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Elder was able to rig up a holographic bathroom. At first, it was nothing
more than a partition that gave the user some much-needed privacy. Over
time, with little else to do, he added more and more to the program,
including the highly requested feature of a noise-canceling system, as well
as some scent-masking. Eventually, it looked like they were in one of those
extremely fancy and expensive bathrooms that only the wealthiest of people
used. It wasn’t like a holodeck, so they couldn’t touch the double basin
sink, or the clawfoot tub, but it made them feel a little less confined.
This tactic was quickly expanded to the entirety of the tent, allowing them
to pretend that they had more space than they did. They could transition
views between a number of different environments. It could look like they
were sitting in the middle of a serene forest, against a backdrop of
mountains, or even in the middle of outer space. That one wasn’t used very
much, but it was there if they wanted it. They could also use this to make
the tent appear to be transparent, allowing them to see what the real world
outside looked like. The imagery was bleak, and a little depressing, but it
was often better than the claustrophobia-inducing opaque walls.
In addition to these cosmetic changes, Elder had a lot of other work to do.
In order to transmit objects from inside to the outside, and back again,
there was a small built-in airlock. It had to be flexible, so it could
collapse into the pack where it was stored, of course, but it was enough in
a pinch. He was able to program a tube of starter nanites to head out onto
the regolith, and begin building them a larger, and more permanent, living
structure. Once it was finished being constructed, they would finally be
able to stand up, and walk around. It was hard to get exercise in this
thing, so they were desperate for more options, especially since this planet
featured fairly low gravity. Bicycle crunches were probably saving their
lives, but they were becoming increasingly sick of them.
Bronach Oaksent claimed to be only a few hundred meters away, but he was
nowhere to be seen. There were a number of geological features nearby, which
could easily conceal him, particularly well if he had built his own shelter
mostly underground. He could also be in a very small dimensional generator,
which would be incredibly easy to hide. Even before he built the
nanofactory, Elder designed a pebble drone, based on the kind of rocks that
were present on this planet. Tiny cilia that were invisible to the naked eye
pressed against the surface, allowing it to roll along in search of
Bronach’s hiding place. It was a very slow process, but it used very little
power, and each one could operate autonomously. Indeed, a larger drone
design would be easier to spot, so this was the best way to do it if they
didn’t want to get caught.
True to his word—in this sense, at least—Bronach never reached out. Elder
didn’t detect a single radio signal, so he wasn’t trying to communicate
anywhere else either. Elder would even be able to tell if he were using some
kind of quantum messenger, which would be difficult to transport with its
relatively high mass, or maybe not if his dimensional generator theory were
true. There was still so much that they didn’t know, and it still wasn’t
priority. Their focus was on survival. What he really needed was a real lab
so he could start working on that time machine. Debra had wanted to leave
Extremus, but she made it quite clear that she would prefer it to this.
“Don’t worry about the time machine right now,” Debra argued. “Just get me a
place to stand up, and then a place to sit down. You are building
chairs, right?”
“Of course I am,” Elder replied, “and I’m not worried about the lab
right now. I’m just talkin’. The nanites are busy on the structure; me
discussing the future doesn’t slow that down.”
“You should have brought more nanites,” she tried to reason.
“The amount of time it takes for them to replicate is negligible compared to
the time it takes to actually build what we need. Packing more would not
have significantly sped up the process. In fact, it might have slowed it
down, because it would have been more difficult to get them through the
airlock pocket, and on its way to the worksite.”
“The worksite is right there.” Debra pointed. The tent was pseudotransparent
on one side right now, so they could watch the construction progress. The
other sides were showing the ocean surrounding an atoll.
“That’s miles away to a nanite. Scaled up, that would be like if you drove
around the equator of the Earth,” Elder tried to explain for the upteenth
time. He hadn’t had to say that specific thing to her before, but she was
one of the least educated people he had ever met. She didn’t listen. She
seemed to think that the nanites were magic. If she knew their breakdown
rate, she would...well, she wouldn’t understand that number, but if she did,
she would throw a fit.
