Lola was still gathering information about our local area, and I had just finished a 12-hour programming session—I was tired.

  We would later have to test all the programs in simulations, which would take some time. Too bad we couldn't use any of the quantum chips. We simply wouldn’t have the room for such luxury. The cooling solutions took up too much space, and, of course, it meant we needed to constantly burn our supply of liquid nitrogen.

  Liquid nitrogen was also one of the main reasons we couldn’t run quantum chips constantly back on Earth. We didn't have the machines to make it in the amount we needed.

  That brought my mind to nanomachines. Right now, I was mostly printing more nanomachines for the power core, as there was no reason not to constantly print something. Well, materials might become a problem.

  I also added a few patches to test out if I could use them as a better thermal connectivity medium to pull off more heat from the radiation shielding.

  I felt new energy flow into me as a new idea started to interest me. It would take some testing, but perhaps this entire ship’s heat management could be improved drastically. Still, I should set the timer so that I would go to sleep in a few hours; otherwise, I would once again be pushing my days to be ever longer, messing up my day and night cycle even further.

  Two days later

  I was sitting in the command chair, this time looking at a map of the Milky Way. There were still plenty of empty areas, but the area around us was quite filled in, and the broader strokes of the entire galaxy were displayed. The situation was better than I expected, although seeing so much red was also disheartening.

  The red represented danger areas—either pirate-controlled space, hostile nations, although that was a small percentage, and then, of course, the two huge zones of red: one named the Canyon of Death, the other Zone of Misery.

  They were about equal distance from here but still about 40,000 light-years away. The Canyon covered an area of about 20,000 light-years in length but only about 3,000 light-years across, while the Zone of Misery was more of a blob that was at its longest 8,000 in length and width.

  Those were the places that had decently high mana density, although still quite low compared to some of the other places in the universe. The problem was, that there weren’t any real nations there to fight against the space monsters for a long while, so the area is infested with them.

  There is a lot of industry around those locations, and a lot of adventurers go there to get started. There were other such areas, but they were usually handled better by those nations that inhabited them, and those were some of the more powerful nations in this galaxy.

  There seemed to be quite a lot of nations, most of them quite young—something Lola mentioned about waves of civilizations rising in roughly the same amount of time. So only a few civilizations were older than 200,000 years that had reached FTL, and many of them had long ago collapsed. It seems like everything had an expiration date.

  There were no large nations here, the biggest ones claiming about 300 star systems. Most controlled only a few or just one-star system. So overall, the situation was much like the rest of the universe, which—at least—was some good news.

  “So, Lola, you mentioned you might have found us a first destination?”

  “Yes. You mentioned a trade hub. Unfortunately, we passed the first one. That trade hub’s current entry is only about six hours from Earth and approximately a week of travel from there. There is, however, human activity around there, so I’m guessing even if we could, you wouldn’t want to go there. So here is my recommendation.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She had, during her exploration, shown me where that trade hub was located, and now the image changed to a new one. This one looked bigger, and instead of being run by a nation with just one solar system, it was controlled by one with about twelve, which was actually quite impressive.

  Also, the nations around there seemed to be allies, which was common, smaller nations were usually under the sphere of influence of bigger ones.

  It was about 10,000 light-years away, which would take us four weeks to reach because it was a bit off the main current and even off the side current, but basically next to it. It even had a way to go deeper off the main current and a way to get from the wider galaxy to the main current. That really seemed like an excellent location for a trade center.

  “The only problem is that hull and armor, and even better materials, are more expensive there than the average, so I do not think it would be suitable for a big retrofit like you want.”

  In that, she was correct. But that place was a lot better to sell off some of the more valuable stuff that I could sell—at least, I hoped so.

  “I think that’s a destination where we can get a lot more information. I’m certain they would have a proper web where we could gather some good intel. Afterwards, we will choose a place that we can use for a proper retrofit that wouldn’t break the bank, so to say. This would also mean that we will need to refuel three times. Can we do that?”

