Beep beep boop beep

  I immediately looked toward the computer where the sound came from.

  “Damn it,” I cursed as I quickly put down my current tools and headed toward the ramp. I had only gotten a few steps onto it when I started to feel the shaking.

  “Lola, get ready to activate the hover platform.”

  “Acknowledged,” a sultry woman's voice answered, and I could hear some of the engines starting to ramp up while the shaking got worse.

  After about a minute, the shaking lessened, but I didn’t move and waited for another five minutes before I heard the same computer beep, indicating it was safe to move again.

  “Lola, shut down the hover platform.”

  “Acknowledged,” came the reply once again, and I could hear the engines shutting down.

  “That was the third one this week. I don’t think we have long.”

  “Your prediction seems to be correct. In fact, the area around our base has survived three months longer than predicted.”

  Damn it. I didn’t want an answer to that question. But no matter how intelligent I’ve been able to make her, she’s still an AI I cobbled together, and I’m surprised she’s functioning at such a level.

  Although she does have trouble interpreting human emotions and reactions, it's a shortcoming I don’t mind because her other parts are beyond my expectations and the only reason I’ve been able to make proper progress on my project.

  I moved back to work on the problem I was facing—trying to put together an air-purifying system with the capability of producing oxygen by breaking down other substances that had oxygen in them.

  I had a design open on my AR, but unfortunately, I didn’t have half the parts, even while I had drones searching the entire megacity. Those parts were simply too few in number and most likely bought up long ago by every nation and corporation that could get their hands on the stuff.

  I wondered if there was still anyone else alive on Earth, but I reckoned there still was—perhaps in some shielded bubbles, still working on making their ships and trying to escape this dying planet. I was left to die in this megacity, but here I still am, ten years later, when everyone else around here is dead.

  Many of the skyscrapers have fallen, destroyed by the shakes. It was a good idea to move to the suburbs when I started this project—at least here, things couldn’t fall onto me, and the rich always liked to keep things a bit safer, so even the ground was strengthened.

  “Fucking bastards, knowing they were going to kill this planet or choosing to not believe those scientific facts.”

  In my rage, I hit a broken-down monitor multiple times before I managed to calm myself down.

  “Why are you mad about things past humans have done? You could not have changed their actions,” Lola asked.

  “Because I can’t believe how stupid they were, only doing things for money. To get more of it—for what? Most of them will die in those ships of theirs. There isn’t even a guarantee that when we activate the faster-than-light device—which managed to be made through the combined efforts of every nation in this world just before the end truly began—actually works as it should.

  For all I know, the only humans still alive are the ones inhabiting the rest of the solar system, but they would not even call me human. Now, please stop wasting your processor power on this problem and conversation.”

  “If you can’t figure out how to produce the power we need to run that FTL device and the propulsion engines I managed to put together, we will be enslaved or killed by the remnants of the human civilization. Of course, perhaps it would just be better to stay here.”

  She didn’t answer back, which was good, so I got back to work.

  Two hours later, as I was running diagnostics on the device, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was returning green flags for every test.

  “Finally, another piece finished.”

  As I was bringing it into the ship and starting to put it in its place, adjusting things to work around it and switching up its housing. The final piece looked nothing like the original design. I was surprised to find out that I didn’t have another thing on my list.

  “That’s weird.”

  I manipulated my AR HUD to check what was going on, only to find out that the only mission-critical thing not completed—more specifically, not figured out—was the fact that we couldn't generate enough power to run the FTL device and the engines.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Fortunately, I had another list. This one was also incredibly long, but there was nothing to do but start it, as this was the non-critical item list I needed to acquire or make to ensure my stay in space wasn’t just about survival. Although, still, most of this list was for things that could go wrong and ways to fix them.

  Three months later

  I was tinkering with another device when I heard, this time, a good beeping. This was surprising, as the earthquakes were getting stronger and now happening daily. I was running the hover platform constantly so I could keep working in peace.

  The deep mining had really destroyed Earth. Everything that had been taken out had left too many holes. Unfortunately, that pesky gravity wanted to pull everything downward.

  About 15 years ago, everything was made public. Large areas of the Earth’s surface were going to collapse—not by much, but enough to destroy almost everything we called civilization.

  They had only announced anything close to the truth because they were getting real close to figuring out faster-than-light travel and were already ready to unveil multiple huge spaceship projects to take parts of humanity to the sky.

