21 - There Goes the Neighborhood

Maya gasped for breath and could not find any. She gaped and felt weight upon her; not painful, just everywhere. She tried to move, but her arms were stuck. She began to panic.

Choking on dust, Maya burst out of the pile of dirt she had been buried in. She sucked air and gasped, feeling tears running down her face, followed by pain everywhere. She collapsed to the ground; gasping like a fish out of water and weakly pulling herself from her shallow grave.

“Shit,” she stated.

She dug her fingers into the dirt and pulled herself forward, her legs finally freeing themselves from the thick layer of dirt that had tried burying her. She rolled onto her back, vision blurring and the rainbow sky wavering for a moment.

“Shit,” she said again. No other words coming to her mind. It summed up her existence.

A red light was glaring at the corner of her vision, but she ignored it. If the System had been screaming at her to stop what she had done, then she was sure that it would have some choice words for her. She closed her eyes and shuddered with barely contained emotion.

Stupid. She had been completely and utterly stupid once more. She should have run and gotten the hell out of Dodge, not trying to battle a monster that was more than twice her level.

The rogue AI had been after the mana core. Sure, she needed the core for continued survival, but her own actions had led to the destruction of the pub AIs. They were machines, but they were also… what? Friends? Companions? A voice other than her own that would stop her from going insane in this fucked up world?

She tried sitting up, but pain flashed through her body and she collapsed back into the dirt. She felt that she wasn’t going to be getting up any time soon. She breathed slowly and closed her eyes.

Sleep didn’t come to her, but instead she swiped at the messages that were awaiting her attention.

Enemy of the State

112,958,478,654 sovereign entities have signed the Multiverse Compact where they have deemed the use of dimensional bombs as an act of utter horror. Whole worlds have been destroyed and civilizations have been eradicated through dimensional bombs. Only the most evil of societies employ such weapons.

-10,000 faction points to every Multiverse Compact signee.

10 million credit bounty.

Woman of Mass Destruction

Go big or go home.

+ 1 Foundation

+ 2500 EXP

Double Kill

Back to back destruction of Boss Level Entities that are twice or more of your current level.

+ 5000 EXP

+ 5 Attribute Points

Dimensional Bomber

Only the cold hearted, the despicable, and the dangerous turn a tool of progress into a weapon of mass destruction.

Dimensional Awareness II

[Riflewoman] Level 3

Ranged weapons expertise, train constantly

(Bonus Attribute Points only given at level 1, 10, 20…)

[Bomber] Level 1

Destroy things via violent explosions.

+ 1 Mental Strength

Explosives I - (Make explosives out of common items)

…

[Bomber] Level 5

Destroy things via violent explosions.

(Bonus Attribute Points only given at level 1, 10, 20…)

[Anarchist] Level 1

Society is building things up, but some people just want to tear it all down.

+ 1 Mental Channeling

…

[Anarchist] Level 8

Society is building things up, but some people just want to tear it all down.

(Bonus Attribute Points only given at level 1, 10, 20…)

Improvised Explosives II

Rogue AI MND45BB - Level 25 - mid grade, Tier 1

Defeated

+ 2600 EXP

-Loot destroyed

Level up!

Level 10

“Yay,” Maya muttered, “my horribleness continues to grow. Faction points is new.” She allotted her Attributes and kept to her plan of maintaining a well balanced status. She accepted the change and felt the surge of power as her body was updated by the System. It didn't heal her wounds, but made it somewhat bearable.

She wanted to wallow in her misery. She wanted to sleep and wake up from the nightmare that was her life. Instead she stared at the sickening rainbow sky and its terrible black jagged cracks.

“I’m going to die here,” she said. “That’s it. Game over. I’m done.”

A distance crash jerked her from her misery. She remembered where she laid and that two rogue AIs had just battled there a moment ago. Groaning with pain, Maya pulled herself into a sitting position.

“Okay,” Maya said, looking upon the devastation. “The System wasn’t pulling any punches. Jesus.”

***

Maya had been more than half way to her truck when she had decided to go against all that was good and holy and create a dimensional bag bomb. Sometime between the dimensional bag exploding and her own unconsciousness, she had been dragged back to where the pub had stood.

Where it had stood…

The pub no longer existed.

Maya limped and used her crowbar as a cane. Her body felt as if someone had taken a mallet and tried to tenderize her while she had been out. There were no broken bones, but there had been a few punctures from flying debris and some scouring by the the dirt on her exposed skin. Other than every part of her body covered in bruises, Maya felt she had come out fine.

