chapter 64
It only took me about half a day to finish writing a paper about AI and also write down all the ideas I knew about job promotion management.
Sending them to Thoron just before he got off work made him groan a bit, as he now knew he would need to do more work and would most likely have to skip today’s evening at the pub.
Also, I noticed that my crew members were acting a bit shifty, but when I went over the new reports that I still hadn’t read, I found an interesting one marked as a meeting.
Seems like Bob made a report of a meeting they had with other complex AIs. I also left my own report stating that from now on, complex AIs would just be called crew members.
The meeting minutes were quite interesting to read, but Bob was also up to his usual antics with that opening joke. Otherwise, I was quite pleased about this development.
There would still be a need to monitor this. Now, would I have been a lot more worried if I didn’t have the magical bonds? Most definitely. So I might have to look for a skill to secure those bonds even further, just in case some others could influence them.
Now I turned my attention to the ship itself. With the skeleton of it built, we would need to start building out everything else necessary for the ship to function as we needed it to. To finish the structure completely, we were still waiting for quite a lot of ordered pieces, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t start building out some important features.
The cargo bay was the biggest area in the ship, mostly because of how tall its floor was going to be. It was going to give us quite a bit of cargo space. Going with the same naming conventions as the Mark I, the cargo bay was going to be Floor 1. Floor 2 was going to do quite a few things.
It was the second-largest floor, and here there were going to be quite a few important things. It should also be noted that between the 1st and 2nd floors, there was going to be quite a thick deck. With it being almost 3 metres thick, inside it, there was going to be quite a lot of fuel tanks for the reactor and the engine.
With the amount of space we have, we should be able to operate the ship for a month using the main engines. If I get the side engines to work properly, we should be able to extend our range from months of continuous travel to possibly years.
For safety reasons, I wasn’t going to have one large fuel tank but multiple smaller ones. Also, having one large one wouldn’t actually work because we would have a large cut-out section at the back half of the ship that would allow us to transfer anything we’d need from the cargo bay to the second floor.
Also, in the middle, we were going to have a large heavily armored box that was almost going to extend from the second floor down to the first floor ceiling. This was going to be the housing for the new power core. It was a relief knowing that we would finally be able to cover that mass of nano machines so they wouldn’t be exposed like they were on the Mark I.
The housing for the power core wasn’t going to be fully filled with nano machines. Those nano machines were going to act like balancing weights.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
They would have enough room to move around, and because of that central location, it would allow us to shift the gravitational center of the ship, which would make flying and transferring cargo a lot simpler.
Some of the structure for this housing was already being installed. Above that was a bit of empty space, and just before the third floor started was another armour box being slowly built out. This one was going to be a lot bigger than the power core’s housing, but also less armoured, as we couldn’t shift the center of gravity up by that much.
Inside here was going to be the main crew quarters. These weren’t going to be luxurious—in fact, they were going to be quite small—but I don’t think any of us was going to have a problem with that. It was also going to house the computer core, with most of our processing capability, and of course, FH’s AI. It was also going to be the command center for the entire ship.
In just two days, the armoured housing was built enough that if we were to build it any further, it would get difficult to start installing all the devices we’d need to go inside it.
It was still a bit too early to transfer the power core over, but it was time to install the computer core and FH into the Mark II. They would still be powered externally, connected by power cables. They looked a bit silly just running down and then through the empty holes of the ship.
It took us nearly a week to finish installing it properly, but with this, the Mark II was no longer just a bit of built-out structure, it now had its brain installed.
For the following week, we continued to build out the command centre, but it was mostly just structural work, preparing for all the things we were going to add to it. What I also did was prepare enough material for the nano-printers to continue working the entire time I was down on the planet.
It would take months and months to build out the necessary number of nano machines, and we couldn’t afford any delays. Otherwise, we might not finish in time.
Thoron was already contacting me, as our time to use the elevator to get down to the planet was approaching fast.
“Anything last to report before I go?” I asked the assembled crew and drones. They were all in front of me—an impressive number of nearly 500 individuals. Would this look intimidating to others if they saw it? I think it would look intimidating to me if I saw someone doing something like this.
Almost all the responses I got in return were “no,” except from FH.
“I have noticed an increase in communication traffic—quite an alarming amount, in fact. I have not been able to determine the exact cause of it, but be cautious, as something might be happening.”
“Thank you for the heads-up. I will now be heading to the planet, and hopefully next time I’ll be allowed to bring a few of you with me.”
And with that, I headed out—fully kitted out—as I would hopefully be able to run at least one portal to gain some strength and understand how they worked a bit better.
I took a train to the Third Cave, where Thoron was waiting for me. As soon as I saw him, I actually froze in shock.
Normally, dwarves wore durable work clothes, and the only other type of things dwarves wore were armour. So why was Thoron currently wearing an oversized shirt that was incredibly colourful? He was also wearing shorts and flip-flops.
The current scene made me question reality so much that I thought perhaps I was sleeping—or had I been killed? That would be a better explanation than what I was currently seeing. The only thing missing was him having sunglasses.
As he saw my astonishment, a stupid smile came to his face, and I snapped out of it.
“Aren’t we going to miss the train?” I asked him, which wiped that annoying smile from his face.
“I was waiting on you. Let’s hurry,” he said as I started to follow him. This time we headed to a different train station. This train would move a lot faster, so we’d make it to the space elevator in time.
Slowly, Thoron’s mood got better as we crept closer to our destination. I so wanted to ask him about what he was wearing, but I sensed that he wanted me to ask. I didn’t feel like giving in so quickly.
As we got off the train, there was quite a lot of traffic with people rushing from one place to another. There were obvious exceptions, as Thoron didn’t seem to be the only one going down to the planet for a vacation. It was so strange to see, among the sea of dwarves, some who were wearing colorful clothing and obviously not rushing toward anything.
The space elevator itself was incredibly large. It had a circular platform with multiple levels. Its radius was 52 meters, which was incredibly impressive. All but one of the levels were for cargo. The trip down was going to take nearly an hour, so there were seats and even a small pub to serve anyone who needed some snacks or a bit of drink.
Unfortunately, there weren’t any viewing platforms to see the planet below, but it was easy enough to imagine the world teeming with life.
This was going to be my first step on a planet other than Earth, and I wondered what it was going to feel like, but before that, we had a bit over an hour of travel left.