chapter 84
We have been in FTL for five days now. Not everything has been going as smoothly as I wished. There are some problems that have emerged. None of these are so bad that we can't fix them, but they are slowing us down as we haven't even had a chance to start assembling the workshop.
Mechanically everything is sound as we tested everything out thoroughly. The problem is the software side. So many programs are unoptimized, so FH, Lola and me have been working constantly to fix the unoptimized and sometimes bugged programs.
Such mistakes needed to be fixed fast as they could be quite costly in terms of resources if something went wrong. As currently our entire world, our entire existence, is this ship. If something happens to it, we are all done for.
The pressing issues are now fixed, but Lola is going to stay plugged in to help FH manage the running of the ship, as none of us expected it to be as time consuming as it is. We do have a lot of programmes that help automate things, but currently there's so much to do that it's just overwhelming even for FH, whose capability to multitask is quite excellent, but just not enough.
I left Lola here in the command bridge as I left it entering the third floor, the future workshop. Basically every floor had one crucial weakness: they were all open floor plans, as they didn't have many walls separating areas.
This is incredibly bad. That’s why a lot of the drones I’ve awakened have built the beginning short walls and hallways. The thing is, closing everything up fully actually would bring down productivity hugely.
There's no one machine that could do it all, so when we make stuff, they need to be brought from one place to another. Hallways and closed-up rooms would complicate this a lot and slow it down.
So for the workshop floor we came up with a plan of making walls that end at chest height. From the ceiling, at exactly the same locations, walls would also extend downwards.
We will make it so that if there’s an emergency all the walls could be slammed down, connecting them, creating a more robust workshop layout for multitudes of situations including breach of hull, intruders, and many others.
There will be a few exceptions, as some machines can be quite loud, so the fully built walls around it would be used to keep the overall noise level down a bit. No matter what, this place was still going to be quite loud, with so many drones constantly flying, but managing sound levels was important.
The first goal was to get all the machines needed to start producing all the AI cores we needed. Some of the construction drones will be retired, as I need the capacity not just for the AIs that will be helping run the Mark II, but also for its maintenance drones.
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There was much to do, but as Lola and even Sam commented, I have had a constant smile on my face ever since we entered FTL.
Eight days later
Crawling in the maintenance tunnels felt cramped this far up the left wing. In front of me two spider-like maintenance drones moved with yet to be installed AI cores. While I would have liked to install all the AI cores myself, I’m simply too big to get to everywhere.
We did consider making a more central location for a lot of the AI cores and just using high-speed connections to their bodies, be it a weapon turret or a shield generator.
It could have worked, but my 6th sense kicked in, urging me not to do it, as it’s important for each AI to be inside their own bodies. The feeling I got from that skill did indicate something further than just that reasoning, but that I couldn’t figure out.
While installing my last AI core it struck me how much I was now using my telekinesis skill to complete my tasks. It was just so handy, like having a few extra hands when you need it, and when there was a screw or wire in an annoying position or hard to reach, it just made the work go so much smoother.
As I was crawling backwards to get out of the maintenance tunnel, out of the left wing and back inside the main ship, it struck me that some people back on Earth did this as a hobby inside caves. Perhaps I should reclassify human beings a bit more mad than I previously thought.
The maintenance tunnel wasn't too long, and soon I was in a large room inside the wing. From here we could open up a port on the wing to get out if needed, but mainly this was going to be used to launch drones. We made it big enough that it could store two larger combat drones that could be classified as a proper fighter class vessel.
While a huge portion of space combat will use more traditional weaponry, there will be times when fighter combat will also happen, and while we have excellent point defence, sometimes you just need to engage with some nimble fighters.
Currently we don't have a good design ready to be built, and no one is actually working on that as there are just too many other things that need to be done.
We will most likely have two fighter drones with every inch of them optimised for destructive capability. To fill up the other two slots we have for vessels so big, we will also have a breacher vessel that can carry combat drones and even, if needed, crew members to board another vessel forcefully.
The last slot will be filled up with a more transport-orientated vessel meant to bring us, if needed, to some places the Mark II just couldn't go. It would be tight, but I think we could also add a little bit of a cargo area as well, so if we needed to drop off something small to another ship, we could do it.
Of course, it would also help with just transporting stuff over a longer distance when the Mark II is settled down on a planet or perhaps docked. We will need a few other vehicles as well, but those would be stored inside the cargo bay. I also have no idea about their design, but I’m sure something will come to me, and perhaps where we’re headed there are some ideas I could borrow.
It took a few hours more, but finally all the new AIs have been installed in their correct locations all over the ship. There wasn't going to be a grand awakening of all the Ai. I was going to awaken them mostly one at a time, but some in groups. All of them were going to get personal attention from me, FH, and Lola.
It was going to take a while to raise them all up, but I was going to do this properly. All of them were going to be above the threshold of sapience. Whenever taking an AI to that level of complexity, there was a chance that something could go wrong.
Fortunately, I had plenty of experience, and I was certain my 6th sense skill was also going to get plenty of use. It all was going to take quite a while, and by the time we were finished with the AIs, the workshop should also be finished with a few other assembly tasks completed as well.
The current focus was on the rest of the wall structures for the ship, as other floors also needed hallways and rooms. Then inner defenses like small turrets. With who knows how many skills out there in the universe hoping no one gets on board is stupid.
This means that we needed to prepare for everything we could, hoping it would all be enough.