Gates of War - Chapter 2 (Commander SI - Multiverse)

CID: Day 23

To my displeasure, I quickly learned one important thing. There is a very big difference between build times in the game, and in real life. Building is still a fast process, compared to construction times that actual military and civilian contractors are capable of, but it was still a slow enough process that I got irritated by the act.

In hindsight, it would make sense since the time that passes in game is actually much faster, if the rotation of planets are anything to go by. Even so, it still took me about ten minutes to actually build the metal extractor, but when it activated, I could feel my reserves increase. That was a strange feeling...if I had to describe it, it was like getting food into your belly, when you hadn’t eaten that day, and the relief that flooded you. It was the same as when I activated the Storage Tower and gained the leftovers from within it, only to be empty as the amount of storage increased. This however was a constant feeling of getting what I needed, which only reinforced my theory on why building these were so addictive to Commanders.

With no enemies to fight, I simply spent the next few weeks coping with my new situation and building the entire world up. Mostly for practice. I also managed to unlock the Advanced Data Packets and install them, but each one had to be done “by hand” essentially and it was a pain in the ass. It was worth it in the end though, since I now had the full package, plus the more advanced Storage tech from the tower. So yey.

As I travelled the world via Teleporters, I was able to reach the ocean and decided to make it my personal space on the planet as I was able to find some green finally. It had only been day three when I reached it, but it did me good to see grass, bushes and trees growing by beaches. They were normal trees of a birch-like variety, but brown instead of white. It was still good to hear the leaves fluttering in the breeze.

The grass was actually a sort of greenish blue due to various minerals and the light from the local star affecting the spectrum. The bushes were normal as well except they grew rose like flowers that were zebra striped in white and purple. I took so many photos.

I had at that time come to name the world I landed on after the relic I had assimilated and gained from, since the world needed a name and it was a good one for me.

Pillar. That’s my name for this world. I like it, it has grown on me.

Yes, traveling the world as my bots, planes, and vehicles did the work of building helped me cope better and think of all the new crap I will have to deal with as a Commander.

Something of note. I now know why the commanders had to “claim” data from their enemies.

They were machines.

I know...surprise!

Not really, but bear with me.

Basically, a Commander, as capable as it was, as much of a “person” as it could be, as powerful as they were, they were still just machines. While I was a human being now inhabiting a commander’s body, and thus able to innovate and make my own units as I wish, the problem is that you can only make things when you understand the science, physics, engineering, economics, and philosophy behind them.

Things were designed a certain way, for a reason, made out of certain materials, that cost “X” amount, and appear this way because “blank”. Commanders however do not have the creative capacities their creators did. That’s not to say they were mindless, emotionless machines with no creativity at all, not at all. They can mix and match and use devices in ways not intended, but as war machines, they lacked that drive to do anything beyond what they were “ordered” to do.

Lacking that “spark” that came with being an individual.

As such, they can only build what they know, and while it is within them to design better versions or even entirely new machines, they were still ultimately the sum of their knowledge and parts.

Now...as a human inhabiting a Commander, I do not lack these things like they do. I possess a level of freedom that, even now as they are, the Commanders could only imagine. However, like them, I am limited by what knowledge I know. If I don’t know how “X” works, I can’t make spaceships, despite my own knowledge prior to becoming a commander.

Could I make an interstellar warship? Absolutely, with the basic knowledge I had been given. Could I make it as good as anything the other commanders or progenitors could make who possess that knowledge? Nope. I could make stuff, for sure, no doubt there, but I lack the knowledge they possess to make it as well as they could, or as smartly designed.

I don’t know. In time I would be able to make my own stuff that was superior simply because I learned through trial and error, like humanity has always done, but I can see why scanning and taking the knowledge and technology from your enemies was preferred.

That isn’t to say I didn’t make modifications and redesign a few things. Like my color scheme.

