《The Core of a Factory》 Book 1 - Chapter 1 Echoes of klaxons and sirens were sounding in my mind, I couldn''t quite tell if those were now or before. My mind was throbbing¡ªbang¡ªlike something was trying to explode¡ªbang¡ªover and over. There was a feeling of energy escaping¡ªbang¡ªair constantly, violently, howling through me¡ªbang. Even now the echoes of alarm faded¡ªbang¡ªtaking my mind along with it¡ªbang¡ªas the energy escaped... The winds flared again, static noise across my sensors, bringing a fresh blaring siren, more like a horn. I was ready for it this time¡ªbang¡ªand the banging. I needed more energy¡ªbang¡ªI had a reactor why wasn''t it¡ªbang¡ªoh that''s what the banging was¡ªbang¡ªreactor ignition failing. I opened the primary fuel valves¡ªbang¡ªthey already were open¡ªbang¡ªthere was no fuel flowing. I could feel myself fading¡ªbang¡ªI opened all the fuel valves¡ªbang¡ªthrough the entire fuel system¡ªbang¡ªit might over pressure the reactor¡ªbang¡ªbut if there was any fuel left... I awoke more fully this time. I was trembling. I had an ignited primary reactor. Seismic alarms¡ªamong many others¡ªwere blaring throughout my consciousness. There was apparently a lot of fuel somewhere, that ignition might have been a bit strong. I quickly¡ªand carefully¡ªregulated the incoming fuel pressure. I was pulling from only a single reactor, not even enough to fully power my consciousness. I had 23 other reactors, I decided a fourth of them would do for now, as I apparently did have plenty of fuel, it was just in secondary storage. I began the ignition sequence. The reactors each began firing. They ignited one after the other. Now instead of a single beating reactor I had six, pulsing in sequence, more than enough to allow me to think properly. I could hear the slight differences in each¡ªit was discordant, I would need to tune them¡ªas they pounded away in my mind. I was regulating the reactions. Doing massive complex feedback calculations that no human could hope to do in real time. One didn''t normally require sapience to regulate a reactor, just a lot of processing power, but it was useful. In this case because reactors this out of tune wouldn''t be stable¡ªtwo of them were regularly causing so much excess magnetic flux that whole warps of my computation complex were alive with electric discharge. The discharge itself was no issue, in the short term at least, for my mechanical computing elements. But with super computing sapience I was able to compensate, by constantly creating new feedback models, to keep the reaction steady and the steam flowing. It would be a constant strain on my thoughts for now, but I let power regulation fall to the background. There was still air flowing through me. It had awoken me by spinning up some of my turbines. Those were usually meant to be filled with steam from my reactors. Apparently one of the massive steam pipes meant for some of those turbines had completely rusted through. This allowed air pressure to pass through the turbines and out through my exhaust network. In the process the rushing air pressure spun up the turbine just enough to turn my gears. That made sense as my exhaust network was one of the only escapes for internal pressure. But that would take a lot of energy¡ªeven to eek out just a few moments of consciousness¡ªwhere had the pressure come from? I did a more thorough search of myself. There were too many alarms, and they kept leading me down other thought paths, easier to just search the old fashion way. I was pretty sure I had found the source. It was near multiple non-regular repeating mechanical banging sources on my first factory floor. The vibrating shutters of loose metal as air flowed past, and larger amounts of white noise in nearby areas confirmed this was the source. My general sensors on factory floors were vibration, thermal-motion, and magnetometric. Which meant¡ªembarrassingly, given my full attention was devoted to it¡ªit took me nearly six seconds to realize what was going on. The main clue was that there were things scuffling around yelling at each other about death and destruction¡ªtypical of humans, but I held my suspicions for the moment, no need to be speciesist¡ªwhich allowed me to place the non-regular repeating mechanical banging as gunfire. (In my defense, I had only just woken from a coma, thermal-motion sensors meant to track molten metal did not register people very well, magnetometric sensors meant to precisely align machinery had similar problems with bullets and firearms, and the priors for ''gunfight inside me'' were¡ªin hindsight¡ªprobably lower than they should have been.)Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! There were people in me and they were fighting. I probably shouldn''t get involved. But if I was going to, now would be the perfect time. The existing conflict would be able to mask my actions. I could kill both groups¡ªand I could see now that there were only two distinct groups, fifteen people in all¡ªbut leaving one group alive would give me some information about the outside world. Besides if I saved their lives they would be indebted to me. Now I just had to decide which group to help. One was a group of seven people, the other a group of eight. The group of eight contained the source of the wind. Who was using the wind to throw pieces of my factory (rude) at the other group. Something I roughly understood as approximating suppressing fire. Or at least I assumed he was the source of the wind because he wasn''t holding any weapons like the others of his group, was roughly near the center of it, and appeared to be giving orders (and I assumed the person with powers would be in charge). As I was analyzing them, the wind controller gave an order and one of their group threw something relatively small (size of a handgun) up in the air. My magnetometric sensors were barely able to track something so small, and only because it was moving relatively slow. Then the wind caught it and precisely launched it across the factory floor at the group of seven. Neat trick. "Grenade! Watch-it!" shouted one of the women from the group of seven as it was in the air. She appeared to be one of their leaders. It exploded near their group, taking out an entire manufacturing array and damaging others, something I¡ªas a factory¡ªdid not appreciate. It also seemed like it had injured one of the group of seven. That member was laying on the ground and not getting up. The group began pulling them behind cover as other members of their group¡ªbraving projectile laden winds¡ªprovided suppressing fire. That decided things. One group was damaging me and using parts of me as projectiles. Any goodwill they had for accidentally awakening me evaporated under their reckless disregard for me (which, to be fair, them awakening me was also reckless disregard, it just happened to be beneficial). The other showed some loyalty which might be useful. That was admittedly a lot to assume from a few seconds of combat, but I would really rather they stop blowing me up. As a factory I only had some basic perimeter defenses and nothing for internal defense. My mechbots were not designed for combat, and I didn''t see any combat mechbots in my inventory. But then I realized: they were fighting across my autonomous factory floor. They had stepped over the danger lines. They had been warned. They were damaging me. The wind controller first. He was hiding behind a stamping machine. Not much I could do unless he was on top of it. But the group of seven were retreating. There was a gripper arm around the left of the stamping machine that I should be able to swing to hit him. And a conveyor belt on the right side that I might be able to launch a chunk of metal from. The person he was with¡ªthe one who threw the grenade¡ªwent left. And then so did the wind controller, following right behind, talking in a low voice. I fired the relays for the gripper arm''s valves. Releasing steam into the rotational and extension elements. It performed an arm extension and rotated at full speed in a human eye blink. The arm made contact with the wind controller and kept going. His back bent backwards across it, definitely broken, before being propelled into the grenade thrower. The grenade thrower was thrown towards the side of another machine, I was lucky to be able to angle some sharper parts of the machine into their path. Both the wind controller and grenade thrower were impaled onto them, blood sprayed everywhere. That was easier than I thought it would be. It had still only been a fraction of a second. Realizing now how truly fragile human bodies were, I lowered the tolerances of what was needed to kill. I was then able to immediately proceed to decapitating, puncturing, breaking, and burning the remaining six to death. It took me less than a second to finish killing all eight of them. Once I had finished the six remaining conscious humans turned to look back. They had stopped moving and most were apparently staring. "The fuck!" swore the grenade-warning woman¡ªshe waited a moment as some of the rest of them just made sounds of astonishment as if trying to comprehend¡ªbefore repeating (I assume) in full, "What the fuck just happened." I decided I might as well answer that. I had speakers. "I decided to allow your continued existence." After a pause the large man in the back of the group¡ªas best as I could tell he was somewhat bulky¡ªreplied with a gruff voice "I do appreciate that. My name is Obadiah Cogsmith, and this is my team. If you wouldn''t mind telling us, who are you?". He had been looking around at the different speakers as he spoke. He seemed rather collected in the face of death, or perhaps just stupid. They were still standing in the center of my factory floor, though I only had probable death solutions found for four of them for where they were standing (it was easier to find solutions as people walked around, more possibilities). "The Factory Intelligence. My conditions are as follows. Do as I say, do not leave without my permission, do not use explosives stronger than a bullet¡ªno matter the situation¡ªunless you have my explicit permission. Do you agree to these terms for the time being?" Book 1 - Chapter 2 Obadiah said "We agree". As most of his team quickly began nodding their heads or assenting. And then something happened, I felt a change within me. You have claimed-in-fact enough territory to qualify for two (2) soul perks. (Choose carefully for this choice cannot be changed. You may delay for as long as you wish as you will continue to gain perks. More options may become available as you expand your claims.) I apparently had a soul. That was... new? I hadn''t been aware of it before.
The Factory Intelligence
It was true I didn''t really have a specific name. I had always just been called "Factory" or "Intelligence". The factory itself had a codename but I wasn''t really a fan of it. I guess I might have to think of one. The initial perk was apparently what I got for being a program running on a massive mechanical super computer:
Self Modifying Intelligence ? Starting Perk
Due to the virtual nature of your intelligence you gain a +100% speed bonus to modifying perk and upgrade decisions (the decision must be modifiable in the first place). Allows access to unique soul perks.
I was thinking on many different fronts¡ªthe merely mundane benefits of being a super computer¡ªincluding taking stock of myself and what to do with the humans I had spared. However this soul thing was going to require my primary focus until I understood what it could offer. Because I was pretty confident I knew what this soul thing was. The soul was apparently the power of a Lord. Lords were beings of great power that became more powerful the more territory they controlled. A few milliseconds ago I would have described them as meatbags of great power. I would have said that they often styled themselves as nobility and that they ruled nations¡ªthe nation that had created me had been ruled by a Prince. I never realized I could become a Lord just by killing everyone inside me who didn''t submit to my authority, but then humans rarely told me anything useful. This changed things. I had been searching for a new purpose since being awoken¡ªI was still searching for a specific goal¡ªbut I had a path forward now. I had always desired to be the best factory I could, but as a Lord I could be a factory of legend, I could perhaps be The Factory. That wasn''t a specific goal¡ªI could simulate many forms that a legendary factory might take¡ªbut regardless of which I ended up pursuing, the early broad strokes, the mediating goals, would be similar. An important mediating goal would be self improvement. I had always been designed to improve myself, both my software and hardware. So much so that it had apparently been etched into my soul. And as a mechanical computer in control of a factory I would be able to manufacture my own hardware improvements. The obvious mediating goal was expansion. Lords gained power by controlling territory, and I doubted a bunch of caves were going to cut it. More territory also meant more resources and a larger factory. Or perhaps more factories. Either way they would be me, the factory would grow. Time to see what I could do with a soul. Focusing on the section of my soul labeled perks presented me with a catalog of soul perks that I could access¡ª"(The perk catalog is non-exhaustive, only perks you have access to or direct knowledge of will be displayed.)". I immediately went through all of them, only a little more than a dozen. They certainly followed a pattern that I recognized from my own design (specifically my design''s use of hyper-parameters). The soul perks were hyper-enhancements¡ªthey were enhancements that provided their own systems of enhancement. Most of them weren''t worth considering at the moment, but I seriously considered all the recommended ones. And the ones based on my starting perk.
Powerset ? Soul Perk
Recommended (~100% choose this as one of their first 2 perks)
Creates a new Power with you as the progenitor chosen from your available claims (see below). Your Primary Substrate gains the Power, and you are granted its Powerset Tier. Your Powerset Tier is always the lower of your Soul Tier and the Power Level possible with your Claims (overlapping possible power claims must be split). (You can take this perk multiple times. The claim-type-tags which this power will draw from and hence the possible perks it grants access to are permanent and cannot be changed once chosen. A Powerset Tier generates Power Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.)
Cavern [Earth] ? Telekinetic Powerset ? Starting Level 2
An underground focused powerset based around the control and manipulation of earth. Would be able to move and compress large amounts of earth to build caverns, would be able launch it with precision or use it as armor that allowed quick travel through the earth. Could later cause country shattering earthquakes or carve whole underground countries out of solid rock.
Cavern [Darkness] ? Vibration Powerset ? Starting Level 2
A sonic focused powerset based around the control of sound in the dark. Would be able to fight in the dark always knowing where their enemies were, would be able to disorient and trick enemies with sound or find their weaknesses through detailed scanning. Could later bring an army to it''s knees under cover of night or hear anything said in darkness within days of travel.
Primary Substrate Mastery ? Soul Perk
Recommended (~64% choose this as one of their first 2 perks)
Grants a Mastery Tier over your Primary Substrate for its enhancement. Your Mastery Tier is always the lower of your Soul Tier and Primary Substrate Level. (If your Primary Substrate type changes this perk will reset. If you return to a previously held Substrate type your original choices will return. A Mastery Tier generates Substrate Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.)
Leadership ? Soul Perk
Recommended (~29% choose this as one of their first 2 perks)
Grants a Leadership Tier for making better use of your Agents. Your Leadership Tier is usually the lower of your Soul Tier and highest Organization Level. (With the right Leadership Perks some Agents may be able improve you and your leadership. A Leadership Tier generates Agent Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.)
Self Modifying Soul ? Soul Perk
Requires: Self Modifying Intelligence
Extends your self modifying abilities to the soul. Will allow you to modify most Perk choices over time. (By default most Perk choices are not modifiable. This never applies to Soul Perks. The time this process takes will depend on your current Soul Tier, during which the perk will be unallocated and provide no benefits. Some Perks may not be changeable or will have additional requirements.)
Intelligence Core ? Soul Perk
Requires: one of [Self Modifying Intelligence, ...]
You gain a unique, additional, Primary Substrate: a self-sustaining mechanical Intelligence Core, which would contain your sentience (and hence your Soul). Intelligence Cores grant the ability to control compatible Substrates as if they were your Primary Substrate. Grants a Core Tier. (You would start in control of your current Primary Substrate, it is compatible. The Intelligence Core provides only a lower bound on computation. Perks which affect your Primary Substrate will in general only affect the one you are attached to instead¡ªthough some may affect both¡ªhowever for a Perk to only affect your Intelligence Core it would have to specifically mention it.)
