Three days later

  "I don’t think it’s going to fit."

  "Lola, stop being pessimistic. It needs to fit."

  "I understand that, believe me, I want it to fit, but I think it’s just a bit too big."

  "Trust me, it’s going to fit. I just might have to dent the surface a bit."

  "Wait, what?"

  I used my left hand this time and pushed the surface of the housing that protected the computer core. It bent in a bit, and I managed to fit in the quantum chip housing. With the cooling and the nanomachines currently available, we could only run two, but that was still a significant boost in computing power.

  "See? I told you it would fit."

  She didn’t answer back.

  “Really? The silent treatment? I guess I don’t have to connect them.”

  "Just make sure that the next computer core has even more compute power than this."

  "That’s an easily made promise. Now, let me connect the proper lines and get these chips some cooling and power."

  It didn’t take me too long to get everything set up, and from my wrist display, I looked at the temperature of the chips, which was rapidly going near absolute zero.

  This should help a lot. And maybe Lola can help me with the programs for the communication PC because writing those programs was getting really boring—especially now that we had a destination.

  "You should be able to start. Let it run slow, and we’ll see how stable the temperature remains."

  "Acknowledged."

  Slowly, I watched as her processing ramped up as she started to use the quantum chips. The temperature was still dropping, eventually reaching near absolute zero, and then she started to ramp up the usage even more. It would take her a while to go through and see how stable it was, but I didn’t have to monitor her too carefully—she had done this plenty of times before.

  Instead of doing more programming, I decided to build out the universal communication device that would go around my ear so I could, in real-time, hear if someone else spoke in another language and have it translated into mine.

  This wasn’t something new—Earth technology had that for quite a while now—but this thing was supposed to be a lot better, especially if you had AR capabilities.

  That required some extra stuff, but that would be easy compared to actually making this thing, which wasn’t too bad. The real problem was the materials needed. I was starting to feel poor.

  Currently, I only have a bit of free gold left. I had more of the other precious metals, but making nanomachines gobbled those up fast.

  If things continued like that, I wouldn’t have any valuable stuff to trade for mana credits. Fortunately, I would be able to dismantle the mana rebirth chair.

  But there was a big problem—when we were in FTL, I wouldn’t be able to run any of my machines. None of them were made to operate in 2.3 gravity, and worst of all, it was in the wrong direction.

  Now, there might be some technology that would help with that, but the deeper Lola went into the quantum net, the harder it was to be sure if something was real or just some fantasy someone wrote about long ago.

  In the trade hub, we should be able to pay for proper information. I didn’t think the fueling stations along the way would offer something like that—at least, it wasn’t on their homepage that showed the prices of the fuels they sold.

  It was a good thing we didn’t take price comparisons to mana credits completely seriously. While it seemed like gold truly was the gold standard even in the universe, fuel certainly did fluctuate.

  For example, hydrogen was actually more expensive than helium-3, which would work better as a fuel, although I wouldn’t be able to switch them out before I reached the trade center.

  That wasn’t strictly true, but if we did go to another trade station that could facilitate what I needed to do to switch the fuels, it would basically take us just a little bit less time to actually make it to the trade center. Eventually, we would want to go there anyway, so what’s the point of a detour, especially if it doesn’t change how many fueling stops we needed to make.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  The number was three. Three fueling stops. Each of them meant we would be exposing ourselves and this tin can to everyone and anyone nearby. Now, I don’t know how appetizing the ship might seem to pirates, but I think what would make it look desirable is the fact that there’s no discernible fusion reaction happening on board.

  That’s a problem because that means I have some other way to get enough power density, and that meant fission materials. And those were damn expensive.

  Now that Lola knew where we were, we were able to get some better price estimations. Even without the workshop or cargo included, my ship was worth about 100 million mana credits.

  Now, that’s a rough estimate, and most of it came from the computer core and overall software side—and the nanomachines. If we included the workshop, the price was at least double if not more as it was hard to understand how much my workshop was worth.

  The worst offender, however, was the fission materials on board.

  They were worth approximately 500 million to 600 million mana credits. So I was basically flying around in a tin can full of money.

  This was not good news.

  I had tried to see if there was any way to fake fusion signatures, but there didn’t seem to be anything reliable. The only way was to actively have a fusion reaction happening on board, and that was out of reach.

  My musings came to an end when I finished making the translator, and after testing it in simulations and seeing it work correctly, it was time for some off time. After that, some sleep—and then back to programming.

  “Good morning.”

  A voice woke me up.

  “You sound happy, Lola. Why is that?”

  “I helped finish some of your programs. You need to go over them, but a large portion of what you need to do is done.”

  Well, that was good news, but—

  “Wait, weren’t you supposed to work on the cybernetic stuff? I appreciate the help, but it’s more important that you do that.”

  “It’s all done,” she said quickly, and with a truly happy voice.

  “Wait, what. okay, this is too early. Let me wake up for a few minutes.”

  "Now explain, please?"