  What they didn't expect was the shaking to mess up the rotation of the metal core, causing the magnetic field that kept us safe from the sun to sometimes weaken a bit too much. Electronics suffered hugely, but that wasn’t even the worst thing—it was how the solar winds degraded our atmosphere. It took a while, but right now, no normal human could survive on the surface. They would simply suffocate to death.

  My mind ran away a bit, but I focused back on the good beeping.

  In the megacity, I had literally thousands of drones scouring for anything useful, and it seemed like one of them had found something its programming indicated was really valuable. The signal I was getting was quite weak, so I checked the current magnetic field of the planet—only to find it particularly weak.

  This was going to make things a bit more difficult.

  After a bit of programming, I was able to change some of the routers to ones that seemed to be less affected, most likely because of their location, and got a clearer picture of what I was looking at.

  What’s that? Some sort of tech lab? That could be really useful.

  I ordered the drone to pan about. I felt my mouth drop open when I saw the name of the company.

  Nano Tree.

  That was the leading company in nanotechnology, something still experimental when the world turned crazy. That could be a literal goldmine.

  “Lola, I’m going out. I need you to take over running the base.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Acknowledged.”

  “Do you really think this is the best idea? It could be really dangerous,” Lola asked, but I didn’t answer as I started to prepare the modified ATV that I was using to pick up stuff my drones found.

  It was electric, like almost everything else, but the engine still whined when I cranked the accelerator. I didn’t actually know what model this one was, as I needed to replace the upper half of it with an electric motorcycle so I would have a way to control this thing. It was all-wheel drive and had double axles on the back so it could support larger weights for the trailers it could hook up on the back.

  The drive out of my place was quick enough, and the light of the surface hit me. It was fortunate that I didn’t need an airtight base, but the leak tests I did on the spaceship reminded me how good it felt to have proper air to breathe.

  Who would have guessed that my suffering would eventually allow me to survive?

  Outside, I stopped near the camouflaged warehouse that was open on all sides. I didn’t have to worry about anyone on the ground, but up in the sky, I didn’t want anyone there to find where I was.

  While driving around was a risk, there was also nothing I could do to stop them from noticing me, except for the low chance they had simply because of how much ground there was to look at.

  While Earth was pretty dead, with only a few locations still showing broadcasting signals, the rest of the solar system was quite active. Those bastards up there were not very nice, and I had heard the calls for help when they attacked some of the ships that tried to escape Earth.

  There were two types of ships leaving Earth—ones just trying to escape and accepting the authority of those who lived in the rest of the solar system, and the ones trying to escape this solar system.

  The ones trying to escape... well, it seemed like those ships were too valuable to let go, and I could understand why. All of them had fusion cores—something that allowed them to produce enough energy to activate the FTL device and the propulsion engines needed to actually reach the correct speed for its activation.

  Unfortunately, fusion cores were a newer type of technology that allowed for the miniaturization of fusion power plants so they would fit into a spaceship. Because of that, they were also a lot more guarded about how they were made, and no matter how much I tried to look for the blueprints, I have not had any luck.

  Fortunately, the engine I made for propulsion, on paper, should work. It would still require a lot of power, and I still needed enough to actually activate the FTL device.

  After hooking up a trailer, I pulled out onto the road that led from this suburb toward the megacity where the Nano Tree lab was.

  As I was riding there, I continued to think about the needed speed to activate the FTL device. It wasn’t actually faster-than-light travel—that was still physically impossible. What this device supposedly did was allow you to enter a side dimension where distances were a lot shorter relative to this dimension.

  This meant that there, you would only need to move one meter, and here, you would move 100. Of course, that wasn’t the correct calculation, and while some tests were run, I didn’t have the correct data to make exact calculations. I would only be able to do it after a jump. There was also a chance that this device was just going to make me disappear because none of the ships that had left had ever come back.

  That was also curious because the rest of the solar system seemed to be slowly getting better and better technology, and from the looks of it, those designs did look alien—so someone should have come back and found alien life.

  Things have been kept hidden, that’s for sure, and I think my best chance for freedom is actually getting out of the solar system. Mostly because the rest of the humans up there don’t count me as a human, and I would not like to be a servant for them for who knows how many remaining years I have.

  It took me approximately an hour to get to the megacity. It was a desolate place, with many of the buildings completely collapsed. Basically, no window had survived that was above the third floor, and even now, my AR hood was showing red zones where tall skyscrapers could fall at any moment.

