Cheevos

Lily was quite happy. She had managed to acquire over seventy doped ruby rods, which she was already packaging carefully to take home with her. She even had to pull her fabricator out of the trailer to build a simple travel case for all of them, as they could be a mite fragile if she just dumped them in a bag or box. She didn't want any of them to be chipped when she got home.

In exchange, Lily agreed to give the Mechanist a full course of treatment of all of her available genetic therapies. He was most interested in life extension therapy and sleep therapy, which would reduce his need for sleep by about two hours per night.

Sophie thought that two hours wasn't that big of a deal, but Scott looked at her like she was crazy and explained two hours a night ended up being an additional thirty days awake a year, a full month extra that he would have to work on things that he was pulling out of the ether. He said it was especially important, as he didn't think he was especially gifted and relied on a lot of hard work to make his breakthroughs.

Lily thought he was underestimating himself but agreed with his premise. She wouldn't sleep at all if she didn't have to.

The number of lasers she would be able to construct was going to be incredible, though. She already had tentative plans to create dozens of AirTaser auto-turrets, of which she had only built a handful of prototypes; now, she would include lasers on them as well. Plus, she could convert most of her Termitrons into having at least one Protectron-arm. A taser on one side and a laser on the other sounded ideal.

"Zhose zhat doubt my peaceable intentions will drown in zheir own blood!" she vowed aloud, her voice thick with promise and emotion as she finished packing the items.

Lily forgot that Sophie was in the same room until she saw the robot girl float backwards and disappear out of the room. She was floating slowly, doing the robot equivalent of slowly backing out of the room, hoping not to be spotted.

Lily blushed, actually feeling a sting of minor embarrassment. She wasn't being literal there... well, not entirely. It was an old Chinese joke that dated back to when the Communist Party still ran things, and she thought the joke might have even originated from the Soviets even further back before she was born.

She paused. Who was she kidding? She was entirely serious! However, she would reassure Sophie that she was merely joking. Ha-ha-ha.

She would turn her little hospital into a fortress the moment she got back. Well, more of a fortress than it already was. Right now, it was only moderately dangerous, capable of dissuading raiders at most. She did have a number of tricks and one-off hazards that might even catch either the Brotherhood or the Enclave off-guard, but probably only once. Until now, she didn't have the weight of arms available to truly dissuade strong players, and she didn't yet have the sheer number of combat robots that Scott had either, but she planned to make up for it in fixed defences.

Glancing down at the case full of thin ruby rods, she nodded, 'Well, that will hold for now.'

She could get a few hours of sleep before waking up in time for Sophie's breakfast in the morning. She had been optimizing the sleep program that she used to stimulate her brain and had gotten the equivalent of a whole night's rest down to approximately ninety minutes. However, when possible and when she did not have anything pressing, she preferred to sleep the entire two and a half to three hours, as it resulted in less psychedelic and trippy dreams and increased the rate at which her old memories were digitized.

Lily found her old room, which Sophie had turned into a guest room, and laid down on her bed before triggering the sleep inducer.

---xxxxxx---

The breakfast the following day was pretty good, as was usual, and it was clear that Sophie had all of the optional culinary programmings a Miss Nanny could have, even if some of the ingredients had changed over time.

She had worked on some of her projects until a little after nine o'clock,

"Okay, I will go get Monsieur Gary; if you could load all of zhe zhings we are bringing and meet us with zhe truck near the Diner, we will meet you zhere," began Lily. She had given operator permission for all of her Termitrons to Sophie so that she could control them. She, of course, retained the sole superuser account on all of her robots.

However, Alice's user credentials would all be elevated to superuser either in the event of her death or in the event of her disappearance for longer than two months. It was odd making a plan that considered the possibility of her own death. For over two hundred years, she was practically unkillable... or at least, she would not stay dead if killed. In fact, most of her wealth back then went into her resurrection and apotheosis plans. To be back at the beginning of her build-up was still a surreal feeling, even months after she realized it had occurred.

Also, some of her opinions on her life had changed. Before, she would not have particularly cared if "she" died, so long as a relatively recent back-up of her ego survived. Now, while she would certainly work to produce resurrection options, she was focusing her efforts on ensuring she never died in the first place.

Scott nodded, "Yes. We should be there in front of the diner in approximately forty-six minutes from now." Lily started an internal timer because she had to know if he was just bullshitting her with that approximate time that was so precise.

