more than powerful enough to handle other programs, like, for example, emulating the same software that allowed Agents to function like they did.

Phone, messaging, and email. Done. More than that, it also solved the need for a good computer, because these things were better than anything that wasn't a server farm in terms of processing capacity.

I’d added onto that by installing a laser emitter, radio antenna, signal scanner, and even a nanite-based interface plug. It could handle, with the right software, most if not all forms of communicators used by Humanity in the current day and age. All of it was emulated, providing a gap between the actual processing architecture and the simulation, which I expected would stop any countermeasures or hacking attempts because the system could just... turn off the relevant programs. No compatibility with Ihara-Grubb algorithms unless it was specifically emulated would stop all but the point zero one percent, and the literally alien architecture would slow down even them.

As a bonus, the laser emitter was connected directly to the energy cells, and could be overpowered into a more general-purpose tool.

Powering all that was a micro-micro fusion generator, which, much like the one currently on my spare desk, could use atmospheric gasses as fuel. In other words, I was never going to need to think about that for a long, long time to come.

The laser alone wouldn’t have drawn enough energy for it to be required, but the final piece of tech is what really made it such a troublesome little bastard.

Propulsion.

Yes, it could move under its own power. I had also chosen that, rather than use the horribly prosaic option of a fan, I would instead install gravity coils that would allow it to float around with complete freedom.

I’d have been finished eight hours ago if not for that final decision.

Manipulating gravity is one of those annoying little things where it works better on a larger scale, and the smaller you want it to be, the more difficult it becomes to acquire the appropriate materials. The gravity coils were thin, winding strands that went across the entirety of the structure underneath the outer shell, providing full, three dimensional movement at a significant speed, with enough power that they could lift an unaugmented man. Sadly, they also required something a bit more fancy than basic elements.

If I’d had a proper matter synthesizer, it would have been easy. Buuuuut... I didn’t.

Hence, the particle bombarder, or, rather, version two of the particle bombarder.

On the plus side, once that was ready, I didn’t really have anything to do other than just wait for the isotopes to build up in sufficient supply. I was going to be making more than a few of these little things, partly for redundancy, and partly just to show off.

That meant that I had plenty of time to start looking into other things.

I’d spent an hour going through the leftover Cyberware of the Scavs, trying to pull as much information from as I could. The Neuralinks had their own memory drives, and lifting that information gave me some fairly good clues on where to go next if I decided to keep pulling on this whole Scav operation string. The Cyberaudio Suites contained, in most cases, Internal Agents, which I was able to lift account information from so that I now had some backup supplies of money to start transferring around if it proved necessary. The accounts in most cases were a bit thin, though.

After that was done, though? I started looking into property ownership.

The answer, as it turned out with a lot of things in this city, was “It depends.”. If you were in a Combat Zone, there were no official rules, because Combat Zones had been administratively isolated from the city in order to artificially deflate crime rates. The question was basically “Can you hold it?”, and if the answer was “Yes.”, then it was yours.

The city would eventually get around to that, though, so I wanted something less like to result in dead officials and unwanted attention.

If you were in the Glen or its surrounding non-Combat Zone areas, then purchasing property was basically a petition to Night City’s appropriate department.

Most interesting of all, however?

If you were in the Overcrowded Zones, and yes that was the official designation, then you had two options. First, go talk to the appropriate department, and they’ll negotiate at a fee.

Why did they need a fee?

Because, technically, everything that wasn’t in the City Center was controlled by City Managers. There was one of them for every zone, and they’re responsible for most of the local areas... including zoning designations and property management if that property happens to not already be owned.

As a fun example of a property that was not currently owned?

This warehouse.

I could sense an opportunity, there. This building? Pretty damned good for me. Lots of space. Room for me, room for...

Expansion.

I’d made a plan.

A chiming noise caught my attention, and I looked up from the monitor screen.

The nanofactory had finally finished. I straightened up, turning towards the table.

Ten spheres laid there, nanomachines peeling away already, save for a few, thin cables.

I smiled at the sight, feeling a bit of excitement as the next step started.

All of them were dark, no energy. With enough time, their cells would eventually convert enough ambient thermal energy to charge, but I had no interest in waiting.

The nanomachines were already reaching towards the generator. They connected, leaching a bit of energy in order to charge the cells.

It only took a few seconds. There was brief, nearly imperceptible hum as the much smaller generator of the spheres kickstarted.

Their lights flashed on, TRON-lines stretching across the surface. They pulsed with energy, flickering with meaning known only to me. The colour of the optics, the central ‘eye’ shifted from a lighter shade of blue to a subtly deeper one.

I smiled, and, in an entirely unnecessary gesture, raised a hand and flicked my pointer finger upwards.

The spheres rose into the air, utterly silent. With a thought, that changed, and they spun in a circle with a very slight hum.

I laughed.

Oh, progress felt so good.

“You’ll need some proper names.” I mused, looking at them. I leaned back, and they followed my mental command, moving into an orbit above my hand. I watched them swirl, and the satisfaction was worth the effort.

Chozo had a few naming conventions for their machines, but for something like these? These drones, not statues, not of significance, without spirit?

There was one convention. A portmanteau of the word ‘auto’ with the intended role of a machine. Autector, for a security drone that was designed to detect things, for example. Most of those machines were intended for singular purposes, though.

Most of them were also completely autonomous, rather than controlled like mine were. With that in mind, it didn’t really fit, but in the absence of a better idea..

“Autgents.” I decided, before flicking my hand. All but one of the Autgents flew off, splitting up as they went through the room. Bright blue light bars stretched from their optics, scanning across every surface of the room. The last projected a hologram, the room they were scanning building itself into a perfect model right in front of my eyes.

This was going to need a bit of setup... but I was going to try and keep this place.

With a thought, the hologram shifted to the side, shrinking as it did. A picture appeared, followed by a text box.

The face of Santo Domingo’s City Manager stared back at me.

Well.

Let’s see if I can bullshit a City Manager.