Another One Into the Frying Pan (PA/multicross SI)

[Ramble]

Alright, here I go.
@Drich @Battleship_Fusou @Faith @torroar @Anon for whom the tag probably doesn't work because of that accent thing and @Gideon020

So yeah, here I go.
Link Start!
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In the beginning, there was darkness. And then there was . . . still more darkness. That's odd. Let me try something.

Drivers okay.

Diagnostics all green.

Sensors functioning alright. Wait. There we go! Let's try this again.

And then there was . . . desert. A wasteland as far as the eye could see. Gently rolling dunes and endless sand stretching out for all of eternity for as far as the eye can see, well, as far as a human eye can see anyway. Measurements gathered by the instruments onboard my unit's Chassis. I had taken great joy in reading about the misadventures of my fellow SVers shoved into progenitor commanders and unfortunately I was now also stuck in one too. According to unit diagnostics, I am a Centurion commander, fun.

It occurs to me that it is likely my ramblings and log entries are being written and posted on either the Sufficient Velocity or Spacebattles creative writing forums for the enjoyment of other people, after all, it's happened to everybody else so why not me. Hi guys! Hi! Hi!

Done now. Alright, back to business. Interestingly, this planet has something like earth standard gravity and atmosphere though that wasn't exactly all that interesting or hard to tell. I could tell the composition of the air around me just by looking at it after all, I can literally see the individual molecules so all it takes is a quick headcount of what molecules I see. Unfortunately, that's boring and not at all fun, so I start running all of that stuff subconciously and just focus on regular "visible" spectrum light and lower resolution.

There. Much better.

Physics also appears to be working exactly as it did on earth with the exception of the Progenitor level bullshit physics fuckery that they were casually capable of and thus, I am capable of.

I feel like I'm forgetting something.

Doh!

Of course I'm forgetting something. I'm a commander, I'm playing an RTS game and I've just ignored one of my instincts as an RTS player, immediately getting started on an economy. I shall fix that immediately.

Right arm. Left arm. Legs. Here we go, walking motion.

Magnetic field orientation and movement of the sun allows me to grasp the orientation of this planet around the sun as well as differentiate directions. Ground penetrating scans indicate a stable plateau some distance to the north along with metal deposits that I can utilize. This is good. Walking there takes only a short time and I immediately begin constructing metal extractors., shortly followed by energy generators right next to the metal extractors and surround both with energy and mass storage buildings.

Looking over my specs, I think I'll probably be able to tank anything that comes, but just in case, I put down a bot factory, a vehicle factory, and an aircraft factory. Come to think of it, a couple of fabricators would probably do my construction time some good. By this point I've got all the metal spots on this plateau about covered, so I should probably send fabricators out all over the place to get everywhere.

. . .

I don't have unit designs.

Also I don't know how to design units.

Fortunately there's a helpful tutorial and an entire database of progenitor knowledge at my disposal. I'll just integrate everything real quick. Aaaaaaaaand my ping is spiking. That's not good.

Oh. That's a lot of la
__________________________
It's a bit short. Sorry >.>

Beneath here will be . . . a bunch of stuff. Misc stuff.

Spoiler: World Queue

Once the hub is established, these four worlds are next on the chopping block list for our wonderful wonderful world tour.
Horray!

1. Mass Effect
   
2. Red Alert 3
   
3. Kancolle
   
4. Ace Combat

Possible Worlds

Spoiler: Adventure!

1. Fallout
2. Pacific Rim
3. RWBY
4. StarCraft
5. Sins of a Solar Empire
6. Men in Black
7. Independence Day
8. Halo
9. Final Fantasy (some are sci-fi)
10. Sid Meier's Civilization 5
11. X:COM EU & EW
12. Supreme Commander & SC:FA
13. Command & Conquer Tiberium Wars
14. Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
15. Command & Conquer Generals
16. Armored Core 4 & AC:4A
17. Arpeggio of Blue Steel
18. Endless Space
19. Stargate SG-1
20. Planetary Annihilation (Fight fellow commanders!)
21. FTL: Faster Than Light
22. Warhammer 40K
23. Star Wars
24. Star Trek
25. Muv-Luv
26. Sanctum
27. Homeworld
28. Honorverse
29. EVE
30. Avatar
31. Battleship
32. Code Geass
33. Boloverse
34. Archon
35. Star Trek (post-dominion war)
36. Gundam Seed
37. Gundam 00
38. Supreme Commander
39. Stargate
40. Strike Witches
41. Universe at War:Earth Assault
42. Lost Planet
43. Gears of War
44. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
45. Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
46. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
47. Familiar of Zero
48. ASOIAF
49. Infinite Stratos
50. Titanfall
51. Valkyria Chronicles
52. Wolfenstein: The New Order

53. Sue verse (automatic next if rolled)

__________________________
Name: Ramble

Titles:
Commander
Postmaster General
Postal Inspector General
Mom
Dad

Visual aids:

Spoiler: Commander body

Spoiler: constant avatar

Children:

Spoiler: Galm Squadron

Galm 1 = Vladimir
Galm 2 = Luc
Galm 3 = Riku
Galm 4 = Nichol
Galm 5 = Kayden
Galm 6 = Robby Jiro
Galm 7 = Geoffrey

Spoiler: Yellow Squadron

Yellow 1 = Hiroki
Yellow 2 = Milton
Yellow 3 = Raymond
Yellow 4 = Levi
Yellow 5 = Aleksey
Yellow 6 = Payton
Yellow 7 = Elvis Hachiro

Spoiler: Thrush

Thrush = Thrush

 

[Ramble]

And I'm back. Fortunately, now I can get down to business. Also, apparently I needed to have a little existential crisis, but with handy mental acceleration, I can do that in only a few seconds. Lovely stuff that.

Anyway, now, down to business, a T1 fabricator tank, or I suppose a rover since treads would actually be a bit of a liability here, so let's go with wheels hmm? Six of them, and they're going to be big. like, let's say two meters in diameter each with three on each side of the rover. Next a chassis on which to mount a reactor and a place to put all the everything, fabricator arms, scanners, and everything else. After everything is said and done, I end up with a chassis 10 meters long, five meters wide and four meters high. All of these values are integers because I like integers and screw everyone who doesn't. A front cab for aesthetics and whatever other purpose I might have for them, four fabricator arms that fold into low profile boxes, and some bits and bobs here and there to pretty the thing up and it's done.

