As soon as the squirrel finished crossing over the threshold, it froze.

Lucas… I’ve got a bit of a situation here.

“What sort of situation. I’m trying to escort a squirrel out the front door and it just froze up before I could even walk down into the hatch.”

It’s related to that. That squirrel is the floor boss for the dungeon’s roof. With it cowed and crossing into my portion of the dungeon, I was given the option to, and I quote, “Take control” of the roof as a dungeon floor.

If I take control, the squirrels become my minions and the squirrel you are escorting remains a boss for the dungeon. Not exactly sure what all that means at this point. There is some mention of not being able to control them until I get a race upgrade from a system object.

If I take over, there is danger to my power supply. I assume that the involved Nanobots are Dungeon Nanobots, and the trees are there because the squirrels willed it. I’m not sure what will happen if I take over. The nanobots may stop what they are doing, causing the trees to fall over crushing the solar panels, or the Nanobots may keep on doing what they are doing until I call them to another purpose. Alternatively, nothing could happen since I cannot control the floor zero monsters. What if I prepared a command for my Dungeon Nanobots to take over the glue function as soon as I take over the roof? Do you think that would work?

“I’m honestly not sure. I don’t have a clue how any of the dungeon stuff works. I can create a system object and you can check with the system if you’d like.”

If I check with the system before I take over control of the top level, I will need to select my race change. If I do that, then I am stuck with whatever general options come after AI as opposed to the dungeon-based race that taking over the whole dungeon grants. I’m doing it. Get inside, just in case. Worst case scenario, I use the Dungeon Nanobots to repair the solar panels.

Hurrying inside and closing the hatch behind him, Lucas heard Rose giving him a countdown. 10..9..8..7..6..5..4..3..2..1

As Rose reached one, the power went out on the base and all the internal lights went dark.

“Rose!” yelled Lucas. “Are you OK?”

There was no response. Pulling out his flashlight, Lucas yelled again for Rose again but there was no response.

Talking to the stationary squirrel, Lucas said, “I’m going to have to bypass the blast door that she shut and go down and see what the problem is. Maybe she needs a reboot, or maybe a wire short-circuited and she isn’t connected to the speakers and transmitters anymore. You stay here and be a good squirrel.”

The squirrel chittered something back at Lucas, as Lucas ran towards the door. As he was running a popup suddenly filled his sight.

Message from Rose I'm using Dungeon Nanobots to project this onto your cornea the same way the messages and interface from the system are typically displayed. I can hear you, but I can't respond. The Base AI's have locked me out. They now consider me a foreign entity due to the... well changes is the best way I can describe it. I think I mentioned this before, but it will take me some time to hack my way back in. Until then, you are on your own. The trees aren’t going to fall. The squirrels are nominally under my control, so you can leave them alone. The base is safe. I’m just in lockdown. My suggestion is to go visit the village while I work this out.

“OK Rose, I will go check out the village. If I can trade for it, I will try and get us some basic materials.” Turning Lucas walked to the front door. Calling out, “Rose, open the door,” but there was no answer. After waiting around for a few minutes, he received another popup.

Message from Rose I can't get into the door control systems if I am not connected to the Base AI's.

Plus there is no power, so the motors won’t run. You will need to take the Ceiling Hatch.

“I’m sorry Rose, that’s pretty obvious in hindsight. I will let you focus on hacking back in. Don’t panic if I stay at the village tonight, you said before it would take a while to hack back in.” With that, Lucas went to his room, grabbed the supplies that he had access to, and headed out to the village.