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

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Eighteen
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    • 6 months after I came into this world, I've pretty much gotten everything under control, probably. While producing pure gasoline from my resource cores would certainly be easy, it wouldn't be viable for the the entire world since I would be taking all of my resource cores with me when I leave and then the supply of oil would start running out again. What I need to do is to get renewable energy going, via either solar power, wind, or finding a way to produce crude.

    Fortunately, I can get that out of the way fairly easily. It takes my Hive base gengineering facility only a few days to cook up a strain of extremely fast growing cyanobacteria that is completely benign and also fit for human consumption when dried in case of any emergencies. With a system that sucks in air and blows it up through the growing tank, I am able to keep them growing at a constant rate and filter carbon dioxide out of the air at the same time. In a short week, I'm pretty sure I have enough for my purposes.

    Fortunately, things work out pretty much as I expect them to. By taking a slurry of some water and the algae and cooking them under incredible heat and pressure, I am able to convert the algae to crude oil. It takes a while to figure out, but it only takes a while to get the right process to make light crude instead of the heavy stuff which means it's much more useful. In addition to being renewable, it's also technology that I can leave behind without worry. It would probably never be useful on the large scale unless I had massive tracts of land to work with, but it's fine for now. I'll work on it later.

    I now turn to more immediate concerns, namely, the construction of a massive dock facility located on the mountain chain that was formerly the mid atlantic ocean ridge which had risen out of the water when the ocean rose. Raising the ocean would actually take a while so in the meantime, I had the time to begin construction of the largest construction so far. A kilometer long floating, moving, island that I would be able to move anywhere around the world.

    It is about generally the shape of an aircraft carrier, only it is going to be so much more. It's going to have a kilometer long runway with an electromagnetic aircraft catapult and 500 meters of angled deck to land on. It's going to have a full lab complex for everything from basic physics testing to gengineering and everything inbetween as well as a full machine shop. At the center of it is my commander body which I had walked across africa and across the ocean floor. It's sitting in an armored cocoon filled with quantum computers to provide all of the computing power necessary for really anything that would ever be needed. It's great really, it's like a giant oceangoing base.

    Missile technology had really been one thing that I had managed to get from the United States including a working example of the Tartar missile system and the Standard missile which I had refined, modified, and turned to my own ends as my premier surface to air missile system. I have placed four Mark 13 launchers on my mobile base in order to facilitate launching the standard missile as well as the harpoon. Malachite missiles still have to be launched from box launchers though, so that hasn't changed, and it unfortunately breaks up the lines I was going for.

    Ah, well.

    In addition to the giant ship is the support fleet to support it. Most of it consists of 380 meter long nuclear powered tankers to refuel the fleet, each capable of carrying up to 500 million liters of fuel to refuel the rest of the support fleet. Combat stores can typically be replenished by the mobile base anyway so container ships aren't really necessary. I can manufacture at least two or three of the replenishment tankers every day and slip them into the water. It's one of the reasons why the dock to construct those are down by the water instead of inland on a dry berth like the mobile base and the rest of the combat support fleet.

    The rest of the support fleet consists of nuclear powered battleships for shore bombardment, nuclear powered cruisers to make up the core of the defensive fleet, and conventionally powered destroyers as the fleet's main striking arm. In any case, the reason why the ships are inland is because when the ocean rises, I intend for the ships to just start floating cause I just don't feel like building on water.

    I've come up with a color scheme for my fleet. All of my units are to have a white base layer with the most prominent detail being an orange racing stripe near the front canted forward. I chose the white paint scheme because in all likelihood, I'm going to want to try solving my problems with diplomacy as much as possible rather than bloodshed so I'd prefer not to put off my enemies with the intimidation that battleship grey usually has. White is a much nicer color that puts people at ease rather than intimidating them.

    Of course, the color scheme is a direct rip off of the US Coast Guard color scheme, but there is a valid reason for it, and I like it. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, and I've always admired the coast guard. I also like the Hamilton-class cutters, that's why I'm pumping out like one every other day to keep the oil tankers company.

    Other than that, there's not much left to do. Oil and water is flowing smoothly from my africa base to hive base now that the pipeline has been completed and the airports are servicing aircraft every once in awhile. Really, nothing all that exciting has happened other than my recent testing for my nuclear missiles. I give a brief chortle as a mushroom cloud rises above what was once the Bikini Atoll Ah, nuclear test ban treaties. In the post apocalypse nobody's around to notice and thus, give a shit. I still monitor the radioactive fallout but still, it's nothing to be concerned about.