I'll call it the Fab Rover, and it's going to be my T1 land based fabrication vehicle.

Wait. I know what that cab is going to hold now, a little computer core to run simple AI on. It's only a small box and it doesn't fill up the entire cab, but eh, good enough. I'm a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war constructed by a post scarcity progenitor civilization to war on a galactic scale, I can indulge in a little inefficiency every now and again and honestly, it's not even all that much. Now I don't have to micromanage it so much. Yay!

I send the design to my vehicle factory and begin pumping it out in mass numbers, using them to build more vehicle factories. In any case, there's a Queue option where I can set actions to be performed in case I need to do something else or really can't be bothered. Lazy bastard that I am, there's really nothing I need to do for a while, and I want to have a bit of some other kind of fun.

I have land factories continuously producing Fab Rovers while all fab rovers begin networking to scan, scout, and begin spreading across the entire planet, putting down a metal extractor, two energy generators, four mass storage, and four energy storage clusters wherever they find a metal spot. With my progenitor levels of computing power, I manage to get everything necessary done in like 19-20 milliseconds and really, with everything automated now, all I have to do is wait until something happens, either my Fab Rovers run out of metal spots, or they encounter something.

I was lazy in my life before becoming a giant killbot commander of a giant swarm of killbots, and my personality hasn't been altered thus far yet so I'm going to do what I do best. Slack off until the last minute. Hooray! It's going to take like, a couple hours for my construction Rovers to get everything done anyway, so I have maybe a day or two or something. I shunt everything to mentally accelerated subconscious management while my conscious mind stays real time.

Slacking off is pointless if no time passes while you're doing it. I pull up a game of solitaire.

-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-=-TimeSkip-

I have underestimated the amount of time I can manage to kill when I do something devoid of interaction with other human beings. I have a tendency to fall into a zen like state when doing something repetitive but contemplative and solitaire was one of those things. Without the need to use the restroom, sleep, eat, pay attention to mothers or roommates or adorable puppy dogs or really anything, I had managed to pass fourteen hours before I got a mental note from subconcious management.

It appears that I have encountered something very very interesting indeed.

You know what it is?

Do you?

Nah, I'm messing with you. It's a road. A busted and broken road but a road nonetheless. Any paint or anything on it may be gone, but it is no doubt an asphalt strip large enough for maybe two-three lanes or something. It appears that there's another strip only a couple more meters next to it. I have the rover follow the road or what's left of it for a while.

Unfortunately, apparently much of the road eventually becomes lost to the sand and/or is heavily broken up, eventually getting to the point where I can't tell where the road is anymore and the optical sensors on the rover can't see far enough away to see the road continuing so that's kind of a bust.

Damn. None of my units have ground penetrating Radar either, I forgot to build that into the fab rovers. Oh well. I might want to have that road around for a bit longer.

I order that particular unit to keep exploring the rest of the road, all the while paving it over again to restore it to good condition so as to mark where it had already explored and also to pretty the place up, as pretty as it could get anyway. Who knows. I don't care, I have resources to spare and not enough to spend them on.

Hmm.

I should probably flesh out a bit more of my unit and construction database.

Things to consider. Things to consider.

In other news, drowning in metal and energy. Post scarcity tech is such bullshit.

 

[Ramble]

I have my rovers halt their construction. This planet may be earthlike but I don't want to stir up any eldrich creatures that ROB may have set up for me to fight just yet. I'm not ready and I'm not sure if I really should take my chances until I have all of my bearing yet, so I err on the side of caution.

For the moment, I have a lot of resources. It's a bit silly, but I really need to get the lay of the land.

A light aircraft would probably be the way to go. Actually, it would definitely be the way to go. I believe something similar to the U2 spyplane would probably be a good idea since getting the lay of the land from almost the edge of space would probably be high enough so as not to disturb any local wildlife and if there is habitation here, it would most definitely be high enough to at least evade anti-aircraft fire, not that I'm expecting anti-aircraft fire at least. Right, designing, but first. I need to set up my base. The current air factory is wholely unsuited to my needs. It is too small for what I want to do so I need to redesign an entirely new factory if I want to build my bigger stuff.

I start out with a box, a large box, maybe 50 meters wide by 20 meters tall by 80 meters long. That should do. It needs a base and anchoring section in order to hold its other stuff. A base made entirely up of mass and energy storage cubes connected together and reinforced should serve as an acceptable base. Then what's inside is a whole lot of stuff that if I were a regular person, I would have lost track of, but I'm not, I'm a brutally efficient self replicating mechanism of war.

My new and improved construction hangar is ready to go and I plonk down seven of them. I like the number seven. It's a nice, agreeable, round number.

Now for something to operate my planes from. Well, I decide I may as well indulge my fantasies a little. I use several fab rovers to reclaim a whole lot of the surrounding material, not the metal, and use that materiel to pave eight really nice runways, each one a three kilometers long by forty meters wide, two sets of four each at an offset to each other so as not to interfere with operations.

A tower and computer center complete the whole place. Okay, the computer center building is basically a pretty reinforced concrete shell with transparent aluminum windows occupied only by a single 4 by 4 by 4 meter box. The tower is a transmitter, radar, lidar, all sorts of good stuff, and a reciever. Everything is basically so that the whole "air base" can basically run itself when I'm not paying attention to it.

A last edition, an energy generator and storage buildings on site to make it all self sufficient.

I'll just take that and save it onto a single file for later use elsewhere.

The last thing to do is design the aircraft.

Right. Resources to spare, resources to spare. Wings. Two ridiculously long wings, each one, let's say, 44 meters each, a central fuselage 25 meters long, and a nice little tail. Powerplant? Well, I'll go with the regular electrical motor driving a turbofan so that should probably be good enough. Of course, I stick a metric crapload of scanners and stuff into it including ground penetrating radar, more sophisticated sensors, and "nanite rockets" in order to get an even deeper, in depth look at anything it detects.

Due to the size of the spy plane however, it requires three factories to produce the parts separately. Simulations have shown that assembling the plane outside the factory would not have any serious effects.

