Bootstrap Colony

by Hechtl, Chris

  Two days of exploration had yielded an outcrop of granite five kilometers north east, about a kilometer away from the lake beyond. A trip there and back had yielded a bit of rubble, and a couple pulled muscles. He needed the jack hammer rig to break the rock, or explosives. Once he had it down to rubble he could transport it back to base for further processing.

  The idea of playing with Semtex was tempting, but enough to make him break out into a cold sweat. He had no experience with blowing up cells of rock and wasn’t sure how far shrapnel would fly. Jackhammer it was then. Planning the expedition would take a day, he needed to have a least two robots on security on site, robots to load the rock, one of the mini skip loaders, along with the train of vehicles going back and forth.

  The remainder of the rabbits had given birth; there were quite a few fuzzy little things in the cages now. Cute little things. It was going to be hard to cull them when the time came. Fortunately there hadn’t been many stillborns to feed to the Cheetah.

  Hera and the female cats and dogs all drop their broods almost within the same day; he was a little annoyed that Hera insisted on doing it under his bed. The constant mews of newborn kittens were enough of an incentive to get the cave ready to be occupied.

  Most of the rodents had also given birth; the raccoons chittered a lot, dancing back and forth in the cages. The tiny ones would grasp their paws out to reach things, and a few had begun to explore the latched door to their cages with alarming interest.

  The limestone cooking was going well; he already had a pretty good supply of the calcium carbonate. He had done a quick test with water, sand, clay, accelerant, and the calcium, the Portland cement was still drying. If he planned it right he could pave some of the pot holes in the cave floors, once he was sure he didn’t need to run cables or plumbing through them of course.

  In fact he might be able to get away with using some of the feldspar and limestone as the aggregate, at least for the time being. As the idea began to take shape he started to follow through. He needed a runway for the long range UAV, so he might as well test it out there. The grader beeped an error, so he trotted over to it and stepped into take control. He used his Bluetooth as he drove, commanding the GP robots to grind the limestone then set up the cement works for its first load. The cement truck was turned on and brought over to the cement works.

  He realized he needed a better bed, so ordered some of the sand to be dumped behind the grader with the dump truck and bobcat. Choreographing everything was quite a chore. He had to order the roller out and over to the area, it would be needed to pack the sand down. Hopefully it wasn’t too wet that it would muck things up. It was a bit alarming and disconcerting to see just how much sand he went through just making the three hundred meter long runway. It became obvious he would have to run out for more sand quickly.

  The AI reported the cement truck filled just as he finished grading, he pulled the vehicle over to the hangar and taxi area and set it to work on that area. The cement truck arrived; he watched it warily as it dumped the first load on top of the sand. Two general purpose robots were nearby, directing the chute and acting as a second set of visuals. A second set were standing by with a long metal scree bar. The four had just finished setting up the plastic form, a stack of plastic rails nearby were for the rest of the forms.

  He took a break for lunch, pausing to check over the first pour. It was messy, and looked a little watery. Getting a sandwich, he paused at the cement factory and dialed down the water mix for the next batch. The cement was already pouring into the truck for the second batch. He checked the screeing as he walked back to the landing field, noting it was going okay, if slow. A pair of humans could have finished in half the time. “Gotta use the tools I got,” he muttered. He looked over the robots noting the spattered cement. “Command, all robots assigned to cement to hose off every other hour,” he ordered. He sighed, and then pulled himself up the ladder and into the grader.

  When the sun came down it was almost a relief, almost because he was dirty and tired, but not done. Stepping up to the hummer, he led the bobcat and dump truck with double trailer load to the sand embankment. It was dangerous he knew, he was tired and predators lurked about. He watched from the cab of the hummer, tweaking the bobcat’s movements from time to time as it filled the giant bins. The first truck trundled off and the one of the tractors replaced it. It was towing the last of the fertilizer trailers. The four other tractors behind it were each towing small trailers. One by one they were filled and sent off. A donk on the other end would tip the trailer to dump the load, and then reset it on its wheels.