She stared at the aftermath of the dimensional bomb and gulped.

Turrethead was a massive creature, fifty feet tall and although slender, still had mass. Medusa was a giant egg with tentacles, so that also was a lot of mass. The pub itself was a hundred feet wide and thirty feet tall.

All the remained was a third of the pub, which seemed to have been flipped over so now it lay upon its roof. Where Turrethead, Medusa, and most of the Pub once existed was now a giant hole.

Maya stared into the hole. It was as if something had just scooped the earth right out of it. It went down forty feet and was eighty feet in diameter, seemingly a perfect circle. No heat rose from the hole, instead the air was frigid, a terrifying change as the temperature of the rainbow sky hellscape never changed.

It wasn’t the cold that caused Maya to shiver, though. She felt her legs weakened and sat down heavily, still staring down into the hole. The walls were mirror smooth, but she could already see the bowl beginning to collapse upon itself.

As she gazed upon the hole, Maya felt a churning sickness in her stomach. It was as if she were looking at something terrible, not just from the destructive aspect of it, but something instinctive. A feeling of sickness and wrongness plagued her as she looked at what remained of the dimensional bag bomb. She had to look away, but the feeling still remained.

There were no signs of the two rogue AIs that had battled. No trace that they had ever fought or that they have been defeated. Maya looked about, trying to find something that remained of them, but they had been completely vaporized. She shuddered again.

“There goes the neighborhood,” Maya remarked. Then she laughed hysterically, feeling all the emotion she kept bottled up beginning to well over. She clamped down on it, choking back tears and the fear that was ever present. She gasped and shuddered, but after a minute it subsided. She breathed in raggedly and forced herself to get back to her feet.

She had destroyed the two rogue AIs, with luck and stupidity, but in the process she had also destroyed the only place that was keeping her alive. The pub had resources, it made water, it had organics to make more booze, which could be used for food, and it had a mana core that could have got Nanaseto back online.

Maya glanced at what remained of the pub. It looked as if the vaporizing bubble that had wiped out everything had taken a large bite out of the building. Even as it lay upside down, she could see the sheared metal glinting in the weak light.

Perhaps if she had run, the rogue AIs would have just pulled the core and gone on their merry way. Then again, the mana core had been built into the very structure of the pub itself. Maya had taken a look into the small engineering section of the structure. The core had been a four foot tall tube with wires coming out of it. If it hadn’t been labeled, she might have missed it.

A properly shielded mana core wasn’t much to look at.

The rogue AIs would have had to shred apart the pub to get to the core and then do more damage to remove it. Either way, that would have meant the end of her safe place.

Maya shook her head and limped toward the pub. Thinking of what could have been wasn’t going to help.

“Do something, anything, don’t wallow in pity and what-could-have-beens.” Pops’ words.

It took Maya a moment to figure out what remained from the pub. Although two thirds of it was gone, she could still make out what was Tender’s bar and then the Pleasure Rooms and the living quarters were she had found Tommo’s body. Seeing that, Maya moved quickly toward the tilted remainder of the pub.

She had to marvel with sick horror at the way the dimensional bomb had sheared away the metal of the structure. It was cleanly sliced away, a perfect curvature that ended in a point so narrow it was needle sharp.

The smell of spilled alcohol assaulted her nose, the drinks she couldn’t consume behind Tender’s bar she had left alone. They were poison to her biology. She wrinkled her nose, wondering if breathing them in would cause her harm. She sighed at the thought, there had been an environmental suit in the dimensional bag. She had left it inside the bag along with the armor the battle bear had been wearing. Richfield had helped her adjust the armor’s straps so that she could wear it. She hadn’t been used to the feeling of all that weight, so she had opted to not wear it.

She cursed her stupidity again as she ran a quick inventory of what had been in the dimensional container and the dimensional bag. As the container had been designed to hold bulk items, Maya had put a few of the heavier tools and items into it. Along with large stores of processed water, some organics she was going to take back to the Hangy, and other materials she felt she needed. They were all gone now. The dimensional bag had been her ‘Adventurer’s Bag’. It held the rifles and ammunition she had stolen, along with the sets of clothing, armor, and tools she had taken off the dead. The only thing she had from the armor set were the heavy combat boots that were made for wider feet than her own.

