Falling out of my hammock, I was already wishing I had the toilet installed up here. I grabbed a breakfast bar, debated wearing my street clothes versus armor, and decided It would be dumb to die because I didn't want to suit up. I was soon ready and climbing down the back of my mech. This bedraggled monster of a machine never got old for me.
I wasn't going to set up the entire engineering trailer but I wanted to get the Roundabouts repaired and I couldn't wait to install Big Fe into his new digs. I summoned several vanilla cyborg synths and had them grab the axle out of the Kombi-Max. I had Squad Leader accompany me as I inspected the broken truck. The middle axle had gotten fragged in the battle and knocked the rest out of alignment. The entire vehicle wouldn't move until I fixed it. I asked Squad Leader to perform his own diagnosis and prognosis, more of a test of his communication skills than his inherent repair skills.
He talked me through a straightforward but rather boring process to repair the truck. Instead of doing it his way I decided to fix all three axles at once. I had eight synths lift up the truck and then I placed it on secure blocks. That way I could access both rear axles at the same time. It took a couple of hours but I managed to install the new axle and align the rest of the wheels and joints so that the truck could run. I aligned it by hand, but I cheated and used my telemechanics and so it came out perfect. I had the synths drop it down and then I asked Squad Leader to take us for a spin. While he was driving over to the edge of the canyon I was using my abilities to inspect the truck from bumper to bumper. While the armor was dinged and damaged, the drivetrain and rest of the Roundabout was good to go. We were now back to full towing strength. Good thing too because I just added three more trailers. At least the truck had a clean bill of health, for now.
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed hearing Squad Leader talk about generic repairs and driving operations.
“Say Squad Leader, I kinda feel bad about your designation. Do you want a better name?”
He responded, “How could a name be better than another? More accurate? More specific? Longer?”
“Well I think I just meant something more personal, more real for you and the other Squad Leader. Why don't you think about it and let me know. Talk to your sibling?”
Keeping his electronic eyes on the road he said, “I will do as you instruct Prime.”
“Well that’s not exactly, nevermind. Let’s head back to the camp.”
As we rolled back into camp I saw Molly milling around the camp kitchen. I bailed out of the truck and headed to the central campfire. “Morning, Molly, how are things out here?”
Molly was making sandwiches with some sort of roasted steak. “Well good afternoon, Miss Gama. It's been uneventful. No problems for us here.”
Grabbing a sandwich from the cutting board and taking a bite, “Please Molly, just call me Gabby, we are close to the same age. You can be stuffy for Sunny and Alexandria but not me,” I said with my mouth full.
Molly nodded and finished platting up the food. Miles and Estéril joined us, chatting excitedly about their latest experiment, bio-mechanical harmonic feedback, or something. I was just focused on the sandwich. The four of us chatted briefly about Neu Ca?on and the next site. No one was eager to leave yet, but everyone was tired of staying still as well.
“Oh guys, I forgot to say last night, but if anyone wants to head over to the city, I am going to stay here, and you are welcome to go,” I said belatedly with a sheepish shrug of my shoulders.
Estéril got excited and her ears perked up and tail flicked. She asked Miles if she could go, and with his consent she galloped off to their RV to get ready. Miles headed back to work and I thanked Molly for her delicious food. She curtsied, again, and started to clean up. Looking around, I couldn't spy any kaf so I made a pitcher of Citrus myx? drink and went back to work.
I was quickly realizing I did not like having the engineering trailer stored and unavailable, but I was very excited to get on to my next project. I opened the side door into the engineering trailer and headed to the computer core. The main computer for the Mobile Repair Station was a PCC advanced diagnostic system that could recognize and monitor all PCC and allied corpo vehicles, drones, and mechs. It was, of course, a rebadged CyNET compute node. But I didn't care, it did the job. I had ‘upgraded’ it with the engineering package that would enable unfettered design and diagnostics for robots, cyborgs, and vehicles. It was the single most expensive Black Market◆ purchase I made, but well worth it considering my line of work. It enabled the simulation and precise instrumentation of the synths I was building. And it also had as complete a corpo catalog as the Black Market◆ had.
Right next to the main computer stack was Big Fe. Currently he was about half the size of the trailer’s computer, but that was about to change. I let him know I would be disconnecting him and I began to separate and secure the computer stack. I grabbed a dolly from the storage drawer and rolled him to the back doors of the engineer trailer. They had a ramp that could deploy even when the full trailer was folded in half. I carefully rolled Big Fe across the campsite, cringing at every bump and knock. Modern computers could never be damaged by such a small force but it still made me wince with each impact. I arrived at the back of the reefer trailer and used the built-in lift gate to load us.
