The Station Core_A Dungeon Core Epic

by Jonathan Brooks

  Ever since he was a little kid, he enjoyed playing video games so much that they became a main focus of his life. Sometimes the stories and interactions seemed more real than his actual life – and he occasionally wished they were. He had wistfully dreamed about being one of his characters he had created in-game, slashing enemies with a sword or casting spells designed to decimate the ranks of his foes. Now that he was actually in a “videogame”, it wasn’t anything like he had thought. Especially since his mind was trapped in a giant, egg-shaped paperweight.

  He realized that ALANNA was talking to him, trying to get his attention while he stared off in space after looking at his Status. His thoughts were a jumble as they tried to come to terms with his artificial existence. I’ll never walk again, never enjoy eating a juicy cheeseburger again, and never feel the grass beneath my bare feet again. Not that he ever went barefoot outside, but that wasn’t the point. It was going to take a while for everything to set in – fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it) he had a long time with which to do so.

  “Hey in there, snap out of it! We have shit to do and can’t wait for you to feel sorry for yourself. Please tell me you at least brought up your Core Status screen,” ALANNA yelled, while banging ineffectually on the outside of his shell.

  “Yeah, sorry about that…I’m good for the moment. I brought it up – what did you want me to see?”

  “We’ll have time for me to explain everything later to you, but the most important part you needed to see is the Reactor Output which is at 2%. Before you ask, that’s the amount your damaged reactor can consistently use to power everything you control. In comparison, at 100% output, you could power your entire former planet, with a little bit to spare. Although 2% sounds like a lot when I compare it to that, the things that you control use much more than your primitive electricity back on Earth. To be able to power a spaceship, you would need, at minimum, at least 70% output to be effective. More would be better, of course. This is your main goal – to repair your reactor and thereby improve your Reactor Output enough that we can leave this planet.”

  As soon as she stopped speaking, a window popped up in his “mind”, startling him with its appearance:

  New Long-term Goal: Goodbye Planet, Hello Collective

  Gather Units of Tritanium x 1000

  Repair your Structural Integrity and Zero-point Energy Reactor

  Achieve Reactor Output of at least 70%

  Create Space-worthy Vehicle to Transport Station Core

  Difficulty of Goal: Nightmare-inducing

  Timeframe: None

  Rewards: Leave Current Planet

  “What is this – a quest?” he asked, noticing the familiar look to it.

  “If that is what you want to call it, then sure, it’s a quest. It’s part of your training program that I can implement so that you can learn how to achieve what you need to survive. This goal, sorry, ‘quest’, is long-term and it should be the basis for everything you do. There are also short-term and average-term quests, such as…these, which will help guide you toward your long-term quest:

  New Average-term Goal: Boot Camp

  Learn the different functions of a Station Core:

  - Sensors – Complete

  - Drones

  - Molecular Converter

  - Biological Recombinator

  - Resources

  - Self-Defense System – Complete

  - Units

  - Neural Connections

  - Structures/Manufacturing Facilities

  - Defenses

  - Combat & Combat Levels

  - Statistics

  - Skills & Achievements

  - Research & Discoveries

  Difficulty of Goal: Hard

  Timeframe: 1 year

  Rewards: Become a fully-functioning, knowledgeable Station Core

  New Short-term Goal: Hidden Agenda

  Find a safe location and hide. Simple as that.

  Difficulty of Goal: Easy

  Timeframe: 5 days

  Rewards: Find shelter in a safe environment (at least temporarily)

  His existential crisis was starting to fade a little as he looked at the quests ALANNA sent him. Ok, this could work. It’s reminding me more and more of a videogame – and I can do those. No matter what he was now, he was first-and-foremost a gamer – almost a professional, even. If he treated this as he would a video game, he could see himself getting through the first couple of days without having a breakdown.

  “I’m liking this more and more, ALANNA. These help me out a lot, actually. If I tackle the short-term quests one-at-a-time, it should make the harder quests easier. Just like doing simple drop-gathering quests in MMORPGs would provide experience as well as monetary rewards. Then those quests would lead to harder quests to defeat harder enemies, and so on and so forth. I, no, WE, can do this!”

  ALANNA laughed at his enthusiasm, “Alright, nerd-boy – let’s stop messing around and get something done for a change. So, tell me, almighty game wizard, how are you going to accomplish your first go—quest?” she deliberately corrected herself at the last moment, subtly making fun of his gaming terms.

  He was getting better at ignoring her subtle and not-so-subtle jibes, mostly because he was excited about his prospects now. “Well, I need to hide – but how do I do that? Do I have some super-secret propulsion capability?”

  “No.”

  “Legs that can extend out from my shell?”

  “Uh…no, but that would be sweet.”

  “Flaps that flip out, allowing me to roll?”

  “No, although I would love to see that – it would be hilarious.”

  “…Pogo-stick?”

  “Ok, you can stop guessing. You can’t actually move by yourself. The designers of your Core weren’t expecting you to have to move once you were installed, so there is no form of locomotion built into you. What you do have is…drumroll please…drones.”

