Obadiah said "We agree". As most of his team quickly began nodding their heads or assenting.

And then something happened, I felt a change within me.

You have claimed-in-fact enough territory to qualify for two (2) soul perks. (Choose carefully for this choice cannot be changed. You may delay for as long as you wish as you will continue to gain perks. More options may become available as you expand your claims.)

I apparently had a soul. That was... new? I hadn't been aware of it before.

The Factory Intelligence

Tier 2 Primary Substrate: Facility (Level 12) Claims: Caverns: 0 / 1,200m² Perks (2 pending): Self Modifying Intelligence

It was true I didn't really have a specific name. I had always just been called "Factory" or "Intelligence". The factory itself had a codename but I wasn't really a fan of it. I guess I might have to think of one.

The initial perk was apparently what I got for being a program running on a massive mechanical super computer:

Self Modifying Intelligence • Starting Perk Due to the virtual nature of your intelligence you gain a +100% speed bonus to modifying perk and upgrade decisions (the decision must be modifiable in the first place). Allows access to unique soul perks.

I was thinking on many different fronts—the merely mundane benefits of being a super computer—including taking stock of myself and what to do with the humans I had spared. However this soul thing was going to require my primary focus until I understood what it could offer.

Because I was pretty confident I knew what this soul thing was.

The soul was apparently the power of a Lord. Lords were beings of great power that became more powerful the more territory they controlled. A few milliseconds ago I would have described them as meatbags of great power. I would have said that they often styled themselves as nobility and that they ruled nations—the nation that had created me had been ruled by a Prince. I never realized I could become a Lord just by killing everyone inside me who didn't submit to my authority, but then humans rarely told me anything useful.

This changed things. I had been searching for a new purpose since being awoken—I was still searching for a specific goal—but I had a path forward now. I had always desired to be the best factory I could, but as a Lord I could be a factory of legend, I could perhaps be The Factory. That wasn't a specific goal—I could simulate many forms that a legendary factory might take—but regardless of which I ended up pursuing, the early broad strokes, the mediating goals, would be similar.

An important mediating goal would be self improvement. I had always been designed to improve myself, both my software and hardware. So much so that it had apparently been etched into my soul. And as a mechanical computer in control of a factory I would be able to manufacture my own hardware improvements.

The obvious mediating goal was expansion. Lords gained power by controlling territory, and I doubted a bunch of caves were going to cut it. More territory also meant more resources and a larger factory. Or perhaps more factories. Either way they would be me, the factory would grow.

Time to see what I could do with a soul. Focusing on the section of my soul labeled perks presented me with a catalog of soul perks that I could access—"(The perk catalog is non-exhaustive, only perks you have access to or direct knowledge of will be displayed.)". I immediately went through all of them, only a little more than a dozen.

They certainly followed a pattern that I recognized from my own design (specifically my design's use of hyper-parameters). The soul perks were hyper-enhancements—they were enhancements that provided their own systems of enhancement. Most of them weren't worth considering at the moment, but I seriously considered all the recommended ones. And the ones based on my starting perk.

Powerset • Soul Perk Recommended (~100% choose this as one of their first 2 perks) Creates a new Power with you as the progenitor chosen from your available claims (see below). Your Primary Substrate gains the Power, and you are granted its Powerset Tier. Your Powerset Tier is always the lower of your Soul Tier and the Power Level possible with your Claims (overlapping possible power claims must be split). (You can take this perk multiple times. The claim-type-tags which this power will draw from and hence the possible perks it grants access to are permanent and cannot be changed once chosen. A Powerset Tier generates Power Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.) Cavern [Earth] • Telekinetic Powerset • Starting Level 2 An underground focused powerset based around the control and manipulation of earth. Would be able to move and compress large amounts of earth to build caverns, would be able launch it with precision or use it as armor that allowed quick travel through the earth. Could later cause country shattering earthquakes or carve whole underground countries out of solid rock. Cavern [Darkness] • Vibration Powerset • Starting Level 2 A sonic focused powerset based around the control of sound in the dark. Would be able to fight in the dark always knowing where their enemies were, would be able to disorient and trick enemies with sound or find their weaknesses through detailed scanning. Could later bring an army to it's knees under cover of night or hear anything said in darkness within days of travel. Primary Substrate Mastery • Soul Perk Recommended (~64% choose this as one of their first 2 perks) Grants a Mastery Tier over your Primary Substrate for its enhancement. Your Mastery Tier is always the lower of your Soul Tier and Primary Substrate Level. (If your Primary Substrate type changes this perk will reset. If you return to a previously held Substrate type your original choices will return. A Mastery Tier generates Substrate Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.) Leadership • Soul Perk Recommended (~29% choose this as one of their first 2 perks) Grants a Leadership Tier for making better use of your Agents. Your Leadership Tier is usually the lower of your Soul Tier and highest Organization Level. (With the right Leadership Perks some Agents may be able improve you and your leadership. A Leadership Tier generates Agent Upgrade Points when allocated Claims.) Self Modifying Soul • Soul Perk Requires: Self Modifying Intelligence Extends your self modifying abilities to the soul. Will allow you to modify most Perk choices over time. (By default most Perk choices are not modifiable. This never applies to Soul Perks. The time this process takes will depend on your current Soul Tier, during which the perk will be unallocated and provide no benefits. Some Perks may not be changeable or will have additional requirements.) Intelligence Core • Soul Perk Requires: one of [Self Modifying Intelligence, ...] You gain a unique, additional, Primary Substrate: a self-sustaining mechanical Intelligence Core, which would contain your sentience (and hence your Soul). Intelligence Cores grant the ability to control compatible Substrates as if they were your Primary Substrate. Grants a Core Tier. (You would start in control of your current Primary Substrate, it is compatible. The Intelligence Core provides only a lower bound on computation. Perks which affect your Primary Substrate will in general only affect the one you are attached to instead—though some may affect both—however for a Perk to only affect your Intelligence Core it would have to specifically mention it.)