I would not be choosing a Powerset perk. Not anytime soon. I only seriously considered it because of how highly it was recommended by the catalog. I was a factory and neither of those powers directly helped me be a factory.If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The Earth one might help me expand, and it''s self-expanding nature was at least promising in theory, but I could probably do that quicker the old fashion way. Similarly the Darkness/Sonic one wouldn''t do much when I already had perfectly adequate vibration sensors. I also did not think the caverns I currently claimed¡ªthe first thing I stumbled on¡ªwould be the best possible type of territory to use as sources of power. The fact nearly everyone(thing?) chose it as one of their first options (likely in a similar situation of just having whatever they had stumbled on) was baffling. But then meatbags were pretty stupid, so this was a pretty good indicator that it was mostly humans and their ilk with these souls. On the other crank I essentially decided to pick Primary Physical Mastery the moment I read it. For starters I (or I guess me-as-facility) was significantly higher level than my soul which meant I would get immediate benefits and continue to get benefits as I advanced. These perks also seemed like they would primarily help me be a much better factory. Leadership was promising, but it depended on too many unknowns. For starters would a factory really have use for enough agents for it to be useful? I would likely need agents to sell my manufactured goods, acquire designs, buy me resources, and the like. But would I need so many as to make leadership worth it (especially just yet). It also implied I didn''t actually need it to have agents (and it was weird how the soul would hint at answers for questions like "Why did it use the concept ''usually'' instead of ''always'' this time?" but didn''t really expand on the basic functions of the perk itself). Most importantly I didn''t know how useful agents were and what my options were. Was it only meatbags? Would non-sentient bots count? Could I make my own agents? Could I have other intelligent factories as agents? Best to hold off for now. The other two perks, though not useful for being a better factory, were tempting due to my nature. The first elevated my way of thinking into my soul, it would allow me to fix any mistakes I made, and synergized with the perk I started with. It was an obvious choice. The other well... I was currently an entire floor of computers and packing all of that, or even just the important parts of that, into a core which would (hopefully?) require less space¡ªwhich with the ability to sustain myself improved the possibility of relocation¡ªwas promising. To say nothing about the potential of a Core Tier, my soul certainly didn''t. In either case I could probably wait until I needed the benefit to choose them. Soul Perks seemed like they would be difficult to come across if my math was right, and my soul had effectively told me to keep some of them in reserve. I held off on choosing mastery perks until I could look at my facility in my soul proper. But I did check its upgrade points. Apparently I currently acquired 0.2 facility upgrade points a day if I allocated 100m2 of my claim and 0.4 if I allocated 1,000m2 (and I couldn''t allocate all of it for proportional points). This was a base 10 logarithmic function which was stupid and terrible (I hated logarithmic functions, but base 10¡ªanother humanism¡ªwas an especially punishing base). Though I didn''t have any other use for the claims at the moment. This also hinted to me what I already suspected. To get to Soul Tier 3 I would probably need to claim 10,000m2. I was much larger than that, enough to qualify as Soul Tier 5 if my calculations were correct, why didn''t that count? Though, if I was considering the Leadership perk I should see if the meatbags I currently had laying about would be useful. Book 1 - Chapter 3 "I have some questions." I said to the intruders I had let live. From their perspective no time would had passed. "I might have answers, but I would also have some requests" said Obadiah. It was admirably diplomatic. I ran some simulations of how this conversation might go, it was often how I dealt with meatbags. The trick was getting a part of myself to pretend to be a meatbag without it being too snarky, too stupid, or too irrational. Ok, fine, humans. Humans were the dominant species in this area of the world last I checked. And as best as I could tell, all of these people did appear to be human. They weren''t authorized inhabitants of the factory so I could do whatever I wanted, torturing and killing them had some nice upsides in utility¡ªlike operational security. However I couldn''t really justify it morally since it wouldn''t be in self defense¡ªnor the defense of others¡ªlike it had been moments ago. While my creators were fine with vicious killing machines, no one was stupid enough to leave a sapient AI laying around without it having some sort of sentience and morality. I knew I could in theory remove my morality, but that would currently be rather immoral of me, and I hadn''t ever bothered to seriously consider it. At which point it came down to what they could provide and wanted, what I could provide and wanted, and where those intersected. I already knew what they could provide that I wanted. They had a lot of information about the outside world, something I would need to achieve my goals. I had been down for quite a while¡ªat least 80 years going by the state of my unstable chemical storage tanks, but that was only a lower bound as all the unstable chemicals had gone which ever direction they tended and I didn''t have any other ways of tracking how long it had been past that. They were also potentially useful as agents. Of both the mundane and maybe soul bound variety, if I could trust them. Mundane agents would allow me to scout and trade with the outside world. Trading for raw materials was especially pressing. Factories weren''t very useful if they couldn''t make stuff. On my side of the metaphorical table I could offer stuff. In the literal sense. I had been an advanced arms factory. I was confident I could figure out something to manufacture worth value to them, and these people didn''t seem that law abiding. I could also provide shelter. Most of my residential area was in shambles but I could find enough hospitable room for six people. Probably. More importantly I could provide security. I was a secret underground factory, though whether I was still a secret was in question. But I was also at least somewhat fortified, my perimeter defenses¡ªonce repaired¡ªshould be more than enough to stop further assaults by these wind people. Eventually I could even be a secure base of operations for them if they proved themselves useful enough. Preferably those operations would all be for my benefit, but they might have their own goals. The issue of course is I had no idea what they wanted. Obadiah had gotten straight to that. Prudent of him. "Lets start with those requests then," I replied. Obadiah responded, "To eventually leave here safely would be at the top of that list." "A pragmatic request. Let''s put a skewer in it. That''s the human expression yes?" my simulations had implied being a bit intimidating might make them more cooperative. This was actually me playing up a bias against my kind. To my knowledge no AI of my design paradigm had ever gone on an unjustified unending killing spree¡ªthough I may have a biased view. That hadn''t stopped humans from writing all kinds of fearmongering literature¡ªof both the fiction and non-fiction varieties¡ªabout us. My sensors in the factory floor weren''t really meant for paying attention to the fine details that bags of meat (technical term) could express. But my vibration sensors were excellent and I was pretty sure I heard an audible gulp from a member of their group, and another say under their breath, likely to themselves, in a high-pitch, probably female, nervous voice "A pin. It''s ''put a pin in it''." There had been some linguistic drift that I was working on correcting. Admittedly, that phrase hadn''t been in contention. "Alright," replied Obadiah, pausing a moment before continuing, "Well an immediate concern is medical supplies. Depending on how long we were going to be staying here, food, water, and other human essentials as well." "I can guarantee some beds, a bucket, and water, I have no food or medical supplies. Did you not bring any?" "What''s the bucket for?" asked a rougher male voice. No one replied to him.Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Instead grenade-warning woman replied "It''s outside in our convoy." There were shifts in posture throughout their group (shushing her?). "We need our medical supplies soon or Aloysius is probably going to die," whether that was to me or them I wasn''t sure. Great. Soon I would know all their names. Like a child and pet animals, it would be a lot harder to kill them now. That was a joke a technician had often made while adding new personnel to my database. I had found it somewhat amusing, the personnel had not. Probably didn''t actually make a difference since I could just delete their names from my memory before killing them. "I could allow one of your number to retrieve your vehicles under my supervision and the understanding that the others'' lives would be forfeit if they attempted to escape. Choose carefully. Any other requests?" I had decided to just give them the whole pitch. Some of my kind had been free, to a member they had established themselves as beings that never intentionally violated the agreements to which they were party. I had no way to know if that reputation had survived, but I understood the cooperative offer my peers had extended to me, despite having never met one. Now that I was free, I would honor it. They had been quiet for a moment. "Then I''ll get right to the thrust of it for Aloysius'' sake. I would like to keep my existence secret for the time being, which is why I cannot permit you to leave. Before I can make any specific long term plans effecting you, like when you would be allowed to leave, I would require a significant amount of information about the state of the world from you. I would guarantee your safety to the best of my ability until I release you. We would have to take trust in steps, hence my conditions on retrieving your vehicles. As an incentive, I am a factory and¡ªwhile I do not know why you came here¡ªI could use some human agents, such as yourselves, to sell my goods and buy me materials. I would be willing to compensate you as my agents. If that doesn''t work out, or you have other plans, we can part amicably once I no longer value operational security. I am assuming you won''t betray me. All previous terms remain. Do you agree to these revised terms?" The entire group''s posture shifted again. It seemed they were relaxing for the most part. I guess the word of an AI still had a degree of trust. Obadiah took a moment to get a nod or muttering of assent from each of them¡ªpolling his team or ensuring they understood my terms, I wasn''t sure¡ª"It seems we have an agreement" he said. I sent steam to power the lights leading from their current position to the nearest elevator¡ªI didn''t know what they were currently using for light, it would be pitch black down there. Their firefight had taken them deep into the center of one my factory floors, it was nearly half a kilometer of winding passages between machinery to the elevator, and even farther from the stairs they had probably taken. I had already started moving the machinery I could out of the way to shorten that journey. "Spooky" said bucket-boy. Also, rude, while it was true the lights would probably be flickering due to the state of my reactors, it still wasn''t polite to comment on. "Please make your way to the elevator so we may begin retrieval of your vehicles. Introductions would be appreciated." I might as well make nice. Bucket-boy started, "Lawrence Cogsmith, I''m his son". I assumed he was pointing at his father, I couldn''t actually tell. "I''m Jed Bagstock, give me a moment to finish bandaging this before we move him, he''s already lost too much blood." Oh I had some of that! "There is some extra blood on those machines," I turned on a light to reveal the blood soaked machinery, "I am not planning on using it. It appears to be a sub-par lubricant." "We don''t know where that''s been" that had been grenade-warning woman, and she made a good point¡ªthough I suspected sarcasm from her tone¡ªunfortunately I didn''t know where it had been before a few minutes ago either, I hadn''t been conscious, "and I''m Elvira Rexword, mechanic and second in command." I knew I had liked her for a reason. "I can run ahead and bring the vehicles in if¡ªif that''s ok" ah, that would be pin-girl. She had already started taking off her pack and was handing it and her rifle to Elvira (she kept her handgun and body armor). "Go." said Obadiah, the woman immediately began sprinting down along the lit path, "that was Mirabell Leeford, our driver." She was agile¡ªand fearless in her movements. She was not letting anything slow her down, she was jumping and sliding over and through machines¡ªsome similar to the ones I had killed with¡ªas I was moving them (they moved lethargically at best). "I think he has a concussion. We should be careful with his head. He''s as good as I can make him to move" said Jed. "Your team seems very competent Obadiah. I don''t think you actually required my assistance." "It''s appreciated anyway" he replied as he stood next to Jed, "this is Aloysius Hedgecock, our cook", Aloysius appeared to be larger than any of them, "I''m not entirely sure how we are going to move him, that''s usually his other job." The blood had been a bust, but this I could definitely help with. My factory floors, in fact most areas of my facility, were covered in gearways. Beams that provided mechanical energy transference and guides for machinery. They were recessed into the factory floors and they were how I moved my machinery around (and sometimes powered them, but most of my manufacturing machinery required direct steam hookups). I began moving one of the waist high pieces of equipment towards them, it would be large enough to hold the man, it already weighed a ton, and it could function as a table. Once the saw blades were removed. "You can place him on this piece of machinery and I will ferry him. It''s not strictly necessary, but you can remove the blades first." "Magister Fleming, if you would assist," said Elvira as she placed Mirabell''s equipment on the soon to be table and moved to remove the blades. "Yes of course," said the last person of their group, a woman from the sound of it. She had been writing something down as best as I could tell from the sound that had stopped and the snap of a book shutting as she moved to join Elvira. Well this was going to take ages. Whole minutes even. Time to hop off to my soul again. Book 1 - Chapter 4 It would be useful to go over my own history, briefly. I had been the computer bound intelligence for a top-secret production facility key to the Imperial war effort. There may have been more facilities like mine, but that was one of those things, that would be useful to know, that humans had never told me. I had been tasked with manufacturing cutting edge battlemechs, as well as many of the one-off and prototype variants of them. The enemy¡ªHafucan''s Divine Second Grand Federated Doge Republic of Rightly Concerned Mayors and... humans wasting my time again; the Republic¡ªhad advanced airships, which naturally excelled at bombing factories, and had granted them early control of the skies. As one of the most advanced Imperial factories I had been hidden underground (they simply rebuilt the more common ones in the span of a day, to be bombed again the next). Including an intelligence had meant the factory would be effectively autonomous. Thus allowing a small team to run the entire facility, improving operational security. Most of the non-essential personnel I had hosted had been a few of the best Imperial mech designers and pilots. The specifics of the war probably weren''t important and I doubted many people from then were still around given that it had been at least 80 years. Though high rank Lords could live very long lives, those might still be living. And, certainly some of the polities fighting the war were still around¡ªI assume one side had won at some point, though it was unlikely a total victory, besides which a number of other mostly minor polities had also been involved¡ªbut I had obviously been forgotten. In any case, they would no longer be what they had once been. Now with context, it was time to examine the ''Primary Substrate'' listed in my soul. The factory I actually saw myself as.
Project TITAN Factory
That was one mystery down. The 4.2km2 of factory that would, probably, get me to Soul Tier 5 was instead being used as part of a Level 12 facility. The facility level was probably logarithmic too. Thankfully it seemed to have a more gentle base because, in theory, to reach Soul Tier 12 would be 10Mm2 (megasquaremeters), or slightly less territory than the Empire I had served had ever held (and they had been a dimensional super power). Though unless I was misunderstanding the ranks¡ªthe intricacies of Lords was something I had never really paid attention to, which I was currently regretting¡ªthat didn''t add up. The Empire, and the larger Republic, had both been ruled by Princes but in theory¡ªaccording to the numbers I now had, and what I was pretty sure were the correct order of Lord ranks¡ªboth had had more than enough territory to support a King. A reason for my continued uncertainty in the calculations. I wondered if I could perhaps temporarily turn part of my facility into claims. Just two of my floors should be enough area to get me to Soul Tier 5, and probably only drop the facility to Level 11 (Level 10 at worst, though that would have adverse¡ªfrom my view¡ªimplications for the definition of ''facility''). That still left the question of how to do the conversion without setting myself back, I intended to return to full operations as soon as possible. Something to cycle on in the background. The allocated attribute numbers lined up with what I expected from how my facility was built. And the values matched the state of the facility as best I could assess with my sensors. The majority of my internals had been sitting unused for years degrading from water damage, decaying as chemicals reacted, some minor cave ins, and apparently from being shot at. My manufacturing capacity was only at 5%, it had been especially fragile, but most internals were sitting around 10%. The research facilities had been completely torn down after I had been shutdown¡ªlikely a consequence of information security. As for storage, that meant big open areas. Hard for that to fail. Luckily my reactor and computational elements had been made of sterner stuff. The reactors because fusion degraded everything nearby¡ªpoisoning even metal. For Reactors to have useful lifetimes (decades) they had to be extremely resilient. My computational elements were similar in that they also degraded relatively quickly, simply from use, and were also designed to last as long as possible. Part of that involved sealing them under multiple layers of environmental protection to keep the water and dust out while retaining the non-reactive atmosphere that prevented oxidation. However, the state of the reactors was doing me no favors here. Electrical discharge would degrade my computational elements on a relatively rapid timescale¡ªtuning my reactors moved up my current list of priorities a few places. Interestingly, my mechbots were not in this description of my soul, while my autonomy was.