I had heavily customized this trailer, and I doubt there was another refrigeration trailer from T-D-B? quite like it anywhere. First we had the normal double doors. After I rolled the computer stack through those, and shut them, we had a much thicker environmental sliding door. And finally after that we had a secure shell that surrounded the entire cargo area. This door required full multi-factor auth to get in, and I was the only authorized user. Electricity, communications, RF, radiation, and cold air was buffered and filtered completely so nothing from the outside could get in. All entry points were routed through the false side door. I moved Big Fe into position, in what was likely his final resting spot. I lifted and carefully slotted him into the rack. Right next to him were 20 more compute clusters. I had spec’d out the rack in the trailer to hold a max of 144 clusters. We had a lot of room to grow; I couldn't wait to see what he could do then. He was currently composed of nearly three full clusters cobbled together. So this upgrade would be more than a 650% increase. I had used similar compute fabric for the Squad Leaders, but one cluster could make about four squad leaders, or 10 vanilla synths.
This means that Big Fe was going to be equivalent to 90 Squad Leaders after integration. And that’s not ever an accurate comparison. A lot of the Squad Leader processing was for body and combat optimizations not just communication and analysis, the critical thinking that Big Fe excels at. Furthermore the more compute that is added and internetworked the gains become less linear and more exponential. Of course not all computing fabric is the same and not every problem can be solved by quantum factoring and discrete log cracking.
Depending on the various size constraints, available power, requirements, and of course cost, different types of computers and therefore compute fabric are used. Post quantum computers were the norm these days. I had selected the top of the line CyNET commercial grade kibi-scale systems. It wasn't cutting edge, but was solid quality. And as BDwerks? likes to say, quantity has a quality all its own. You could still find quantum, neuromorphic, and even old binary/ von Neumann architectures. If you dig deep enough I am sure you can find an abacus. Today’s computing was more like a mesh of memory, compute and storage all mixed up on top of each other. I thought of it as goop, but it looked nothing like goop, of course. It just was flexible, mouldable, reconfigurable, modular and filled the available size like goop.
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>>But what am I doing, I don’t need to explain this to you, do I Big Fe? With 20 more piles of goop you are going to be unstable, err I mean unstoppable.>>
It would take up to 24 hours for full assimilation and integration. I eventually wanted to remove one of the older compute clusters that he was originally on and break them up for further synth R&D, I couldn't have my synths running on American Empire hardware forever. But, I wanted to make very sure that Fe is okay before I yank a piece back out.
I grabbed the dolly, retraced my steps, and left the trailer. I decided it was high time to get organized, and a leader delegates, so I asked Squad Leader (name pending) to perform a complete inventory and upload it to Big Fe. I would need to know what we have, and more importantly where it is as I continue to repair and refurbish the convoy and the additional synths.
With that accomplished(ish), I decided to work on Sunny’s Dozer next. He took the poor thing into battle against giant dinosaurs and got scraped and shot to pieces. After a quick mental inspection I realized that the bulldozer had about half of its functional armor left. The front hydraulics were damaged but I could reseal and recalibrate them. The rear forks were bent but the main problem was the windshield and armor. I spent the afternoon removing, resurfacing and repairing the armor. I was going to need a synth or two to help bend the forks back into place. The sun was setting before I realized it and Miles was messaging me for dinner. I mean if Molly was cooking, I might as well.
I replaced my tools and headed toward the camp kitchen. I quickly washed my hands and took a spot around the campfire. I never really questioned why we have a campfire every day, in the desert, but it didn't seem to put off that much heat, at all. Come to think of it, when it was warm out the fire didn't seem to produce any heat, a mystery for another time I guess. Molly brought Miles and me a plate of vegetable pasta and fresh bread. Not what I would order but Molly made it amazing. Estéril wasn't back from town yet, so Miles, Molly and I started a quiet dinner.
<
“Big Fe!!” I might have shrieked out loud, a bit.
>>Wait, how are you talking to me?!? I can telemechanically talk to you, but I have to read your std.out to get your replies. how can I hear you?>>
<
>>Wow, Big Fe! It’s great to finally hear a voice and not just read your responses. How are you feeling? Everything ok?>> It felt weird talking to him this way, but it was incredibly convenient.
