Props to Lasiefo for getting me pumped to write this again! I kinda lost my motivation after some rather rude comments directed at me.

Hi. Caelus here. I had a bit of health problems between the last chapter and this one. I thought I was going to die and start over, but it was alright. Let’s get back to it.

Loop 7 Year 3 Day 306

The robot I built has had a few problems in the field. You can’t test for everything I guess. Even though I made sure to stress check each part of the robot, one of the joints was destroyed. It was shot out by a sniper.

The robot starts targeting the person, but I have it leave via remote control. I don’t need to kill off random people just trying to keep their families alive. I need to find a way to survive for as long as possible.

The robot took a total of five days to find four of the required parts. They were better than nothing though. I decide to send the return command. It would take a while for it to come back though. It had spent most of those five days traveling.

Loop 7 Year 3 Day 323

My robot meets with a very unfortunate accident on the fourth day coming home. One of the, for lack of a better term, natives, decides that pouring a vat of nuclear waste right on the poor bot’s body is funny. Of course, I have the means of removing the radiation from the robot, but it would take at least 20 years. That is a long time to wait for some simple parts.

Instead I have the robot scout the area too far to be in range of my cameras. After a few weeks, I decide to just let the robot roam free. Any information it receives will be sent to me anyway.

There isn’t much more that I do that loop. I look at all the stock market rises and falls of the last few decades, including the time that led up to the bombs dropping. It’s all very technical stuff, but I somehow seem to understand it well after only a bit of studying. It’s helpful to have such a good memory.

After a few months of trying to scavenge enough materials from my bunker, I decide I must go collect some from the outside world. One robot is worth a lot in terms of fighting power and scouting ability.

I go to the munitions factory in my base, and collect an assortment of weaponry and bullet proof clothing. On top of that I have some incendiaries, and a bit of food and water. Just in case I must stay out there for a while.

I find a mostly hidden hardware store. My robot staked this place out for about a day. No one went in or out of it. After I go in I notice a large portion of the products are missing. No surprise there. I take what I can, but when I go to leave I can only sigh.

Outside of the door are about a dozen different people. They are all carrying various forms of weapons. The biggest problem was the fact that two of them had flamethrowers. Bulletproof clothing does nothing against flames.

I sigh again. The people take aim and shoot at me. Of course, the bullet proof clothing protects every part of me. Except for my eyes. One of the bullets just ‘happened’ to land in my eye. What luck right?

Loop 8 Day 1

Here I am making the same sandwiches again. I start questioning myself. Is this really all in my head? Less than a decade has passed in total since the first ‘loop’. I could just be crazy. Maybe I’m still at the hospital from the second ‘loop’.

That would be sad, yet oddly funny. I finish making the sandwiches and just chill with Chelsea. I decide to start the process of telling her family again. This time I know most of how to do it. I will just have to prove to them that I can ‘see the future…’.

I write down all the major events that will happen in the next few weeks. After I do that, I have them go with me while I buy all the lotto tickets.

Loop 8 Day 6

When they announce the winning numbers for each one, I show them that each one perfectly wins. I play the stock market a bit, and show them that I can perfectly ‘predict’ which one will increase the most each day.

Chelsea still wants to go around and look at all the possible housing locations. If she is going to be like this every time, I might just tell her after I build the damn thing. The people I hire to build my shelter are each promised ten thousand dollars in addition to their regular pay. That is as long as they finish this entire thing in three months.

I go about buying a large amount of materials that I hadn’t bought in the last loop. Most of it being the necessary things to build more robots. I also buy enough things to practice making some new types of weapons. Relying on gunpowder won’t do.

Loop 8 Day 102

Today Chelsea’s family and close friends move in. I allow some other people that are close to her to move in as well. I even fly my friends from across America over to live here with me. There is a couple of them I don’t really trust, but I will just try to be more open minded.