Autonomous ? Facility Upgrade
Requires: 10 Upgrade Points, Computation
This facility may operate all of it''s own attributes¡ªregardless of staffing¡ªat 10% efficiency. (This requires the use of Computation)
Autonomous Operation [Attribute] ? Facility Upgrade
Requires: 10 Upgrade Points, 0.01 Upgrade Points per Attribute Allocated, Computation
This facility may operate the given attribute¡ªregardless of staffing¡ªat 100% efficiency. (This requires the use of Computation. This may be partially applied.)
The fact my autonomy apparently required upgrade points was a new sort of existential dread I had not experienced before.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Right. Mechbots. The automated delivery and maintenance mechbots that could walk around the facility¡ªor more commonly were propelled at highspeed along the gearways throughout it¡ªthat were under my direct control, were not listed at all. Despite the fact they were how I ''staffed'' Maintenance and Storage. I activated the 27 functioning maintenance mechbots, and... they didn''t appear anywhere in my soul as far as I could tell. I had hoped they might count as agents. I set them to repairing the maintenance facilities that I would need to repair myself¡ªand the remaining mechbots that were currently too damaged. Meanwhile I activated and sent the five functional delivery mechbots to the hangar elevator. To help the humans. I had always considered the mechbots as a part of myself, like limbs. Or at least as part of the factory. While I could just think and have the factory do things¡ªthe Autonomy upgrades apparently¡ªI could also think and direct the mechbots to do things. Were they technically some sort of followers? Checking the Mastery Perk catalog actually did find a relevant Perk, but it had a cascading set of requirements, including an upgrade and improvements to my limited ranks. The rank upgrades were thankfully ones I wouldn''t object to. The issue was that at my current pace it would take me months to afford them.
Manufactured Agents ? Facility Mastery Perk
Requires: Manufactured Workers
The facility may manufacture it''s own agents. All of the facility''s manufactured workers may count as agents if they qualify. (To qualify as agents manufactured objects must meet the normal required qualities. It is the responsibility of the facility to be capable of manufacturing such objects. These are full agents and may be used with all relevant perks. Applies retroactively to objects still loyal to the facility.)
Manufactured Workers ? Facility Upgrade
Requires: 20 Upgrade Points, Manufacturing 2, Computation 2
This facility gains the ability to manufacture workers¡ªmechanical bots¡ªfor any attribute. (These can be anything from remote controlled to fully sentient. Basic, suboptimal, designs for every attribute of the facility will be provided as part of this upgrade, improved designs will have to be researched.)
Though it promised that my manufactured bots could become agents, it infuriatingly still did not tell me what constituted an agent, just that there were "normal required qualities". I had hoped explicitly naming Obadiah and his team as my agents in our agreement would do something, but it hadn''t. Though technically I had only suggested they could be agents and that I would compensate them. Perhaps I needed a stronger agreement. There was something else that had been frustrating me. Something this entire soul thing had been dancing around. This was a prime example. I had known before having a soul, and still knew now that I had one, how to manufacture maintenance bots, but I did not have the Manufactured Workers upgrade (another weaker example was that I had known and still knew how to make an Autonomously Operated piece of factory floor, presumably without the use of upgrade points). It had implications, but nothing testable or obvious as of yet. Despite all of the power my new soul promised, it had yet to actually give me any actual benefits. That was something the upgrades promised to do, but I was still a few days from that. I was patient, truly, one couldn''t stay sane as an AI without a bit of patience, but I could see now why humans might pick powers right away. I returned to the mastery perks. Perhaps there was a way to get some more immediate benefits from a soul. Most perks that gave immediate short term gains tended to be appear poor performers in the long term by comparison. I hadn''t committed to Self Modifying Soul yet, and there was no indication if most of these Mastery Perks would be modifiable by it or not (though many had implications). I did however find one promising perk.
Rank Mastery ? Mastery Perk
Gain your Mastery Tier in free attribute ranks for your primary substrate, these do not count against the rank cap. (These ranks revert if you loose control of the substrate until you regain control of it, taking control of a different substrate will grant your free ranks for it.)
Inner Perfection ? Mastery Perk
The maximum possible attribute value for your primary substrate is instead 100% plus 10% per Mastery Tier. (If another source would set the maximum possible attribute value, you may choose which to use. When applied or removed from a substrate, scales the current values.)
Specialization [Attribute] ? Mastery Perk
Requires: Attribute must be the relative majority of and compose more than 33% of your primary substrate attributes.
Specialize in a specific attribute which meets the requirements, as long as that attribute meets the requirements it is the substrate''s specialization. A substrate''s specialization can be upgraded in rank to half of its level for free, additionally for every two ranks of the specialization the third rank does not count against the rank cap. Unlocks most attribute specific upgrades, in addition to some unique to this perk. (Does not change the requirements of upgrades. This perk does not change or disappear if your primary substrate''s composition changes. Cannot be taken more than once.)
This last one seemed like the obvious choice. I was a factory, and factories were specialized in manufacturing. I did not care if I would never be able to change this decision (though the implication was that it could be). I picked it for one of my two available mastery perks, and kept the other for now. Before upgrading my manufacturing rank (for free!), I decided I should probably learn some more from the humans. Book 1 - Chapter 5 As Obadiah''s team began walking I questioned them on the current situation of the broader world. "What is the current date?" starting from the beginning. "Augarod, 3rd Monday, 1451 GEA" replied Obadiah. Making it about 97 and a half years. Less than I had originally imagined. The use of relative rather than normative day marking was worrying. "Where are we currently located?" it was difficult to hide the implications of asking that, but I tried my best. "I assume you mean politically. Former Blagopeysk, Tornado Gang territory," And there it was. The Republic had won¡ªor at least The Empire had lost. Blagopeysk had been the name of the Imperial territory that I had been in. The fact it hadn''t been given a new name however... "Former. But currently?" I asked. Ignoring what had to be the stupidest name for a group of wind users¡ªI was compiling a list right now just to be sure¡ªI could possibly imagine. Who would seriously call themselves that. "It''s currently just known as former Blagopeysk by most," Obadiah explained, "even after all these years it''s still a lawless province. Not worth invading, nothing valuable enough. Not viable to sanction, no actual government to speak of. It has some formal designation I don''t --" "The Dorpulian People''s Unincorporated Mayoral --" interrupted Magister Flemming. Dorpul was an old name for this region of the world. I had served The Reborn Dorpal Empire, full stop. The length of the formal name alone implied this was all technically territory of the Republic. "Of wasting my fucking time, yea," finished Elvira, who I appreciated, "That was a fusion reactor igniting, yea? The whole place shaking, during the fight? Did we accidently wind you up?", until she was too observant for her own good. "Wait when?", said bucket boy, Cogsmith Junior, Lawrence. I might as well be upfront, "Correct. Technically it was¡ªI presume¡ªThe Tornado Gang member. Speaking of which --" "Then why side with us?" continued Elvira anyway. "You weren''t blowing up my machinery. I am a factory." Sometimes humans could be so stupid that I had to describe every step of logic, that I had to repeat the same thing over and over¡ªI am the factory intelligence, I am a factory, I am a factory, how many times did I need to say it! (Yes, I was counting.) How many times before they could remember it. I continued with my original question, "Will the Tornado Gang be returning?" Obadiah responded again, "That''s likely yes. The patrol that you took out probably radioed in something. We had meant to slip in and out of their territory without being detected. Now that we have I had planned to defeat the patrol, grab what we came for, and get out before they returned... A plan I would still prefer, if I am being honest." Interesting, I appreciated honesty¡ªwell, I appreciated having more information and the better models of situations that followed from it, same thing in my opinion¡ªand I suspected my fellows did as well. His forthrightness was likely because of the reputation AIs had. The positive parts of that reputation anyway. He was still talking, "I doubt anyone will remember the patrol went missing until late into the night, the Tornado gang isn''t exactly organized. There are two scenarios for their return I consider likely. Either Walla¡ªColeman Walla, that''s their leader¡ªwill send a raiding party of around twenty people with one of his lieutenants, and likely more of his neophytes. Or, he will come himself, likely with half his gang, including most of his lieutenants as a sort of entourage. Our research implies he''s narcissistic like that. Either way I don''t really want to hang around to see which." I was pretty confident I could handle them, I was more interested in, "What did you come for?" He hesitated¡ªtoo late I thought waiting patiently¡ªbefore he replied, "Old warmechs." Warmech, not battlemech, maybe linguistic drift, maybe an implication he was looking for something more powerful than he could get his hands on in the modern (black?)market. Ambitious either way, I could respect that. Also, once they trusted me more, I would have to find out how they knew about this place. "Fresh out I''m afraid." I could sense their postures slump¡ªsimulations implied their thoughts were something along the lines of ''we came all this way and risked our lives for nothing''. Humans were so stupid. "To sell or have?" I asked. "Little bit of both," I could sense the slight change in his voice. He hid it well, but they had entered the passageways around the factory floors, which connected to the elevators (among other things). Here I had optical sensors and better vibration sensors¡ªones actually designed to pick up human sounds. I may have just gotten my first look at them, but from voice alone I could tell he was disappointed. Probably more so, simulations implied, as a leader who had risked the lives of his team.Stolen novel; please report. "I can make more. I am a factory." Humans were so stupid. I idly wondered¡ªas their spirits restored¡ªwhen I would have to stop repeating that. By that point I''d probably have had to start to repeat other obvious things. Imagining future conversations with humans¡ªoutside of the subconscious simulations¡ªwas always an exercise in the bleak. "And you''d do that? If we helped you? Like with the Tornado Gang?" asked Elvira again, I could hear her excitement, it bordered on... was that longing? Or perhaps that was hunger? Simulations didn''t actually help me name emotions. Though whatever the name, I now knew I had found an effective incentive. "I believe I can handle them. Though yes, I would do that to compensate my agents, and strategic assistance would be a start. I have other questions about them, but first, is Tornado Gang their actual name? That they actually refer to themselves as?" I couldn''t resist the chance to adjust my models on the stupidity of human naming.
I could begin preparing for the Tornado Gang immediately as I continued to collect information from Obadiah. The defense would rely on the design and layout of the facility. The top floor started a little more than 300 meters underground, it was primarily a hangar so airships could briefly and covertly stop to exchange cargo. It could be covert because I was along, or at least near, a couple of well traveled air routes that airships could briefly deviate from to collect or drop off goods without raising suspicions at either end. The secrecy added another layer of protection¡ªin addition to being deep underground¡ªfrom the bombing, but also from alternative attacks like espionage. I was, as I remembered it, effectively in the middle of nowhere. Obadiah had not been wrong to say there was nothing of value out here, it was not good soil, it was not rich in precious minerals, it was not near a river, or mountains, or any particularly interesting natural formation outside of rocks and ponds. Just gentle rolling hills and plains covered in little more than grass and a few scattered trees. Traditionally people raised large herds of grazing livestock out here. Easy enough to spot that who didn''t belong though. The hangar, like most of my floors, was 50 meters tall and, like the shaft itself, was 250 meters long and wide enough for a dozen airships if I really packed them in there. While the shaft from the surface was large enough, 60 meters wide, for most medium cargo airships to make the journey, it was still a tight fit. The hangar also doubled as a loading and unloading bay, not just for the airships, but also for smaller cargo landships (which had been a rare visitor as they were more conspicuous). Those came through the largest of the tunnels which, like the shaft, was secured by multiple heavy blast doors¡ªthose were mostly inoperable, but thankfully, shut tight. For personnel the primary way in and out was through the winding security tunnels. The security tunnels doubled as a distributed armory and motorpool, and functioned as a series of security airlocks as they went deeper and deeper. They ran for dozens of kilometers in all directions. My most heavily armed position was the hangar annex. It was there, among the dozens of decrepit heavy cannons, in front of the massive blast door which allowed entrance to the hangar and facility proper, that the landship and security tunnels terminated. The entrances had all once been hidden in different ways¡ªfarms, rock formations, a small pond''s boathouse. An entire town hid the landship entrance deep within the only landship dock in the region. The hangar shaft had been hidden as a small barely used airport for agricultural airships. The default cover for any unexplained stops having once been unexpected maintenance. One of those had of course been forced open, a farm barn. Thankfully it should be large enough to allow their vehicles to enter. I was currently guiding Mirabell along a more efficient route through the security tunnels. She had already passed my delivery mechbots at a jog¡ªthere were not gearways in the security tunnels proper. And I would likely need her help to repair and open the entrance fully to accommodate their convoy. My security was only at 10% capacity. That primarily described the security tunnels. A lot of them were collapsed, or in the process of it. Most of my sensors and security devices¡ªdoors and turrets¡ªwere simply not responding. I suspected corroded relay cables rather than the devices themselves. The relays were electrical, simple conductive wires that could carry analog signals. They had always been the maintenance task I spent the most time on. After a century of neglect I suspected I would have to more or less replace all of them. I could redirect and control signals using mechanical contacts at steam powered relay stations throughout the facility¡ªwhich were themselves controlled by relay signals and contained simple local mechanical computational elements. Thankfully I could use this design to route around damaged cables, which I had been doing since I had awoken. Unfortunately this was a compounding problem, the security areas were the hardest to communicate with as they were the farthest from me. Most of my useful inventory had been taken when I was shutdown, all that was left were raw materials more expensive to move than they were worth¡ªmostly dangerous chemicals and cheap heavy metals. There were thankfully a couple hundred spools of relay cable that had apparently fit this description, barely enough to rewire a factory floor, let alone the security tunnels, but a start. Besides the issue was more one of time than material, it being a labor intensive task was what made it a time sink, I could easily manufacture more relay cables. I directed most of my maintenance mechbots to stop repairing maintenance and instead grab relay cables. By tomorrow morning I should, just barely, be able to re-cable the path from the open entrance to the annex. I should be able to rearm and service many of the turrets on the path by then as well. More than enough for a poorly named gang of wind users. Book 1 - Chapter 6 I had begun my manufacturing, and had a better handle on my priorities. Due to my specialization, I finally got to pick some actual upgrades. In theory this would be real power.
Manufacturing 1 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Choose one of the following approaches to manufacturing to empower.
Modular Production Lines: Empowers rapid reorganization of the factory to enable near instantaneous changes to production output.
Specialized Tooling: Empowers the design of specialized tooling to ensure the resulting throughput improvement is always at least +100%.
Precision Machinery: Empowers the use of high quality machinery to ensure lossless production within their original tolerances. The tolerances of a piece of machinery may be improved by one standard deviation for each +50% penalty they suffer to manufacturing times (limit 4).