I oversee construction of the first one myself. Three of the construction hangars spring to life, constructing the parts. The entire process lasts for a few minutes. I get in a round of fruit ninja in that time. And when the parts are finished, I have the fab rovers drag the pieces one by one to Runway 1. Once all the peices are in place, it's a simple matter to spray nanites on the joints and those "weld" the pieces together into a single piece of metal.

It's time to fly. You know, I've always wanted to fly but I never got to. I shall direct this first scouting mission personally. After a quick check through of my subconscious routines, I shove everything to subconscious management and take manual control of the spy plane myself.

Pre-flight diagnostics engaged.

All systems nominal.

Energy levels nominal.
Flaps.
Throttle controls.
Thrust vectoring.
Scanners.
Rockets.
All check.

All checks complete, Go for spy plane.

I throttle up all the way and the plane leaps forward, accelerating down the runway until I pull the nose up. I lift off without issue and begin my patrol. Everything seems to be working just fine, and with the progenitor alloys keeping the whole thing together, it is very maneuverable, as in, I could easily pull the thing into an aileron roll if I wanted to and everything would be alright. If that was tried with a mundane U2, the wings would shear off.

At 20000 feet, I open up the scanners, Radar, Lidar, and Ground penetrating radar.

. . .

What the hell?

 

[Ramble]

There are signs of civilization some several kilometers to the north, or at least, that's what I suppose it is. My current territory spans a 180 kilometer radius zone around the area where I had originally landed. Expansion had occurred somewhat slowly as apparently, I had deemed it worthwhile to build up the area around my metal extractors with defenses in the form of laser defense towers and Galatia turrets, about four laser defense towers and six Galatia turrets, though now that I think about it, such defenses are probably overkill.

Still, I'm not exactly complaining. At the moment, I am fairly confident that my territory is well defended against pretty much anything that this planet would be able to throw at me. As my spy plane climbs to 70,000 feet, I'm able to make out the . . . I'm on africa. I can see roughly the outline of apparently where the oceans used to be by the large salt flats and that roughly corresponds to the shape of the former north african coast.

Of course, the oceans aren't all gone, but they are severely depleted for reasons that I don't know yet, probably something that I need to find out. The mediterranean has receded several kilometers and as such, it really us more of an inland sea rather than attached to the atlantic ocean. I suspect that the Gibralter strait has also become a land bridge between europe and Morocco.

I also have a good giggle (or a close approximation of one) at the ironic thought that though England in my old world liked to pretend that they were in the middle of the atlantic ocean rather than 30 miles off the coast of France, they're now part of the continent as well. Hmm. Probably worth a visit.

Scanners detect life forms and settlements along the coast, mostly in the form of miniature cities and various strongholds containing esoteric cars of various types, each unique and often dangerous to operate with sub-optimal (read: none) safety features in the name of adorning them out with things like spikes and grills and various slabs of sheet or corrugated metal. There are also various primitive weapons, absolutely nothing capable of hurting me though. The nearest settlement is a couple dozen kilometers away and the nearest warlord band is again several dozen kilometers away.

I quickly note down what appears to be the notable factions in the area, not really worrying, but definitely worth checking out. In fact, I probably will be checking them out sooner or later.

At the moment though, I have something else to do, namely, something to spend my ridiculous stored metal on. Holy crap, I have something along the lines of 100 million+ metal stored up and that's only going up by the minute and my energy is effectively being completely wasted.

In addition to my crazy income and storage, my lone factory has been putting out fab rovers non-stop for 14 hours and I now have an entire fleet of something like 2000 at my disposal which is on the whole, way more than I needed.

Right.

I have my assignment now, and now that I've had my fill of slacking, I'm ready to start working, slacking is getting old anyway, and really, without the internet, there's really nothing I can do to slack. If I just do nothing then I'll go crazy.

Wait. Now that I think of it, the aesthetics of this world look surprisingly like something out of Mad Max.

Wait. It can't be can it? It's just a thought, but still . . .

Well, even if it isn't it's not like anything in this world can hurt me anyway right?

I know what I'm going to do now, and that thing is making cheap gasoline.

This should be fun, but if I stomp all over everything with my progenitor tech than it's just going to be no fun. Hmm. Choices, choices, decisions, decisions.

I got it, I'll just handicap my units to 21st century level technology, not my building tech though, just my combat and I suppose transport units, and possibly what defensive structures I build in the future.

Now to solve the current problem of oil, namely in that locals don't have much of it and if I want to keep myself at 21st century level technology, I'm going to need oil to run my vehicles and units. Fortunately, this dilema is easy to solve, a way having been found in the 21st century in fact.

By way of extracting carbon dioxide from a source and then reacting it with hydrogen created by the electrolysis of water, the reaction catalyzed with palladium, the ensuing reaction would end up with 60% of the reactants turning into hydrocarbon fuel usable by modern vehicles and the remainder of the 40% becoming methane which I could also use, capture and turn into liquefied gas for use in other vehicles.

Right, less info dumping, let's do this!

First, my gas facilities. I round up 500 of my cute little Fab rovers and have them begin building my structures. First is the fan intake, separation, and compressor facility. Really, the hardest part is maneuvering everything into position, damn, it takes more time maneuvering them into position than it takes building the actual building, which isn't saying much considering the 400 meter long by 400 meter wide by 60 meter tall facility takes like three minutes to build.

Progentior tech is such bullshit. It didn't even tank my economy either.

Oi! What are the rest of you lazy lumps doing? I forgot to direct the rest of my rovers while I was building the compressor building.

I have them begin reclaiming their way straight through the ground, digging a giant square hole to fill with storage buildings stacked one on top of the other and tied together with struts. That ought to keep them occupied for like, an hour or so.

I spin off a subroutine to automatically boss around my cute fab rovers and give them busy work.

Now the pipeline, which takes all of seconds to build.

Now for the reactor and storage building. Again, like the fan, filter and compressor building before it, the reactor and storage building takes much less time to build, about two and a half minutes, only taking so long because of the greater internal complexity. After that is just a few more pipes and gigantic storage silos, 100000 cubic meters each to hold everything.

And now for the moment of truth!

I switch the facility on.

