And with the previous evening’s interruption out of our way, we resumed our journey to our mining site. We were on edge and jumping at anything that moved, or at least that was me, the entire time but we managed to make our way toward the old town of Ajo NV. As soon as Sunny mentioned Ajo I was hoping for wild fields of garlic and crops, but given the desiccation and virulent herbicides used in the Water Wars, I wouldn't have been surprised to see nothing but dust and dirt as far as the eye could see.
Soon we transitioned onto the side roads, really trails at this point, that lead past the Phoenix area. Any transportation infrastructure from before the war was long gone, weather, monstrous reshaping of the world, and even scavengers had devastated what road and highways that might have survived. In modern times villagers, wanderers, and even animals carved smaller paths and trails between outposts of civilization.
The Maricopa Corridor was the exception,and the only other example in all the Wastelands was the infamous Route 666 from San Fran to HousTon, of course. And it was less of a road than the Maricopa Corridor and more of a death run in a general heading. As I understood it, that Route ran due south in California and then east as it followed the reinforced border wall all the way into Texas. The corpo border guards might shoot you for fun (with artillery), but it was better than trying to make your own way through the wilds of California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and even Utah. Plus the richy rich yonos on the other side of the wall were far too important for the border guards to protect for them to pursue any of us in the wastelands. Their job was to keep us out of Mexico after all. We continued to plod along smaller roads with trail of dust choking the air behind us.
Big Fe sent me an alert and I could tell, somehow, that he was excited.
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>What sort of project?>>
I wouldn't say I was alarmed but I had no idea Fe was working on, well anything, not assigned.
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Forgetting to use telemechanics I spoke out loud, “Oh, don't feel bad Big Fe, that is one of my projects on the list, but I haven't had time to get around to it, with all the more pressing hardware and software work involved in the squad leaders development.”
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Pausing to breathe, (and of course Big Fe had no need to breathe but must have picked up the habit), he continued.
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Continuing faster Big Fe said,
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<<(BF)2S is a complete encapsulation of any actor or entity, more or less. I evaluated publicly available datasets (let me tell you how limited that exercise was out here) and developed a standard distribution for human, and humanoid abilities based on historical performance data. I evaluated athletes, soldiers, students, and researchers for both measures and metrics. From there I am working on quantifying powers, skills, knowledge, and mastery in a more universal format, for that I… Actually let me just show you what I did. Here is the template for the Road-synth infantry:<<
“Wait, wait, wait. You are creating a character sheet for the synths like some sort of game? You seriously expect me to think that will have any bearing on what I create or what they do?” I asked incredulously.
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Big Fe, dropped that bombshell before continuing
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“What was that? No wait, don't distract me, you have this for more than just the synths too?!” I asked.
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“Hey you don't get to start talking like John does, give me a real answer you diabolical yono.”
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“Sure that's not creepy and alarming!” I mumbled.
“Yes, show me what you came up with. Wait, no. What if I don't like it? You are summing up my entire existence with a few numbers. What if it ruins my perceptions of my own abilities and I never recover from the harsh judgement from my pride and joy, the best Artificial General Intelligence. The best AGI to ever grace Earth, heck the universe! Right? Right. So…… yes show me.” I managed to convince myself there at the end. And who was I trying to kid, it's a loot Pandorbox. Of course you are going to open it.
“Humm, where did you come up with the names for my powers, sorry skills, is that the best name for them? And Levels? Tiers? I don't know where to start, you iron lump of circuits!”
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“Co?o! Wait one Quad damned minute you malfunctioning, misfiring, pile of complete and utter yono. Where do you even get off calling me one of those worthless magitecha wage slave, dime store, fekking, scaving, slummers! What do I have in common with those pathetic excuses for assembly line workers!?” I might have screamed loudly enough in Gretta’s cockpit to be heard from Neu Ca?on.
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“You DON'T GET TO TELL ME TO CALM DOWN!” I continued my tirade.
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“Did you just say ahem?” I said not unsarcastically.
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“I can't believe you did that Fe! Humph.” I sighed, “this isn't over!” I grumbled
“So I couldn't help but notice my intelligence of 15 huh? What's average? How did you possibly derive that value?” Slipped out of me before I could continue my tirade.
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I snorted, “Don't make me laugh, I know you did that just so you could have your dumb exponential acronym. But seriously tell me!?”
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“Wait, max? But what about my scores.”
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“Right, that's grade school stuff, what does basic affinity have to do with being superman on your dumb spreadsheet?” I was genuinely curious.
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“But why isn't this more well known, everyone should know this, even if 1% of it is true!”
<<1%! Seriously Gabby you wound me. Do you not think I was double checking and rechecking all my results and findings. That I am not doing that right now as we speak. Please. And who is to say in the halls of Pirimid Magica Ubique? floating over Seoul that they don't understand this better than we do. But what reason would they share outside of their corporate enclave? Similarly , I imagine other corporations have their own research teams and philosophies of existence. The extent that their existentialism matches mine is something I am very keen to learn more about, but even I know my limits.<<
I finally was rendered speechless by Big Fe. He did it. I sat back down in my pilot chair, having been controlling Gretta reflexively. And boy was I glad I didn't step on anyone. Collecting my thoughts I finally used Gretta’s sensors to get a sense of our surroundings.
The terrain changed drastically outside of Phoenix, a lot like the terrain in front of Mount Grasham, our previous location. The trees were long gone, but even the grasslands were giving way to withered sagebrush, dead cacti, and sand. And what wasn't sand, was rocks. Several times Sunny had to speed ahead (as fast as a Multi-Dozer can speed) and move large rocks out of our path.
We had been on the road for over three hours and I was shocked to hear Miles come on the radio, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am surprised to say that I feel the presence of a doorway or foci up ahead. I am not sure the specific direction but it seems to be south of us, in the general direction we are heading. Feels like it is about 30 miles out.” Doing the mental math I realized that it was about 50 kilometers away. But frankly I was just glad I had fixed and installed the toilet, I never needed to come out of Gretta if I didn't want to now. The toilet was an incineration model and would work as long as I had power. And with the Doorways and whatever monstrous visitors or strange phenomena it might entail, sitting safe in Gretta never seemed more reasonable. If 28 tons of ceramics and supersteel can’t keep me safe, then I don't know what will.
Sunny let out a grunt on the convoyNET, “Well I reckon we should stay well away from that.”
I heard the hesitation and interest in Miles' voice, “well it would be a great opportunity to study a loci…”
Sunny sounded none too happy about the idea, “I dunno Miles seems like asking for trouble to me. Gabby what do you think?”
I cursed Sunny under my breath. Sure, make the kid decide between the two adults. “Well, jeez. Thanks Sunny. I want to stay as far away from something like that. I assume it's still here on the way back. Maybe we can study it then?” Miles seemed to appreciate the compromise “Of course, I would not want to do anything to jeopardize our team.”
After we resumed our journey it soon turned out that Miles was wrong about the distance. It seems the loci was further away as we continued to creep closer to our destination. That or it was more powerful than usual. After another hour we had arrived at the outskirts of an ancient mining town. No idea why the former occupants called it Ajo, but a few maps had been found of Nevada and the names were kept as much as could be identified after a hundred years of destruction and decay. Ajo, at this point was a few miss-colored patches of rubble. The buildings had long been razed to the ground and any mining machinery was savaged or rusted to nothing. And rust seemed to be a common color as well. A fine layer of rusty dust seemed to cover the town as we drove through it. Just outside of town on the south side, closer to the border wall, and closer to Miles’s mysterious loci was a giant hole in the ground.