    I guess I can wait for Hive base to also finish up that fast growing sunflower strain too which I'm going to be using to remediate the land and clean up radiation. I'll probably just reclaim the super duper bad spots of radiation and the low level radiation would be able to be absorbed by the sunflowers, leaving only the areas with medium-ish levels of radiation for the rest of everybody else to clean up. I also need to find a way to have the sunflower only concentrate the radioactive isotopes to the leaves and stem rather than the seeds so I can still get sunflower seed oil from them. I haven't had any good mayonnaise in a long time.

    All these things I can do remotely and I have already relegated most of it to subconcious control, so what have I been doing in my spare time?

    I found a hobby.

    Latte art.

    "Order up!"
     
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    • A difficult challenge to pull off :D.

    Speaking from experience, there's a lot more to Latte art than just pouring milk into coffee.
     
    Oh. My. God. I'm dying of laughter.

    I wonder what @Battleship_Fusou's reaction would be if you met up with her.

    "so, what's your story?"
    "Well, my first world, I made gasoline, reinstituted the US Postal Service, removed the heaviest patches of radiation, filled the world's oceans, and made latte art. I'm really proud of that last one. Speaking of, you want a coffee?"
    "But...You're a Commander. And you had months to build up!"
    "Latte. Art."
     
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    Ramble said:
    Really, nothing all that exciting has happened other than my recent testing for my nuclear missiles. I give a brief chortle as a mushroom cloud rises above what was once the Bikini Atoll Ah, nuclear test ban treaties. In the post apocalypse nobody's around to notice and thus, give a shit. I still monitor the radioactive fallout but still, it's nothing to be concerned about.
    Click to expand...
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    ... hmm. If the former nuclear powers still have working seismographs or spysats, and I'd bet on at least the former, below/above-ground nuclear detonations have a distinctive seismic/infrared signature. On the other tentacle, absolutely zero of them are in a position to do anything about it (other than worry).
     
    Ovid said:
    Oh. My. God. I'm dying of laughter.

    I wonder what @Battleship_Fusou's reaction would be if you met up with her.

    "so, what's your story?"
    "Well, my first world, I made gasoline, reinstituted the US Postal Service, removed the heaviest patches of radiation, filled the world's oceans, and made latte art. I'm really proud of that last one. Speaking of, you want a coffee?"
    "But...You're a Commander. And you had months to build up!"
    "Latte. Art."
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    Well, to be fair, I did a fair bit of gengineering too, but the latte art is quite a productive activity I assure you.:)

    Though making sure everything is working as intended independent of a commander's guiding hand is rather time consuming.

    MEHFOOD said:
    Are you saying Iowa doesn't have 'massive tracts of land'? if so, i'd suggest scheduling an appointment with your eye doctor my good commander.
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    I assure you my good sir that the udders attached to Iowa's torso, though quite massive, aren't quite so useful in the production of genetically enhanced cyanobacteria as one might imagine.:V
     
    MEHFOOD said:
    Are you saying Iowa doesn't have 'massive tracts of land'? if so, i'd suggest scheduling an appointment with your eye doctor my good commander.
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    Well, yeah, they don't call them Great Plains for nothing...

    ...wait, did you mean something else? (And yes, I darn well know that Iowa is not on the Great Plains, thank you geography for ruining my joke. It's pretty close though, fortunately.)
     
    Nineteen
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    • 8 months is all it takes for Scrotus Legion to make its move on the small community around hive base. I had been juggling cigar boxes in front of the white house when Yellow squadron notified me that there was a scrotus patrol that had attempted to threaten my little community, promising not to cause trouble if they would hand over food and water. Naturally, due to the reputation of the warboy legions, they had relented and given a tithe of fish and water. I was fine with that, guests are always welcome, and though they are rude and brutish, I have no quarrel with them, so I let them take the food and leave. Just in case though, I fling over some bolt action rifles, revolvers, and ammo along with the replacement for the food and water just in case things get messy. I'm glad to see that there's at least a veteran there, possibly of the Australian Defense Forces and that they recognize how to use the guns that I give them.

    A few days later, a much larger band of warboys comes back and decides that it would be a jolly good idea to stroll up and just take all of the food in the settlement. Still cowed, the villagers gave up the food and water. It was not trouble, after all, I would simply replace them when the warboys left. Unfortunately, I don't think that's going to be the end of it, so I decide to assign Galm squadron to take command of the assets at Hive base in case there is an attack. They would be able to handle anything that comes up.