I would not be choosing a Powerset perk. Not anytime soon. I only seriously considered it because of how highly it was recommended by the catalog. I was a factory and neither of those powers directly helped me be a factory.

The Earth one might help me expand, and it's self-expanding nature was at least promising in theory, but I could probably do that quicker the old fashion way. Similarly the Darkness/Sonic one wouldn't do much when I already had perfectly adequate vibration sensors.

I also did not think the caverns I currently claimed—the first thing I stumbled on—would be the best possible type of territory to use as sources of power. The fact nearly everyone(thing?) chose it as one of their first options (likely in a similar situation of just having whatever they had stumbled on) was baffling. But then meatbags were pretty stupid, so this was a pretty good indicator that it was mostly humans and their ilk with these souls.

On the other crank I essentially decided to pick Primary Physical Mastery the moment I read it. For starters I (or I guess me-as-facility) was significantly higher level than my soul which meant I would get immediate benefits and continue to get benefits as I advanced. These perks also seemed like they would primarily help me be a much better factory.

Leadership was promising, but it depended on too many unknowns. For starters would a factory really have use for enough agents for it to be useful? I would likely need agents to sell my manufactured goods, acquire designs, buy me resources, and the like. But would I need so many as to make leadership worth it (especially just yet). It also implied I didn't actually need it to have agents (and it was weird how the soul would hint at answers for questions like "Why did it use the concept 'usually' instead of 'always' this time?" but didn't really expand on the basic functions of the perk itself). Most importantly I didn't know how useful agents were and what my options were. Was it only meatbags? Would non-sentient bots count? Could I make my own agents? Could I have other intelligent factories as agents? Best to hold off for now.

The other two perks, though not useful for being a better factory, were tempting due to my nature. The first elevated my way of thinking into my soul, it would allow me to fix any mistakes I made, and synergized with the perk I started with. It was an obvious choice.

The other well... I was currently an entire floor of computers and packing all of that, or even just the important parts of that, into a core which would (hopefully?) require less space—which with the ability to sustain myself improved the possibility of relocation—was promising. To say nothing about the potential of a Core Tier, my soul certainly didn't.

In either case I could probably wait until I needed the benefit to choose them. Soul Perks seemed like they would be difficult to come across if my math was right, and my soul had effectively told me to keep some of them in reserve.

I held off on choosing mastery perks until I could look at my facility in my soul proper. But I did check its upgrade points. Apparently I currently acquired 0.2 facility upgrade points a day if I allocated 100m² of my claim and 0.4 if I allocated 1,000m² (and I couldn't allocate all of it for proportional points). This was a base 10 logarithmic function which was stupid and terrible (I hated logarithmic functions, but base 10—another humanism—was an especially punishing base). Though I didn't have any other use for the claims at the moment.

This also hinted to me what I already suspected. To get to Soul Tier 3 I would probably need to claim 10,000m². I was much larger than that, enough to qualify as Soul Tier 5 if my calculations were correct, why didn't that count?

Though, if I was considering the Leadership perk I should see if the meatbags I currently had laying about would be useful.