Birds Of A Feather, Chapter 1.18 (Patreon)

1.18

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The Nanofactories got to work quickly. The first thing they did was start processing the feedstock that I’d tossed them on to.

A lot of it was scrap metal, yes, but a significant amount of it also consisted of materials that had once been a part of the Scavenger’s setup. This mattered because, when I’d been rendering them down into scrap, I’d made certain that it was ready for reprocessing later on.

It was now ‘later on’, and my foresight and Foresight proved my decision correct.

The nanites seemed to eat through the material rapidly, dissolving entire chunks of it within a minute. Silver spread out over the ground but unlike before, this wasn’t just highways of nanomachines.

No, this was actual infrastructure, too. The Nanofactories were expanding themselves, building entirely new material processing and energy centres. With each little spot that was formed, the swarms gained that much coordination, that much more freedom to operate.

Silver-white crept throughout the room like vines of ivy. Pulsing waves of nanomachines crept across the floor before retreating back into the main highways, picking up dust and detritus as they did. Perfectly clean floors were all that was left in their wake, as well as a web of nanomachines slowly expanding further and further.

There had been quite a bit of scrap metal in the depot before this whole thing. A few dozen tons, mostly in the form of decayed and broken down shelving units. This provided a plentiful supply of steel, as well as trace amounts of other metals. The Cyberware provided a bit more variety, both in rare elements, and in more common elements that weren’t iron. There had been a stack of broken down pallets in one corner, too, which had been rotten through in most cases, but that still meant an abundance of organic compounds.

That was a lot, but it wasn’t quite enough for what I desired. I could get most of the way there, yes, but anything I accomplished now, while nobody was scrutinising me, would pass much more easily unnoticed than in the future.

Fortunately, there was a solution to the problem of elemental scarcity that happened to double for another very important purpose.

It took two hours for the nanites to process enough materials to build what I wanted. They were less than a third of the way through, though by then they had already begun to reach the limit of their efficiency, using up all the environmental energy that they could gather in the process of their operations.

That was fine.

A simple mental command halted the reprocessing in its tracks, and shifted the nanomachines to a new purpose.

On the floor, the highways shifted into activity, more support structures spilling outwards from them before building upwards. It took shape layer by layer, nanomachines crawling upwards and distributing matter carefully. The stocks of excess materials that had been built up quickly died away as the new machine was formed.

It was, in truth, nothing new. It was a fusion generator, just like all the other ones that I’d already built. The main difference was the scale of this machine, significantly larger than even the one I’d been using to power the synthesizer.

The second difference was that it was, technically, two fusion generators. It had a pair of plasma chambers, one intended for normal use, but the second was actually meant for heavy nuclei. The operation was fairly simple, the first chamber would fuse elements all the way up to iron, then pass the heavy plasma to the second chamber, where it would fuse elements heavier than that. Naturally, the nuclear binding energy of the latter meant that it wasn’t energy positive, so that was going to cut into the energy production...

But I didn’t need that much energy anyway. That basically meant that I could run the machine and full input and turn every spare bit of energy towards nucleosynthesis rather than dialing it down.

The accuracy was... not great, but it would work.

I’d like to run the generator on hydrogen, but I currently didn’t have easy access to water that wasn’t being monitored, so it wasn’t really an option, unfortunately. In turn, that significantly hampered the actual possible efficiency since I was using just normal atmospheric gasses, which in turn was mostly nitrogen, one fifth oxygen, one percent argon, and trace amounts of everything else, all of which were much less effective fusion fuels.

Though, considering every other fusion reactor on this planet couldn’t do that at all... Well, I was already coming out ahead. That the Chozo half of me was lamenting the use of such quaint sources of power was just something that wasn’t worth dwelling on.

I zoned back in again when the nanite scaffolding around the installation began to pull away, indicating that it was finished. I shifted my robes a bit, and all of my Autgents emerged from within, floating over to the machine.

I watched as they opened up, a cable extending from them before plugging into the machine. From its surface, a holographic projector activated, showing a flat display. The setup was done quickly, the progress displayed on the screen. A diagnostic started, and returned no errors, so I sent another mental command to the Autgents. Their own generators powered up to full capacity, transferring it all into the new fusion generator.

A new display appeared, showing the internal capacitor that was now slowly trickling upwards. It was beginning to activate, stages of the machine coming to life.

I had not designed it so that I could stare at the plasma. Allowing visible light through would have inevitably allowed other, more dangerous, and most importantly, detectable radiation through. Even so, I knew what it looked like in there. I could See the air transforming into plasma, purple light burning into bright pink as it was trapped and compressed by electromagnetic fields. It reaches the necessary level, and the ignition is sudden and sharp. The pink flares into burning white.

On the outside, nothing of interest is happening. The only indication that it’s even doing anything is the way that it’s pumping in air.

The readouts on my holographic monitor give more of a clue. The heat monitor rises, the capacitor beginning to fill. The Autgents disconnect, and then return to me.

