The lower fabrication bay smelled of burned lubricant and recycled air, which wasn’t surprising. Unlike the main fabrication bay, which was constantly in use and massive to compensate for the extra demand, this tiny one had been deactivated for years and only brought online when the primary line was overwhelmed. When Adam and Dave found it, it was a dark, dust-choked husk with broken consoles, stripped wiring, and more rust than metal. That, however, would change very soon. Adam had already rerouted power from a secondary grid, bypassed three administrative locks, and pulled in every spare part he could scavenge from retired Hoplites and junked service drones.
It took many days, but after constant work, the lights flickered back to life under Adam’s override, bathing the room in a dim, industrial glow. Dave stood silently nearby alongside the team of maintenance hoplites he had borrowed. Each one was holding a box containing as many parts and materials as they could fit into it. The workbenches were already cleared, cables rerouted, systems flushed. The ventilation was still patchy, but Adam figured they'd live—or at least function. The last obstacle was the fabricator, a massive industrial-grade construct that took up an entire wall. Without it, everything else was just theory.
It never really dawned on him how alien the thing was when he first tried to repair the behemoth of a machine. From what he could piece together by sifting through the archives Delphi allowed him to access, this was a first-generation fabricator that had entered service roughly 109 years ago. Built in an era when modularity was still a theory and every part required its own specialized tool, it was a monster of welded steel, pressure-sealed panels, and hard-coded logic cores. Unlike the smaller and much faster fourth-generation fabricators located upstairs, this one was designed almost exclusively for industrial use.
If one wanted to use this kind of machine, every request would have had to be processed through a manual queue. While that setup worked fine for a human technician—someone stationed just to input schematics and press buttons— it was a logistical nightmare for Adam, who needed seamless integration with his remote systems. Wireless control wasn’t even an afterthought in this design; it simply hadn’t been considered. It ended up taking him two whole days of crawling through its backend, rewriting outdated protocols line by line and installing small pieces of custom electronics just to get the queue manager to recognize his schematics. But when it finally ran, when that first hiss of pressure vented and the massive arms inside of it came to life, it felt like waking a sleeping giant.
Adam stepped back from the console, the hum of the awakened fabricator filling the bay with a low mechanical growl. The diagnostic lights along the casing pulsed steady green—ready. All that needed to be done now was to input his custom schematic.
If there was one thing Adam liked about his new condition, it was the ability to learn almost anything in seconds—or minutes, depending on complexity. He had never created a schematic before, much less designed a functional robotic unit from the ground up. In his former life, that sort of work would’ve taken weeks, maybe months, and required a whole team of engineers. But now, all he had to do was pull from the archives, isolate relevant design protocols, integrate the fabrication standards, and cross-reference structural tolerances against available materials. What should have been impossible had become manageable. Routine, even. After an hour of work alongside Dave, who helped with adjusting load distribution models and modular frame attachments, they finally had something solid.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
It wasn’t pretty. The design was utilitarian to the point of being ugly. It was effectively a box with a set of spider-like legs and a central chassis packed with a multitude of modular tools—manipulators, welders, diagnostic arms, and hardpoints for carrying payloads. It wasn’t meant to fight or even think independently beyond a basic task queue, which Dave would personally handle as his first assignment. Its primary role was to handle low-level maintenance work, the kind of tasks the maintenance hoplites had been burdened with, even though there weren't a whole lot of them. In theory, deploying enough of them would free up the larger units for what they were built to do and handle the much larger projects Adam had planned. In a way, it almost resembled a crab, which Adam thought was funny.
Adam gave the schematic one final review before saving it to the local drive, then turned toward the fabricator.
“Dave,” he said, gesturing toward the console, “go ahead. Start the print.”
Dave gave a quick salute—something he’d picked up after observing soldiers saluting Adam whenever he passed them while operating a Hoplite. Without another word, Dave turned and made his way to the console with hurried steps. Once there, he examined the interface briefly, confirmed the correct schematic had been loaded, then pressed the glowing START key with a firm tap.
The fabricator groaned in response, internal systems spinning up with a deep mechanical hum. Pressure valves hissed. Robotic arms extended inward, preparing the build chamber. The machine’s display pulsed once, then scrolled a message across the top of the screen: Schematic A-01 accepted. Fabrication in progress. Adam watched as the first sparks began to fly behind the armored glass, metal being fused layer by layer. After so long, it was finally working.
***
In the end, the process took a total of fifteen minutes. The machine worked slower than newer models, but the result was exact—precise down to the micron. When fabrication was completed, a mechanical arm lifted the freshly constructed unit from the build plate with surprising care, as if it knew not to scuff fresh armor. The frame was still hot in places, faint wisps of heat rising from the welded joints. With a final alignment check, the arm set the unit down onto the bay’s conveyor track, which creaked to life and slowly rolled the finished machine toward Adam’s workstation.
He stood waiting at the end of the line, arms crossed as the squat, crab-like bot came to a smooth stop in front of him. It looked just as ugly in person as it had in the model—stubby legs, overbuilt central core, awkward distribution of tools across its chassis—but every part of it had purpose. Adam stepped forward, tapped the primary power node, and watched as the machine powered on for the first time. Its sensor cluster activated with a quiet chirp, lenses adjusting to the light. It sat there motionless, waiting for its first command.
After a few moments, Adam turned slightly toward Dave. “Well,” he said, “we built something that didn’t immediately explode. I’ll take that as a win.”