As she crawled into the devastated pub, Maya pulled up her Inventory. She hadn’t moved any of her food or bottled water from out of the Inventory, therefore all her perishable food were still there. With the additional space from Dimensional Inventory II, Maya had been using her own Inventory to keep more random items. It was far easier to toss it into her Inventory and then at a later time transfer it to the bag or container.

Maya leaned heavily against a wall, looking up toward where Tender’s bar had been. The AI was gone and only the twisted remains of his track and some fleshy skin remained. The rest of him had either been eaten by the dimensional bomb or was tossed around when the structure flipped. There was no sign of Richfield or Annabelle. It seemed they had been consumed by the bomb.

Tears pricked at her eyes, but she pushed the emotion down. They were machines. She had only known them a week. They were… Maya breathed deeply and clenched her eyes closed until the emotion burnt itself out.

She stumbled through the upturned pub and crawled over the small wall that was a doorway. She felt the glass light coverings under her boots crack. She looked down and saw the light flicker.

Maya paused, looking at it. She had turned off the exterior lights to try and hide from Turrethead, but the internal lights had remained functioning. She had glanced over the layout of the Redenno Deployable Structure in the days she had been in the pub. It was a simple thing, built to be used on a variety of planets. The structure was like a compact space station. It could provide clean air, water, and with the right upgrades, food and manufacturing.

As a result, everything on the structure was compact versions of normal items. It had a compact mana core, life support systems, and other items. But the main bulk of space was covered over to cargo handling. Everything from extra supplies and tools and resources that would be needed. As Tommo wasn’t the brains of the operation; his brother Pegarios had supplied everything, according to the invoices, and there had been abundant supplies in the storage areas. Including all the monster parts they had purchased from hunters on Haltor’s World.

The monster bits was what Maya had been hoping to use for food production. She had talked with Tender about the parts and although nearly all were poisonous to her biology, she figured Nanaseto would work her magic and make her a burger.

“Make plans and watch our hideous lord Cthulhu chuckle,” Maya said as she pushed aside debris.

The living quarters were a mess; the upside down-ness of the pub did nothing to keep doors aligned or easy to open. She had to force aside the thin metal door with her crowbar before entering. The nest bed she had been using was on the ceiling and there was water dripping from cracked or busted pipes.

Maya made her way toward a small panel that was close to the floor, now close to the new ceiling, and popped it open. It was a crawlspace that mechanics and engineers could enter to gain access to the underbelly of the structure. Its where all the magic happened, the pipes, power conduits, life support equipment, and especially the mana core.

Her pub utilities map wasn't clear, but Maya held a hope that the mana core hadn't been among the vaporized parts of the pub. She had checked it out prior to the whole mess and she remembered it was under the living quarters, something about being easy to access in times of emergency.

Groaning and cursing, Maya pulled herself up into the crawlspace, hissing in pain at the sharp edges and jagged metal. The structure was bottom heavy, therefore its violent overturning had caused some metal fatigue. Maya looked at the damage and tried moving faster. She didn't want to be in a tight space if something decided to give and crush her to death.

Relief and no small amount of joy flooded her as she came across the mana core. The four foot cylinder remained connected, but she could see a lot of the intervening machinery was destroyed or vaporized. There was a diagnostic panel on the side of the core and Maya connected it to the computer.

A brief moment of worry was relieved when the ‘connecting…’ message was updated to ‘connected’. Maya grinned and pulled up the diagnostic screen. Most of the information was meaningless to her, complicated diagrams and numerical displays, but the only thing she was concerned with was the status.

Vagaran 22W Compact Mana Core - low grade, Tier 1

Status: Disconnected

Condition: 92 Operational

Error - mana core has been unexpectedly disconnected from local power grid. Core entering powered down mode.

Maya sat down heavily and smiled. At least that remained.

***

Although the mana core was smaller than she was, it weighted an ungodly amount. Maya left the crawlspace and grabbed some extra tools from a small utility closet, it was nearly bare as she had moved much of the tools into her container or into the truck. But with modular technology, everything was designed to be easily slotted in and out. She just needed a futuristic wrench and her crowbar to disconnect the mana core.

Leverage and cursing got the heavily shielded core moving. She felt heat coming off of the device, but the connected diagnostic screen showed it was still at 92. She got to the cut in the pub and looked out to see she was facing the trash pile and not the hole. That was a bit of relief as the stange devestation wrought by the dimensional bomb filled her with dread. There was something wrong with that hole.