Lily nodded, grabbed her tri-beam rifle as well as her spare laser rifle and started jogging to Canterbury Commons. Despite the fact that her skeleton was over two hundred times stronger than it used to be, it was only half the original's weight.

Of course, that only accounted for a loss of about three kilos of weight, given the fact that she only weighed a little over fifty kilos, to begin with, but to her subjective senses, it felt that she could run and jog a lot longer and jump higher since she had finished replacing her skeleton.

It only took her ten minutes or so to jog to the settlement, and she headed directly to the tavern slash inn that Gary was staying at. She walked in, expecting to have to roust the man out of bed, but he was seated at a table, picking at the remains of his breakfast.

"Ah, Doctor. I wasn't sure if I was going to see you today or tomorrow. Is today the day, then?" Gary asked jovially. Lily peered at him. He did have a bit of a black eye. She asked him, amusedly, "Did you run into zhe door? Do I need to call zhe constables about your 'usband?" She then looked around, obviously, as if trying to find the man responsible for the domestic violence.

Gary chuckled and smiled, "Oh, don't worry. I just had a disagreement with somebody, but it all worked out in the end. We're friends now, even."

Lily nodded slowly, "Fair enough." She glanced at her timer that was still running in the corner of her vision. "We have about zhirty minutes before we need to be at zhe Dot's diner in zhe centre of town."

Gary glanced down at his meal and nodded, "Lemme finish this and check out, and we can mosey on over there." Lily was glad to see that Gary didn't need any reminders that leaving behind a single calorie was a large taboo in this society, as he cleaned his plate rapidly.

He grabbed his carbine and headed upstairs, soon returning with a full pack of all of his belongings. She noticed he had sold a few of the rifles but not all of them. He spoke briefly with the lady at the front desk, who also apparently was his waitress and exchanged some caps with her. Lily was surprised that she didn't demand he pay everything in advance. Perhaps Gary was just very charming?

He walked back over to her and nodded. Then, he took a moment to look her up and down. "Those ballistic plates look preem. Did you make them yourself?"

Lily blinked and considered how he had made that connection. In her mind, a 3-D model of her body appeared, slowly rotating, wearing all the same clothes she was wearing now.

'Ah,' she thought to herself as she realized the anomaly. He noticed they looked brand new, which might have been explained away but not that they were exactly the same dark grey colour as her armoured bodysuit. The bodysuit was also so form-fitting that it looked almost painted on, so it had to be bespoke for her; ergo, she made or had made the entire outfit.

She nodded, pleased again at dealing with someone who could make and follow simple logical deductions, "Ah, yes, I did. Zhey are a product I might be selling in zhe future, or at least providing to my employees, at zhe least."

Gary nodded and followed her out the door. She handed him the spare laser rifle and said, "Most likely zhreat profile indicates high likelihood of zhe swarming attacks from giant ants. I'm not sure 'ow much ammunition you dragged out of Vault 108, but it is a lot easier to recharge energy cells than to manufacture new cartridges. You can use this for today."

Gary spent a few moments familiarizing himself with the weapon, and finally asked, "This isn't a model I'm familiar with. Can you give me a quick briefing just to make sure I know how to run it and clear any obvious malfunctions?"

Lily smiled. She didn't expect him to ask that since the controls were quite simple and obvious. But it was the smart thing to do, so she was pleased. She gave him a quick run-down on all the controls and the malfunction drills, which mostly consisted of checking energy-cell, reseating energy-cell, and hoping that fixed the problem. It didn't have any moving parts, after all.

He took careful aim and fired a test shot at a tin can that was twenty metres away, knocking it off the fencepost it was resting on. He nodded, satisfied. "I'll have to leave my guns in your truck, then." He paused, then asked, "...did you build this rifle yourself, also?"

Lily considered whether or not she wanted to answer that question. Finally, she nodded slightly, "Not all of it. Zhe most complicated part is a specially doped rod of synthetic ruby or sapphire, which I can not replicate as of yet. I built everything else, zhough."

Gary smiled and continued walking towards the centre of town, "I've always wanted to know how these red-dot sights work. Could you explain it so that a dumb sailor could understand?"

Lily pursed her lips, "'ave you ever seen one-way mirrors, like in cop and robber TV shows? Where zhey interrogate someone, and the bad-guy can only see a mirror, but zhe cops behind it it is glass, and zhey can see into zhe interrogation room?"

Gary grinned and nodded rapidly, "Yeah! Like Dick Magnum!" Lily tried to avoid smirking; surely that couldn't have been the name of anything but a porno film?