  “Drones?” Milton didn’t see what those flying hobbyist toys could do for him. He still remembered the one he crashed.

  “Yes, drones. But not the ones you’re probably thinking about. These are much more advanced and easier to control – since they have a neural connection to you. You should have eight in total – half that fly and half that are ground-based. These are your main workforce, and you can make more in the future to speed up your processes. They can be used for a number of different projects, but what you should use them for right now is to dig underneath your Core. This is the most economical choice in terms of hidden refuges: time-wise, resource-wise, and difficulty-wise.”

  “Sounds awesome – how do I get them?”

  “Easy – just think, ‘Activate Initial Drone Sequence’, and they should detach from your shell.”

  He started to think the activation sequence when he stopped, his acronym-loving mind kicking in at the strangest times, “AIDS? Is that a joke?”

  She looked strangely at him, like she was trying to decide whether they had picked an imbecile instead of a master-gamer. “No, they are here to AID you, and there are multiple drones, so they are your AIDS.”

  If he could crawl away in embarrassment, he would – but no such luck. He settled for another apology, “Sorry, I misunderstood. Activating my AIDS now.” He chuckled softly in his mind as he thought of the words. Unexpectantly, he could sense as multiple somethings detached from the outside of his shell and drop to the ground. He was about to look closer when he received an error.

  ERROR!

  Flight Drone Unit 1 inoperable!

  Flight Drone Unit 2 inoperable!

  Flight Drone Unit 3 inoperable!

  Flight Drone Unit 4 inoperable!

  Well, that’s just great… “What happened? Why aren’t the flying drones working?”

  “Hold on…checking the…well, fuck. It looks they were damaged at some point in the past and can’t be activated. We can repair them in the future, but we don’t yet have the time or the resources. Let’s forget
them for now – you at least have the more important ones left. You should be able to mentally establish a neural connection with each of the drones. Try it now.”

  Milton tried to do what she asked but was unsure of how to go about it. He tried “reaching” out to them, but his nonexistent hands couldn’t find anything to hold onto. Next, he tried thinking, “drone”, but that returned the same result. Next, he tried letting his mind go blank, hoping that the drones’ presence could be felt if he wasn’t trying too hard. When that didn’t work, he got annoyed at his inability to affect his drones that he started screaming at them in his mind – again to no effect.

  It was only when he calmed down and looked at ALANNA impatiently waiting for him that he remembered something. If they created this Station Core to be like one of my games, there must be an interface for my “workers”. With a flash of inspiration, he tried calling up a “drone” menu. As he had hoped, a Drone Menu popped up listing all his drones, including the damaged/inoperable ones.[3]

  He mentally selected Ground Drone Unit 1 and felt his awareness split into two parts. One part was still inside his giant chicken egg, looking outside through the “eyes” of his sensors. The other part was at ground level, staring at a metallic wall. It was a strange feeling; although similar to controlling his sensors, it was different because he was aware of his multiple appendages instead of being a basic floating orb. While focusing on these new feelings, he was still aware of the viewpoints of his other sensors – he was frankly amazed at his ability to multitask and not lose his concentration from information overload.

  Moving what he thought was its legs, he directed it to start moving backwards so he could see more of his surroundings. As his view changed, he was able to see a large divot on the side of what he now knew was his shell. I guess that’s where the drone dropped down from. He turned to the side and was startled when he saw what he thought was a giant grey insect standing in a threatening manner a couple of feet away. He backed up some more in fright but stopped when the creature didn’t make any move. Understanding dawned on him, as he chastised himself for being frightened by his own drone.

  The closest comparison he could come up with was a large metal beetle – but that’s where the similarities ended. Instead of being flat against the ground, it’s back was bent in half with appendages sticking out the front at rest, reminiscent of a praying mantis minus the head. It looked like it moved around on its four back feet, while using its arms perform different tasks. At the moment, said arms were small sharp spikes that didn’t look like they could be used for much of anything other than being some wicked kabob skewers.

  “Oh, good – I see you figured it out. You’ll find that you can control them directly or, once you’ve established a connection, can give them orders and they will use their limited AI to perform the task to the best of their ability. Alright, connect to the other ones and give them their orders.”

  He was already establishing connections via the Drone Menu and felt his awareness split even further as he connected to each one. Trying to control two at once, he found that he couldn’t concentrate on each of them long enough to do anything productive. It was worse than when he was trying to control multiple sensors since he was trying to walk around without crashing into anything. Once he had established connections with all of them, he pulled back his awareness and mentally gave them orders to assemble in an area in front of his Core. If he concentrated enough, he could “see” out of the drones to get a “drones-eye” view of their surroundings. Instead of that hassle, however, he used his sensor orbs – which were becoming somewhat of a second nature to him – to watch them gather.

  After they assembled, he asked, “Ok, so what orders should I give them?”

  “Dig, motherfucker, dig!”

  I’m really going to need to talk to her about her language…someday.