  He managed to watch two revolutions before it became too dark and the robots were having many visual faults. He called a halt, and then general retreat after the last vehicle was loaded. Arriving back at base, he was glad to see that he now had enough sand to pack the hangar taxi area, and maybe enough to complete the twelve centimeter thick runway. Faults with the vision systems forced him to turn spot lights on and direct them to the work area. Now that the pour was on he was reluctant to stop, knowing it would take a week or so in this weather to harden and fully cure. The cool night breeze was a concern; he was gambling a lot of effort on Murphy not rearing its head.

  Cradling a cup of coffee, he watched as the robots worked. It took a bit of work to get things sorted out in the dark, the sharp contrast of shadow and light was causing a few problems. It sucked when he had to cut stress lines in by hand, it took a couple of tries to get it right, and he knew he was messing things up a little as he went. After five more loads he called a halt, the strip was complete, and he even had the hangar and taxi area done. “Time for bed,” he yawned. “Computer, night routine implement,” he said on his way to his motor home.

  The next morning he took a walk over to the edge of the strip. He tapped it with his hand, finding it was pretty soupy. “Damn I hope this works,” he muttered. The UAV launched nearby, he turned to watch it head off. He fingered the coffee cup gently, took a sip as he watched the craft bank as it followed its programming. He had a crude map of the surrounding thirty kilometers, but needed to find more. Iron was going to be important soon.

  Sure, when he started recycling the damaged materials, packing materials, and unused flatbeds he would have plenty of metal from the frames. The flat metal plates that made up the beds were going to be used for various things. Some were already in use as roofing for the animals. A few panels would be cut into doors, shelves, flooring, or other useful things.

  It was tempting to grade and pour one of the permanent greenhouse sites, or the warehouse site, but he put it off. Better to use the trencher to lie some of these cables underground and out of the way. It was backbreaking work, he was glad the robot could do it. He smiled wryly at the thought, and then saluted the trencher with the cup. The thing looked like a giant chain saw on wheels and sure did a job tearing the ground up. The bobcat and trucks were already out getting more sand. He had found that they could handle the job with only minimal supervision during the day.

  He checked in with the Andy bots, discovering that they had done a good job of clearing the rubble from most of the accessible ground level chambers. He took a diamond saw to one of the stalagmites, but soon found that without plenty of water for thermal relief and lubrication it was not going to budge. He put the saw away and turned to the sledge. A few good whacks at the tops knocked pieces down, and it did a smash up job on the lower stalactites too. Wore him out pretty fast though.

  Mid afternoon he checked on things, finding the grader was doing okay, trucks were running convoys out and back, and the trencher was done. He ordered the GP robots to push the cables into the trenches, and then hook a dozer blade to one of the donks to have to fill in the holes.

  He checked the animals, finding most were okay. The sheep, alpaca, and goats were a problem; they had clear cut their entire pastures. He was forced to stop what he was doing and set up two additional pastures for them, and then herd them to their new stomping grounds with
the collies. The sheep went with minimum fuss, but the goats were a different story, one of the billies was none too happy about the collies and kept charging and attacking them. It even charged one of the GP robots, smacking into it before staggering off. Once that happened it was a bit more docile and he got it into the pasture.

  The dairy was running okay, he had gone back over the manual and discovered keeping the works out in the open wasn’t a bright idea a few days before during the last rain. He disconnected the butter churner, and then had a donk relocate it to the stables. He wasn’t going to get much butter anyway, the milk was starting to taper off, and some of it was off color or smelled weird. Probably the alien grasses messing with the digestion he thought and then sighed. He was going to need to set up a shed over the current dairy center, and program a GP robot and donk to transfer milk from it to the tanks inside the caves daily. Maybe program one to clean the tanks every day too he thought, rubbing his chin. That reminded him, he was going to need to set up the areas for the calves and kids soon and break out the gear to take care of them.