  "Certainly. I was able to push the quantum chips more than I expected. The results are promising. The hardware locks are broken, and we can copy the current cyberware inside of you. I am also running through new designs, and I should have positive results in a few days."

  "That is good news."

  "There is one problem. How are we going to make them? We don't have any bio-printers, and we would need a combination of a bio-printer and a regular 3D printer to make this stuff."

  "Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. I think I’m going to have to spend almost all of my remaining high-end materials to make a large cluster of nanomachines that could handle such a job. Fortunately, I think we can break them back down when we are done. Although, I guess now comes the question—what changes do we actually do?"

  "I’ve been thinking about that. I think we also need to upgrade the individual nanomachines inside of you and make them have a direct connection to you, like the one you have with me.”

  “That way, they would be connected to you magically, which means all the cybernetics should be as well. This way, they could continue to upgrade you with new cybernetics that would work with your reborn body. They would just need to build them slowly."

  We talked about that for some time. From what I read, it could work—or it might not work. It wasn’t an exact science; it was magic.

  From what Lola was showing me, there were instances of someone not connecting at all with their cybernetics or even with AIs, sometimes leading to their death. It was a risk I needed to take, but hopefully, the things Lola came up with would work. We simply could not risk breaking the universal law and I was not confident in the bureaucratic world.

  "I think I would still want my right eye to look as natural as possible, although be as good as my left. And of course, we should replace all the other cybernetics I’ve been able to get before the end started.”

  “The rest of me, I think can stay the way it is. Although, what do you think is the maximum number of connections I could have? Like the connections I would have to the nanomachines and you?"

  “Your cybernetics and your computer are already drawing near the maximum wattage they can before your body would run into trouble of producing enough power. The designs should eliminate that issue a bit, so you should be able to fit those two connections—but no more.”

  “What about the computer? Could we upgrade that so I could have many more connections?”

  “It already could have more connections, and I guess, yes, we could increase it to perhaps near 200. But you couldn’t handle that many—your neurons would simply stop firing, and your nervous system would shut down.”

  “What if I had more power generation?”

  “That would bring the problem of heat.”

  I looked toward the computer core and what was above it.

  “You want to make a heat exchanger cybernetic so that you could have more connections? But why? What does that give you?”

  “Well, if I’m going to go through mana rebirth and be magically connected to you why not the other drones and the ship itself? They could even be upgraded to be an AI, at least by the standard of the universe. That could give me a lot of advantages.”

  “I will run the calculations and see what I can come up with, but it would be a radical modification. It would increase the likelihood of it not working after the mana rebirth. Fortunately for you, there is no limitation on how many AIs can be connected to one person. And I guess upgrading the ship would become a lot easier if you had such connections and more capable minds to do the work.”

  “That was my idea as well. There’s going to be a lot of upgrading in the future. I’m going to have to spend a lot more than we currently have—excluding the fission materials—to upgrade the ship to at least be competitive, so that not every other ship could blow us out of the sky. Hopefully, we can fix the money problem in the trade center.”

  “I can see where your thinking is going and will do my best. You better start designing those clusters and printing out the needed nanomachines.”

  Ten Days Later

  I was watching as about half a heart was finished assembling. It was a mix of pure white and dark red. The colors were beautiful. This was going to be my replacement—the first organ we were making—although a lot of the cybernetics would all need to be swapped at the same time.

  Lola’s design, with a little bit of my input, was magnificent. She had a way of making cybernetics. A talent I didn’t know ran so deep. The ideas I had were viable, although I would need some extra juice if I wanted to truly use all of the connections, which could now be almost 200.

  A new port was going to go into my shoulder. There I could insert a battery or a small generator that would give me the extra power needed to run everything.

  Fortunately, if I put a large portion of those connections into shutdown, meaning that the drones would be in hibernation like they currently were, I wouldn’t need any extra power.

  Back home, I’m guessing all of this would cost about 5 to 7 billion, and I could just make it in this dingy workshop in a tin can of a spaceship. Those executives would have strokes.

  This cybernetic heart wasn’t going to be fully metal. The cells it was made of had biological parts. That’s where the deep red color came from. Overall, they were a lot better than my current ones simply because they would be a lot more natural.

  The problem was this was going to cost me 90% of my current food supply, although the remaining 10% should give me about three months of food. After that, it would be heavy rationing as the algae regrew.

  All of it was done with my genetic makeup in mind, so hopefully, it will work with the rebirth. We also decided on one more new modification. We were going to replace my entire vascular system so that I could handle even more G-forces. Hopefully, that will save my life someday, and hopefully that day was far from this day.

  To finish all the cybernetics will take nearly a month, and in the meantime, I would have little more to do than design my future ship and keep this ship flying.

  It's a damn shame I can’t continue to print nanomachines—they're just so damn useful. Hopefully, I could upgrade them with some better base materials that should be available in the Trade Centre. If I can get them to a certain durability, a whole new world would open up to us that would make traveling a lot safer.