“I’ve never been to Earth.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.”
“Stop fighting,” Rita interjected. “This is a stupid conversation, and I’m
over it. Elder, how long until we can teleport into the new structure?”
“We’re not teleporting into it,” Elder contended. “We have precious little
temporal energy left in the teleporter gun, and we need to save it.”
“If we’re so low, how are we ever going to go back in time?” Debra
questioned.
“I will be able to harvest more with greater resources,” Elder clarified.
“It would sure help to have some stored to catalyze the process, though,
which is why I’m having the nanites build a docking cone. That’s mostly what
still needs to be finished. It’s right there.” He pointed to it. A metal
cone was gradually materializing towards them.
“And the time until it’s complete?” Rita reiterated.
“Only a few more days,” he answered. “I know what you’re gonna say next, but
bear in mind that solar is our only source of power at the moment. The
shelter would take even longer if I had the nanites build a fusion reactor
at the same time, even though having fusion would eventually make them go
faster. Plus, the basalt and sedimentary rocks have to be pulverized and
reformulated into a sort of concrete to create the airtight seal that we
obviously need. There is not as much metal in the regolith as I would like.
But as soon as they’re done, we’ll have nine square meters to spread out in.
It will all be worth the wait, I promise you.”
“And a real bathroom?” Rita asked hopefully.
Elder hesitated to answer. “Not quite yet. It’s coming, but think about it,
how complicated the fixtures in a real bathroom are. There is a room walled
off for it, but we’ll still be using our portable toilet, and rubbing
ourselves down with dayfruit...” He trailed off, his mind scattered to a
million pieces. Sometimes a keyword would switch his train of thought to the
wrong track, even if he was the one who said the word. He went back to
contemplating his latest project to solve one of their problems. Each of the
five leaves of the dayfruit was packed with its own natural substance. They
were using the sugar and salt leaf regularly, programming every other fruit
to produce one, and every other fruit the other. The second leaf gave
them an alcohol-based sanitizer, which could be used to disinfect wounds in
a medical situation, as well as a body cleanser when water was scarce, as it
was here. The third leaf was a soap for when water was plentiful enough. The
fourth was basically a GMO super-eucalyptus, which had countless benefits,
from toothpaste to a moisturizing topical ointment. The fifth and final leaf
was a sort of user’s choice. If not programmed for something each time, it
would just grow empty. Well, not empty, but layered, so it wasn’t completely
useless, since it still functioned as toilet paper, but Elder wanted more
out of it. He wanted to program it to produce a certain chemical compound.
Unfortunately, they were stuck with an inert fifth leaf. It was a heavily
regulated trait, generationally encrypted by the institution that designed
the dayfruit strain in question. In this case, that governing body was part
of Extremus. No one here had the authentication factors, not even Lieutenant
Suárez. When he had time, Elder had been trying to hack into it, but even
geniuses had their limits. These seeds required a password for certain
modifications, and if he wanted to subvert them, his only option might be to
write his only version of the fruit from scratch. That was not out of the
question, but they weren’t there yet. It would demand certain chemicals to
even begin anyway. Digital DNA was useless without the organic material to
begin the synthesization process. Nothing could come from nothing. Not even
their world of temporal manipulators could this maxim be subverted.
“Old Man,” Rita shouted. “You’re in your head again.”
“No, you were telling us to rub dayfruit on our bodies,” Debra clarified.
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “I meant the sanitizer. We’ll have to keep
using the sanitizer until we can find a source of oxidane.”
Rita nodded, but Debra was confused, as usual.
“Water. We need water. If we find a significant reservoir, we may be able to
stop having to recycle our waste.” They added sugar to their drinking water
to get rid of the urine taste, but...they could still taste it.
Rita shook her head. “When we go back in time, and get back on Extremus, I’m
going to lobby for a change in policy. Earthan space explorers wear those
standardized integrated multipurpose suits all the time. They debated doing
that on the Extremus, but it was never our plan to ever go on spacewalks, so
they ultimately decided against them. I think that was a mistake. We would
be so much better off if we could go outside right now. I should be wearing
an IMS. From what I hear, they’re comfortable enough.”