=timeskip=timeskip=timeskip=timeskip=

Apparently I didn't take into account that the giant fans would kick up a giant sand storm. I also didn't account for what I would do when a sandstorm inevitably came and blocked everything up. The machinery wasn't jammed, but the sand did tend to accumulate outside the filters, keeping air out and preventing the fans from doing their job. I solved that by setting up a reclaiming machine atop the facility to clear up any blockages and turning the fans to their lowest settings.

Additionally, in order to rage at the universe, I decided to put a bunch of my surplus energy into another facility, one that relied on progenitor bullshit to split apart atoms into any other atoms that I wanted. So I turned all the sand that was being reclaimed into hydrogen and carbon and then fed it into my gas reactor.

Idly I make the realization that I can actually make metal extractors without metal spots. Lovely.

Everything seems to be chugging along with

Proximity alert.

I turn my attention from my structures to my perimeter. One of the petty warlords to the south is attempting to migrate up to the north from the south. I did notice more structures to the south than I did the north though. The approaching war band is composed of what appears to be some forty individuals with various motor vehicles. Eight modified sedans, four technicals, five motorbikes, one hatchback, two vans, all but the motorbikes and technicals have carts with supplies.

All of them appear to be armed with primitive bladed weapons, and some firearms of a make and model I cannot distinguish. There are two AK-47s among them, both old and rusty and likely in poor enough condition to cause the venerable weapon to jam bit still.

They are approaching one of my metal extractor clusters and will be within sight of my structures in 20 minutes.

I shall direct this personally.

 

[Ramble]

Before I assume direct control of my defensive structures, I must prepare some units to defend myself with. Sure, my structures could probably, okay definitely shrug off anything that the locals could throw at me, it's the principle of the matter.

Mental acceleration allows me to accomplish much in the time that I have. Ground penetrating scans of the desert have shown some wreckage of machines of the great war, the once that essentially caused the fall of civilization, final reminders of what once was and what could have been. I have the spy plane launch nanite rockets at the wreck sites to quickly scan them and extrapolate from the data what the finished fighters may have looked like.

I am able to recognize a few based on what I looked up on the internet during the time I was human, namely F-4 Phantoms, F-105 Thunderchief fighters, A-10 thunderbolts, Mig-21s, Mig-25s, and surprisingly, an SR-71 Blackbird. In addition, there were also vehicle wrecks scattered all over the place as well. I don't really need those. I have my own plans for land vehicles.

I open up the unit editor.

I've always had a soft spot for the F-4 Phantom and capable of carrying a huge load of ordinance so I select it for the design I am going to use. A quick modification to the avionics allows me to turn it into a QF-4 Phantom. I delete the weapon officer's seat and integrate a HOTAS system into the pilot's dash. The extra space goes into an extra computer and a small packet of nanites to ward against mechanical failure. Additionally, I upgrade existing computers and systems to 2000-2010 standards to make room for if I want to take direct control and I also attach a camera on a swivel into the headrest of the seat and on the dashboard for extra situational awareness.

Save design.

I open a new project, this time for the A-10 Thunderbolt. The wreck I had found mercifully had enough of the gun intact enough for me to quickly reverse engineer with minimal difficulty. Modifications to the Avionics turn the design into a QA-10. I largely make similar changes including a nanite packet behind the pilot seat to ward against mechanical failure. One thing I deviate from however is deleting weapons hardpoints from the A-10's design and simply adding external fuel tank attachment points.

I have my QF-4s to carry missiles. The QA-10 will be my dedicated "tankbuster" and if I am ever to find a group coordinated enough to maintain a semblance of civilization, is somewhat technologically capable, and isn't a collection of complete asshats, the modified A-10s is what I would be giving them.

Save design.

I have planes, but I need to design something to service those planes. The army component can wait. Wheeled vehicles would never be able to get to the battlefield in time. I quickly draw up a generic refuling tanker and a car to drag the planes out of the hangars when they're done being fabricated.

All this takes a few seconds at most for me.

I have one of the leftover Fab Rovers that is just lazing about the airfield start constructing some fabricator arms at the beginnings of the air strips while I have the hangars begin constructing planes. There is plenty of room to fabricate the planes and the towing vehicles at the same time in the same building, more in fact, I'm constructing two in the same hangar.

Thankfully, since I'm using such low tech, it takes literally four seconds for the planes to finish. In those four seconds, I design a small diameter 250 pound PGM rocket assisted glide bomb for the planes to use. Like the small diameter bomb in my old world, the bomb carrying rack can allow the plane to carry four per hardpoint. I design two other weapons as well, a 1000 pound rocket assisted PGM glide bomb similar to the JSOW, and a ripoff of the AIM-7 Sparrow. With maximum mental acceleration, I have these designed, simulated, and debugged within three seconds, allowing me to have my QF-4 Phantoms constructed with full fuel tanks and fully loaded with weapons using the last second.

15 minutes till indigenous locals are within visual range of my towers and I have seven QF-4 Phantoms out on the runways ready for launch. I spin off a few mental threads, one for each of the fighters so that I can control them without getting a headache, or at least the closest approximation I can get to one. I want to command everything in real time.

I order the fighters to throttle up and they do, unlocking their breaks and barreling down the runway before they nose up and lift off into the air. Excellent. The second flight is being moved to the starting position.

I designate my first squadron of QF-4s Yellow squadron because I want to.

Now I just need to determine what to do with these guys, do I wait for them to come into visual range of my structures and attempt to initiate dialogue or should I simply eradicate them here? It's not like it would be any bother, I'd probably be able to pick up their language and maybe they might be willing to talk.

Or I can assume that since they have skulls on their vehicles that they're really better off dead than anything else. That is also a valid option.

Screw it, I feel like a weapons test today. Yellow one, Yellow two! You're up! Weapons hot.

I get two affirmative pings from the two QF-4s and they speed up to begin their run, though not past the sound barrier. I watch as Yellow one's primitive artificial intelligence works with Yellow two's to decide based on the sensor picture that an efficient way to prosecute the target would be to use two JSOWs one at the lead and one at the rear of the convoy. and use the small diameter bombs to eliminate any additional vehicles that made it through the initial blasts.

I give target confirmation and the go ahead. Sensor returns from the spy plane indicate no camp followers so I mark all targets as valid.