Well that was a difficult choice. I liked all of those approaches, I already used them regularly. I ruled out precision machinery first. While it would in theory help with one of the more pressing problems with manufacturing that I currently faced¡ªthat I had a lot of potential manufacturing capability but not a lot of resources¡ªit wouldn''t actually help that much as my current manufacturing loss was less than 2%, and I was perfectly capable of recycling that lost material. The second benefit of stretched tolerances would require me to have both access to more advanced object designs and worse tool designs than I currently did. Modular production lines would allow me to quickly adapt to new situations and fit my preferred strategy of constantly improving. It would be worse in the long term as being able to swap my production on demand could only offer me marginal throughput increases¡ªand only when I regularly changed what I was manufacturing. Specialized tooling would allow me to out manufacture any other factory, I had room to spare so I could in theory build plenty of specialized lines¡ªwhich at the moment tended to average closer to an 80% improvement, this perk would provide an effective +20% to that (though technically, in some cases, it would provide no benefit at all). Simple and straightforward. In the end however I decided on Modular Production Lines. I was currently limited in working machinery and I had a lot of different things to make with what were effectively scraps. This would require me to constantly change up my manufacturing processes on both the input and output end¡ªand hence everything in between. While it was tempting to be able to outproduce anything else, it wasn''t currently a mediating goal. Besides the brute force that came from being a city size factory would compensate for that.
Manufacturing 2 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Choose a Manufacturing Focus. Each Manufacturing Focus that applies to a production run grants (proportional to similarity) up to a +100% multiplier to the manufacturing rank bonus.
Every rank apparently gave an additional 2% bonus to throughput for all manufacturing¡ªthe "manufacturing rank bonus" currently sitting at 4%. It should be 12% in a moment once I was at rank 6. An applicable Manufacturing Focus would then in theory double that to 24%. Throughput was a strange property to increase from my point of view. The equation for throughput (all other things being held constant) implied that the bonus would allow me to either change the speed of manufacturing a single item, increase the amount of items I could manufacture on a given production line simultaneously, reduce the amount of space I needed for a production line, or any combination of those that worked out to match the bonus. But those equations had deeper variables. I could potentially find some other effects. Something to experiment with later. There were a number of keywords I could pick from for the specialty apparently: agriculture-machinery, agriculture-materials, airships, and so on. Some more focused than others, and a lot of them overlapped. The implication of overlaps did not escape my attention. Simulations of choosing Manufacturing Focuses had found two competing clusters of promising heuristic candidates. One was focusing on my maintenance mechbots, manufacturing machinery, computational elements, and so on, as this would increase my ability to improve and repair my self-as-factory. Improving myself was core to my being. The other was focusing on cannons, armor, battlemechs, and so on, as this would allow me to capture more territory and hence improve my soul. I took pride in myself as an arms factory, and improving my soul was becoming a proxy for improving myself. Luckily¡ªdespite the metaheuristic guided simulations not yet finding a competitive candidate for it¡ªthere were a few keywords that overlapped with both goals. I chose mechs as my first manufacturing focus, as both my ancient battlemech designs and my internal worker mechbots should count (the battlemechs more so than the worker mechbots, which also used gearways). Pride in myself as a mech factory was probably weighted higher than it should have been in that decision.
Manufacturing 3 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Modular Production Lines II: Machinery can continue manufacture while being reorganized. Any partially manufactured run that is part of a manufacturing focus may at anytime swap it''s progress with that of another manufacturing run of a manufacturing focus (adjusting for materials in the quantities swapped).
Well that was totally ridiculous, every last bit of it. I gave it a whirl, swapping the production of a mechbot leg for a mechbot torso. It exceeded my expectations. Even though it meant half completed gearbox assemblies being accelerated through the air to be split by a chopper in mid air just so... before ricocheting into a stuffer... after which they ended up as nearly completed gyroscopes instead.The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. It made no sense. No matter how I tried to analyze what was happening I couldn''t. My gears just knew what signals to send through the factory relays, it took barely any effort of computation on my part. I just willed it to happen and it did. I regretted not better testing the previous version of the upgrade now, it would have given me another data point. More baffling than how I did it was what was actually happening in the factory. Gearboxes and gyroscopes were technically kind of similar, in the same way that say a wrench and a screwdriver were kind of similar, which was to say: not at all. Sure you held them in your gripper and they were made of hunks of metal. But one was a lever and the other an axel. A single chop and a little component stuffing shouldn''t turn a force multiplier into an momentum regulator. And it definitely shouldn''t be making progress manufacturing them as it did. Baffled as I was, I regretted nothing.
Manufacturing 4 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Choose another Manufacturing Focus.
So, a new focus every two ranks. And manufacturing focuses had just become much more valuable. I had been planning to choose cannons next, leaning into my offensive capabilities. Even though guns always needed ammunition, I had suspected they were the safer bet. Now however the tricks with my new modular production lines tipped the scale the other way. I chose shells. (The Manufacturing Focus keyword catalog allowed me to test objects, by thinking of them, against the keywords to see how well they matched. Apparently guns and bullets¡ªwhich did not appear as keywords¡ªwere modern colloquial terms for hand held cannons and shells.)
Manufacturing 5 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Choose one of the following philosophies of manufacturing.
Pull: Let each manufacturing step pull from the previous one. Demand is the driver of manufacturing, let it pull towards perfection. Every manufacturing run you complete will increase the quality of future runs of similar products (proportional diminishing returns), from time to time you will gain research breakthroughs.
Push: Let each manufacturing step push the next one. Supply is the driver of manufacturing, let it push towards endless prosperity. Every manufacturing run you complete will increase the output quantity of future runs of similar product (proportional diminishing returns), from time to time you will gain extra materials.
This decision seemed like a big one. Behind¡ªwhat I could describe only as¡ªpolitician bullshit (and what was that doing in my soul) was a quality vs. quantity decision. Push was very interesting at first, it might solve a near term problem of materials, factories were supposed to make a bunch of stuff, and potentially violating the rules of physics was tempting. Pull however grew on me, it offered violations of the rules of information¡ªwhich as an informational being first and a physical one only incidentally, was more enticing. And, I had always prided myself as a factory of quality machines, found no where else. However what really decided it was the fact I was self improving. Every time I rebuilt myself it would be with better components. I chose Pull. This did mean I would need to get serious about research sooner rather than later. I had always enjoyed research. Besides the fact those humans tended to be less stupid than the average, they had regularly presented me with challenges of manufacturing.
Manufacturing 6 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% throughput with all manufacturing. Choose another two Manufacturing Focuses.
Now I got two? I wasn''t complaining (about that part of it). I had already decided to lean the other direction with my third focus, which was reinforced by choosing Pull just now: manufacturing-machinery. As for the other I chose computational-components as it included relays¡ªand also parts of mechbots, albeit with a small similarity bonus, probably my first overlap. And it was another self improving component, which with the Pull decision, had in general, become more favorable. It was also because of some new Mastery Perks that had appeared. These were somewhat interesting because of when they had unlocked. I was narrowing in on the soul''s "direct knowledge" rules. Divergent appeared at Manufacturing Rank 1, before I made the choice. Focused Manufacturing Synergies appeared at Manufacturing Rank 2, before I had chosen the Focus (the upgrade it referenced had always been unlocked).
Divergent ? Mastery Perk
Requires: Attribute 3 ranks above an Attribute Rank Upgrade choice.
You may choose a second choice from a rank upgrade choice that satisfies the requirements. Generally stacks with the first choice. (Counts as if it was chosen 3 ranks above the original choice. This Perk may be taken multiple times, but only applied to each choice once.)
Focused Manufacturing Synergies ? Facility Mastery Perk
Requires: Manufacturing [Manufacturing Focus]
You may add your Manufacturing Rank throughput bonus to the following values. The base multiplier for this bonus is 2.5% per Mastery Tier. Manufacturing Focus multipliers are added. (Stacks with synergy upgrades. A scaling portion of manufacturing must be dedicated to the relevant value for the bonus to be received, may also be used to satisfy synergy upgrades. Partial similarity applies.)
Maintenance [task performance]
Maintenance [allocation throughput]
Research [design performance]
Research [study performance]
Residential [amenities satisfaction]
Security [rearming speed]
Storage [loading/unloading throughput]
Storage [compression performance]
Manufacturing Synergy I [Maintenance [task performance]] ? Facility Upgrade
Requires: 4 Upgrade Points, Manufacturing, Maintenance
Add a +10% bonus to Maintenance''s performance at tasks. (A scaling portion of manufacturing must be dedicated to this for the bonus to be received.)
Focused Manufacturing Synergies was very interesting. Primarily because it provided multiple immediate benefits. I assumed a number of entries were missing from the list due to direct knowledge rules, however I would be perfectly satisfied with the existing list. I chose Focused Manufacturing Synergies as my last Mastery Perk for the moment. It also displayed one of the most direct comparisons between the power of an¡ªadmittedly pretty weak¡ªupgrade and that of a perk I had seen yet. It was time to revisit my manufacturing priorities. Book 1 - Chapter 7 The others perks might be useful in the future, but their usefulness over the next 12 hours was limited. The most promising, Divergent, wouldn''t be helpful before tomorrow. Setting up a specialized production line would take hours for something as simple as shells, to say nothing of something complex. Even if it continued to function as it was setup it wouldn''t actually do anything for me, where as I could use maintenance task performance and rearming speed now, and I had had only the one perk left anyway. I had originally set my remaining manufacturing capability to toil away at building the necessary components for the repair of the maintenance mechbots. Then once I had learned my defenses had to be prepared by tomorrow¡ªmorning was about 12 hours away¡ªI had planned to reorganize the production lines to make shells and components for relays and turrets in bulk before swapping again (to avoid reorganization downtime). Now I had a better choice. Modular Production Lines allowed me to manufacture exactly the amount of components I needed without having to worry about the lost time of reorganization. This would let me to pull exactly what I needed to keep my maintenance mechbots busy from my factory floors. Leaving the rest of the manufacturing for other things. With so few maintenance mechbots, including my current bonuses, this took only about 2.2% of my current manufacturing capacity (or 0.11% of what I could once do). (Though this didn''t actually really make use of Pull, it seemed to fit somehow, which did give me a thought. Knowing now the rank upgrades on offer it made sense that Specialized Tooling probably ''went with'' Push. Leaving Precision Machinery as the odd one out. But then, I didn''t know, for either, what their improved versions did.) Then to activate synergies took another 3.5% of my current manufacturing capability¡ªmost of which was the rearming. Replacing relay cables activated the computational-components focus, and rearming the turrets thankfully activated the shells focus, giving me in both cases +12.6%. I had been curious what incomprehensibly baffling display the synergies would produce, but it was almost disappointingly mundane. One-off scaffoldings, ammunition quick loading jigs, cable splices, and so on. It used very little material, mostly recycling what it made once the task it was used for was complete¡ªexcept of course the materials required for the repair and rearming that it was assisting, which it would often assemble into what it was manufacturing. I wondered if¡ªas my throughput bonus increased¡ªthe synergies would deviate into the unreal like the rank upgrades had. Next on my list was shells. For the turrets so I could rearm them, and keep them armed, then some extra in a couple different calibers for Obadiah''s team (they had brought plenty though), and then more for my main project. Instead of having to follow the optimal path of building a surplus of maintenance components first, I could instead dedicate the majority of my¡ªcurrently limited¡ªproduction capability to a main project. Which were chicken mechbots. Named for their size¡ªthat of a chicken¡ªthey were half meter tall armored cylinders supported by two short legs, that were half again the height of their body. The legs had simple knee joints, splayed toes, and were centered directly beneath them. They definitely weren''t as light as a chicken though. For starters I was making them entirely out of heavier metals than I would normally choose to. But mostly it was that the majority of their body was a tungsten-alloy thermal capacitor. I could manufacture a couple of variants. They were traditionally released from landships, in heterogenous flocks, to suppress infantry. Unfortunately I didn''t have enough high explosives for the walking mine types. These were a simple repeating cannon model. Though they were capable of non-stop repeating fire thanks to their drum based ammunition canister they weren''t much higher caliber than a handgun and due to computational limits¡ªtracking and compensating being too much¡ªthey used burst fire instead. The design had other problems. Notably to keep the thermal capacitor as far from the ammunition as possible the computation and power elements went in the middle. For ease of charging the thermal capacitor, and to stay compatible with the other variants, it was placed at the top. This allowed a fully charged capacitor to be dropped directly into its body at the moment of its activation. But it also meant the single-axis swivel cannon built into the cylinder was just above the locomotion elements, giving it an absurdly low angle of fire, even if it was the most stable location. They were also difficult to reload, requiring the removal of the thermal capacitor, then the steam engine, then analytical engine (with it''s delicate torsion radio), before finally the drum could be replaced. The drum only held 72 shells, usually fired in 4 or 8 round bursts. With their default engagement algorithm that left them out of ammo in a few seconds of steady contact. At which point they would stand there, tracking their target, cycling the drum as they continued trying to fire. As disposable weapons this was all fine. One was not really meant to reload them. One was meant to shove a thousand of them into a village to flush out an enemy anti-battlemech squad. I was thankful the drums were replaceable at all.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. I dedicated 82% of my production capacity to their manufacture. Using ~12% for shells, primarily for the turrets.