The nanomachines are already moving to take their place. A series of plugs were forming quickly, and the moment that they finished, they went straight into the capacitor’s outlets.

It’s easy to see the result in the swarm. Where, previously, it had been slowing down as it continued to draw less energy than it was using, now it sped up dramatically, reinvigorated by the effectively limitless supply of energy that they’d just connected to.

Which, of course, means that they go straight back to work.

The scrap metal vanishes quickly, exponential replication and growth leading to greater and greater processing speeds. Eventually, the limit it reaches is the simple logistics of transport, ferrying atoms and molecules throughout the structure even as more nanomachines continued to surge forth. The highways on the floor appeared to thicken continuously, growing in a manner that wasn’t unlike a slime mold as it adapted to the changing circumstances.

Eventually, however, the last of the scrap was completely processed, which meant that it was time to move on to the next stage.

First things first, getting a bit of comfort going.

I was going to have a delivery in a few hours, and I wanted to enjoy that, after all.

One of my Autgents floated forwards in front of me, before projecting a three-dimensional hologram. It displayed a complete picture of the entire building. With a thought, I split the hologram in two, dividing the upper and lower halves.

I was still in the process of pondering how to redesign the building, but I had decided on a few things already. First, I was going to keep my living area downstairs, alongside everything sensitive... Whether that be because they were volatile and dangerous, or because they were so advanced that if a Corporation found out about them, they’d stop at nothing to acquire it.

The front office upstairs did not have an underground mirror downstairs. I intended to change that, because I had a couple ideas for what I would end up putting there, and all of them would benefit from having support that could be directly accessed through the floor. In turn, I could basically write off that entire corner, because I just didn’t feel like setting my bedroom up right next to it. The other front corner was out for a similar reason.

For the two back corners... Well.

The lift was on to the right side, but it was still closer to the middle than it was to the right edge. That left it pretty in the way, so to speak, but it did mean that I had more space on the left at the moment.

I could change that in the future, but for now, that meant that the back left corner was about to become my new nest.

I waved my hand in a way that was wholly unnecessary, and the hologram zoomed in on that little corner. Snapping my fingers didn’t produce quite the same noise it used to with this skin, but it didn’t really bother me, and it got the point across just fine regardless.

On the hologram, a cabinet appeared. For pure theatricality, I snapped my fingers a few more times, summoning a fridge, a bench, a chair, a stove, a few cooking implements, a set of cutlery, and a plate. With everything I’d need for later out of the way, I snapped my fingers again, and the nanomachines received the construction order immediately.

I breathed in, satisfied, and I was immediately reminded of the next thing that I could do in order to be a bit more comfortable.

Cleaning the air.

I had been breathing Night City’s polluted air for two and a half days, and while that wasn’t actually a problem for my biology, it still wasn’t pleasant. The smell was just... bad.

Sealing the upper level would basically require rebuilding the place entirely with how many holes there were in the walls, but the lower level was, mostly, intact. The hole in the ceiling that the lift attached to was one of the exceptions, as was the door leading to the U-shaped staircase into the upper office.

Both, however, could be quite easily solved.

It wasn’t that simple, of course. The fusion generator was sucking in air, so if I just sealed the place up, I’d be running out of it soon enough. That wasn’t an immediate problem with my biology, but even Chozo needed to breathe eventually.

I was going to need a ducting system. That was simple enough, though.

I brought the full hologram back up, showing me the entire room. I would need to make sure that air was being pumped through the area to make sure I didn’t get any local deadspots, but, again, that wasn’t that big of a deal.

I pointed at the back middle of the room, and lines started to etch themselves into existence.

The outer intake could just poke through the floor for the moment, exposed upstairs. A pump to suck air in, then several layers of filters so that I could get rid of anything I didn’t want. Actually, parallel sets of filters, that way I could alternate between them and have the one not in use be repaired and cleaned. Nanites would be able to break down any detritus into something that would almost certainly be useful.

Air flow... I’m going to end up changing this later, so it doesn’t matter if it’s ugly now. In the creed of Factorio players, it’s just my starter base, after all.

Six main vents for each wall, three on the floor and three on the ceiling. One of those three would be intake, the other two would be output. Intake fans would have their own filter set, and go right back into the output. I’d need a monitoring system for making sure that the internal atmosphere stayed at the right levels, but I could automate that perfectly fine.

The fusion reactor would need its own intake and output, but that wasn’t a meaningful challenge.

Sealing the room would be more annoying since I’d need a way out... Or I could take a much easier shortcut for the moment. If I put a bunch of ionising lasers on the lift’s access, and then some magnetic field generators, I would be able to have a magnetic barrier of low-temperature plasma blocking airflow. In terms of material expense, it was much lower than literally building a seal, and I wasn’t in need of energy, so...

Hmm. Yeah.

That sounds like a plan.