Since I wasn’t actually a part of the Legionis Mechina, I changed my blue and grey to that of Gundam Wing Zero. The Tykus Commander was essentially a bastardized Gundam anyways. If I was going to be in what was a Gundam rip off, then I’m at least gonna look the part. The only thing I was missing was a flight system, beam sabers.

Speaking of which, I did more useful things than just a new paint job. I did some changes to some of my units.

For example, changing all the lasers from what they had from the start, to ones able to adjust which end of the light spectrum they can use. So now they have rainbow lasers as they can adjust which part of the light spectrum they use, as well as simply going full blown X-Ray lasers if some serious burning is needed. Gamma-Ray Lasers were also a thing, but really expensive and bulky.

With the power systems being as effective as they are, there was no need to add any energy capacitors in order to charge up the weapons for the higher end of the light spectrum, and if I wanted the weapons to do more damage, all they had to do was stop firing the weapons in a blip of light and fire a full beam that lasted as long as they needed until the target burned down to ashes or liquid.

So now all the standard laser weapons of all my laser bearing units have been changed into rainbow lasers that were also Xasers, and Beamers. I also designed a version that used Gasers since that required a different set of workings entirely.

Except for the laser satellite. That was a free electron laser, and that’s a different set of physics at work, so I left that alone.

Along with this, I also allowed for the use of fluidic optics to be used. Basically, I replaced the standard crystal core the light reflected upon with a reflection chamber that was made of a reflective fluid. The reasoning behind this had to do with laser emitter design in general. Laser emitters basically are the sum of their parts. Usually they were a light, which then was reflected about in a chamber, which is then emitted down a specific point. In order to get things like shotgun lasers and so on, you needed to add parts to allow for such adjustments.

There were a few ways to do this. The first was you change the point where the light exits the emitter, which is then changed to whatever shape the light is forced into. Anyone who has had a laser pointer with a changeable cap, or played Fallout 4 and made weapon mods to allow different kinds of laser beams would know what I was talking about.

The second way to do it is the include a mechanism in the emitter itself to allow these changes and adjustments.

The problem with both of these methods is that they require a redesign of the weapon entirely. Minor in the first case, but then it’s a specialized weapon. In the second case, it’s not specialized but multi-function, but requires a bigger weapon system to make room for the changes.

Me... I decided to say “Fuck that” and make my own rules. Now I’m not even sure Fluidic Lensing is an actual thing, but it should be now if it isn’t. The basic premise is that the weapon contains within the emitter a core reflector, but instead of rigid angled crystals that focus the light like a parabolic mirror to create a single intense beam of light, it contains a metal fluid, nanomachines in this case, that shaped itself to the needs the machine required upon the moment.

In shaping the core, it could in turn adjust the intensity of the light beam, as well as its shape on a shot by shot basis. So not only did I have lasers that have multiple forms of fire, but could also become oversized spotlights that can turn an entire crowd of people to ash due to a wide angled laser beam at high power, or automatic shotgun lasers for anti-air defense and the like, or even freaking millimeter wide sniper lasers to penetrate through hundreds of feet of material upon a single target unseen, which could also be used for laser surgery if need be...for some reason.

I’m a bit of a utilitarian, in case one couldn’t tell.

Now one would think “Wow...that’s overpowered as hell.”

No. Not really. None of what I did is outside of the stuff commanders could have already done. They just didn’t because; it was a game which had limitations, and because it was cheaper to make a normal laser that cost one resource unit instead of the fluidic lensing variable frequency (F.L.V.L. or Fellvell as I call it) version which cost ten. That and, well...they were war machines. Boom is what they needed more than anything.

I have all the old designs still, and didn’t discard them because “I got better toys.”. When I am able to produce things with no worry about costs, like I currently am on this world, I will go for the good toys, but when I need something fast and don’t want to waste resources for quality when I need quantity, I’ll use the old designs.