The sound of the jets gets to them before the actual jets do and I can see them looking around before Yellow one streaks by at 1000 feet, startling them all. Yellow one's JSOWs slam into the convoy not more than a minute later. Two explosions erupt, outright obliterating many of the vehicles, defening and stunning drivers, and flipping motorbikes.

Yellow two follows at a more sedate pace, scanning the situation as determined by its own sensor picture and the data gathered by the spy plane orbiting overhead. I watch as Yellow two's primitive (by progenitor standards anyway) artificial intelligence analyzed the collected data and determined that three vehicles were still in condition to be returned to functionality with minimal time expenditure. They are marked for destruction.

Three Small Diameter Bombs are deemed suitable for total destruction of all targets and the firing solution is forwarded to me for evaluation and approval. I do so and clear Yellow two for weapons drop.

Yellow two actually overshot the targets while analysis was being done so most of the vehicles had actually been abandoned by the time it circled around, the former operators of said vehicles were running on foot. That was inconsequential. Three of the small glide bombs dropped from a bomb rack and struck the empty vehicles directly, turning functional cars into burning wreckage.

Mission accomplished,

I give the order for Yellow squadron to reform and RTB. The flight that just launched I designate Galm squadron and set a patrol pattern around my territory. There wasn't all that much space to cover so they would be able to loiter a while and I was making more fuel than I needed so, probably a good idea to start burning it off.

I set them to automatically patrol the area and schedule yellow and galm squadrons to patrol in turns so that I have at least seven jets in the air at any time.

The immediate "threat" has been taken care of. What to do next?

 

[Ramble]

Now that that's over with, I have just thought up just what I need to do in order to fix this planet that I'm on. The main anomaly currently is where the hell all the water is since that's one of the major problems facing mad max next to the energy crisis. There's no water and the sea receded so it's harder for people to even get water. Now, this is a problem, and one that I will need to rectify alongside the whole no oil thing that everybody is suffering from.

So, what am I going to do?

Hmm. I have way too much resources. Alright, let's try building a resource core!

So I do. I round up a bunch of my cute little fab rovers and spend a ton of resources on a quantum resource extraction and storage core which takes only 25000 metal and a crap ton of energy required to do the quantum bullshit associated with creating a device that extracts matter and energy from nothing. Still, it doesn't exactly tank my energy economy so I really can start creating more.

I spin off a subroutine to task some fab rovers to construct some more resource cores, because the law of conservation of mass can go screw itself. After a bit, more resources are flowing into my storage and to make it better, some of it didn't even exist a few minutes ago. Progenitors are so bullshit.

Now with that settled, I know what to do with this planet. Let's get to some rehydrating all up in this bitch.

What's the best way to add water to this planet though? Make more I guess, but first, I need to investigate what exactly caused all the water to dry up, and that means I need to get my sensors so a place where they have a lot more coverage.

Space!

Now, my spyplane actually has a direct mass/energy link to me so it would be a trivial matter to just burn away from the planet until it got to orbit, but, there's another more fun way. To the Vehicle Assembly Building! I need to build it first though. No matter. To the drawing board!

My new VAB turns out to be an extremely large structure 500 meters tall by 300 wide by 350 long filled with fabricator arms and all sorts of things necessary for the construction of 21st century level spacecraft. There's also a bunch of resource cores as well in order to allow my little space program to facilitate construction. In addition to the VAB, I construct three launch sites only a short distance away, a launch pad with an erector tower and two silos for missile launches.

All of this takes a while to build and design in real time, but it takes me months in time dialation to design and test and I have a feeling that it would have been even longer if I didn't have progenitor knowlege downloaded into my head to help me with all the fiddly math stuff.

Bleh! No thinking of that now! Science.

Science!

SCIENCE!
-=-=-=-=-
Simulations are all well and good, but I could just do that in Kerbal Space Program. Actually doing so is a bit different, and to that end, I start off the exact same way I did in KSP, a crew module (crewed by a spun off runtime I call Jebedia Kerman), a fuel tank which will be loaded up with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen because why not, and an engine. The hundreds of fabricatore armateurs in the VAB take seconds to construct the primitive 25 meter tall rocket and I have it transported to the erector launch pad via a crawler transporter vehicle.

Once at the launch pad I oversee the fueling process and the prep process. It takes a while, Lox and Liquid Hydrogen both require careful handling and I don't want to screw anything up. Finally, it's ready, and while I monitor the incoming information from the rocket, I transfer final launch and flight controls to Jeb.

He barely gets the controls before he hits the launch command and the engines flare up. The rocket lofts itself into the air. Yes! Yes! It's working! T+15 seconds, the rocket is nosing over, it looks like Jeb is going to an LEO trajectory. I had only intended for the rocket to see how high it could go but this is alright. Go jeb, Go!

Man, they're probably seeing the launch for miles, god damn. I didn't think this through.

Oh well, let them come if they think they're hard enough.

Ah! The rocket doesn't have enough fuel for an orbital burn so he looks like he's going to try to come back with a boostback burn.

Steady. Steady!

Too much lateral velocity and the rocket doesn't have enough thrust or distance to kill it all before it slams into the ground.

He's not gonna make it. I prepare to recieve Jeb's conciousness at the VAB for when he . . . what is he doing? He's staying with the rocket as it's going down, managing the small number of nanites placed aboard the rocket to gather data until the very end. I'm recieving flight control data as well as exact data on the status of all the rocket components. I get a last message from him, text only.

"Banzai"

. . .

BANZAI!!

The rocket slams into the ground short of the launch pad. The liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks rupture, dumping their entire contents into the while mess. The rocket explodes sending pieces far and wide, some even pelting the exterior of the VAB and erector tower though they do no harm to it because they are constructed from progenitor materials.

Jeb keeps transmitting data until his capsule is shredded by shrapnel and incinerated by the inferno.

BANZAI!!

. . .

Welp. Back to the drawing board, and with new data to help me build the rocket more. Oh what fun this is going to be. I can't wait.

But first, military matters, and other measures for when I am to receive guests. I am likely going to. There is literally no chance that somebody didn't see the launch and it is very likely that someone is going to investigate. Problem is, will they be good or bad?

Also, I should really get started on the water thing.