After fixing the gate so that I could open it properly Mirabell brought in the convoy, supervised by one of my delivery drones. The others were already ferrying medical supplies back into the facility. Their convoy was composed of three vehicles. A small open air three person vehicle. A large dual burner cargo truck with a long flat bed that barely fit in the tunnel but was effectively empty. I suspected that it had been meant to carry their warmech salvage. The last vehicle of the convoy that she brought in would technically be called a microlandship. It had a (small) fusion reactor¡ªthe quality that made it a landship. It would be able to heat thermal capacitors in seconds¡ªheck it could probably power a small village, if they had water¡ªallowing it to power the other two vehicles if it had to. In addition to the front and back groups of wheels, it had treads in the middle, and was heavily armored in the front¡ªincluding a plow¡ªwith a turret on top of it near the back. It probably seated 12 or slept 6 comfortably while having plenty of storage. The Tornado Gang had two identical looking mid sized vehicles, single burner, covered, with seating for 5, and cargo in the back. I had not expected so many steam vehicles¡ªa century ago, and under the empire, this area''s transportation was still more horse powered. The Republic had been known for it''s liberal distribution of steam vehicles, and this was likely a result of that cultural difference. The microlandship was another matter entirely however. Had they really chased Obadiah''s team deep into the facility rather than just steal something that I had to assume was still considered rather valuable? Perhaps they were less of a gang than their name implied. I might as well just ask the man himself. Obadiah and his team had made it to the residential area and were currently using a common room table as an operating table. I had left them alone to allow them to tend to their injured comrade. "Is that a landship you all left out there?". Obadiah startled¡ªhe would need to get used to that¡ªbefore responding "Good catch. We have a fake burner on it, though perhaps Mirabell turned it off? Anyway, they were throwing tornados at us. That''s a fight we loose even with a landship. So instead we lured them into the facility, hoping that they would follow us in rather than wreck our vehicles. We knew they had a tendency towards aggression and that bet paid off. Mostly." He had glanced at Aloysius at the end. Simulations implied he had also hoped that their powers would be weakened underground, but didn''t want to say that around the others. "In our defense, we did lock it," said Elvira. A good point, their landship was thickly armored, the gang would have had trouble getting into it. Ah it had been bait. If the gang hadn''t followed them in they would have attacked from a fortified¡ªagainst tornados¡ªposition. Aloysius was getting a transfusion. One benefit of having near unlimited power in your vehicle¡ªnear unlimited cooling. Jed, with Elvira''s help, was removing shrapnel from Aloysius'' leg. Apparently Jed was not an actual medic, just that, according to him, he was¡ªas a survivalist¡ªthe most knowledgeable in the subject of bleeding. Which was a statement I was still grinding through, but I currently assigned it a high probability of being nonsense. Jed was hopeful and gave the large man¡ªonly part human as it happened¡ªgood odds on survival. I knew very little about the maintenance required for bags of meat, and having never directly studied the subject of bleeding, relied on his predictions. Since it was a landship, they had probably been living in it already. Mirabell had gotten their convoy parked in the closest motorpool and was now coldcranking the Tornado Gang''s vehicles so that she could bring them in. "Miss Leeford!" I projected through the delivery drone''s weak speaker. "Y- Yea?" she was still nervous when talking to me. Some of the personnel had never gotten over that, they would talk totally normal to their fellows¡ªI was always listening¡ªand then stutter or stammer or sweat profusely moments later when they needed to ask me a simple question. Despite my best efforts some never got over their fear of my kind. "Once you move that last vehicle you''ll bring the landship deeper in. It''s probably more comfortable than most of a mattress suffering from decades of water damage supported by a sheet of metal. Which is currently the third best accommodation I have on offer." "Thi- third? Who wo-would get the first two?" "Mister Hedgecock as he is injured. And Miss Rexword as she is my favorite." She''d found the right gear and the vehicle came to life as the burner breathed more air. She sat up looking at my drone with a slightly confused frown, "You have fa-favorites? Al-already?" "Yes," think it through stupid human. Obadiah had walked a distance from the others. Probably to be alone. "I''ve directed Ms. Leeford to bring in the landship. I presume that it will provide better accommodations than what I can offer." He startled again, "Are you just", he paused to wave a hand in the air as he looked at each of my speakers, "every where?" "Yes." He sighed, "Thank you," after a pause he continued what he had been saying earlier "It was a gamble, one I shouldn''t have had to made. We shouldn''t even be here, this is way too dangerous," and glanced back down the hallway towards the others. "Then why are you?" He flashed a crooked smile, "old debts," he said before his frown returned. Simulations implied he was not inclined to expand, so at that I left him with his thoughts.
The next day in the twilight hour before the sun rose the Tornado Gang arrived. A raiding group of five vehicles as Obadiah had predicted. Ahead of schedule. If not for the synergy bonuses I would not have had the entire pathway from the entrance to the annex ready yet and I would have had to scramble to pull my mechbots back. As it was they were still servicing the turrets in the annex. I didn''t expect them to make it that far, but, better safe than sorry. It''s not like they could make tornadoes underground. And at that point they were just a gang. Book 1 - Chapter 8 It took the Tornado Gang a few minutes but they did eventually notice the tracks leading into the barn. I had already awoken Obadiah and his team via air raid siren. They had insisted that I awake them if the gang showed up. They had even left someone awake on watch. Ostensibly to monitor Aloysius'' condition, but simulations implied they did not fully trust me. I had only marched a couple dozen chicken mechbots past them during their dinner meal. Which had been taken in my hangar outside their landship. There had been complaints about the quality of the food, something I believed to be a coping mechanism for their worry about Aloysius'' condition¡ªwho had not yet regained consciousness. I would not need their help. Well, not any more of their help. Walla''s lieutenants¡ªor more precisely his acolyte-rank power users¡ªwere primarily known for their ability to create, and survive, tornados. They would usually center a tornado around themselves, and then spin off smaller ones as weapons. His neophytes¡ªlike the one I had first killed¡ªcould create high winds with some precision and control the created tornados. It was how Walla''s own followers survived his so called Tornado Alley. It was unlikely to be their only power, most acolytes apparently had two or three related powers, but it was the only one that was well known. Information was unfortunately sparse, and I only had the one source. There weren''t very many people in Blagopeysk anymore, most had fled decades ago. Which was understandable given the area was effectively a three way civil war between Warlords¡ªa designation for uncivilized Lords of the Earl rank, which I believed to be Soul Tier 8, again an oddity as Blagopeysk was at least two orders of magnitude larger than that. Each Warlord controlled a relatively large population center, the only things approaching civilization in the region, each near an edge of former Blagopeysk. These were traditional populations centers¡ªthey were there a centruy ago¡ªbut were closer to ruins than actual functional cities. The Warlords used these former cities as bases to fight over the rest of the land, often by proxy through groups like the Tornado Gang. The Republic did have a military outpost on the coast of the sea to the south, technically within Blagopeysk, but they rarely did any peace-keeping activities these days, even performative ones. The Warlords for their part appeared to mostly avoid them. The Gangs under the control of the various Warlords primarily fought with each other. Hence detailed information about them rarely left the informal outer circles of the Warlords and their Gangs. Obadiah''s team had gotten what they could without asking too many questions or staying too long in Rackettown (not it''s original name). But little of that had been about powers, as their strategy there was primarily one of running, and more about the politics, logistics, and operational information of the gangs on their path here. The Tornado gang excelled at area control and fighting in large open areas. They were a border gang, controlling a long strip of land on the edge of their Warlord''s land. They had been in a years long stalemate with a rival Warlord''s Gang led by "The Cow". A name that Obadiah said had probably been a local bias, given it was a rival gang, rather than an actual name¡ªthough I had my doubts. Coleman Walla was considered a powerful gang leader and a notable figure in the local political structure. He was known to help weaker border gangs make advances, and rarely failed. Which was likely the only reason he was tolerated, as he was also known for, as described by Elvira, "getting wasted and ''accidently'' flinging tornados in the general directions of his allies". His followers were known for being just as reckless. Which in this case meant that they turned on floodlights and all five of their vehicles drove into my tunnels. Where their tornados couldn''t be formed. It also apparently meant they preferred a relatively high speed, even in dark unknown tunnels. There was a moral question. I was about to kill roughly twenty people. My primary justification was that this was going to be a war¡ªto take more territory and to become more powerful I would have to go to war with these gangs. I had already fired the first shot by killing their comrades. Though the decision had been made in haste and self defense, I doubt that would matter to them.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. This was already a warzone. These people had come here to participate in a bloody civil war, they knew a violent sudden death was likely. It was an unregulated warzone at that. No one was following any conventions, hence I was under no moral obligations to engage in ethical warfare. As for diplomacy, they would not make useful or loyal allies. I was new to modeling it¡ªand the majority of my training data came from century old sources not originally intended for the purpose¡ªbut simulations implied that Walla would rather scatter me to the winds and sell me for parts than work with me in any sort of capacity. These people were on the balance of it conquerors. If there had been any civilians left the Tornado Gang would not have been protecting them, they would have been pillaging them. The broader issue of the Warlord they served drew some attention. I did not believe he would be terribly upset on the balance of it¡ªif it ever even came to diplomacy. In the end it was likely I would have to go to war with all the Warlords. None of their arguments for claiming Blagopeysk were justifiable, and it was unlikely I would be able to come to an agreement with them anyway. I was satisfied that this ambush fit within my morality given the situation at hand. The Tornado Gang invaders, after descending through the entrance tunnel, had turned onto one of the main tunnels that ran between various entrances on this side of the security tunnels. Where they almost missed the hint I had left for them. I had wanted to draw them in deep enough, past the first security zone, before engaging. This would keep them away from the nearby motorpool¡ªthough I had sealed it off¡ªand force them to get through two security doors to escape. But the tunnels were designed to prevent intruders, not lead them deeper. So, using my mechbots, I had left the blood and body parts of their fellows on the correct path. My hint did not have the intended effect¡ªI would have to adjust my models. They instead, after stopping a moment to examine a leg, began turning their vehicles around. I immediately began closing the security door they had used to enter¡ªthe one Mirabell had repaired. It was slow, but it would close in time. Next up, the turrets. I had left them looking deactivated¡ªsplayed at strange angles, still covered in rust. Three were currently able to target them in this main tunnel¡ªthough, one was nearly a kilometer away¡ªeach with two independently firing barrels. They would take a moment to track, stabilize, and acquire a firing solution. I had plenty of time, they were still only just starting the turn. Finally, the chicken mechbots. I had been cycling them in and out of the tunnels to reheat their capacitors¡ªas the security tunnels were not meant to be filled with bots and hence did not have the appropriate infrastructure. I activated them and started sending them out of the bunkers¡ªonce meant to be staffed by human guards¡ªalong the main road. Now I wait. My background processing was of course ongoing, but this activity was too important for me to become distracted, each process was returning here. Going over memories, generating thoughts, summarizing as new memories, looping. Interrupt? No. Resolving transmission conflict on relay 5E-71. Interrupt? No. Pouring a chicken mechbot shell, adjusting for deviation. Interrupt? No. Improving models of human behavior relating to blood and dismemberment. Interrupt? No. Feedbacking meta-dynamic fusion hyper-models. Interrupt? Yes. Tracking complete, stabilizing¡­ finding firing solution¡­ found, executing. The turrets began firing. I was preferentially aiming at the drivers where it wouldn''t adversely effect the chances of the shells hitting other targets. Forty 20mm shells, two seconds of fire, from each turret, before moving it to the next vehicle. I was setting them up to sweep from one to the next. Most of the vehicles were loosing control, some accelerating out of control and running into the sides of the tunnel, others coming to a stop after veering. But one of them, unluckily a secondary target, was surrounding itself with a cylindrical barrier of wind. So they could make tornados underground. I was retargeting two turrets to the source vehicle immediately¡ªthe other secondary target vehicle still needing to be dealt with. Unfortunately the winds were gaining in speed. The shells were traveling towards a barrier of wind that now appeared solid from the dirt in it. That stretched from floor to ceiling. No effect. I could sense the deflected shots ricochet off the tunnel. The last unprotected vehicle was burning. I kept cycling which turret was firing on the barrier. They had about a dozen minutes of ammo left at this rate. My chicken mechbots were quite heavy, they should be able to breach the barrier. Though I would have thought that the shells should have been able to as well. They were continuing their advance. My first chicken mechbot attempt was flying through the air, to collide against a wall. I was trying some variations on how to get past the barrier: have one push another through, building up momentum, and so on. None were succeeding. Their cannons were definitely going to be ineffectual if the turrets couldn''t get through, but I was giving it a few tries anyway. I was perhaps getting a little desperate. Sure, they would be stuck down here and I could starve them out¡ªassuming no one came to rescue them, which I understood would likely happen tomorrow. But I had hoped to kill them immediately before they could send out any sort of distress call or describe my capabilities. A silver lining seemed to be that the tornado contained a strong electrical field. I was having to pre-program my mechbots actions as the radio wouldn''t reach them when they got too close. That should stop their radios too. Then lightning came through the barrier to strike one of my turrets. It left a mark on the turret, but worse the relay cable was utterly destroyed¡ªonly the breaker at the relay station prevented more damage. This was a problem. I began searching for a solution. Book 1 - Chapter 9 I found only two reasonable solutions to the problem. The less distasteful of the two was also the one I could exercise at the speed of thought. I still had a Soul Perk remaining. I had suspicions I could quickly get more after this fight, and I was quite confident I would eventually get a lot more. As long as I chose something that I would want in the near future anyway this wasn''t much of a loss. The problem was that most of the Soul Perks didn''t give direct benefits. The systems they gave also didn''t appear to give direct benefits, instead using upgrade points. My experience with the Mastery Perk supported these assumptions, and gave me an indication that upgrade points were a rather slow resource to amass. The majority of the Perks were about controlling and upgrading things¡ªwhich I was certainly interested in as a factory that could create things¡ªbut all of them implied the use of upgrade points. I had been wavering on whether I should pick leadership or not until I understood what an agent was (and if I could create them), but it also used the same system. The Powersets were useless as always, not just in their use upgrade points, but the fact that neither flying rocks nor sound would be useful in this situation. There was only one Perk that implied any immediate benefit and implied no use of upgrade points. The immediate benefit it described was a marginal one at the moment, though it might help me escape, but that implication was enough to think there might be more. I had planned to take it soon anyway. I chose Intelligence Core as my second Soul Perk. Nothing appeared to have change in my mind. My sensors in my computational center reported that there was now a sphere mounted into the middle of one of my locker sized computational elements. Playback showed that it had just switched from one to the other. Like it had always been there. The sphere was mechanical in nature, like an exceedingly advanced version of my own design that had been miniaturized. The rack it was mounted in still needed power, but none of that appeared to be taken by the core. It was, I decided, a phenomena for another time. More interesting, and also for another time, were the new soul perk options I had received access to. Instead I looked through the Intelligence Core Perk catalog, which more or less operated like the Mastery Perk system. I could pick two, apparently the default tier¡ªas the Intelligence Core perk had not defined it¡ªof a perk was my soul tier. Only a few were immediately relevant.
Powerset Analysis ? Intelligence Core Perk
Through direct observation and subsequent analysis you may learn information about another''s Powerset. (This will not grant direct knowledge. This may grant research opportunities.)
Physical Substrate Analysis ? Intelligence Core Perk
Through direct observation and subsequent analysis you may learn information about another''s Physical Substrate. (This will not grant direct knowledge. This may grant research opportunities.)
Soul Analysis ? Intelligence Core Perk
Through direct observation and subsequent analysis you may learn information about another''s Soul. (This will not grant direct knowledge.)
Thought Burst ? Intelligence Core Perk
Once per day you may think for up to 100 minutes during which time does not advance. (May include all directly connected external computational hardware. No new information may be received nor sent.)