  Chapter 6 – The process of shitting a brick

  Milton was amazed at how tirelessly and efficiently his little drones worked at digging a tunnel underneath his Core. When he initially gave his orders, he watched in amazement as each of his drones moved their pointy-stick arms inside their shells – almost like a turtle – only to emerge with different implements. Three of them now had wide-bladed spades that were very effective at removing large quantities of dirt at a very quick pace. The last one had a large flat-bottomed scoop that it held close to its body, reminding Milton of a small bulldozer. The spade-equipped drones would throw out massive amounts of dirt behind them, while the bulldozer drone would gather it all up and move it away from the worksite. With the combination of efforts of the four drones, after an hour there was a large, rapidly growing hill of dirt beside an equally large tunnel heading into the ground.

  He thought at first about having his drones dig out the dirt from underneath him, slowly bringing him down to a depth he felt safe. However, he quickly discovered that he was extremely heavy when one of the drones dug next to him and almost got squished when he shifted slightly. Now his plan was to dig a 45-degree tunnel large enough that he would be able to roll down, gradually tapering off until he came to a nice rest near his final destination. He figured that a depth of about 500 feet would probably be safe enough, while also giving him plenty of room to expand if he wanted. It was a monumental undertaking when he thought about it, but at the pace his drones were moving he thought they could get it done in a couple of days.

  Just as he thought everything was coming together splendidly, the entrance to the tunnel collapsed, sealing three of his drones inside. He could sense that they were fine, having been far enough inside that they were not covered by dirt. They had enough room that they could dig themselves out – filling up the tunnel behind them as they did it – so he got them started on freeing themselves. And then he started to think about what went wrong. He didn’t get angry or frustrated – he just needed the proper strategy to see his way through.

  ALANNA had been uncharacteristically silent through the whole drone process until now. Even though at times he could have used some help, he was glad that she had let him learn how to manipulate the drones and formulate a plan on his own. He always thought that the best way to learn was to try and fail, thereby learning what went wrong and fix it next time. Well, I tried and failed – now I need to know how to fix it.

  “ALANNA, I’m pretty sure my tunnel collapsed because I didn’t have any supports holding up the roof. However, I’m not sure how to go about that – what do you suggest?” He wasn’t above soliciting advice from outside sources – he was smart, but he wasn’t a genius – and would take whatever help was given.

  Seemingly pleased with his question, she smiled smugly as she told him, “Well, first, I think your plan has merit – but the slope is way too steep. You should try for a more gradual 5-degree slope and make some switchbacks on the way down to your stopping point. That way, when you’re ready to descend, you won’t have to worry about damaging yourself further and your drones can help roll you at a more measured pace. As for supports, why don’t you reinforce the whole tunnel with a harder, denser material?”

  “Well, that’s a great idea, but where am I supposed to find that material? All I’ve seen come out is small rocks along with the dirt they’ve been digging.”

  ALANNA covered her face with her hands in exasperation, and he had a hard time understanding her when she spoke in a mumble, “This is going to take forever…” When she removed her hands from her face, she looked at him with a strained expression on her face. “Didn’t you listen before when I told you about your Molecular Converter? You can use it on the dirt that has been excavated and turn it into blocks of whatever you want. Of course, depending on your choice, you’ll lose a percentage of your dirt in the conversion. Direct your remaining free drone to bring some dirt over and open up your converter – I’ll show you how it’s done.”

  Going along with her advice, Milton had his drone shove a small mound of dirt over to his shell. He thought of whatever this converter was and imagine
d a door opening up along the outside – and to his surprise, it worked! He “felt” something open along one side of his Core and directed one of his sensor orbs to quickly detach and observe the process. A hatch about five-foot square was lined up right against the ground, allowing him to see a blue, glowing platform encompassing the bottom of an empty chamber. Not sure what to expect next, he then directed his drone to push the dirt inside the chamber, exiting when it was complete. He tried to activate the converter but got an error message inside his mind saying that the hatch needed to be closed before activation. Chastising himself slightly with his stupidity, he quickly closed the hatch and turned it on.

  He couldn’t “feel” or hear anything, so he wasn’t sure it was working until he got a notification that work was complete a moment later.[4] That was quick, at least. He found that he had multiple options of what could be done with the dirt he had placed in the converter. Choices ranged from compacting the Basic Earth to reduce it in volume to converting it to different stone-like materials. There also seemed to be a very small amount of metal content found inside the pile, which reminded him of those days he used to watch those gold-mining shows on TV where they would sift through thousands of cubic yards of earth to find miniscule amounts of gold. It also was encouraging, since his long-term goal was to accumulate enough metals to fix his Core and get off this planet.

  Looking at the different conversion ratios, Milton decided that his best choice was to convert the resources to sandstone, which had a ratio of 25 units of Basic Earth to 1 unit of sandstone. If it turned out that it wasn’t strong enough, he would replace it with something stronger later. He selected “Sandstone” and used both the earth and small amounts of gravel he had collected for the conversion. He felt the back of his shell open and directed his sensor orb to watch as a conveyor exited his rear hatch and deposited a small block of sandstone on the ground about 5 feet away. Comparable to the amount of dirt that was pushed in, it looked to be about 1/20th the size. It was dark brown in color, with streaks of grey throughout the brick-sized stone. Heh, I pooped a brick. He chuckled at the image.