After everyone is in the bunker, I close it off. I go about showing everyone each part of the building, and then lock myself in my room for about a month. They can’t leave, but they were already told that. During that month, I only allow my closest friend, and Chelsea into my room. I still need to talk to people sometimes.

Loop 8 Day 139

I finally finish with my work with the robots. I can piece together a single robot in only a week now. It is a bit better than what it was before.

I show my masterpieces to the group assembled before me. They are in awe. There are four outstanding robots before them. Obviously everyone here is on the do not kill list.

Of course, some people want to leave after realizing they were all trapped here, but since everything I’ve said so far has been 100% accurate, only two of them leave. I told them they can’t come back, but they left anyway.

I know they are going to try to get back in at some point, but I had already prepared to ignore their desperate pleas. I would have to show these guys that I meant business, lest I invite another Chad incident.

As it is I have changed my bunker a lot. There is still a huge food and munitions production area, but now the defense has increased a nice bit. I’ve installed several turrets around the perimeter of my base. The turrets are based on a technology derived from the weapons system of the robots.

Each turret has at least four types of weapons, depending on where they are located. They can easily switch between the types, and refill their ammo through a large conveyor belt system that links directly to the munitions factory. I even have one near the very entrance that takes nuclear waste, and shoots it.

That is the only new weapon I design in this time. It has a small compartment of nuclear waste, part of the molten salt core nuclear reactor I built in my base this time. It takes the waste, and sends a super high current wind through a nozzle. A small amount of waste gets shot out of the lead nozzle, and can hit anything within a shotgun blast radius.

How cool is that!? A gun that shoots nuclear radiation? I obviously called it the Radiation Gun. I equipped it on only one of the robots. If it somehow messes up their systems I don’t want all four to go down at the same time.

I send them out into the wasteland to obtain more materials. The massive amount of vegetables and fruits can’t cut it forever. My people will eventually want meat. Hell, I want meat.

Loop 8 Day 300

I spend a lot of time with the group in my base. There is occasionally a burst of anger, but we have a way of settling that. Whenever an argument breaks out, I simple confine both parties to their respective rooms. Of course, the adults don’t always want to listen to me, but with my six constantly patrolling robots, they don’t have much choice.

Obviously, I spent six weeks making robots. The gear I bought before the bombs was enough to make at least a hundred. It takes up quite a bit of room, but that was also one of the changes I made.

For the past two and a half months I have been just playing around with the people here. We mostly have fun. I do a bit of research and building here and there though.

My main area of research, currently, is a large assembly line. It isn’t too hard to make a giant thing to construct things for you, but I’m wanting it to build me more robots. That way I can spend as much time as I want with Chelsea.

No one comes near our base after the incident.

The incident happened a few months ago, about a month after I let the two people leave. They tried to come back, just like I thought they would. But instead of begging to be let in, they had a horde of angry people trying to break in!

I had my turrets turned off so I didn’t kill them, but when they shouted that all we had to do was kill me and they would only enslave the other occupants, I decided enough was enough. The cameras took hundreds of pictures in a second, and caught the faces of almost all of the raiders.

I activated the full force of the turrets, and robots. First the turrets came up from the ground, and began pulverizing the entire mass of people. There weren’t any elderly or children, so I had only a little bit of guilt from killing them.

After that they started running away. I had my turrets and cameras around the area track them, and sent the robots to mop them up. The ones I let escape must have told others, because no one else even came close to getting near my base after that.

Of course, the group in the base started to act differently towards me after that. Once again I found myself alone most of the time. Bored and lonely, I decided to throw myself into my work.

The things I build this loop would go on to help me for hundreds of loops in the future. Using the information I could get, I studied up on nuclear energy and nuclear physics.

I had basically just copied the blue prints for the molten salt reactor core. It was a great idea to do though. Usually water is heated by uranium breaking down. The uranium creates a massive amount of heat, and that heat turns the water into steam.