Elder shook his head to mirror her. “I should have packed one in my
emergency kit. I guess that’s not why they’re on the recommended list,
because the people who need them the most are already wearing them to be
prepared at all times.”
“Could you fabricate one now?” Debra asked. She was being genuine this time,
not critical or argumentative.
“I don’t have the materials,” Elder replied. “And...I wouldn’t know how to
make one. It’s not the library, I don’t think. Do you know how to harvest
and contain monopoles? I’m not saying that to mean. It’s just so far above
my paygrade.”
“Well, that’s one layer,” Rita began, “but a vacuum suit doesn’t have to
have it. The other layers alone would work well enough on their own, unless
you think you might get shot out there.”
Elder looked towards the horizon. When Bronach left them, this was the
direction he walked, implying that that was where his own shelter was—which
was why he was concentrating the pebbledrone search in that region—but that
could literally have been a misdirect. “We don’t know that that man doesn’t
have projectile weapons. And anyway, no,” he went on. “The nanites aren’t
constructing the structure out of the best materials possible, just what
they can find. We do not have what we would need for additional clothing of
any kind. We never will, not here.”
They all three sighed at around the same time, and went back to watching the
docking cone inch towards the tent entrance, one conical section at a time.
It really was slow, though, so they eventually broke out of the group
trance, and started focusing on their own things. Later that evening, they
watched another episode of Sliders together. It was the one where
they go to a world that is free from the war because of a virus that only
kills Kromaggs. It made Elder uncomfortable, but he tried not to show it.
The ladies still didn’t know that much about his past.
A couple of days later, the cone was finished, and they were in the new
structure. Rita couldn’t stop breathing a sigh of relief, and Debra teared
up a little. Elder sat down on one of the built-in benches against the wall,
and didn’t stand up for almost three hours. They didn’t call him Old Man for
nothin’. Lying down, sitting up, and crawling were not good for his back in
the long-term. Now that they had more space to move around, he was able to
get some real work done. Their new airlock still wasn’t big enough for a
person to step through, but that wasn’t the point. His hands could move
faster than the nanites. He was able to collect building material, and build
some larger equipment in here. The progress of their shelter continued to
get faster and faster. He cut out some windows, and forged silica glass to
protect them. They hadn’t experienced any dust storms, or these might have
been too dangerous to consider.
With more space and more time, he was able to build larger drones too, which
were able to travel farther from their immediate vicinity, and perform more
detailed surveys of the land. They found deposits of magnesium and aluminum,
and trace amounts of others, like silver and copper, which were vital
components of some desperately needed technology, like better solar panels,
and a fusion reactor. It took months, but these drones also found subsurface
ice only about forty centimeters under the regolith. For simplicity’s sake,
they ignored the first site, and focused on one that was a little farther
away, but on higher ground, so a basic aluminum pipe could transport water
from the boiler structure, down to them via gravity.
It was starting to feel a little like home, but only a little. They remained
firmly in favor of finding a way back to the ship in the past. Debra talked
a lot about their ultimate goal of traveling to Bronach’s location, but the
other two were hoping to avoid it altogether. Rita was anyway. Elder still
had plans for the fifth leaf, though if he never figured it out, he might be
able to find a way to synthesize everything he needed in the normal way,
especially with this silica for lab supplies. He was no chemist, though,
that was the problem. He was counting on the dayfruit’s ability to formulate
a programmed compound for him, rather than him having to mix it by hand.
This plan wasn’t vital to their survival, but not having the weapon could
prove fatal one day. He had relinquished his morals once; he could do it
again if it was necessary.
They were on this dead planet for five whole months before Elder was even
able to begin manufacturing the time machine, and it was shortly
thereafter when he hit a snag. Harvesting temporal energy wasn’t as easy as
he thought it would be. He might only have enough for one person for one
trip with a smaller design.
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