Still, she continued, "Well, zhey work like zhat. What you're peering zhrough in the sight is a one-way mirror. And you're looking at the mirror side as if you were zhe criminal, yes?"

He looked confused but nodded, so she finished her explanation, "Except, zhis mirror only reflects a very small amount of light spectrum, specifically about 670 nanometres, which corresponds to zhe bright red colour of zhe red dot. Zhere is a very small light-emitting diode in the bottom of the sight that shines a small dot up at zhe curved mirror that is reflected back to you. Since it is only zhis tiny fraction of light zhat is reflected, it appears to be clear glass from your perspective."

He was quiet for a time before saying, "Ohhhh. I get it. Funny, I thought it would involve lasers or something, but it is just a funny mirror. How do you treat a piece of glass so that only a certain part of the light spectrum is reflected?"

Lily clucked her tongue, "Zhat is a much more complicated question, so I will just say you do eet carefully. But you basically have to vacuum deposit a very small amount of a substance, usually a metal, on zhe optical surface, zhe same as if you were making a regular mirror. You repeat zhis multiple times, tuning to zhe particular colour-band you want to be reflected based on zhe individual and combined characteristics of zhe layers you add."

She didn't mention that the only way she knew the particular optical coatings was she scanned a red dot sight with her scanner. The vacuum deposition box she had constructed when she was trying to create lasers from scratch, hoping that playing with the output optics a little would be enough to get a working weapon. They weren't, but she did end up using it both to create red dot sights and some test lenses for microscopes.

Oh, and she made the Apprentice a set of sunglasses, too, that blocked out all UV light. She wasn't sure the girl would be down with replacing her eyes with cybernetic replacements, so the girl needed to take better care of her vision than Lily did.

"Ah, zhere is something I need to talk to you about regarding my friend, as I would not want you to accidentally offend 'im or 'is girlfriend," Lily said, as they waited next to the diner.

Gary turned to her, and Lily carefully explained the complexities of The Mechanist to him. Surprisingly, Gary did not seem to care, and even shrugged and said, "After my wife left me, I can definitely see the appeal of a robot girlfriend."

Lily found that a little amusing but had to carefully correct him that Sophie was a fully sapient individual, the same as any human. That he had a bit more trouble accepting but agreed to be polite and agreed that he had no idea what would happen or how a robot would grow after two hundred years of continuous operation.

Her truck pulled up to a stop next to the diner. Lily glanced at the chronometer still running at forty-six minutes and twenty seconds. She was tempted to check the surveillance drone to see if he had been slowing down to make the ETA he gave or if he just was that precise, but she decided she didn't want to know.

Her truck looked like a proper eighteen-wheeler now, as the trailer they stole was an enclosed box-type trailer. Those weren't too popular in the apocalypse, as it was common to have guards or even passengers ride in the flat-top trailers that were most common. A guard wouldn't be able to protect you that well if they were inside a steel or aluminium box. Still, for now, it would be fine. She did have a Gatling laser installed on the roof, after all.

They both hoped up into the cab, Gary had to go into the back sleeping area and sat next to Sophie. Lily introduced everyone, and Gary was polite and shook Sophie's manipulator, saying, "It's nice to meet you, ma'am."

Lily suspected that Scott only had a few categories of people in his brain, and definitely, those who treated Sophie well and those who didn't were two of the major ones.

Lily, herself, had a sliding numerical scale between one and ten, where one indicated someone she would protect at all costs, even if it meant her own death, and tens were people she would absolutely kill and melt their cortical stack if she had the opportunity to do so, although she had never actually had to Really Kill anyone until she came to the Fallout universe.

She did not, presently, have any ones in her database, but the Apprentice was a low two and the lowest person in this universe. Scott and Sophie were low-threes, while the average stranger she met was usually in between a six and a seven, depending on her first impressions of them.

Grace was mid to high three; her team were fours along with Mr Tombs, while Miller and Gary were both presently low fives. Gary was close to becoming a four, primarily due to the fact that since she brought him into the world again, she felt a little responsible for him, as well as his continued behaviour reinforcing trust and that he wasn't working against her interests.

While she liked Miller, she doubted he would ever be much lower than he was now due to his priority of protecting a group of people that Lily was not a part of. She could see continued cooperation being in both of their best interests, but she could also see him selling her out if he absolutely had to in order to protect those he had sworn to defend.

She could and did respect that, but she wouldn't let him lead her down the garden path, either.