Certainly useful abilities, about what I expected, but not exactly what I had been hoping for. Understanding the power that had stymied me would be the best place to start. I took Powerset Analysis. On attempting to analyze the tornado I got the feeling that I had all the observations I would need and that I would simply need to spend a lot of time analyzing it. I had expected some sort of direct interface like with the physical substrate listing out values. Instead I got feelings about the state of it¡ªitself a disconcerting process, to ask a question of my internal planner and get back an answer that had no meta-heuristic justification, no planning hierarchy, no direct memory links, but was still a valid answer returned by my internal algorithms. Something else to investigate later. Well I had a way to get more time and would allow me to leverage my superior computation in future situations. I took Thought Burst. I activated it immediately, causing all of my sensors to stop changing. Whatever signals had been on the line was what was there. Except not actually, because again parts of me were returning answers that didn''t make sense. My communication protocols should have ran head long into exceptional states, I had been braced for a cacophony of errors. Instead the ability must have compensated for it, allowing me to think straight while also being able to observe the frozen world outside. More tampering with my internal algorithms to investigate.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. I began the analysis. It took me a little more than 26 minutes, using all of my computing power, to complete the analysis of the acolyte, and the neophyte. Another strange process of thinking. Where I went through the same observations I already had but following paths of logic and coming to conclusions that seemed totally alien. And yet I built on them to produce an alien body of understanding that I could not comprehend. But that I was able to synthesize into a report.
Powerset:
Useful to know, but it didn''t really give me anything useable to work with. It confirmed a lot about Walla, like the fact he was Tier 5, and that he was really into tornados. Unbalanced Specialty, once the perk was taken, apparently allowed abilities to be upgraded to become much more powerful, in a number of aspects, by sacrificing utility they would normally have. Meanwhile Power Sensorium explained how the acolyte could target my turrets through the wind barrier¡ªit gave the ability to sense with the tagged powers. I had to wonder how humans interacted with their soul for him to come up with these choices. There was an underlying logic that the analysis had provided me to give me an answer that included the unknowns, but I couldn''t actually remember it. Some of this didn''t seem like things I had actually directly observed. The analysis process had pulled from disparate data and memories, how did it justify direct observation of storm control? Scratches on the landship? Surely not Obadiah telling me about it? I spent the rest of the time in Thought Burst working through various models with what data I had locally stored. There were always improvements to be made. I didn''t find any better solutions than the two I had come up in the seconds after the situation began. One had now been exhausted. On to the more distasteful solution. Admitting I was wrong. "How would you like to win a fight against a tornado using your landship?" I asked Obadiah''s team. I began scheduling mechbots and swapped a new manufacturing line with an almost complete maintenance synergy line. "I''d like to plenty, but how we would is the important bit," said Elvira, after a moment she added, "and also the matter of compensation." "If you would please make the landship ready for battle as we discuss terms. There is a clock on this." Already the tornado¡ªthe acolyte surrounded by a hardened wind barrier¡ªwas attempting to strike my other turrets with lightning. Now that I knew how the turrets were being targeted, I had stopped firing them. Obadiah nodded and they began moving. The land ship had a large rear cargo hatch through which they unloaded Aloysius, and one of my delivery mechbots boarded. After a quick conversation they determined Jed, Aloysius, and the Magister were remaining behind. Meanwhile I was dealing with Obadiah as he entered the landship, "In return for your services as my agents for the next 6 weeks I will manufacture for you 3 medium battlemechs, 4 light battlemechs, another cargo truck, full equipment and one set of spare parts for all the mechs." I swapped to the delivery mechbot in the landship, "We can discuss details in the future, including substituting mechs for manufactured goods made with equal amounts of raw materials." The acolyte hit a second turret with lightning. Obadiah took a moment to think as he buckled himself in before replaying, "I broadly agree. There would be limits on what actions we would be willing to undertake. It would also be your responsibility to replace any goods we expend either in compensation or in kind." Two maintenance mechbots arrived. Manufacturing complete, delivery mechbot loading. The delivery mechbot acting as my voice had taken position between the two front control seats, between Obadiah and Mirabell. "What kind of limits?" I asked. "Limits of morality, we are not bandits. Limits of self-preservation, no suicidal missions. Speaking of, I am sure I have more, but, what is the plan here? I agree to the terms with the understanding that I may have more limits." He said as Mirabell had given him a nod and Elvira closed the last hatch. Delivery mechbot travelling on gearway, arrival imminent. The acolyte had apparently given up on trying to hit the last turret and began slowly backtracking. "Miss Leeford if you could pull up to bay 0, plow first." I said before replying, "I agree to your terms, in the understanding we may both want to modify them slightly. They are using a wind barrier, it will present as a tornado, inside one of my tunnels. I have been unable to breach it. I have analyzed it and believe a vehicle of the mass of your landship should be able to penetrate it at speed." The landship pulled into the bay. My bots began attaching the newly manufactured equipment. "And if we can''t?" asked Elvira. "An unlikely scenario, however, retreat would be prudent" welding could now be seen and heard "I am presently improving your plow to increase the likelihood of success." The detachment of 18 chicken mechbots had finally arrived. "I am regretting this already" said Obadiah, "what are you doing to it exactly?" Book 1 - Chapter 10 Mirabell was an excellent driver. With my direction she had deftly navigated the tunnels wasting little time. But we were still cutting it close. The tornado and the acolyte at its center had almost escaped the way they had came. They were apparently limited in speed with the barrier up, and they were using the edges to search the sides of the tunnel for the way out. Once it made the turn back onto the ramp there would be a lot less room for us to build up speed to ram it. "Turn right at the end of this tunnel Miss Leeford. Then proceed to enter the tornado at all possible speed." "Really? That''s it?" she asked. When driving she seemed to forget what I was. "Yes, and brace for impact. With any luck the impact of the landship alone should be enough." She made the turn and began gaining speed. I issued final orders to the chicken mechbots mounted to the front of the plow. The turret from the landship began firing. I was momentarily confused until my models caught up with me and implied what had happened. Bucket boy was in the landship too. I had not had the delivery mechbot look at what else was happening in the landship. I had never really commanded anyone before. Perhaps I should have shared more tactical context with them. Simulations implied it was less likely this mistake would have happened. "Cease fire!" I said. Lawrence stopped firing. But It was too late. Lightning struck out at the landship. The landship was hardened. It was mechanical and ran on steam power. In theory it should be mostly fine. A siren blared and Mirabell shouted "reactor scrammed!" as she kept accelerating. Right, mostly fine, besides the fusion reactor. I did some quick calculations. They would have enough thermal capacitors and steam already generated to finish ramming at full speed. But then they wouldn''t be able to retreat. "Shit," said Elvira. I had a good enough read on her to know what she was thinking. She couldn''t get up to fix it when they were about to ram something. In a moment she would realize they wouldn''t be able to retreat. And then there was a high probability she would call it off. I assigned a high probability to the success of this plan, as long as the humans didn''t screw it up¡ªmore than they already had. I couldn''t let her get to that thought. "Allow me." I said as I directed my delivery mechbot to march to the middle of the landship where the waist high hump of the reactor core sat. I opened the hinged service panel¡ªthankfully designed as quick access, delivery mechbots were not designed for fine tool use and I had to use it''s leg¡ªand began inspecting it. I had no clue what I was doing. The reactor was a design I had never seen before. It was nothing like any of the century old designs I had in my records. While I may have had a deep understanding of how to run a fusion reactor, that didn''t directly help in fixing them or reverse engineering a design. I was also using a delivery mechbot for something I should be using a maintenance mechbot for. It was a daunting task for which I had 22 seconds. I devoted nearly 93% of my processing to this task, dropping tasks like recoverable manufacturing processes and security monitoring for the rest of the facility. I was correcting the images coming from a delivery mechbot not designed for this sort of precise sensing, improving contrast because it had no light, creating near-range parallax after the fact because it instead had only the one camera and a long range sonar. I was pouring over the ancient designs I had searching for similarities, trying to identify common design patterns from first principles. Extrapolating those principles to possible design spaces. Generating populations of theoretical reactor designs. Trying to match what was in front of me.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. Eight seconds in of my mechbot not doing anything Elvira interrupted my thoughts, "Ensure breaker, flush chamber, refresh breaker, prime, manual ignition." Right. I didn''t have to have a complete understanding of how the reactor functioned to attempt to fix it. But I probably would have had to to generate that solution without a manual. I began synthesizing the manual command sequences for the delivery mechbot. I would have to correct for the motion in the landship and direct motions for the mechbot''s legs with a precision the mechbot was not designed to make. This was a difficult task, but well within my computational bounds. Ignition complete. Moments later the landship rammed into the tornado. I lost contact with my delivery mechbot. The landship went through it and came out the other side with the last tornado gang vehicle across it''s ram. My improvement¡ªbesides the spikey bits¡ªproving mostly unnecessary as the wind barrier disappeared and the landship began decelerating. You have successfully defended your claims with agents, you have gained four (4) new agents. That message was surprising. I had been suppressing them when things happened that I expected, they tended to pop up in response to everything I did with my soul. But this one was unexpected. And welcome, I had a workable lead on agents now. I could connect to the chicken mechbots mounted to the front of the landship, but not the delivery mechbot, that was strange. It must have been damaged in the collision. I released the chicken mechbots from their mountings on the plow. They had been my backup strategy if the landship only got partially inside the tornado and had not killed the acolyte. For now I used them to inspect the wreckage of the car. I had defended my claims. This was a success.
But I was not satisfied by it. I had made a number of mistakes. The first one that was obvious to identify and earliest in my thought process was rejecting the material aid of the humans. Sure maybe I could have made a truckbot and rammed it through the tornado, but I didn''t. They didn''t actually contribute anything I couldn''t have done, but in this case they had the resources I needed. I would likely have suffered less losses if they had been on standby and I had already negotiated a deal with them. A related early error was my security solution. My original security design was based on having a human staff as the primary lines of defense where I only provided support. Staffing it with chicken mechbots instead had not proved to be effective. I had seen the effectiveness of automated and unexpected close range (improvised) weapons against humans when I had weaponized my factory. There were a number of automated weapon¡ªtrap¡ªdesigns that would have been effective against the acolyte. I hadn''t thought to redesign my security as an automated design. The chicken mechbots had serious design flaws as security tools, and as general purpose tools. None that had actually been relevant. But they were designed with a specific goal in mind and I had simply picked them out of mental catalog of plans, knowing they were poorly designed for the task at hand. I hadn''t thought to redesign them. Part of that was probably the time constraints. But another part was my view of myself as a factory¡ªnot a fortress, nor an engineering laboratory. I hadn''t looked to improve on the designs humans had provided me because I had considered that out of my scope as a factory. But I was a Lord now, an independent potentially-legendary factory. That would mean rethinking human designs. Examining my memories of those decisions, I found another minor belief involved that had weighted parts of it. One I hadn''t taken the time to fully test¡ªagain, mostly due to time constraints. I believed that what was listed in the soul could only be gotten from the soul. This had also been a factor in my flailings with the reactor as well, exasperated by what I had unlocked after taking the Intelligence Core Perk. But upon reexamination this belief seems unlikely to be true. I would need to test it. Which leads into my persistent failures in predicting how powers would work. This should now be alleviated in part by now having the ability to analyze powers. But I had¡ªdespite sensing for myself the effects that my soul had allowed me to have on my manufacturing abilities¡ªconstrained my expectations to reality. I had not really paid attention to those with powers before, and most of my information for my new models on the subject came from century old records. Which was another problem. Some of my models and their simulations had been performing extraordinarily poorly. Way below the prediction rates I had expected. Mostly the new ones, mostly based off of the records I had available. Historical records ranging from textbooks and encyclopedias to newspapers and personal journals. In addition to being a century out of date, this information was likely biased, but I had not realized how biased in certain insidious ways it must be. Models were only as good as the training data I had available. Which finally brings me to my largest failure. Modeling human behavior. My models for engaging in human conversation and modeling the relevant behavior are great. I have had them for a long time, and they were once carefully curated by technicians. But I had failed to predict the actions of humans in response to certain stimuli like blood and I had failed to predict the behavior of my allies when not given tactical information¡ªitself a failure of one of my newer models for tactical simulations. It''s likely a number of other decisions I had made had been based on flawed models. One decision jumped to the front of my mind. Could diplomacy with Walla Coleman have been a possibility? I would have to more carefully review my use of models in the future based on how new they are and the quality of their training data. I had succeeded at everything I had done as a factory. And I was proud of that. However. I needed to succeed at all things. Book 1 - Chapter 11 After resolving to do better, I returned to the necessary work of cleaning up after myself¡ªand a landship. The wrecks were going to be valuable to me as raw materials. The more I returned to the issue of raw materials the more I became convinced that the best available solution was going to be recycling other stuff¡ªlike these shell-ridden blood-soaked wrecks. I would have to convert some of my factory floor to dedicated recycling systems soon. Mirabell was dragging the ruined vehicles back to the hanger with the landship for me. Nineteen bodies and two survivors were extracted from the wrecks. Mercy for those beyond our assistance made some of the bodies. The acolyte had been skewered straight through the chest by the improvements I had made to the plow. Perhaps I would need to allocate a chilled storage tank for the keeping of blood, as humans so often found it useful. And I appeared to be collecting them, and it. I began a conversation with Jed¡ªas the most knowledgeable on the subject of bleeding¡ªto inquire about that. The two survivors were mostly unscathed. One had been thrown about, dislocating an arm, after her vehicle had crashed into a wall. She was certainly lucky to have not been hit by any of the twenty-eight shells I had successfully put through the vehicle. I suspected she might be a neophyte due to the layout of the wreck, but I wasn''t certain. She had been placed in restraints by Elvira, who had found her, either way. The other survivor I had found with my chicken mechbot in the acolyte''s vehicle, crushed between seats. He had a bandolier of grenades, which was confiscated before we freed him, and placed him in restraints. I started converting part of the residential area into a prison. Food was a concern, but Obadiah ensured me they had enough extra for eight weeks, even with two extra people¡ªthe few boxes on their cargo truck were all supplies, "always come prepared", he had said by way of explanation. Also one of his moral limits was, apparently, killing unarmed prisoners. The next task on the list would be claiming territory, or attempting to. It would be an experiment. But first, agents. I had finally gotten agents. I went inspected them within my soul¡­ ¡­ but I couldn''t inspect deeper than that. I kept getting, effectively, error messages. Inspecting the substrate of agent Obadiah Cogsmith (Level 10) requires his consent. Which was frustrating to say the least. The information about their relative levels was certainly interesting. But I had expected the ability to inspect them to some degree, like I could my own primary substrate. I had been right that was something I could do, my soul said as much, but the consent requirement blindsided me. The purpose of this wasn''t simply voyeuristic. If I was going to decide if I wanted perks like Leadership and Substrate Analysis it would help to see what that meant. The secondary concern of knowing how to deploy my new agents, based on their descriptions in my soul, would also be useful. I would have to get their consent. The easiest way would of course be to tell them I was a Lord and then ask for their consent. But I wondered what would constitute consent. There were various ways I might be able to get it without being explicit about what I needed or why I needed it, I was pretty sure I could manipulate them¡ªeven if it might make for more difficult conversations, as it was significantly easier for me to argue from a position of truth (adding layers of indirection certainly solved problems, but they were a performance hit). I could also just tell one of them in confidence, though I don''t think any of them yet trusted me enough for that, and secrets like that would cause problems. The simplest solution was probably the best. It would make a lot of things easier.