  Chapter 4

  A week of hard work on other projects and he judged the landing strip cured enough to use. The predator drone was wheeled out of its pod by a donk, and then pulled to the apron. It took an hour of work with the robots and a couple cuts on his hands to get the wings mounted and all the final connections made. The wings were over ten meters long, covered in solar panels on the top.

  The body also had solar panels, but only along the hump where the wings connected. The classic melon of the nose was left alone; the sensitive electronics were too precious to be addled. He used the command hummer to run the check sequence as a tanker robot filled the hydrogen fuel cells.

  The drone had a four hundred fifty kilometer range, but with the solar panels and proper cruising it could extend that range up to seven hundred kilometers. The ball under the nose twisted and turned, the cameras zoomed in and out. Wing flaps pivoted up and down, Rudders on the canted tail twisted back and forth in sync with the ailerons.

  When the drone reported flight prep complete he programmed it to head out north twenty kilometers, then bank east and return. He wasn’t going to take chances; he could do a couple test flights before he was comfortable it was okay to fly. The drone taxied down to the end of the runway, did a slow turn around then flared its flaps and took off with a rumble.

  “Damn that was cool,” he said and sighed, and then looked for Max. Alarmed he spun around, and then heard a whimper under the truck. Crouching down he took a look, and laughed. Max was behind the tire, whimpering, ears flat tail tucked under him. “Didn’t like the noise uh boy?” The dog crawled out and licked his face. He chuckled, got a face full of tongue, and then the dog began to bounce a bit. He pulled the ball out and tossed it, watching him run off at full speed.

  He let the drone do one more test flight and then set it to one hundred kilometers out north by north east, then bank south fifty kilometers and return. Meanwhile he spent the afternoon using the crane and robots to assemble the Quonset hut hangars.

  That evening he checked the feed, and noted orange and green painted rocks about ninety three kilometers out, almost on the edge of the run. They were between a forest and a river. The drone had then flown south, flying over forests until banking west for the return leg. It had passed over a river, then a lake.

  From the looked of the river and panographic images the river was the same one that bordered the possible iron deposit. The lake was fed by another river, the northern one he had seen before, and drained down a series of small fell into a large canyon river. More trees were south, and what looked like a series of mountain ranges.

  The range of animal life was a bit surprising; there were herds of the giant hammerhead creatures as well as dinosaur and mammal herds. Each species group favored its own, he was curious as to why. The hammerheads were the most numerous, but there seemed to be only the two species, the giants and the ceratopsia. The dinosaurs were also a bit uniform, two herds, one of sauropods, another was a mix bag of ceratopsia, what looked like hadrosaurs, and a few therapods tossed in around the outer perimeter.

  It was weird seeing them, they had headed bare like turkey vultures, but from the neck back they were covered in feathers. The hadrosaurs had scaly legs from the knee down. The struthiomimus looked like emus, but with long feather covered tails. They were quite spectacular; high stepping in ran with a peacock like tail. He was amazed to see a couple of what looked like Anklasaurs as well. They waddled along with the rest of the herd, thrashing their bone tipped tails.

  The mammal herds were quite extensive, bison and aurochs mingled in one great herd north, but along the southern lake he had spotted a mixed herd of animals, some he was stumped about. A few looked like giraffe, but others were a varied lot of deer, and even two woolly rhinos! The deer each had a wide assortment of horns, it made for a mad view, like branches thrashing about. Probably a defensive form of camouflage or visual confusion method he mused, and then shrugged.

  Apparently his base was pinning some of them there, they were skirting the northern river to keep away from him. Or at least that was what he assumed; it could be that they were just staying close to the river. The drone had even caught sight of the eastern Rex family; they were snoozing camped out near another carcass in the sun.