Before she came to this world, she had numerous and complicated flow charts that she handed to her social assistants, which specified the ideal response to a given person based on her rating. Death or at least serious bodily injury or sleeve destruction were common end-points on her flow charts when dealing with nines and tens, but they could also happen to seven and eights given the right circumstances.

Now, however, she was doing a lot more contemporaneous speaking and deciding her reactions on the fly, even if the reactions weren't always the best, which would have caused her incredible distress before.

Everyone got out when Scott brought the truck to a stop, and he went to the rear and opened up the trailer to let out both her robots and the ones he brought with him. In addition to Sophie, he brought Matilda, the Mister Gutsy and six Protectrons, whom Sophie was now controlling effortlessly.

Inside the back of the Truck were a single robot charging station and her small generator and fabricator. That was a good idea. In fact, if she hadn't already sat in one of Scott's robot charging stations last night, she might have done so now as continual usage of her brain-computer had dropped its charge to below fifty per cent, but she didn't want to give Gary the correct idea about her, just yet.

"Well, well well... if it ain't the staff puke!" exclaimed the Mister Gutsy. He floated around to take a look at Gary, "Are you a soldier, boy?!"

Gary smirked, "Fuck no, I ain't! You're looking at Chief Petty Officer Gary Kaminsky, NIN 917-2781-5551, you rusty bucket of bolts." He paused and then said, "Retired, of course."

The Mister Gutsy stiffened his plasma gun and laser-manipulators, going to attention, "Sorry, chief! Say... when's the next Army-Navy game, so I can see you swabbies beaten like a drum?"

Gary chuckled, "When you find out, you tell me. I'd definitely show up to watch in person this year."

Matilda then circled him also and purred out, "Well, well, well... what do we have here?" Lily kicked her, which got her to chuckle. Matilda was a lot more sapient than the Mister Gutsy was, but she liked sandbagging and pretending she was just a regular bot a lot of the time. Lily didn't know why, though.

That reminded Lily, "Oh, Matilda. I 'ave a design for zhe replacement head, it won't be zhe normal laser cannon you're used to, but at least you'll fire lasers out of your eyes again, yeah?"

She looked interested, "I've definitely missed that. But these sword-arms are really nice, too."

"Alright. We have two main objectives with this trip. The first is to acquire a number of machine tools, these should be near the factory assembly line as some of the parts were machined individually. The second objective is to acquire as many operable or repairable fission motors as we can cart away," began the Mechanist after everyone settled down.

He was just rehashing what everyone already knew, which was a good idea on an op like this, so she and Gary both nodded. Lily also didn't mind letting the Mechanist take command of the operation since he had a lot more experience looting dangerous places than she did. Including at least one trip to this very site.

He continued, "Objective two causes the tactics to change, as the last time I saw a bunch of General Atomics crates was very near the ant queen. So we will have to take her out, which means we will have to take ALL the ants out. So instead of a simple looting operation, this is a sweep and clear after which we can loot in peace. Questions?"

Gary raised his hand, "I've seen one of the worker ants, but Doctor St. Claire implied that was the weakest of the bunch. What other types are there, and how will we kill the queen if it is as big as a truck?"

Scott briefly explained each type of ant, from the worker to the warrior to the elite guard near the queen. "As for the Queen, it isn't very mobile, so no doubt it has some sort of ranged attack like spitting acid of some such thing. A massed laser attack would probably work, but we have two additional weapons."

One of Lily's Termitrons jumped out of the truck, carrying the large minigun she had stolen from that lady on the bridge, "This robot will be our heavy weapons specialist. We have about five hundred rounds of armour-piercing, which should work. The second weapon is the integrated electrical attack Lily built into her robots. At high-intensity discharge, continual attacks will likely electrocute even the queen. Questions?"

Gary shook his head, "None."

"Alright, we'll breach this end and work systematically, eliminating all arthropods in sight," the Mechanist said, smiling. "Our first strategy will involve setting a kill box at the entrance; if we can kill one ant there, it will release distress pheromones which should cause a swarm into our prepared ambush. I suspect we can eliminate more than half of the total number of ants this way."

Lily allowed Sophie to control her robots, as the robot girl seemed better at it than she did; she certainly had better multi-tasking ability than Lily herself did.

Lily felt it was a little weird to only have herself and her rifle to be responsible for again.

She grinned as they, as a group, walked into the first large room of the factory; it was time to get an ant-genocide achievement.