    In the meantime, my coffee chain is getting pretty popular and while my little shop started relatively nameless, I've since incorporated it and named it Postal Coffee. It's not very creative I know, but the locals seem to like the name and it hasn't really caused any trouble. It also helps bring up morale among my employees when the standard employee uses their weekly punch card to redeem a free coffee and my postal inspectors basically get unlimited free coffee.

    I need to open more shops. Spread the goodness that is coffee across the world. Yes.
    -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
    Galm 1 was a being of few wants and few needs and none of his wants or needs were being deprived by being reassigned to the Australian Hive Base established by his creator. He had been assigned the male gender by the Creator-Mother, a designation he chose though Creator-Mother prefered to be referred as Male as well and had Male personality characteristics. He didn't necessarily care all that much. All that mattered for him was the well being and satisfaction of Creator-Mother and his own self preservation.

    In any case, being assigned to Hive Base to safeguard the small populace at the base of the walls was no trouble and Creator-Mother desired that the populace should not come to undue harm. They should be able to handle themselves, but should destruction of the community become a sure probability, Galm 1 was to intervene with whatever force was necessary to bring the confrontation to a close in favor of the community.

    Galm 7 had taken control of the Hive Base's defensive installations which included missile launcher and several artillery guns. The remainder had taken up residence in the Hind gunships that had been constructed while Galm 1 himself took up residence in a custom Apache gunship custom fabricated by the Creator-Mother.

    For a short time, nothing of note happened. Food, water, and ammunition deliveries happened on schedule allowing the budding militia to continue their training, helped along by an old Australian Defense Force veteran going by the unit patch that the old man kept with him at all times. Unfortunately, they never go the chance to refine their skills before trouble came.

    A large convoy of crazily painted warboys appeared, bringing along several vehicles including several designated spotter-class, rammerhead-class, metalshredder-class and hardbody-class vehicles along with four catapults, no doubt to cow the inhabitants of the community and force them to give up everything. As soon as the convoy crested the horizon, the villagers as the Creator-Mother referred to them, gathered up everything and had one of their number wheel it out on a cart.

    The warboys fell upon the cart and began to pick through the contents while the one villager who had pushed it out, a young boy, attempted to fall back. Unfortunately, things did not go as planned because Stank Gum yelled something to his warboys and they siezed the boy. The remainder of the villagers began bringing up their weapons but they couldn't fire, not without the boy getting caught up in the crossfire and getting killed.

    After some deliberation, Galm came to the conclusion that this was definitely no good very bad.

    Stank Gum made his demands, not to the villagers but to the Hive Base that unless more stuff was delivered, the boy would be killed. This was made especially clear with the warboy holding the hostage holding a knife to the boy's throat.

    Galm 1 pondered this predicament for all of four microseconds. The Creator-Mother had a very clear stance. Never negotiate with terrorists. He started his rotors and then ordered galms 2 through 6 to do so as well.

    Stank Gum was evidently confused with the sudden humming that had started up and the hostage taker had tensed up, ready to slit the boy's throat. They were even more surprised when Galm 1 rose above the wall and moved forward, the 30mm chaingun mounted in the turret swiveling around to draw a bead on the hostage taker's head. Stank Gum was stunned for a brief moment and turned to give the order.

    Fortunately, a brief moment was all that Galm 1 needed to use his superior calculative ability to draw a bead on the hostage taker. The chaingun, having been extensively calibrated beforehand barked once and a single 30mm shell flew forth, straight into the hostage taker's head, passing straight through and into the sand. The onboard fabricator rendered the round inert, allowing the round to pass straight through with the only damage to the hostage being ear damage from the overpressure created from such a large bullet traveling at supersonic speed.

    Viscera sprayed everywhere as the enemy warboy's head exploded and the hostage fell forward into the sand on his face, clutching at his ears. Good.

    Stank Gum was obviously quite shocked at this turn of events. Perhaps he had not expected such a death to be so instant and gruesome, or perhaps it was something else, but whatever the case, it didn't much matter since five additional helicopters, each armed with double barrel 30 millimeter autocannons emerged and began spraying rounds into the various vehicles, causing several to explode.

    Galm 1 fired a three round burst into the hood of Stank Gum's personal vehicle, causing it to explode and sending the man himself to the ground where he cowered in fear. Galm 1 began reprioritizing. The catapult crews were preparing to retaliate against the small community so in order to preserve the safety of his charges, Galm 1 unlocked his Hydra 70 missiles and began launching salvos of rockets which detonated the catapults and their ammunition, sending all of it up in huge explosions that couldn't have only been from the rocket.