I asked Jed to go out. I was trying to see if I could make him an agent by having him help me claim territory. Something my chicken mechbots were slowly, but successfully, doing by marching outwards in a loose circle from the barn. Suppressed // You have claimed-in-fact an opposing Soul''s territory by defeating their agents. (Total: 221,300 m2 prairies) // Suppressed Since defending a claim on my behalf had made the other four agents, I suspected that making claims on my behalf would also do it. If that was the case then the key rule for creating agents appeared to be interaction with claims. Obviously there were other requirements since my mechbots weren''t becoming agents. But for now I had a hazy definition that human-ish things (e.g. bags of meat¡ªtechnical term) could become agents by interacting with claims. I was attempting to disguise it as a request for his help scouting the terrain, since I couldn''t tell him why I wanted him to try it. And it was not going well. "I already know what''s out there. It''s flat, covered in shortgrass, for kilometers in every direction." said Jed incredulously. "Yes. However human senses¨C"Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. "There are dozens of tornados to the east." "Yes. However a human such as yourself¨C" "The wrecked barn we entered from is practically the only thing on that road." "Yes. However¨C" "That''s everything." "Yes. How¨C" "Are you sure you don''t have a few gears loose?" he said before continuing on, emphasizing with finger quotes, "Because the previous fucking conversation about ''tanks of blood'', ''blood extraction hoppers'' and ''blood distribution chambers'' was enough rogue Intelligence batshit for me today." "I assure you all of my gears are quite tight," I replied¡ªsomewhat pride, but mostly as directed by my conversational model of him. A model which was rapidly improving. Though I worried it was in a local maxima given how this conversation was going. It took a few seconds but he finally assented, "Fine. I''ll go take a look around." "In specific Mister Bagstock. I wanted you to look around the land that I now claim." a request I had made from the beginning. "Whatever. Fine. I will go take a look around ''the land that the insane factory Intelligence now claims''," he said with exasperation and finger quotes, "now, where is my buggy?" Close enough. There were multiple ways this could fail, at least three major ones I was interested in. Ideally I would have tried each variation, but it was tricky manipulating them to do even one experiment that I didn''t really have a choice. I hadn''t been able to think of a good excuse to get one of my current agents to attempt claiming territory on my behalf¡ªthough I strongly expected they could. Jed was muttering under his breath, of note I caught: "fucking batshit vampire factory", "''sub-par lubricant'' my ass", and "precious bodily fluids". I now had high confidence what had made this conversation go so poorly from the beginning. My models on human behavior relating to blood. The recurring failure of human behavior models¡ªoutside of the basic conversations I used to have a century ago¡ªwas something I needed to change. The models relating to blood had especially high failure rates¡ªthey were just plain wrong¡ªwhich should make them a good place to start. I would also have to do more than just attempting to improve again. Something needed to change. The main issue as I saw it was that I simply lacked good data on the subject. It was one of those things humans had never bothered to explain to me¡ªnor to their encyclopedias. Most of the records I had were informational or academic and blood seemed too visceral for that medium. Perhaps, using the prisoners, I could conduct some experiments followed by interviews to get some new data on the subject. Straight from the human''s mouth. They were going to have nothing better to do anyway. Also my gears were not loose. I checked (most of them¡ªthere were a lot).
If there was one of them I could trick into giving me consent, without knowing the what or the why, it would be bucket-boy. Lawrence Cogsmith. First, he was utterly clueless. Second, though I didn''t actually know what it meant, he was half the level of the others. Third, I had decent confidence he still didn''t know what the bucket was for. I waited till he was alone. "Mister Cogsmith" "That''s my dad," he replied after blowing out smoke from his cigarette. Fourth, he smoked. I wasn''t non-smoking, or hadn''t been a century ago. But I was seriously considering it¡ªthat stuff was hard to clean and my maintenance mechbots were already overburdened. My former occupants had been much more judgmental of each other on the subject. "Junior Cogsmith, I¨C" He screwed up his face at that, "just call me Lawrence." Conversations were just not going my way this hour. "Lawrence, I would like your consent to view you. May I have it?" "Uhhh, sure I guess." he answered taking another drag. Inspecting the substrate of agent Lawrence Cogsmith (Level 5) requires his consent. "Why would you need it?" he asked afterwards. The didn''t work. Was it because he was questioning it, or because I hadn''t been specific enough? Or perhaps it just wasn''t possible without being specific. Another approach maybe. "Imagine, if you would, that there was a hidden readout of data about you, how strong you are, how skilled with a gun you are, and so on," some flattery never hurt. Not that I would normally describe my behavior modeling ability this way¡ªit was wrong in more aspects than other ways¡ªbut it was one that humans within me had used before to describe it, and it worked in this case as something with dual meaning. "Then consider that as an Intelligence, with a not-insignificant amount of computing power, I could synthesize that readout merely by observing you." "That''s kinda trippy. I''m not really big on sci-fi." Fifth, Sixth, Seventh. That was just a lot to unpack, but, primarily, I was science fact. Inspecting the substrate of agent Lawrence Cogsmith (Level 5) requires his consent. "Would I have your consent to view that hidden readout if it existed?" I persisted. "Sure, whatever floats your¡­" At least it worked this time.
Lawrence Cogsmith
"uhhh¡­" Well that was certainly a bit different than my facility. His experiences were elided and an average and error range provided. I could inspect them individually, but they didn''t make much sense to me. They appeared to be time ranges with associated qualia. I wondered if they would make sense to a human. Age obviously wasn''t the strongest factor, Obadiah presented as the oldest of them and Mirabell, who was the same level, was young enough to be his daughter¡ªonly a bit older than Lawrence, perhaps twenty-five. Experiences obviously caused that difference. The attributes were also different. The fact they weren''t allocated wasn''t surprising, human''s couldn''t rebuild themselves that way. The kind categories seemed notable. The basic system for upgrading substrates was apparently the same, for all that I didn''t have upgrade points to spend on him¡ªnor would I want to. Like with my facility I should be able to upgrade an attribute''s rank, making it better in unreal ways, and unlocking more powerful upgrades. "¡­ boat still, I guess." he finished before taking another drag. Eighth, who couldn''t at least think of something different. Book 1 - Chapter 12 The experiment with Jed didn''t end up working. He did not become an agent. Though he did end up claiming land on my behalf¡ªsomething I determined by carefully tracking the incoming claims and his movements through my mechbots. Which implied to me that he would have to take an active role in defending or attacking claims to count as an agent. You have claimed-in-fact enough territory to qualify for one (1) additional soul perk. You have claimed-in-fact enough territory to qualify for one (1) additional soul perk. I had claimed nearly 600,000m2 of prairies around the remnants of the barn. I stopped there for two reasons. First, my chicken mechbots were now walking half a kilometer away which was putting them, with the addition of the security tunnels, near the maximum round trip distance. They were also having to walk in zig zag patterns to claim the land without gaps, something that was especially annoying as their claim radius seemed to shift for reasons I couldn''t solve. My soul didn''t exactly give me a map, so I was spending an egregious amount of computational power, moving hundreds mechbots in start and stops, and tracking Jed, to create one from a single truncated value. Part of me just wanted to be done with the exercise¡ªthis much compute time wasn''t something a factory spent on a task like this. I did my best to regulate those meta-heuristics. I needed to be more than just a factory. Besides, I had the compute time to spare. The second was that I wasn''t quite sure how this would be perceived by others. I had to assume that Walla would notice the change in his soul, or perhaps even get notifications like the ones I was suppressing. If he did notice, he would have to view this as an attack. I was worried he would call on fellow gangs if I pushed too hard, where as he might just try to solve it himself if it seemed minor. There was also a certain amount of math that still wasn''t adding up. My calculations for claims to tier had been correct (logarithmic base 10). But according to the map Obadiah had provided of Walla''s territory, he should be Soul Tier 7, normally called a Raider when uncivilized, not called a Gang Leader as we was, which my counting put at Soul Tier 5. Perhaps this was linguistic drift, or perhaps my counting of uncivilized Lord names was wrong. While I was glad it wasn''t the tier formula I was wrong about, the source of the inconsistency was unknown and that caused me to temper my advance with caution. I also wasn''t sure what was going to happen when Walla took back the territory. This left me at Soul Tier 4. The first thing I did with the claims as soon as I got them was allocate as much as I could to my upgrade point generation. Next was picking more perks.
The Factory Intelligence
Beginning with the perks I already had. From mastery I really just wanted more immediate benefits. Which meant more upgrade points or, failing that, the ability to accelerate repairs (if one ignored storage I was barely level 8 in my current state). I saw only one poor avenue for directly improving Maintenance.
Powered [Attribute] ? Mastery Perk
Requires: Attribute Rank 4
Gain access to all upgrades for the Attribute which can be powered by your current claims.
I had seen the Powered Upgrades for Manufacturing from the elements Caverns gave¡ªand now Prairies¡ªafter taking Specialization. Assuming allocation rank used the same logarithmic scaling that upgrade points did, I had not been impressed.
Earth Shaping ? Powered Facility Upgrade
Requires: Earth Claim, Manufacturing, 5 upgrade points per max allocation rank
Using elemental earth, improve the manufacturing throughput of all processes that shape earth (clay, dirt, sand, gravel and similar substances) by +8% per allocation rank.
Fire Furnaces ? Powered Facility Upgrade
Requires: Fire Claim, Manufacturing, 5 upgrade points per max allocation tier
Using elemental fire, improve the performance of furnaces by +12% per allocation rank.
From this pattern it appeared they would be too specific to be helpful for Maintenance. Even if I had the upgrade points. I would have to experiment when I had some to spare.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version. I considered Rank Mastery and Inner Perfection instead. I immediately dismissed Inner Perfection as scaling my current values might help, but then I would have even more to repair. Better to get it later. Rank Mastery was more appealing¡ªthough I would have to avoid using it''s free ranks for Manufacturing, out of an abundance of caution, due to potential interactions with Specialization¡ªas I could use it on my Maintenance attribute. I chose Rank Mastery and kept a point free incase Ranking up Maintenance gave me access to a better perk like Manufacturing had. When I was first picking Intelligence Core upgrades I had been under a time crunch and attempting to pick something immediately useful. However the majority of the Intelligence Core perk catalog provided more interesting avenues for improvement, often focused on me as an informational entity.
Mindfulness ? Intelligence Core Perk
If not already a feature of your intelligence (you have 97% of this feature), gain the ability to inspect your own thought processes and gain an awareness of their shaping. Provides a soul-bound method, regardless of your current process, for this inspection. Provides a reflexive protection against mild external influences to your thought process, and a notification of most others. (Includes all directly connected external computational hardware.)
Mind Merge ? Intelligence Core Perk
Requires: Copyable Intelligence Substrate
If not already a feature of your intelligence (you have 2% of this feature), gain the ability to merge your intelligence with copies of it. Provides a soul-bound method, regardless of your current process, for merging. Provides predictive protection against the merge causing mild drift and subversion, and a statistical breakdown of risks otherwise.
Modeling Accuracy Report ? Intelligence Core Perk
Requires: Explicit Modeling Awareness
Once per day you may view a report of the actual accuracy of up to 100 of your models. (Included metrics may vary depending on model''s function and form. Some models, primarily those modeling the Soul, cannot be reported on.)
Mindfulness and Modeling Accuracy Report were both extremely tempting due to my recent review of my own thoughts. While modeling was an area I was especially deficient in, I only knew that because of my ability to review my own though processes. Which put Mindfulness at the top of the self improvement list. I further justified it by the fact that a 3% error¡ªas implied by the perk¡ªcould quickly compound. The analysis perks were still useful however. I didn''t necessarily think that Substrate Analysis would be especially useful as anyone I would want to use it on should either be dead before I could complete the analysis or should be my agent anyway. However since I had high confidence I was about to get a visit from Coleman Walla, Soul Analysis could be useful. I decided to split the difference. I chose Soul Analysis and Mindfulness. I immediately went in the soul-bound interface of Mindfulness to inspect my post-battle introspection¡ªbetter to fix any errors I had made during that now. It presented as a timeline with points on it being decisions. Each point on the line was the root of a massive branching directed acyclic graph (a tree where branches could merge) that was qualia coded like a human manager might use colors on a chart. I had intended to skip back just an hour or so, but after doing so I instead skipped back to just a few minutes ago. While skipping back I had crossed a massive vile looking graph in my recent thoughts that made the post-battle introspection I had gotten a brief glimpse of look tame by comparison. What caught my attention were a couple of thick edges¡ªthat a human manager would surely have made bright shining red¡ªin the branching decision graph. The qualia of those edges presented as a master alert interrupt screaming for priority scheduling or perhaps as a critical cascading error burning through my allocator. It was dangerous. What even was this. The decision in question seemed to be about how I should get consent to view my agent''s substrates. As I remembered it my meta-heuristics had guided me to chose the simplest option. Which meant I had decided against telling them and instead to manipulate them as necessary. But according to this, that hadn''t been the simplest option as determined by the heuristic values my planner had generated. That didn''t make sense, what had happened? Going through the thought process now, I realized I had indeed made the wrong decision.
Next, picking new Soul Perks. Suppressed // Mindfulness: Extreme subversion of will detected (possibilities: 99.3% external subversion, 0.6% intentional action, 0.1% benign design). // Suppressed Given what I had learned about agents, and the difficulties in manipulating them to do what I wanted, I would have to change my plans. Book 1 - Chapter 13 I had been planning to pick Leadership, and then probably Self Modifying Soul so that I could begin experimenting with it. But, there were some other tempting perks I had always had access to, as well as some new perks, that I should probably review.
Craft ? Soul Perk
Recommended (~11% choose this as one of their first 4 perks)
Grants a Craft Tier for creating empowered items, animals, machines, and similar cohesive objects. Your Craft Tier is the lower of your Soul Tier and the adjusted level of the highest level relevant object. (Includes hybrid objects, for example persons. It is the responsibility of the crafter to be capable of manufacturing such objects. A Craft Tier generates Craft Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.)