She rechecked the messages she had received and saw that her Dimensional Awareness had ranked up. It was a Skill she had no idea how to use; awarded to her when she had first arrived, Maya had never consciously used it for anything. Yet making a dimensional bomb had leveled it. Perhaps thats what was causing the sick feeling when looking at the hole. There might be nothing to see from her perspective, but maybe there was a wound in the dimensional space/time fabric or some other science fiction mumbo-jumbo.

The thought was terrifying but also... Maya shrugged. What could she do about it? She caused the damage, but that didn't mean she knew how to fix it.

The drop from the engineering crawlspace to the ground was nearly twenty feet and Maya glanced at the heavy core. She’d need to winch it down, that meant getting the straps and chains she had left in the truck. She looked down and saw that she was near where Tender’s spot was.

Looking around, Maya noted the mechanisms that had controlled Tender’s body. It was like a mechanical puppet, but connected via cables and wiring. Maya followed the wires with her eyes and saw they connected to a large box. She moved toward it and read the upside down writing.

Primary AI Core Container.

Maya digested the words for a moment. “Holy shit,” she cried and rushed toward it.

***

Removing the AI core was as easy as removing the mana core. It was a sphere the size of a basketball and made of a latticework of metal and crystals.

Redenno Deployable Structure Primary AI Core - mid grade, Tier 1

Following instinct and some knowledge, Maya stripped some wiring and moved to the mana core. The cores had universal adapters that allowed a large variety of devices to be connected to them. Maya made use of that as she attached the wires to it and the core. Power regulation was a thing, but Maya didn't know how that worked. So, she trusted her instincts and brought power to the core.

There was a spark and she saw the icon on her pub controls flash to life. Tender’s icon lit up for a brief moment.

Error. Primary AI core malfunction. Damage detected.

Maya went through several options, trying to figure out what was wrong. Eventually she had to give up, she was no AI tech. She looked down at the core and decided to just store ot for now. At least Tender was still “alive”. As she opened her Inventory she paused as she remembered she also carried an AI processor she had looted from the ramming AI.

She lifted up the heavy processor and looked at it. It had been a mystery when she had looted it and not much had changed. Tender had stated that she’d be jailed if anyone found that on her. She looked down at the extra wires she carried and nodded to herself.

Rogue AI processor core activated.

Restore from backup? Y/N?

Maya laughed. What was this? An iPhone?

It took a while, but Maya managed to strip all of Tender’s data from the damaged core and store it onto her computer. Then she began transferring the data to the rogue AI processor.

Text appeared before her.

-I had thought I was destroyed-

Maya pulled up a keyboard and typed her response. -Totally destroyed. But your core was okay-ish, it just needed replacing.-

-This is a rogue AI processor core. This is illegal.-

-You gonna snitch on me, bro?-

-No. Although you will have to connect this core to a mechanical frame for me to be of any use. I also lack any kind of sensory inputs.-

-Can you connect to my computer? Use its whole suite of stuff to see out of?-

-Give me a moment. Connected…Well, the Plaxar Corporation will not be pleased with your management of their facility.-

-They can sue me. Oh, wait... does this mean you can’t leave this place?-

-My restraints were physical and tied to the old core. This new one, although very illegal, does not have the same restrictions.-

-Awesome. Now how do I power you without connecting your brain directly to the mana core. I need power requirements and maybe some recommendations on how to do it. -

Text and images populated a few windows in her vision. She looked at the documents and filed them away.

-It might be some time before I find the right power source or get this core back up.-

-When deactivated, time is meaningless.-

It reminded her of what Nanaseto had said. She didn't know how to feel about it. An oblivion that could be forever or a few minutes.

-I’ll find power and get you running again. I swear it.-

-I shall look forward to it.-

She shut down the processor and disconnected the wires. She had destroyed everything, but she wasn’t alone. Maya smiled and stored the AI core and cables. She wished she could store the mana core, but it was over fifty kilos.

She needed the supplies from the truck. Although the distance from the crawlspace to the roof wasn’t too far, Maya decided to crawl back the way she had arrived. The last thing she wanted was to twist an ankle or break a leg. She made it out of the pub, feeling exhausted and aching with pain. She’d take a nap in the truck and begin when she was refreshed.

Maya limped out of the hole in the pub and looked toward the truck.

“Aw, fuck!”