  Unfortunately, it seemed like my target was in one of those zones, so I parked my ATV outside the zone, behind some more structurally sound buildings that would hopefully protect it if something were to fall.

  It was about a ten-minute walk until I found the correct building. It was quite a short one, only about ten stories, but the drone indicated a side entrance that seemed to lead to an underground area.

  The drone had already made a way through, and it was waiting for me just outside the lab door. It beeped in greeting as I got near.

  “Yeah, hi there. Let me just connect to you.”

  I started manipulating my wrist display so I could direct connect to this drone. Most likely, I have also gone insane because I’m starting to act like each one of these drones has its own personality. Why did I even say hi to it? Why did I program it to greet me?

  Finally, the full connection was made, and I could now see what it could see in my AR display. I made that screen smaller, put it to one side, and set it to guard the outside area.

  While there shouldn’t be any life here, there were still some drones moving about that weren’t mine, and it wouldn’t be the first time I’d found actual humans. Each time that happened, things didn’t end well for either me or them. That’s why I entered each room with my gun in front of me and pointed at the unknown.

  As I walked inside, I found the lab quite intact, although it was obviously a bit messed up because of the earthquakes. I tried the PCs, but they weren’t turning on.

  From my backpack, I pulled out a battery pack meant to power things that otherwise needed wall power. After hooking the power cable into it, I saw lights turning on inside the PC.

  This time, when I hit the power button, the PC turned on. I took out a remote display port and hooked it up so the PC would display onto my wrist device. It took longer than normal, but eventually, the PC booted up.

  Of course, it was password-protected.

  Before I tried any cracking software, I looked around the desk and then inside the drawers, but there didn’t seem to be any papers with the password.

  I’ve come to learn that, in most cases, there was just a password written down somewhere, and I really hoped that would be the case here as well. Lastly, I looked underneath the keyboard, and there it was—a sticky note, a little faded, with a 12-digit password. I entered it and gained access to the PC.

  I allowed my search programs to go through the PC, only to find that this was more of just a server PC with basically nothing on it. All the proper data would be inside the server, which would most likely be in another city somewhere in a more secure location.

  I tried to see if the server was still online, but it didn’t appear to be here. Yet the IP seemed really similar to this PC’s.

  “No way.”

  Immediately, I started to look around and saw that there were a few corridors that led further in. From my trench coat, I pulled out five small drones and sent them to scout ahead. If the server was actually here, that would mean I could get a lot of useful data—if it was still intact.

  The search went fast. While there were plenty of laboratories, one of the drones took the most obvious path, heading straight as far down as it could go. Eventually it found the server room. Maybe this was my lucky day.

  The other drones had been going through the other laboratories, which were in better condition and actually had stuff that I wanted, especially anything related to making nanotechnology.

  “Lola, I need a full complement here.”

  The signal wasn’t the best, but I got the confirmation beeps back. More of my drone army would be sent this way. There were simply too many good things to get here, and I needed to get this done as fast as possible. I headed down to the server room myself.

  It wasn’t as big as I expected it to be. Fortunately, it didn’t have any power; otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to get near it. Those automated turrets were scary—fortunately, they were powered off. Also, the cage around this would have taken me days to get through if there was power. Now, I simply took out my plasma torch and started to cut.

  The cage itself was made out of something stronger than durasteel and would also be coming with me—at least as much as I could get. This stuff was used as top-grade armor plating for anything military. That job, however, I would leave for the drones. I didn’t have to risk myself for this.

  Things down here were a lot dustier, and when I finally got through the cage and to the other side of the servers, I finally understood why.

  There were about ten bodies in one of the corners, and one sitting behind the desk. Most likely, they died one by one, trapped down here, as this room was probably climate-controlled giving them the best chance to survive until rescue came. It would not have been a good way to go.

  The servers themselves seemed completely dead, and I wasn’t going to give them an ounce of power.

  As I opened the doors, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. There were ten 5000-petabyte drives, and they were the fast ones as well. Even if the data was completely corrupted, this would still help me fix my data storage problems.

  They were nice and compact as well, with each one being approximately the size of a small briefcase, though they weighed quite a lot.

  One by one, I pulled them out, and holding two at a time, I brought them all back to the ATV. It took five trips, but it was well worth it.

  On the sixth trip, I brought back one of the nano devices that would allow me to make new nanomachines. It wasn’t the best machine out there, but it was the most universal, allowing me to make anything, even if it was slow.

  This one was definitely going into the ship. The question was, where would I fit it?