  The next week was spent expanding the pastures, overseeing robots putting up fencing while also juggling his growing list of chores. The farm robots were doing well, if slow. He had hoped things would have been faster, but the design team had warned him it would be a slow process.

  After the sixth day of putting up fencing he finished the gate and took a break to wipe his sweaty brow. It was a bit warm, but the sky south west was ominously dark. He took a long look, wishing he had had the time and power to set up the weather station. “Great, just great,” he sighed, and then looked things over. This pasture will probably be the last he was going to put up for a while.

  The outer ring of pasture fencing was chain link, three meters tall, topped with razor wire. When he had the power it would also be electrified. Until then he was stuck with constant patrols by the robots, eating into his power reserves immensely.

  Three long days of constant rain drove him into the cave. He was worried about the cement driveway; it had been poured by the robots only two days before rains. Too much rain could turn it into soup.

  The first day of rain had allowed him to catch up on much needed maintenance and spend some quality time with the animals. But the urge to get more done had been overwhelming. He had finally booted the auto cad program, loaded the blueprints of the cave, then had it auto generate an architectural blueprints. He spent the evening going over them, adjusting them till he was tired and his head pounded from eyestrain.

  The next morning after breakfast he just couldn’t stand it, he had to do something! He glanced out at the gloomy sky. Hera had jumped onto the bed, waking him with purrs and a desire to be petted. When the kittens insistently mewed for her attention she ignored them for the moment. Far more important things were to be considered, like a thorough petting.

  One of the little fuzzballs managed to climb the bed and get up to mom. Mitch could almost see her sigh in resignation. He smiled slightly in amusement at the thought. The tiny tyke mewed, ears almost flat, eyes almost closed. He chuckled.

  “Buut mooooom. I’m hungry,” he teased, and then laughed as Hera gave him a dirty look as she lapped at the kitten's head. She settled down on her side with a resigned sigh, and the kitten began to nurse. He started to scoot off the bed when the second, then third kitten came up. When he got off, he watched bemused as the fourth just managed to get up over the lip to join them. The fifth was a bit lost; he scooped it up and set it down with its brothers and sisters.

  He muttered at the sky as he splashed through the rain and puddles to the cave entrance. He pulled the precious laptop out of his coat, and set it down on a crate. Maintenance was quick, as were the animal chores.
By the time he was finished mucking out a stall before a robot could get to it he firmly decided to get to work on the cave interior.

  The decision made, he began ordering palettes of materials. GP robots and donks sprang into action, splashing though the rain to gather the materials from the cargo trailers.

  He started in the room he called the hall; it would be the main foot entrance to the cave complex. The robots had cleared the chamber of stalactites and stalagmites. The Andy robots had even completed laying the beams for the walls and ceilings.

  Running the piping for everything was a bit of a chore, it took a lot longer than he had thought it would, which was typical. Still the work was absorbing. Seven sets of pipes were run in the ceiling and floor, one for water, one for air, one for heating and air conditioning, one for sewer, two for electrical, one for the integrated heating in the floor, and the final one was a fiber optic cable. The electrical pipes were separate, one was the liquid nitrogen jacketed super conductor for the main power buss, the other was the low power lines for lights, outlets, speakers, fans, and such.

  It felt good laying it out after a while, when he got the first box in it finally felt like he was building a home. He had been so wrapped up in being overwhelmed with chores and his to do list, it really hadn’t sunken in until that moment. He sat back on his haunches, looking up to the ceiling. The sound of an Andy laying out wiring and piping brought him back.

  They managed to get the first room done by lunch. He took a break while the robots worked on the next hall, laying out the materials for him. He ate a cheese sandwich, watching the rain out of the cave mouth.

  Back on the job, he made short work of putting the pieces together. Now that he had the hang of it, and the robots were adjusting, he could keep just behind them as they laid things out. By the time he was finished gluing PVC, twisting wire ties, and soldering plumbing the robots had finished the next room or hall and moved on to the next area.