 

[Ramble]

Since I think that in all likelyhood I'm going to be hosting guests soon, I believe it would probably be prudent for me to prepare for both the possibilities of war and peace. To this end, I have my fab rovers spread out. While nothing appears to be happening for the moment, I'm not going to stop my rocket launches and somebody is bound to try investigating either way.

I dispatch several Fab rovers to construct "cities" around my outermost energy generator and metal extractor clusters. While I probably could just leave them out and about with almost no repercussions, I feel that it would be a lot better for the locals to not see my economy in action.

It'll actually take quite a while for all of my fab rovers to actually make the hundred mile drive to outer edges of my territory, so I fiddle around with the rockets a bit more. I'll probably use the rockets I build to launch fabricator satellites.

And I need to have my spy plane start scouting everywhere else too, just to make absolutely sure that the world I'm in actually is the bad max universe and if it is, see if it's fury road or the game that I'm stuck in since depending on whichever one I'm in, I'll need to approach Australia differently. Well, no actually, I don't actually need to approach Australia differently, but I have different plans for it.

Spy plane course plot, world map. I mark a bunch of places on the map and let it go, but not before telling it to launch a nanite rocket at a place off the australian coast.

------------------------------------------
It took about an hour and a half for the fab rovers to get to the outermost areas of my territory, Fortunately, when they were in place, I was able to direct them on how to construct the cities. Each city took me only a few minutes to plan out and from there, I would be able to leave most of construction to a spun off subconcious subroutine. I did take the time to lay down a few things manually first. First of all was a foundation layer of concrete coated stainless steel. Each foundation layer spread out in a square multiple kilometers long and wide block into which I would be able to build core infrastructure which included plumbing and a modular electrical grid. Once that was established, I was able to begin in earnest.

At the center of each city is a large tower, what I call a citadel, which encapsulates the mass extractor and generator cluster. Each citadel is a box, almost 200 meters wide and long by 300 meters tall and each one is protected by laser towers and galatia rocket towers. After a 200 meter exclusion zone, the actual city part begins.

I do pre-build several structures before I turn it over to subroutine, mainly several large hangers, solar panel farms, high rise vertical agricultural buildings, and several skyscrapers ranging from 20 to 80 stories filled with either offices or apartments. I also make sure that there is a solar power plant, a gas power plant, a wind power plant, and a waste fired power plant just to allow for redundancy. I also personally install large water plants which use enough resource cores to synthesize something like ten thousand gallons of fresh water every hour. What water isn't used is funneled into a four billion liter underground holding tank for use. When the holding tank is filled, it is supposed to run through a pipeline to the "ocean" but since I don't yet have the territory to build the pipeline yet, I just set it to pump the water to the surface and flash boil it off in several giant structures.

Sewage is a problem that I mainly solve by finding a use for it. The sewage is pumped to a facility which dehydrates, irradiates, and processes all solid waste into neat cubes of organic matter to be used as fertilizer in the vertical farms or for burning in some power plant somewhere in the future. It's brilliant.

Once I have that done, It's basically a big game of copy and paste a bunch of times and then letting my subroutine fill in the blanks.

Right then. I guess I'll nap for a bit. I'll set to wake up in like, a few hours or so. Night.
------------------
I wake up from my nap to an alert that my spyplane has managed to get to Australia and has relatively marked out everything that would possibly warrant marking out.

First of all, yes, I actually am in Mad Max. I can tell because the citadel exists, three huge stone towers sitting atop a huge aquifer. There are also various cars and such scattered around including the iconic war rig. Incidentally, there are actually several other "war rigs" running around, only a few of them are actually able to carry a lot of stuff around like the actual war rig at the Citadel. They can still carry a lot, just not as much.

It looks like this world is a sort of amalgamation of the movie and the game since there seems to be Scabrous Scrotus and The People Eater running gastown at the same time, apparently with The People Eater as the mayor and Scrotus as the super general of its military and the considerable fleet of vehicles at its disposal.

Name: Gastown
Leaders: The People Eater, Scabrous Scrotus
Military Strength: ~160 warboys, ~150 other paramilitary, ~65 vehicles
Threat: Negligible
Other population: 2000+
Resources: Crude and refined oil products, misery, death, terrible fashion

Right. The next bit is the bullet farm which is basically a small settlement surrounding an abandoned lead mine from which they extract and refine various metals and materials from which they can make bullets, primitive weapons, standard metal billets, and occasionally spare parts for vehicles though not any sort of precision machine parts. As per usual, it's run by The Bullet Farmer who is somewhat crazy but generally the sort of benign craziness that comes from being a dictator.

Name: The Bullet Farm
Leader: The Bullet Farmer
Military Strength: ~150 warboys, ~100 other paramilitary, ~45 vehicles
Threat: Negligible
Other population: 600+
Resources: Sweat, Blood, Bullets, Crude Metals, stoic perseverance

And the last settlement of note is the Citadel itself. The place is teeming with life, though not in a good way.

Name: The Citadel
Leader: Immortan Joe
Military Strength: ~420 Warboys, 50+ vehicles
Threat: Negligible
Other population: 4000+
Resources: Machine Parts, dead people, water, pain, misery, repair services

And there's various places too, like Jeet's stronghold, Chumbucket's hideout, Gutgash's stronghold, Pink Eye's stronghold, and Deep Friah's temple along with a bunch of other faction camps and patrols. It looks like even in the apocalypse, humans find ways to thrive and then subsequently start killing each other.

Eh.

I'll get to that later, probably going to save it some other way once I have everything taken care of.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account that with my spy plane off over australia, I don't have any eyes over my own territory until I get some more spy planes in the air. I'd probably better get to work on that, but in the meantime, I have my spy plane fly north to scout out china, korea, and japan, and then set a waypoint over to where the north american continent is supposed to be.

China and other places seem to be the places where there might be survivors and then I want to see what happened to America. I may be a machine, but dammit I'm an american, and I've got to know what happened to my country. Once that's done, I open up the building editor.

 

[Ramble]

This doesn't take very long, well not in the real world anyway, I've been abusing time dilation I think. I need a way to store my planes efficiently and launch them quickly, so taking inspiration from the sort of vending machine like car parking so prevalent in asian countries back home, I make sort of the same thing, only on a gigantic scale and it holds aeroplanes not cars. It's sort of a huge rack system that goes underground and holds planes on "trays" which have magnetic clamps, refueling lines, fabricator arms for rearming and repairs, and a whole system for selecting an aircraft tray and bringing it to the runway for launching. It's quite cool actually, and it also turns my little airport into an airport atop a giant underground complex which is awesome.