    In the confusion, the villagers got their act together and formed into a skirmish line and began firing with the single shot weapons that had been given to them by the Creator-Mother. The hostage had the sense to keep his head down while the world exploded and thus was essentially safe from additional harm. A detachment of Spotter-class vehicles attempted to make a run at the skirmish line but with the volume of fire, they were cut down before they got anywhere.

    The majority of the warboys attempted to retreat, putting their vehicles in reverse, and many were slaughtered. Out of the 25 or so vehicles that had been deployed to attack the community at Hive base, the only ones who were able to flee consisted of two spotter-class vehicles and a rammerhead.

    The remainder of Galm squadron returned and landed in hive base while Galm 1 stayed hovering over the battlezone while a squad went up to retrieve the hostage and also pull Stank Gum from where he was cowering.

    Stank Gum did not survive the next 24 hours.

    Galm 1 sent off the after action report and then went back to supervising the genetic experimentation on the sunflowers and accelerated chicken growth.
     
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    • WOOHHH! Well, this was amusing. You truly are a Mail Commander. If you still need a Beta Reader, hit me up. Just know I use Google Docs for that kind of thing.

    Good work, keep it up.
    Cheers!
     
    I love how even the Warminds (I'm not using the Destiny version, but a literal War-Focused Mind) are more interested by farming, food production and logistics.

    All you need now is a War Zepplin to be more interested in ferrying mail than be concerned about attackers.
     
    Ovid said:
    I love how even the Warminds (I'm not using the Destiny version, but a literal War-Focused Mind) are more interested by farming, food production and logistics.

    All you need now is a War Zepplin to be more interested in ferrying mail than be concerned about attackers.
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    Well they don't have the USPS prefix for nothing.;)
     
    twenty
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    • Constructing supercomputing clusters is not exactly a hard thing for me to do. Considering the computing capability of the device my consciousness is running on is capable of several zettaflops, I could technically just use my own brain as a supercomputer and my only limits would be storage capacity which are quite frankly insane thanks to progenitor bullshit.

    My supercomputing facility consists of a small extension to the main Post Office that I use to entertain guests like President Morgan, the Defense secretary, and various other people that I take a liking to. The room is pleasantly decorated and the computer case serves a quadruple role as something to protect the computer, a room decoration, a conversation piece, and coffee table.

    In any case, I'm using it run down to the atom simulations of various experiments before putting it into actual physical testing at the hive base genetics lab. Analysis of my own avatar's reproductive system indicates that while I am indeed sterile, it would only take very minor alterations to the Gametes to make them viable. Since I very well can't just extract somebody else's reproductive system, I extract my own and send it off for preservation and experimentation. To be honest, I don't exactly trust myself to construct high end artificial intelligences without some form of shackle in order to keep them under control. While I won't take away their freedom of thought, I don't have any qualms with shackling them to a "squishy organic" body. Progenitor super science has essentially allowed me the secret to effective biological immortality so I don't really need to worry about them aging or anything since if they want to age or change up their age, I also can reverse the process as well.

    As it is, I need to run thousands of simulations of candidate DNA to create perfect zygotes from which to create the bodies for my companions. I need them at peak human condition and down to the atom simulations take quite a bit of processing power.

    I might actually need to build additional more powerful computers to assist in the computations. In the meantime, while that's running, other things are happening.

    One year has passed since I came to this world, and things are looking up. There are now nation states rising in Africa, most of them radiating out from the cities I built in the desert. They've learned to use the toilets and by distributing fresh water, they are able to build solid if somewhat unstable governments. I've had to build a wall around my main Africa base, but overall, everything is going fine. So far I've only had to assassinate one psychotic mad dictator so far so I think that's a win.

    Mogadishu is my own special little project. The city is mostly protected from the outside by missile turrets, freeing up people for keeping law and order rather than fighting off other people. I occasionally add buildings that the inhabitants usually find some sort of use for as well as regularly delivering packets of cement impregnated cloth. All that's needed to turn the "concrete cloth" into a concrete wall is a stand and water. I had to demonstrate it a bit by attaching a manipulator arm to one of my Fabrication Rovers and having it show them exactly how but otherwise they picked it up fairly quickly. The city turned from largely a shithole into a bustling proper city with a city hall and plumbing and stuff, and right next to the city hall where a generally benevolent dictator resides and runs the place, is a USPS post office where the city has contact with the rest of the world.