Anyways. Two weeks, with ever increasing numbers of fabricator units in the form of plasma driven aircraft, I covered most of the planet with extractors, generators, and storage complexes in the form of towers similar to the one I had found. Complexes that were hundreds of square miles in size, filled with huge metal rod like monoliths that stretched into the sky. I was both in awe at the sight...and unsettled. I knew it was just a bunch of towers all built into an area for the purpose of storing huge amounts of material for me...but if humanity were to see this, it would almost be like walking into Rlyeh. Less Euclidean geometries, and more artificial and monolithic.

I could hear the hum of power and machines at work, but from the human ear? Silence. Dead Silence. Nothing but your own footsteps. Just giant metal rods that stretch over a mile tall, and were over one thousand feet wide, with no surface features, glass smooth, and non-reflective unless looked upon at a distance, and from the outside of the complex.

I had made a very alien environment by accident.

On top of that, I had built satellites in orbit around this and other planets, and radar stations all across them. My eyes were everywhere now. I could see everything, from the squad of ten Dox units walking a patrol inside one of my complexes, to my dox units on the other celestial bodies in the system. The planets weren’t really noteworthy aside from being alien planets. One was a Gas Giant of a purple and beige color with twelve moons. The other planet was a dead rock similar to Earth’s moon. Pocked with craters and surface covered in dust and rock. Pillar itself had a moon around 200,000 miles away and was similar to the moon around Earth, but was of a grayish brown color.

I had decided to send fabricator satellites over to the planet and moons, and create a Teleporters so I could go to them. I reached this world's moon first, placing a Teleporter upon it and found that it was basically a giant airless dustball. It had an atmosphere, but not enough for a person to survive on. Scans from below the surface showed vast traces of elements and minerals to show this world had once been a living world, but going deeper revealed it wasn’t natural, but in fact the work of terraforming.

The first thing I did once I stepped through the Teleporter...was reenact the lunar landing in 1969.

“One small step for a man. One Giant leap for mankind.”

Then purposefully flubbed it.

“And one giant stomp for a giant robot.” I shouted as I stamped my foot and sent dust and rock everywhere in a plume.

I don’t care what anybody would think. I was alone.

With my lunar exploration going, I had my fabricators go about covering the moon in extractors and power generators. It was interesting seeing the vast complexes on the airless moon with hardly anything in the air to block the sunlight. They shined like a mirror from space and from the ground, but the alien world sense was still present.

I went to the second planet next and found nothing of real interest aside that it too was a living planet at one point approximately half a million years or so. I as I bounced around on the near zero gravity, I had my fabricators do their thing. I don’t know what it is, but the storage complexes on this world for some reason were...less alien here than on the other planet strangely enough. Probably because there was no atmosphere here to block the light, giving a white sun shine on all of them when light hit them. Plus, it was less unnatural looking...it must be the light and place.

Once my fabricator satellites reached the moons, I placed Teleporters on all of them.

The first, second and third moons were actually large asteroids between two to five miles wide that comprised of iron, nickel, and rock. Nothing really noteworthy here aside from the fact it was an asteroid. It was still cool as hell to stand on it and look down upon the gas giant and its swirling clouds.

The fourth moon was interesting as it was missing 5% of its mass. The damaged portion was permanently facing away from the giant, allowing for an easy view. This was caused by what I could only guess was some kind of progenitor grade planet killer since the planet is still in one piece except for the area around the equator, which had an enormous chasm that went as deep as the core of the body. From the bottom to the lunar surface, the cavern angles upwards at an eighty-five-degree angle on both sides, like someone cutting out a piece of an apple with a knife.

As I sent scout planes down into the chasm and scanned for core activity, the readings said that the moon was pretty much dead. Had been for quite a while. What was surprising however was according to the readings of the rocks and composites of the chasm, this damage had been done only in the last two hundred years. To say I felt the Commander equivalent of a cold chill would be an understatement.