  “Yes, there are multiple fueling stations, especially on the main current. I will get you the details, but we should have no problem fueling.”

  “Excellent. Continue gathering intel about the local space, but now put your main focus on cybernetics. On that front, I also have a surprise for you.”

  “A surprise?” she asked in a confused tone.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I figured out how we can get enough cooling to actually run quantum chips in the space we have available without burning up our nitrogen. Here, this is the design,” I said while opening up my notebook and showing her the blueprints I came up with.

  “Of course, this is rough, but I think you can refine the design enough to make it viable?”

  “Affirmative. And this is truly a good surprise. I miss having access to quantum chips—they make going through large datasets easy and help figure out new designs a lot quicker. This should also help with the cybernetics a lot.”

  The next two days were quite busy as I pushed the programming of the communication pc programs since this was more of a priority. First, I put the printers to work making nanomachines that were better designed for this purpose. The first patches I used on the shielding helped confirm that this would indeed work.

  Now, instead of the heat needing to travel throughout the ship and into the heat exchanger, there were small clusters of nanomachines that were connected to more nanomachines, which pulled the heat from the shielding directly. Those clusters then converted it into electricity, which was sent a lot faster to the power core, making everything more efficient.

  The next step was going to be scary.

  I had already removed a section of floor paneling on the second deck, under which was the heat exchanger. It was already barely doing anything, but it was still pulling heat from the computer core and many other components. All of those would get the new nanomachine treatment as well, but first, I needed to change out this device with the one I was currently holding.

  That meant that, for a bit, there would be no real cooling in a portion of the ship. Lola had put herself into low-power mode, and a lot of other systems were as well.

  I rechecked everything to make sure everything would be within reach when I needed it.

  This was a bit scary because we were in zero gravity, and I was not that used to it.

  With an electric drill, I loosened some of the bolts and then moved as fast as I could. In just two minutes and a few seconds, I had finished swapping out the devices, and I watched as the boot-up sequence of the new device cycled for the first time. I was getting green notifications back.

  The heat of the components had risen well into the yellow, and if the job had taken about two minutes longer, things would have started to become critical. Fortunately, that wouldn’t be the case. Now, this new device wasn’t only to pull heat it was to cool what was connected to it.

  What this thing does is use nanomachines to pull heat a lot of it and convert it into electricity. It would not be a good energy source—very inefficient. In fact, it would be consuming a lot of power instead of making it. But it would be able to deliver a lot of cooling and actually bring the main line that would be used for the quantum chips down to near absolute zero.

  Now, we just need to wait for the printers to print more nanomachines. I needed a lot to finish upgrading all the cooling.

  Lola had also figured out how I could go through the mana rebirth. I headed down to the first deck and looked at the crazy chair that was half-finished. The rest of the parts were in the queue to be printed. It was a crazy-looking chair made mostly out of iron with spikes of silver and gold. Attached to it was going to be a lot of cubes similar to the ones that go into a quantum PC.

  When this thing was done, I could sit in it, and after a bit of time, it would trigger the rebirth, which, according to Lola, would take about a month in this amount of mana density and at the speed we were flying.

  Mana wasn’t going to keep me alive. By sitting there without life support, I would be forced to go unconscious by the mana itself—and then die.

  Fortunately, there were a few solutions. One was, of course, hooking me up to life support to keep me alive for that long, but just thinking about the wasted time made me shiver.

  There was another way—make more cubes and just let them continue to collect the mana until you could sit in it and complete it in just a few hours or, at most, a day.

  What’s the problem with making the cubes? They cost a lot. I needed to use up a lot of my gold and silver—even making the chair was quite costly.

  I didn’t want to use up the feedstock I had because who knows when I might need to print something fast. So I was doing it the slow way, using gold and silver bars to build this out.

  The positive thing was that I could just reuse them afterwards, but I could see why purchasing a mana rebirth was expensive and why most normal citizens wouldn’t be able to afford it in this galaxy.