    Additionally, one of the things I did was take essentially a giant truck and lay out several heavily insulated and reinforced phone cables between the nations, hooking up the palace of the emperor to the president's office to the russian PM's office to the Swiss president's office to Mogadishu so that the leaders can talk to each other. Of course, it's not just them, but you get the idea. Global interconnectivity.

    After the experiments at Hive Base turned out successfully "flash" grown trees, I began making them en mass, planting them around Mogadishu so as to make the city greener and introducing fruits to the local populace which was nice. Experiments on fish have moved to the next stage, however, I also begin farming normal fish in order to build up a natural fish stock when it comes time to repopulate the oceans with fish.

    Speaking of water, I also began setting up water generators all over the place such as in the lake victoria in order to get the nile flowing again and adding water to the mediterranean sea. There's also one set up in the rocky mountains letting the Rio Grande flow again. There's others, but listing them off would take a while,

    I found a promising strain of sunflower a while back, sometime just after Gastown's ill fated attempt on the community under my protection, and began planting them in areas with somewhat higher radiation, always with a drip hydration system to allow them to keep growing. It is my hope that by leaving the roots in the ground, disposing of the stems and leaves, and harvesting the seeds, it would fulfill several roles of holding down topsoil, removing radiation, and providing a source of nutrition for the people of the recovering world. I produced my first bottle of sunflower seed oil just a few days ago.

    I shall use it to make mayonnaise as soon as the store restocks the mustard and apple cider vinegar and as soon as my chickens arrive so I can get fresh eggs. This is pleasing to me. Yes.

    Ordinary people are now sending mail. Businesses are distributing advertisements locally, cajoling potential customers to spend their money, vendors are hawking their wares to various retailers, and regular citizens are keeping in touch with each other by writing letters to each other, even across country. I've been pushing for self sufficiency and less need for me to keep looking over everybody's shoulders ever since I created the post office so that it would be able to run as a self sufficient institution after I pack up my stuff and leave. Thankfully, while there were a few attempts at mail fraud, they all pretty much stopped when a postal inspection team drove down the street spinning the minigun and sweeping it around. It was empty of course, but there were no attempts afterward.

    Who would have known that scaring people with promises of ultraviolence in case they did an entirely unnecessary crime would result in many of them not doing the crime. I've also caught and dealt with several budding problems before they could come up. My postal inspectors are separated into branches, which I labeled Action, Investigation, and Administration. This way, they can be directed into tasks that they can be trained for and are grouped into teams, 2 Action, 2 Investigation, and 2 Administration per team under normal circumstances which allows each person to focus on what they have been trained for without other considerations getting in the way. It's to head off any training problems before it becomes a problem and having people specialize and only work with in their specialization helps to ease the workload

    I do after all need people to wholeheartedly trust the mail above all else and also trust that the postal inspection service is doing its job with the utmost capability. Hopefully, I'll be able to make the reliability institutional and persistent.

    My plans to spread my coffee chain all over the world is still in progress, but I have spread it to Switzerland and Japan in addition to the US. Normally, I wouldn't be able to produce enough coffee to keep everybody happy, but one of the first things I did was find a coffee bean and scan it down to the atom, building an extensive blueprint of all the chemicals and atoms in the singular coffee bean so that I would be able to faithfully reproduce the single coffee bean. Then I set up a large factory and set it to produce that one bean. With coffee beans being pumped out in huge batch lots of millions of beans a day and operating costs of essentially zero dollars, I'm able to keep all of my shops supplied and keep prices low enough for pretty much anyone to afford. Everyone's doing it now, and I now control a monopoly on the world's most commonly used psychoactive drug.

    I've got billboards, radio adverts, and even occasionally leaflets being handed out with the mail with the justification that it helps fund the mail service and in some part it actually does. I cut a check for myself from the profits and the rest is dumped into the post office.

    Yay! I'm pushing a drug! So much fun.

    I've basically gotten most of the US government all but mainlining coffee by now the President and his entire cabinet getting free coffee, though subject to revocation as long as I like the work they're doing. Let me tell you, productivity has skyrocketed. Only a little bit more and the situation should be good enough for me to take leave and go to Australia to do what I want to do.
     
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    • The funniest thing about the chapter is.. you just successfully managed to create away to blackmail the vast majority of not just the governments world-wide... but also the global population.
     
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