Milton absorbed the information, watching as ALANNA looked down again in her persistent despondent state. I can see why they were counting on us – they had no other options it seems. There was just one thing that didn’t make sense to him. Why him? It made sense to him why there were a bunch of military people in that small grey room, but it didn’t explain why he was there. Was I an accident? He decided to ask ALANNA.
“You, and one other like you, were selected once it was found that 2 of the 100 candidates selected previously were no longer available due to their deaths. You were to be an experiment…for the experiment. Your knowledge of warfare and strategy through your ‘games’ – despite any actual physical fighting experience – was determined acceptable for what was needed to operate the Station Core. It was even argued that you were actually better suited to it, compared to the others, but it was still to be determined.”
ALANNA seemed to sit a little straighter as she talked, and Milton was hopeful that their continued conversations would pick her up out of her funk. He continued asking her questions, even as night fell on the planet they were on. Neither of them could get tired, so it didn’t stop Milton’s question-and-answer session. By morning, Milton had run out of pertinent things to ask and was ready to get started – and fortunately, so was ALANNA.
Chapter 4 – Sciurophobia
Milton learned a lot that night. He learned that he had survived due to his near-impenetrable tritanium shell and his zero-point energy reactor, which kept his systems running and would keep him powered for countless years into the future. He learned more about The Collective – their races, their customs, and their society. To be honest, he didn’t really care much about them, since he had never met them and probably never would. However, talking about them seemed to be cathartic for ALANNA, as she worked through her issues with not being there for them and slowly came to terms with their present situation. As the hours passed, Milton was amazed at how life-like she was. After a while, he stopped thinking of her as an AI or computer program and as a real person. She had emotions, feelings, and the same doubts and fears as a normal person, with a complexity that would fool even those who knew otherwise.
What really got her – if not excited, then at least interested – was his question about space travel. He asked whether or not he could leave this planet and to his disappointment was shot down immediately. “However, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t create a ship capable of spaceflight, if you were able to acquire enough materials. The plans for many types of ships, as well as an uncountable number of other things, were uploaded to your processing core. It might take centuries, but it would be possible. And then…we could find out what happened to The Collective…”
He could see that this goal, this purpose, was what she needed. She perked up, her movements more animated, and her voice heavy with enthusiasm. Milton wasn’t enthusiastic about searching for the people who had kidnapped and essentially murdered him, but he apparently still had a lot of time to decide. The fact that it might take centuries to get to that point didn’t seem to deter ALANNA as they were essentially immortal. It was a new experience for Milton, however, since he was used to his lifespan consisting of perhaps a century, if he was lucky. It was going to take a while to get used to the fact that he wasn’t going to die from old age. In fact, he didn’t even know if he could die – another question for ALANNA. She told him that unless he was subjected to extremely high temperatures, like being dropped into the sun, he would continue to function indefinitely.
With said sun peeking over the treetops, he continued to pepper her with questions before he was interrupted by movement detected by his sensors. About 25 feet away from him was a small, squirrel-like animal nearly the same height as ALANNA, with a bushy tail that was steadily approaching with determination. It was obvious to Milton that he was its destination – and he freaked out. “Get away! Help! Stop it! ALANNA, do something!” His words had no effect on the small creature, who started bounding in his direction. Suddenly, he could hear something move on the outside of his shell, and a neon-blue laser shot out of the Core, hitting the squirrel right in its face. In mid-leap, the blood-thirsty attacker froze solid and fell back to the ground as a chunk of ice. It landed on a rock protruding from the ground and shattered into about a hundred pieces, scattering around the area in front of him.
Congratulations! You have defeated Blood-thirsty Squirrel! You gain 1 experience!
Current Combat Level: 1
Experience: 11/250
ALANNA was silent for a minute as she recovered from his sudden aggressive action against (at least, what she considered) a poor, innocent creature. “Uh…care to tell me what that was about? It couldn’t have hurt you, so there was no need for that.” Milton didn’t want to lie to her, but he was ashamed of his fear of squirrels. When he was six years old, a squirrel somehow got into his house, made its way into his room, and attacked him when he was sleeping. Attacked might be too strong of a word, as it probably just wanted to get out of the house and was running all over the place, but his six-year-old mind thought otherwise. To this day, he had an unnatural fear of squirrels and avoided them like the plague whenever he saw them.
“I’m sorry, I just really don’t like squirrels. And I thought he was going to attack me…or something,” he sheepishly replied.
ALANNA looked unconvinced, but that was the best she was going to get as far as any explanation. “Ok, whatever. At least you now know how to use your last-ditch personal defensive measures now. They are activated by your own sense of danger, attacking anything you deem needing protection from. Even if it is a cute, harmless squirrel.”
Ignoring her last comment, he asked, “Forget about my reaction for a moment – why was it attacking me?”