It also takes a while. I have 200 of my cute fab rovers construct the bloody massive structure which depending on how big I make it, can hold between 50 and 500 aircraft, small sized aircraft anyway, the trays aren't big enough for strategic bombers like B-52s and stuff. Fortunately, for strategic sized aircraft, I have a similar design, though instead of trays, it's basically a vertically sliding rack with a door. Incidentally, it's actually simpler and cheaper than the tray system and somewhat faster as well, but it also means that I had to have a huge structure above and below ground to fit all the planes in and there are practical limitations to how many planes I can fit in it.

While that's being done, I have my construction hangars begin constructing more spy planes, though not the progenitor tech spyplane this time. Instead, I make it sort of like the RQ-4 Global Hawk from back home. While I do have some of the specs for the SR-71 blackbird that I scanned, I need endurance rather than speed and sonic stealth rather than radar stealth. The Global Hawk fit the criteria.

Seven of them roll out of the construction hangars and onto the runways. I have them take off immediately so as to establish a visual of the entirety of the surrounding area and I have more rolling out.

I establish a visual on the entirety of my territory. There are . . . about ten-ish expeditions heading toward my territory from various places. The reason why I am unsure of the number of expeditions is that there is that there appears to be about two expeditions heading toward my territory on foot and on animals, another expedition coming in from the south with vehicles and there are actually like three road wars going on and coming my way.

I am quickly reminded of Yellow and Galm squadrons, my two squadrons of QF-4 Phantoms. They're sitting pretty on the side of the runway actually, not doing anything until the vending system is completed which should be an hour or so. In fact, they'd been doing patrols, flying low and slow so they hadn't exactly been seeing much but Galm team had been on the ground being refueled when Yellow returned to base for refueling as well. I hadn't exactly bothered to relaunch them again and with the runway being torn up and repaved, they had decided to sit a while and do maintenance.

Unfortunately with all the runways a complete mess, I can't do anything with them so, I'll leave them there for a bit.

What else should I do?

Probably some rocket launchers. Those aren't too hard.

In the meantime though, let's launch some more rockets!
-=-=-=-=-=-
Well that was new, alright. More fuel this time.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Note to self, add more struts.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Note to self. Struts are not in fact physicsless like they are in KSP.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Note to self, make sure "crew" module is actually securely attached this time. Gotta remember that.
-=-=-=-=-=-
Right, so my last launch actually went alright this time. Nothing exploded, my staging was fine, and now I have a lovely satellite in orbit with a transmitter and relay system so that I can control my units on the other side of the planet without a direct line of sight. This is good, because I'll probably want to spread out my units potentially all across the planet. I'm a commander, it's what I do.

Oh! Proximity alert near one of my cities.

Let's have a little looksee who got here shall we?

Ah! Look at that! It's the motorized expedition that wasn't embroiled in a road war from the south. They are within visual range of one of my cities and they don't seem to be one of the myriad local warlords on the continent. Nice.

They're driving up to my city and now they're on the road. Lovely! Lovely! Oh! There's a water fountain in the city center in front of the town hall. Let's add some water to that shall we?
------------------



I feel like my writing is getting a bit spastic and it's a bit hard for me to write at the moment. Sorry guys. I'm going to attribute it to Ramble's fluctuating sanity if you don't mind.

 

[Ramble]

Okay, that's taken care of. Long story short then.

Summary: The group was amazed at the nice clean city as well as the abundance of water that was available in the city. I was basically going to let them look over the city and explore it themselves, partially because I can't be bothered and partially because I don't really know how I would interact with them. They're definitely not speaking english so I'll need to analyze their language for a while even if I wanted to talk to them.

The groups on foot are still going slow and steady. Not much on that front.

The road wars somewhat drag on and in the time it takes for them to conclude, three things happen. First, is that my little airplane storage system finishes up and I have Galm and Yellow squadrons loaded up. The racks for strategic strike craft are also finished up. Those are added to the airport schematics as well. Makes it a bit easier to deploy since there's a template and I don't have to think up something new when I build it.

The second thing that happened was I had sent up a few more rockets, turning my lone satellite into a small constellation of satellites which was extra good because it meant that I would be able to use my drones anywhere around the world that I want without worry of any trouble or interruption.

The last thing that happened was that my spyplane managed to scout out China, Korea and Japan. What I find is very interesting indeed. Most of the water that should have still been between australia and china is actually gone for some strange reason. Despite that however, there are patches of green here and there including animals and some civilization with advanced technology, though there are at most vacuum tube level and none of the locals have anything that can possibly even detect my spyplane let alone shoot it down or intercept it.

Launching nanite rockets quickly allows me to determine that many of the green sites are sitting on top of large aquifers. Aerial scans also show various things like primitive wind turbines and systems that collect atmospheric water, similar to how a dehumidifier works but with the water being the whole point. I can't get the big picture but there is civilization down there.

"Korea" has two green patches and there is a green patch around where the former city of Vladivostok was, but I can't really make anything out.

Japan surprisingly has the most advanced infrastructure including a few primitive solar panels in addition to the basic windmills. Much of the water appears to be coming from underground aquifers, but additionally there are "dehumidifiers" and what looks to be a desalination plant on the large lake that was once the sea of japan sending water through pipelines to several cities. I launch nanite rockets and then have my spyplane go off to america again.

Right. While that's happening time to look into my new guests.

The first group is . . .

There are mutilated human corpses strapped to the hood of those vehicles.

Galm team inquires why I'm deploying them so soon. They thought that they would be allowed a maintenance cycle.

Shhhhh. Mummy needs you to do something for me kay?

They capitulate in that way that primitive machines do, not arguing and no emotion or anything. Buh! Boring. Oh well, that's alright by me.

It takes all of five minutes to have the entire squadron refueled, rearmed, and on the runway. They take off without incident and head toward the target group loaded up with JSOWs.
Right. That's taken care of. Now let's have a look at the other ones.

Okay, the other two that were fighting have gotten to the cities now. I turn on the waterworks, water flowing through the rain gutters on either side of the streets ostensibly to wash away anything and keep it clean and fountains with water all over the place.