<<*laugh* Everything is fine. Prime. I am adjusting to my new environs. As soon as I have finished this, I can wirelessly network with the synths and other vehicles in camp. I support your idea for having redundant wired communications amongst the trailers, that will be much more resilient as well.<<
>>Preem! Alright I need to get back to dinner, I guess. But if you need anything please shout out!>>
“You okay Gabriela,” Miles asked with an amused smile.
“Yeah just got a surprising message ahead of schedule, that is all.” We returned to our meals and just enjoyed the stars as they came out in the darkening sky. I read about light pollution in one of the ecology texts when I was a child, I thought that must have been a silly sight to see. The oppressive lawyer of smog has been burnt off in the Water Wars, at least in these parts.
I bade Molly and Miles good night and headed back to Gretta. Neu Ca?on was nice to visit, but I loved the routine of working on synths or vehicles, sleeping in my giant mech and repeating ad infinitum. I was content. I got undressed and ready for bed in record time. I was out like a light.
<
>Fe, what is going on? What? What time is it?>>
<
>Where are they now?>>
Instead of an answer, I got a dotted line that appeared on my ocular overlay. Sweet.
>>Thanks Big Fe.>>
I hated using my gun, mostly ‘cause I couldn't hit anything, but I drew it anyway. It was extremely dark out, the moon was not out tonight, and clouds had obscured the stars. I had thermal vision in my armor but it made all the equipment jump out because they had been soaking in the sun all day. I slowly crept along the side of the engineering trailer, toward the camp kitchen. Where were the attackers and what are they doing?
-SNAP-.
I heard something on the other side of the engineering trailer. Shit, what was I doing out here? I hated the last battle we got into. It was terrifying. I began to have trouble breathing. A heavy weight was crushing my chest. I am so stupid. I am going to die out here over what?
But instantly like a light switch, my mind changed. I paused for a moment and put my hand against the trailer. My thoughts were clear, I could check out my surroundings and the panic and fear was entirely gone. I almost felt like I had an out of body experience. These feelings made me think of the second night after the battle. I woke up with no nightmare and was feeling much better then. These feelings were very similar, creepily so. I really had no idea what was going on in my head. Neh, needs must I guess?
I dropped to the ground and saw a pair of cyborg feet. Before I had a moment of sheer panic, I realized they belonged to one of my synths who was approaching the same place. I didn't want to surprise Squad Leader but I was almost ready to reach out to him to see what was going on. I got to the end of the engineering trailer and rounded the nose and saw where we were headed.
Squad Leader and three other synths had surrounded two people who were kneeling on the ground next to Sunny’s Dozer. The fourth synth joined them.
I kept my pistol out and pointed down. I walked up, and in an attempt of a menacing voice said, “What is going on here?”
Without turning to look, Squad Leader explained, “Prime, we observed these two sneaking into camp. They appeared unarmed so I ordered the sentries not to kill them. I proceeded to follow them to the MultiDozer under repair. I observed them for three minutes looking through your tools, putting several items in their pockets, and talking to each other.”
Looking more closely I noted the two thieves were barely more than children. One was a human and the other was a Neaman.
“Who are you working for? Who sent you?” I knew just because they were young didn't mean they couldn’t be a part of some crew. “Who is your lieutenant?”
The human kid on the left seemed confused and scared, but the Neaman narrowed his eyes and glared at me.
“You don't scare me kid. Now why shouldn't we kill you?” I attempted my intimidating growl again. I had a feeling it wasn't really working.
Squad Leader started and turned to look at me. Oh sure so now you look. I waved my hands at him hoping he would catch on. I have no idea if it worked, but he didn't say anything.
The human started to blabber, “we don't work for anyone, we just are trying to score a few items to get by, it’s hard trying to live out here. Please don't kill me. I wont take anything. Please.”
>>Have I mentioned, Big Fe, I don't like kids. I didn't like kids when I was a kid.>>
“And what about you, tough guy? Anything to say?” I turned to the Neaman adolescent.
He shook his head fiercely and the other kid moaned.
“Alright enough. Turn out your pockets, leave everything. I mean everything. And get out. Do a better job picking your target next time. You are a bunch of feckless Huevónitos. Trying to klep from an obviously armed camp? Quad help us if you are the next generation.”
>>Squad Leader, search them and make sure you have everything. Then escort them away from camp. Make sure they don't get hurt.>>
A brusk nod from Squad Leader and he, and the three other synths formed up around the kids.
Huh, see non-verbal communication already. Progress. I returned to Gretta and went back to sleep. I was surprised, but I was asleep as soon as I crawled into my hammock.