I left that moon and mystery behind as I visited the next five moons, which were all similar to Calypso and Europa. Rocks and Ice Balls. The last one however, an ice ball, had liquid water under the surface, and to my surprise, the beginnings of bacterial life. At the moment it was just simple microbes and single celled organisms, but it was something! I scanned them and catalogued them. Interesting thing about them was that when gathered into a large cluster, the organisms produced bioelectricity, which allowed light and heat to be produced. Thus, allowing them to survive, make food, and breed in the frigid temperatures.

The last three moons were like the Jupiter moon Io. Volcanically active, very hot, and full a variety of minerals and compounds such as sulfur, and crystal growths such as quartz, and in some places, diamond could be found. Mostly just rock and lava though.

I was finally getting into the spirit of exploration and actually not so angry about being a robot anymore with all I have been seeing and doing. It was surprising to me how sparse the solar system was compared to that of Sol to be honest. While Sol does comprise of only eight planets, there are also several hundred dwarf planets, hundreds of natural satellites, thousands of comets, and what I remembered was over seven hundred thousand minor planets made up of asteroids, centaurs, trojans, and many other forms and phenomena. The Sol system is actually crowded and full of junk.

This one however...was pretty clean for a solar system. Only three major celestial bodies, twelve moons, and the systems sun. That’s it. No solar wind, no asteroids, no comets, no cosmic dust, etc. Just a whole lot of empty. Nice since it made things simple. Not so nice since it was too simple for a solar system. It was suspiciously empty. So, I decided to send a few satellites out of the system, at least as far as where the heliosphere was supposed to be, and then get some readings. I had thought everything was going well when they left beyond the outermost planet’s orbit.

At least until I reached what I could only describe as “The Wall”.

It was a literal fucking wall. Not of stone, brick and mortar, though it might as well be. The wall was in fact an advanced construct that looked like a perfectly smooth wall of metal alloy of an unidentifiable type. Scans of the material revealed nothing recognizable in the database I had, nor was I able to penetrate beyond a few meters of the surface via scanning. Which says a lot about how advanced the wall is, or out of my depth I am. In addition to being a wall of metal at the edge of this system, it has been revealed in part because of my other satellites that the wall actually encompasses the entire solar system.

Further scans show that the wall was in fact absorbing not only photons, and but all forms of radiation, heat, particles, and exotic matter being expelled from the sun and planets of the system, and all without producing anything more detectable than what one probably would read looking upon the observable universe.

So... it’s a Dyson Sphere. Specifically, a Dyson Shell. Well...not entirely since it was way, way bigger than it should be if they wanted to use the inner surface area for living space, but that’s beside the point.

The implications of that and the requirements to make this work at all were quite terrifying to me. It also explained why the inside was so empty of stellar debris. It’s likely almost all of what this system had was used for the construction of the sphere. It would also explain that one moon. They were taking a chunk out of it, but then finished the sphere before the builders ate up the rest of the moon. Then it was left alone...for whatever reason.

So, assuming the sphere was absorbing everything the system gave off and converted it into energy, then somehow it would use this energy not only to keep the sphere centered on the system to prevent collision from the star and the inner surface, but also had to create a form of protection from the SolarWinds that the star normally protected the system from. All of this while also not creating so much heat itself that it would cook the contents within and shine brighter than a star on the outside.

Brown Pants level of terrifying. The Progenitors were fucking bullshit. Practically a Type III civilization. Of course, they could make Dyson Spheres. Why the hell not? It wasn’t as if they were starving for resources with their network and economy, or hadn’t the means to actually make such a thing work despite all the issues.

Sigh.

I can say however that I was glad for this development though. It meant that if I was in fact in the Planetary Annihilation universe, that without some gateway to get in, I won’t have to worry about unscheduled visits from the four factions. On the other hand...how was I supposed to get the hell out?

Welp...time to make more satellites. Going to have to map this sucker. I think a thousand will do.