The problem arises when there is no more water. In that case the heat doesn’t dissipate, and causes the nuclear energy chain to go wild. That is called a meltdown. It also is called a massive explosion.

To fix this some guys started a company called Transatomic (Real company Real idea). They decided to try out heating salt instead of water. The uranium causes the salt to melt, but salt doesn’t give off ‘steam’ at that low of a temperature.

The molten salt goes into a chamber with water, and heats the water. The salt then goes back into the nuclear reactor to get more heat. So even if the water all goes away, the heated salt will just slowly cycle through taking away the heat. This reduces the chance of a meltdown dramatically.

I took this idea, and a few others, and started to make what I thought was the single best method of energy creation ever made. My idea was very much ahead of its time.

Loop 8 Year 4 Day 104

Everyone decides to leave today. Even Chelsea. I understand though. Being cooped up in here for so long would drive any sane person mad. Maybe I really am crazy. Maybe that’s why I haven’t gone crazy already.

Over the past few months more and more people have decided to leave. It’s not surprising that the final group decided to go. With the security of my base there was no way they could know the horrors of the outside world.

I let them go, and instruct fourteen of my robots to guard them. I tell the group they can’t come back once they leave. I outfit them all with provisions, weapons and armors. They are like a military force at this point. I give them several special devices I have made as a byproduct of my research.

I am sad to see them go, but over the past years I have lost most of my attachment to them. I still love Chelsea, but I know she has to be with the rest of her family and friends. If there is a next loop I plan on making sure that I stress the horrible conditions of the outside world.

Loop 8 Year 4 Day 228

I have studied the effects and mitigation possibilities of nuclear reactions for a while now. With my memory, I can easily go from one test to a different one with no loss of thought. It is very helpful. I have created a very interesting piece of work.

It is a thick viscous liquid. It is technically liquid, but it isn’t runny like water. It flows very slowly, and takes a long time to take the shape of a container.

The most special thing about this liquid is its ability to mitigate heat. It can absorb an insane amount of heat before becoming warm. I put it into a furnace I made to test it, and it was still cool to the touch after a half hour inside.

After many tests, I decide to go on to the next phase of my plan.

Loop 8 Year 6 Day 173

I finally figure out the EM field. The Electro-Magnetic field works on a similar basis as the EMP. The EMP sends out an electric signal that causes the electrons within circuitry to go haywire. That obviously ruins whatever they were a part of.

I build up a faraday cage, something that stops radio waves and things like EMPs from getting out. Inside there I spend a long time researching on the uses of the EMP. Instead of wiping out electronics, I plan to utilize them in a special way.

I create a large machine, about twice as large as a full-grown man. Inside that machine is a vacuum, empty space. Inside that vacuum is a single atom. That atom is surrounded by electrical waves on all sides. Those waves are the controlling factors.

Basically, what happens is this. I split the atom. Normally this causes the atom to lash out at all atoms around it, creating a nuclear blast. The electronic waves surrounding this atom are made to stop it.

Of course, I make enough of my special liquid to cover this entire contraption. That way even if something goes wrong I shouldn’t have to be too worried about it. This is the sixteenth test for the EM field. The first fifteen ended up in abject failure.

At least the liquid proved its worth. Even when the atom exploded, the several hundreds of gallons of liquid merely boiled and turned into steam. Two hundred gallons were turned into steam, but quickly reverted into liquid form.

It was almost as if the liquid just refused to be hot. It was the best way to guard against something like this. It seems as if the liquid enjoyed destroying the nuclear reaction trying to take place.

On this, the sixteenth, try, I finally manage to succeed! The atom inside the machine does explode, but it has to for me to get the energy I need.

The electrons start to go wild, but the 43 layers of magnetic fields I put in the machine made the reaction stay inside a relatively small space. The reaction keeps going though. The electrons refused to calm down. That was exactly what I wanted.

Now the last thing to do is figure out how long the atom will stay in this state, and find a safe method of pulling energy out of it without ruining the 43 layers of shielding.