Hehe, the looks on their faces are so nice. Some of them ran to the water and they're drinking it and some are just staring and others are crying. Great! I'll leave them to their own devices. I'm such a benevolent person.

Galm squadron is aproaching the target. Some of the targets are attempting to use crowbars to open the doors to the city but they're locked down tight so they can't get in and they can't take cover from the inbound ordinance.

Galm squadron tells me that they are ready and have firing solutions on all targets and I give the okay.

Weapons release.

Bang. All of them gone and though there is substantial damage to the buildings near the bomb drops, the damage is easily fixable by a fab rover waiting nearby. Yay!

Now hopefully the rest of them won't do something like turn into dictators who artificially restrict the delivery of water to other places or something in order to maintain an iron grip on people, cause if they do, I'll have to have Galm squadron smash them up. Speaking of Galm squadron, I'm receiving a signal from them that they are returning to base. I give them the go ahead.

That reminds me, I need to make some land units. How fun and exciting. I can conquer the world, not like it would have been hard in the first place, but still, escalation.

 

[Ramble]

Okay, so I'm minding my own business right? Then suddenly, out of the blue, I get a data package from out of nowhere, just straight out of the blue. It's undated and it didn't come in on any of the receivers or anything, the file has the file extension ".Avatar" and it just popped into my database from out of nowhere, as if it was just effectorized right into my hard drive or something funky. Rob shit or some such, I don't know.

And as it turns out, I can open it and see what it looks like and lo and behold, it's the data to build some sort of android with both mechanical and biological components. It has organic muscles that according to simulations are incredibly strong, strong enough to bench several hundred pounds, I use pounds, shut up about it. The bones are reinforced and instead of cartilage and ligaments, they are connected with servomotors that would allow for limited use of any limbs severed from muscle so that the limb is completely disabled.

The brain is a quantum computer that is basically capable of running my entire consciousness on it while also maintaining a connection with my main commander body. Surprisingly, I haven't actually been using my commander chassis at all really and the sand is starting to pile up around it. Ah, hell with it.

The avatar is basically anatomically correct and fully functional in every way shape and form. There's just one problem with it though.

It's a girl, a copy of USS Iowa from Kantai Collections. Now, it's not that I don't like Iowa by any means, I wouldn't have her as my avatar on Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity if I didn't but I'm a dude, and that would just not do.

So I see this and I'm all like

"Whoa, this will just not do. I'mma like, change this up a little bit, you know?"

So I try to open up the file and edit it when suddenly I blank out kinda like this.
=timeskip=timeskip=timeskip=timeskip=
And the next thing I know, I'm stuck in the Avatar body which for some reason I'm not allowed to edit and it's just all around great you know? I can still command everything but my consciousness is still locked to the avatar.

Walking is probably going to take forever at this rate. I'm not small by any means, in fact, I'd say that I'm very tall but I'm still much much smaller than the commander body and that means using my feet to go somewhere isn't exactly an option. So now here I am, a 7 foot something blond young lady standing in the middle of the Sahara desert in front of a commander body. Just great.

Oh well, nothing for it. Time to put the Commander protocrafter to work.

So the first thing I need is a ride, and I need something big to get through the desert.

The first thing I put down is a rover chassis and body. Once I make modifications to add a ladder and stairs to reach a fully functional cab since, you know, I want to drive. It also has auto-driver too though just in case I want to nap. The fabricator arms on the back are swapped out for two tanks of gasoline, a tank of fresh water, and a tank of nutrient sludge.

I don't know how to make actual food. I'll need to scan a cow or something so sue me.

Normally the electric motors the rover uses to drive its wheels would come from the quantum network but I don't want that. I instead opt for a heavy radial 28 cylinder aviation engine to drive the generator, just because. What? I'm a dude. I like powerful engines. I like big guns, well, I'm a spacebattler/SVer, liking big guns is kinda a given. Still, big engines, big cars, lots of power.

UNLIMITED POW*self slapping protocol engage*
Where was? Oh! The rover!

I mount it low on the truck though, just so that I can be super super sure that the rover will be stable with the heavy liquid load on top. I'm sure I won't have any trouble, but hey, better safe than sorry. No more dilly dallying, time to get on the road. A hop skip and a jump (really a considerable climb up the stairs) and I'm behind the wheel of the modified rover.

I constructed the airport a couple kilometers away from the commander so that's where I'm gonna go. Tap the button on the steering wheel and the rover roars to life. Wonderful. Lovely!

And off I go at a comfortable 60 miles per hour. Miles, not kilometers cause I'm American, suck it.

Not that I have, you know what, never mind.

In the meantime, I have the fab rovers reconfigure the airport terminal to actually be a functional airport terminal with an adjacent apartment space and stuff to accommodate my squishy meatness as well as prepare a set of outfits for me to wear and/or change into. I make sure that they are manly clothes though, camouflage color pallet and things like cargo pants and shirts, not blouses and stuff, shirts. There isn't a dress to be seen.

And while I'm occupied with driving.

The view from the spy plane is actually really interesting. I've been tracking it up and down over roughly the tropic of cancer and apparently there is actually a considerable amount of water left. Firing a nanite rocket into a large body of water indicates something consistent with if the water were slowly evaporated and then somehow disposed of, but strangely, the oceans are only dried up around Australia. I know that there is still a considerable amount of the Atlantic ocean left because Galm team decided to go on a joyride. GET BACK HERE!

No! Return to base immediately!

Where was I?

Yeah, the water situation is weird, though it is heartening that the whole complete desert thing is only limited to Australia. Come to think of it, Africa is actually still surrounded by water. What's left of the Indian ocean, arctic ocean, and the eastern half of the Atlantic ocean. I call ROB shenanigans by the way.

Interesting. I'll need to send Yellow team out with nanite rockets to analyze the new wildlife. Also, I need to analyze some animals, cows and pigs and deer and goats and rabbits and stuff, also fruit, and vegetables cause I don't want to subsist on nutrient paste all day.

There's the airport, and my accommodations are right there. Ah, I want to crawl into a bed and sleep. I just need to park the rover and get in there.

Right.

Now parking a 30 ton rover. How hard can itOH SHIT!