For the first time, Milton heard a short laugh come from the diminutive woman, “Ha! It wasn’t attacking you! If you hadn’t been such a fucking pansy, you would have seen that it was probably just exploring and was curious at what you are. Attacking you!” In a freaky change in her voice, she mimicked his voice exactly and started pretending to be attacked by squirrels, “Help! Stop them! They are going to kill me with cuteness!”
He was finding it harder to keep his cool with her mockery, “Hey! There’s no need to call me names or make fun. Anyway, I said I was sorry and I overreacted – give it up, already. Despite what you say, it really did look like it was coming for me. If you could put aside your doubts for a second, can you think of any reason why it would?”
ALANNA continued to laugh to herself for a couple more seconds, to Milton’s rising annoyance, before she composed herself. “Keep your panties on, this will take just a minute. I’m going to run a diagnostic of your Core – maybe you landed on its tree or something and was going ‘nuts’ about it.” She snickered for a moment at her own “joke”, before she went vacant eyed as she looked at something he couldn’t see.
Although he was glad that her attitude had improved from her previous funk, he wasn’t sure if this was an improvement – at least for him. Her personality will take some getting used to, especially if we are going to be together for a long time. The way he saw it, if they couldn’t get along, it was going to be a hellish couple of centuries or even – heaven forbid – millennia together.
His musings were interrupted as she exclaimed, “Shit on a stick, that’s not good.”
Although he was an adult, he was never one to use a lot of foul language and didn’t really like it when other people used it willy-nilly. This aversion was instilled in him when he got caught using a number of four-letter words around the house when he was seven. Instead of the old-school wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap or new-school “time-out” methods, his parents took his gaming system and TV away from him for six months. They threatened to take it away permanently if they heard anything like that again, which to this day made him averse to cursing. Some things just seemed to stick with him – not unlike his sciurophobia.[1]
“Uh…what’s wrong? And try not to
curse when you tell me – I don’t care for it.”
“I’m sorry if I disturbed your delicate sensibilities, but this is no time to be a fucking pussy. Your Zero-point Energy Reactor was damaged and is leaking radiation like a goddamned sieve. We need to fix it if we are ever going to get off this fucking planet – otherwise we are up shit creek. The only way we can do that is if we can create enough tritanium to slowly repair the reactor. Even then, it could take centuries to get you back up to the power levels needed to create and fly a ship.”
At first, he had no idea what she was talking about, other than cringing at her use of swear words. Gradually, however, the knowledge he was lacking was slowly filtered into his “mind”, until he understood what the Zero-point Energy Reactor was, if not how it worked, and began to comprehend the damage she was talking about. The knowledge of “how” to fix it was there, but he didn’t know where to get what he needed to do it. “Wow, that’s neat – I suddenly know what the reactor is and how to fix it. The only thing I don’t know is where to get the materials. Where do we find the tritanium? And really, please stop with the foul language, I don’t like it.”
She looked a little crestfallen as she answered, “You don’t find tritanium, you have to create tritanium. And the only way to create it is to convert resources – which you don’t have.”
He waited for her to explain some more, but she didn’t elaborate. “Ok, so how do we get these resources?”
She looked at him like he had asked the dumbest question ever voiced, but then her expression softened as she carefully explained, “I forgot I didn’t tell you yet. You have a Molecular Converter as part of your core, which can break down anything into basic resources that can be used to create whatever you want – as long as you have the correct materials. For instance, if you want to build a wooden chair, you would need to chop down one of those trees over there, insert it into your Molecular Converter, and use it to create a chair. Your Molecular Converter, as the name implies, can convert basic resources into finished product.
“For more complicated items, such as an automated laser turret, you would need many different resources. Some things can be substituted by other material, but overall you would need a large quantity of metals, silica, oils, and plant material.”
“Plant material?”
“For dyes of course – who wants a plain old boring grey turret? Not me, that’s fucking who.”
Milton found that he could sigh, even as a “Station Core” without lungs. “Ok, we’re getting a little off-track here. Back to the original question – how do I create tritanium?”
She thought a moment, before responding slowly, as if she was trying to explain something to a five-year-old, “Let’s see – think of it this way. In your games that you used to play, you frequently had coinage in currencies such as copper, silver, and gold, right? It usually took, let’s say, 100 copper coins to make 1 silver coin, and then 100 silver coins to make 1 gold coin. Now, figure that a small piece of iron ore is worth 1 copper coin and if you wanted to convert it to a small piece of steel, you would need 1 silver coins’ worth of iron ore. In other words, you would need 100 iron ores to make 1 steel ore. Some ores are worth more than iron, but – except for some rare exceptions – not a lot more. This is a gross oversimplification, of course, but even with your primitive mind you should hopefully understand.
“Now imagine there were other, higher-value currencies: platinum, mithril, and diamond – each needing 100 of the previous to equal the next highest. Tritanium is roughly worth about 1 or 2 diamonds, so like 10-20 billion iron ores or so.” After this revelation, she seemed to take his unresponsiveness as despair, because she added, “But there is hope – there are ways to improve your conversion rate and increase the output of your Converter. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said it would take centuries, however, because even with those improvements it will take a while. Which I hope we have…,” she trailed off, looking pensive.