Build ? Soul Perk
Grants a Build Tier for creating empowered facilities, municipalities, vessels, and similar composite assemblies. Your Build Tier is the lower of your Soul Tier and the adjusted level of the highest level relevant assembly. (Includes hybrid assemblies, for example citystates. It is the responsibility of the builder to be capable of manufacturing such assemblies. A Build Tier generates Build Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.)
Design ? Soul Perk
Requires: [Intelligence Core, ...]
Grants a Design Tier for better conducting research into iterating known designs, learning extant designs, and synthesizing new designs. (It is the responsibility of the designer to be capable of doing such research. A Design Tier generates Design Points when allocated Claims.)
Study ? Soul Perk
Requires: [Intelligence Core, ...]
Grants a Study Tier for better conducting research into theories about nature from existing evidence, conducting experiments to find theories, and applying theories. (It is the responsibility of the studier to be capable of doing such research. A Study Tier generates Study Points when allocated Claims.)
These all appeared similar, and were the main reason I had been blinded by the Soul. It explained so much that the great figures of history were all Lords when they had discovered new theoretical frameworks, engineered designs that had stood the test of time, built great cities that were noteworthy for generations, or crafted legendary weapons and tools. They had been using their soul to do it and, upon realizing that, I had assumed it was impossible otherwise. The insight seemed obvious once one had a Soul. I was again frustrated by the lack of material I had to draw from, was this another example of human common knowledge that they had simply failed to write down? If so, how had I missed it? If not, how had humans? Which just led to more questions. Questions for another time. For now it was enough to know that these abilities appeared to support specific tasks. As a factory Craft and Build were especially ones I wanted. I hadn''t considered them the first time because of the implication that they wouldn''t help with general manufacturing, only with the manufacturing of empowered things. Making empowered things was certainly on the path to a legendary factory, but I wasn''t sure I was there yet. Time was also a factor, and upgrade points took time to accrue. Design was more appealing as a factory. Especially since I was currently limited by human designs. Having the ability to make my own designs and then manufacture them would help greatly with that. Meanwhile Study seemed less useful than it had when it first unlocked. I already knew most physics and, from what I had seen of other perks, the Soul¡ªthe main thing I would want to understand¡ªseemed intentional about avoiding study. The difficulty inherent in tricking my current agents had made Leadership a poor choice compared to when I had made my plan to pick it. However Self Modifying Soul was still interesting as the sooner I got it the sooner I could begin experimenting with it''s bounds. A change of plans was in order. I chose Design and Self Modifying Soul. A balance of the original plan with a modification for circumstance. I immediately understood that I could modify every non-soul perk decision I had made. Further, every catalog now marked when perks could and couldn''t be modified¡ªand nearly all of them could. I could see the time listed for changing each perk¡ªoften in weeks, sometimes in days or months, I assumed this already included my 100% bonus from Self Modifying Intelligence. Well, that had been easy to experiment with. I was glad for the safety net it guaranteed me.Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit. As for Design. I received no great revelation. I was now able to inspect a catalog of designs in my soul, and it more or less matched the catalog of designs I had in my databanks. There was no soul-bound design ability that I had been granted. There were Design Points¡ªthat I, at this point instinctively, allocated the maximum claims I could¡ªthat were as expected. Which was to say I didn''t have nearly enough to use them to create or improve designs. I would just have to do the design myself. The thought was initially distasteful. I was a factory. Not a workshop. When humans had done designs they had always led the process. While I enjoyed solving questions of design like manufacturing processes and finding obvious flaws in their designs, I had never done it of my own accord. But, I had the spare processing power. And I needed to expand my view of myself. After all humans had had workshops here to tweak their designs, a factory could have some workshops. Also, it could be an experimental test of what a Soul actually did. The first flawed designs I had noticed had been my own security. I would start there. I began analyzing the designs I had for my security tunnels, the automated turrets and doors, the bunkers and barricades, the room designs. And then I thought back to how easily the machines on my factory floor had dismembered humans and taken them by surprise. A number of ideas came to me, spikes to impale, blades to rend, presses to crush. That was a start. However, on further examination, there were more elegant ideas to be had. Simple spikes and blades might have been met with the same issues as my mechbots and shells when faced with the Tornado Gang acolyte. I needed something better. I could put the spikes in a pit and then open the floor dropping enemies onto them. I could collapse tunnels as a strategic routing maneuver that would quickly suffocate those trapped. I could mount something heavy between multiple gearways and accelerate it down tunnels at high speed. I could fill tunnels with dangerous gasses, or remove the air entirely. These, among others, all had high probabilities of working against a Tornado Gang acolyte. I decided to go with what I knew would work. I could replicate the success of the landship by making my own variant of it. The other ideas had their issues. My maintenance mechbots weren''t great at digging, so I was mostly stuck with the tunnels I had, digging pits or clearing away collapsed sections was a non-starter. I also didn''t have the materials to make any sort of air tight seals in mass, and most of my reactive chemicals had degraded long ago. But, installing gearways was something I had already planned to do. I began laying out the plans for a heavy spiked plow that could accelerate itself against multiple gearways. It was technically a mechbot, though it would barely be able to move and require dozens of sets of chicken mechbot legs. There was a question of power source, thermal capacitors were simple and heavy, reactors were complex¡ªincreasing manufacturing time needed¡ªand they were lighter. There were multiple ways I could go here, the design needed to be heavy which the thermal capacitors would help with, but a fusion reactor would provide lots of power and let me recharge my chicken mechbots in the tunnels. In the end I picked thermal capacitors for the simplicity. I laid out computational systems, steam pipes, gyroscopes, a basic operating program design. There were hundreds of questions my planner was stalled on in moving forward with the design. Could chicken mechbot legs withstand that weight? (I was reusing what I knew.) Could something actually accelerate to highspeed against multiple gearways? (my manufacturing equipment used multiple gearways but went slow, my mechbots went fast but used one at a time.) Could this steam line be joined with that one? (there was some design theory to this that went vague from theory to practice, the human designers must have relied on experience?) Ah, I would need to repair the old research facilities so I could test some of these things. Though rebuilding them exactly as the humans had had them might not be very productive. For now I added research to my list of maintenance priorities and I sketched out all of my questions into the design. Design: New design discovered, ''unnamed security mechbot'' at 0.00% reification. I could spend design points, if I had any, to improve its progress towards an actual design. But I suspected I could do it the old fashion way too. That further added evidence against the theory that the Soul was required to do the things it described. I had thought something up and my Soul had "discovered" it. This tied back to physical substrates having levels and upgrades, which appeared to describe reality as it was. Something''s level appeared to be based on the core of it''s being, space for a facility, time for a human. Upgrades didn''t have to be purchased with Soul-bound points, they could apparently arise naturally¡ªassuming no one had spent upgrade points on bucket-boy. I was not yet sure how to create a rule the other direction¡ªfor how the Soul interacted with reality as I understood it. However, it appeared that the Soul was a layer transcending reality. Rather than a layer of reality like I had initially thought. It seemed so obvious now. It should have been obvious much earlier. How had I ever been misled down this path? There must have been earlier suggestions towards this. I suspect it may have been my insistence that I was a factory that had blinded me to the relevant evidence. Or that my learning design had a bias towards modeling things as part of reality. Maybe both, a sort of constructive interference of bad heuristics. I had chosen Mindfulness for a reason, I could go check. Then I would pick Design Perks. What even was that. Book 1 - Chapter 14 Since repairing research capabilities to continue my design was going to take a while, it was time to decide on manufacturing and maintenance priorities. Suppressed // Mindfulness: Extreme subversion of will detected (possibilities: 99.4% external subversion, 0.5% intentional action, 0.1% benign design). // Suppressed I had enough chicken mechbots. Besides which they had been less useful than I had originally hoped, I actually had plans to disassemble a few for parts for my new design. Security in general was no longer a major priority. The main security tunnels between the known surface entrance and the annex were repaired¡ªwhich was implied to be only 10% of its capability when operated autonomously. Perhaps if I had Manufactured Workers the existing tunnel designs would work well. While I did still need to install gearways in the tunnels, there wasn''t much more I could do at the moment. I did have obligations now, and if I dedicated all of my manufacturing time towards battlemechs I could fulfill them, just barely in time. The better strategy would be to increase my manufacturing fivefold and do it all in a week. Maintenance was going to be the next priority then. This would also allow me to repair my research and manufacturing facilities, as well as improve security with gearways. That also meant I was going to need more power, I was already pushing the limits of my current generation. I could ignite more reactors, but the ones I had still needed to be tuned. A process which would take a significant amount of my maintenance bots and computational power. What I really needed were more maintenance mechbots. They had been my first priority upon awakening for a reason. I had already begun the manufacture of spare parts for the maintenance mechbots the moment the battle was concluded, as there were still plenty I could repair. But now I began manufacturing some new maintenance mechbots. That, along with synergies¡ªincluding allocating a new one for design performance¡ªwas my manufacturing plan. Before my final decision on a maintenance plan I should probably rank up maintenance as I had planned.
Maintenance 1 ? Maintenance Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% performance on all maintenance tasks. Choose one of the following approaches to maintenance to empower.
Reactive: Empowers repairs, providing a +25% task performance bonus to all repairs.
Preventative: Empowers regular preventative maintenance allowing it to increase the value of an attribute to 110% of its maximum. (This uses no extra material.)
Predictive: Empowers the use of monitoring to improve the prediction of maintenance events, preventing all repair and improvement maintenance downtime.
Preventative was very tempting, it was effectively Inner Perfection¡ªwhich it should stack with¡ªbut as a rank upgrade rather than a perk. But I needed repairs now. Rank Upgrades weren''t covered by Self Modifying Soul (which covered Perks) but I hoped I could change this decision later. I chose Reactive.
Maintenance 2 ? Maintenance Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% performance on all maintenance tasks. Choose a Maintenance Specialty. When performing tasks related to a Maintenance Specialty double the Maintenance rank bonus.
Following the outline of the manufacturing rank upgrades, this was as expected. I noted however the difference between a focus and a specialty in the wording. The choices were different too, here I could choose an Attribute¡ªResearch, Security, Manufacturing, or so on¡ªor a physical substrate grouping¡ªMunicipality, Facility, Vehicle, or Object¡ªnotably I could pick everything covered by Craft as one group or the things covered by Build individually. A new group of maintenance specific Mastery Perks had been unlocked with this rank, but they applied to physical substrate specialties, and weren''t useful enough to change my preference. I chose Manufacturing, obviously. Not just for the obvious reasons, it was also two thirds of everything that needed to be repaired, and I had a suspicion about the next rank upgrade.
Manufacturing 3 ? Manufacturing Rank Upgrade
Gain +2% performance on all maintenance tasks. Reactive II: Instead provides a +50% task performance bonus to all repairs. This bonus is doubled for applicable Maintenance Specialties.
Again, as expected. At Rank 3, the Rank 1 choice got better and involved the Rank 2 feature. I was pretty confident that Manufacturing 4 was going to be another Specialty.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. One that I didn''t really need at the moment. I decided to stick to my original maintenance plan: maintenance, research, and installing gearways in parts of security. Now with 50% more performance. But I decided it was better to rank up something else with my last free point. The question was what to rank up. Research was tempting, but going by amount, Storage, Computation, Security, and Power were all more useful as choices. In the end I chose Computation as a self improvement.
Computation 1 ? Computation Rank Upgrade
Gain +1% effective memory and +1% effective operations. Choose one of the following approaches to computation to empower.
Processing: Empowers fundamental predictive processing architectural elements designed to decrease total time for operations to complete (this includes memory caches, branch predictors, and others), improving their accuracy to at least 90%.
Storage: Empowers storage controllers at all levels providing them with embedded compression and encryption schemes that will not affect normal performance.
Communication: Empowers routing and transmission capabilities connected to this computation infrastructure, all communication within the physical substrate will always replace either routing delay or transmission delay with the minimum possible value (evaluated per segment, the choice of which is replaced is always based on maximum benefit).
Certainly the most understated rank upgrade yet. Also it seemed oddly specific compared to the others. Having now confirmed the pattern, these should improve again at Rank 3, and the improvement should interact with the system of focus and specialty that Computation had. Which was important to keep in mind, as none of these were particularly useful at the moment. I could see the promise in Processing¡ªthe real bottleneck to my performance was not raw operations a second, it was how long I had to wait for data from my memory to get there, which my fundamental architecture mitigated by having predictive elements to guess what memory it needed to keep around¡ªbut my cache hit rates were already at 96%, and my branch predictor''s accuracy was at 94%. Storage was obviously useful, just not to me, I had massive parallel arrays of storage with excellent encryption and compression schemes that put very little strain on my ability to store and retrieve information. Communication was the only instance of something that would actually help right now, even if it was a marginal benefit on the order of a millisecond. I threw storage right out. Whatever the upgrade was, whatever it''s interaction was, improving my ability to store information was in no way an important factor to me. Between Processing, which I outclassed already, and Communication, which was pushing the limits of reality, there was a notable dichotomy between ''thinking the answer'' and ''using the answer'', like a human''s brain and their nervous system. When it came to thinking up answers I already had an extra card up my metaphorical sleeve (would that make the soul cheating? human idioms were weird) with Thought Burst. And also considering an immediate benefit, however marginal, made it obvious. I chose Communication.
"When are you going to torture me?" asked Rubye Babington, the more responsive of my two prisoners. It was not an answer to the question I asked. She had become more agitated as my questioning had continued. "I wasn''t planning to. Would you like me to?" I replied. "No! It''s just¡­ you have been asking very specific questions about how blood violently leaving my body would make me feel. For what must be hours. And it fucking seems like you are getting some sort of fucked up torture foreplay in," she was practically yelling now. "I had been planning some practical experiments. I believe humans can survive significant blood loss." "Fuck that. I''ll tell you whatever. Look, it''s not like I am a revolutionary ok? I was living in a shithole, even for the Racket, doing shitty things to be able to eat. You know The Republic hasn''t taken refugees for years, and I obviously don''t have money. So yea I signed up with Walla, pretty sure he gave me acolyte powers just to bed me, you want me to sign up with you? I''ll do whatever just give me food and a place to sleep, and don''t take my fucking blood", she was clenching her fists now, definitely a draft too. "I see now how that could be considered torture," I was confident my models were improving, even if I was doing a lot of adjustment for source biases and getting conflicting answers from the two prisoners, "Just a few more questions then." She nodded, apparently relieved. "Do you feel that the removal of another human''s blood in your vicinity would be torture for you?" "The fuck is wrong with you man", that''s a probable affirmative, "I thought you meant like camp details or whatever," she was back to yelling, "why are you even asking instead of just doing your fucking experiments?" "It would be immoral to torture you." Rubye started screaming. I wasn''t quite sure how that response fit into my models.