  The trip back was uneventful, but now I had to set up a new block in my server that would be isolated from the rest of it, so I could try to connect and most likely hack through whatever protections these drives had.

  My drones would handle the rest of the salvage.

  I was then interrupted by Lola.

  “Master, shouldn’t you be hurrying? You seem to be taking things more leisurely lately.”

  “Please don’t call me master. Remember the directives, right?”

  I got a beep in confirmation. Too bad I had to use some unsavory AI pieces to put this one together.

  “Also, if you haven’t noticed, we don’t have a way to generate enough power. There’s no way I’m going to get out of here. I’m just doing things so I won’t go crazy until I die.”

  She didn’t answer back, but I could see that her processing power notched up a bit, and I saw the research moving a bit faster.

  I’m still amazed I was able to put together such a capable AI. I had suspected it would try to kill me the first instant it woke up, even with its safeguards. It was never safe to combine multiple AIs, but I had no other option since I didn’t have a full library to use a properly validated interface.

  Setting up the servers was easy enough, but now came the hard part. They probably had the best encryption available, which would take me approximately a month to get through with my current processing power.

  Perhaps this place would be stable enough to survive that long—perhaps not. But that would mean I would need to take a lot of processing power away from Lola, and I don’t think she would approve of that right now.

  When the server finally booted up and I started to interface with it, I was actually shocked. There weren’t any safeguards or encryptions—it was completely open.

  That should not be possible.

  Then I remembered the person behind the table. They had quite good clothing—the best of the best, in fact—even if it was now scrap. I looked back at the logs that I could still access, and yep, there it was. Someone decrypted everything and made it possible for anyone to get to this data.

  Too bad that this server wasn’t connected to the wider web. The knowledge here would have been quite valuable when there were still more humans trying to get off this rock.

  “Lola, there's too much data here to go through everything by myself. I need your help. Still, be on guard for traps, but give me a report as soon as you can if you find anything useful.”

  I started to look at how much data there was, and about half of it seemed to be a backup. Still, there was 1/3 capacity completely unused. Yep, these were going into the ship—time to start working on that.

  I would pull a few of the shittier drives from the server on the ship, but I think it’s better to make five new mounts, as most likely, I would get rid of a lot of this data since it would most likely not be usable.

  Being inside the ship, I felt a lot more secure, and I did like working here more than outside. I finished the preparation and started pulling the shitty drives when Lola spoke.

  "Data analyzed. Found possibilities for solutions to problems. Master's organ decay. Master's right knee problem. Master's overall body improvement. Solutions to surviving hostile environments. Solution to—"

  She kept going and going.

  "Holy shit, what's on those drives?"

  Then the next words completely froze me.

  "Solution to power problem for FTL device and propulsion."

  "Wait, wait, stop! Lola, explain that now!"

  "As you wish, Master. There are blueprints for nanomachines capable of consuming radiation, heat, and other forms of energy to produce electrical power. Combining it with our own research and what's available in the World Wide Web database, it is possible to make a power core powerful enough to power an FTL device and Master's propulsion engine using fission instead of fusion and using available plutonium or uranium as fuel."

  It took me an embarrassingly long time to start moving again and to understand the implications of that.

  "Send the blueprints to my AR immediately."

  It only took her a few moments to comply.

  Then I was looking at something straight out of sci-fi. The simulation showed a huge pile of nanomachines periodically expanding from fission expansion, only to be completely contained by the swarm of nanomachines. It showed that this should be about 95% efficient. I quickly did some on-the-fly calculations, and that should indeed be enough, even if it would consume quite a lot of fuel.

  I would still have enough to keep the ship running for quite a while. For ten years of operation, I would need about 20 kilograms of fission materials. And while some would be better than others, I had nearly a tonne of it collected.

  I tweaked the design so the nano swarm would also be containing all the fission materials. It would expand the amount of nanomachines needed quite a lot. It would also make it weigh more, but I could deal with that.

  Lola got back with the calculations quite fast, and I could actually just run the entire ship off the passive effect without ever having to consume any of the fission materials. Only when I needed to use FTL and the main propulsion engine would I need to consume fuel.

  "Lola, get this ironed out and get me a list of materials needed to make so many nanomachines."

  The list was quite long, and I needed some of the better machines if I wanted to get this done as fast as possible. So it would be another trip to the megacity to get things safely and quickly here. I would have a busy time, but holy shit, I might actually get off this rock.