Milton was stunned by how many resources would be required to make just a small amount of tritanium, notwithstanding the amount of time it would take. He was caught by her last statement, however – so he worriedly asked, “What do you mean – aren’t I immortal now?”
She slowly looked up from her thoughtful posture, responding to his question with a sorrowful tone, as if she was a doctor that had to give him an unexpected cancer diagnosis. “Normally, you would be. However, in addition to the damage to your Zero-point Energy Reactor, your shell was also damaged, creating a vulnerability in your structural integrity. With enough determination, something – or someone – could potentially break into your core through the damaged section. Until you repair it section by section with tritanium, you will need to protect yourself from any hostile monsters.” She paused for a moment before continuing – albeit reluctantly – and mumbled, “I hate to say it, but you might have been right about the squirrel…”
With these revelations coming one right after another, Milton was starting to become numb to any surprises. Until he heard that he might have been right. “I was right? I mean, of course I was right. Uh…how right was I?” he excitedly asked.
“Don’t ‘cream your Twinkie’ just yet, I said you might have been right. When Collective scientists created the Zero-point Energy Reactors, they theorized that the radiation from an unshielded reactor could result in adverse effects on animate and inanimate objects. This was never tested – because they didn’t want to subject anyone or anything to whatever might happen – so these effects were only theorized based on hypothesis.
“Three main effects were theorized from exposure to Zero-point radiation. The first was that it would start to rapidly corrode metals, even tritanium, if allowed to collect in a small area. The second was that animals and sentient creatures would be attracted to the radiation on some primal level, almost like a cat being attracted to catnip, but on a whole new level. That’s why I think you might have been right about the squirrel – it was trying to get to the source of the radiation. It wasn’t powerful enough to do you any damage, but it still would have tried.”
If he could flush with pleasure, Milton would have been red as a beet after hearing that he was right about the squirrel. I feel a little better about that, now. Even with my fear of squirrels, I still felt a little bad at how I went about killing the little thing. “Wait, that was only two – what’s the third thing?”
She still looked distracted, and it took her a moment before she answered his question. “The third thing? Oh, yeah – they thought that prolonged exposure would cause genetic mutations. Since they had no real data, they surmised it could be something as simple as an extra toe or as complex as increasing their size, giving them wings, and adding retractable spikes to their back. Again, this was all conjecture.”
Well, that sucks. It’s like I’m a mini Chernobyl disaster waiting to happen. “So, what you propose I do?”
“There’s only one thing you can do at the moment – hide.”
Chapter 5 – Obtain quests, check!
“Hide? Why? If any more squirrels come, I’ll just shoot those as well. Besides, how am I supposed to hide? I’m a 20-foot tall metallic eggshell in the middle of the forest. I kinda stand out.” Milton was confused about what he had to hide from if all there were in this forest were squirrels and big yellow birds. Now that he knew he could shoot lasers, defending himself seemed pretty easy now.
“First, your self-defensive cold laser takes time to recharge after use. It’s only about 30 seconds, but if you were attacked by multiple enemies you wouldn’t be able to get them all before they reached you. Add to that the fact that it isn’t powerful enough to stop a larger, determined enemy, and it isn’t as powerful as you think. Second, you don’t know what else is in this forest – there could be a T-rex or something equally dangerous in there. Third, the more you sit here, the more the radiation is going to continue to accumulate and spread, attracting more and more creatures to your location. Fourth, you’re right – you’re too exp
osed; you need to make it harder to find your Core. Preferably behind strong walls or in a fortified building. Better yet – how about underground? That would probably be ideal.
“Fifth – and this is most important – repairing yourself is going to potentially take centuries. You need somewhere to hideout until you are fully operational again. I want you, and by extension me, to survive long enough to get off this planet and find out what happened to The Collective. The only way to do this is to hide away where nothing can get to you.”
Milton thought he understood her paranoia now. He didn’t particularly like her assumption that his main objective was to find out what happened to her creators (and his captors), but then again, he didn’t have anything better to do. He figured that if or when the time came to leave this planet, he would have a better idea of what he wanted to do.
“Ok, I give in to your expertise. What do I do first?”
ALANNA genuinely smiled for the first time, pleased with her small victory. “First you need to pull up your Core Status screen so that you can see your statistics. The system is modeled after the online roleplaying games you used to play to make the transition easier and more comprehensible for you. All you need to do is think, ‘Core Status’, and the screen should appear.[2]
Milton did as she instructed and found a status screen reminiscent of CLoD, complete with levels, experience, and attributes such as Strength and Intelligence. Of course, they were named something completely different but made more sense for his current incarnation. Instead of Strength, it was instead called Reactor Power and instead of Intelligence – Processing Power. Everything pointed to his presence as a machine and not a living, breathing human anymore. This, strangely, affected him more than anything he had learned so far.
The Station Core: A Dungeon Core Epic (Station Cores Book 1) Page 4