It IS Rocket Science! (5)

As time passes, the operations of Wube Inc. became more visible to the average Night Citizen. At the Night City Landfill the miners are busy digging through the years of irresponsibly thrown trash by the previous company, going through the mountain of scrap and refuse without a care. The miners drill digs through the ground, and the massive claws compact the dug up Scrap before spitting it out on the conveyor belts. 

The Conveyor belts threads are full of Scrap, yet it precisely moves the items through curves, turns, ups and downs without spilling a single item. Once it reaches the Recyclers, large Blue Inserter arms grab the Scrap and throw it inside the machine. The Machine grinds, shakes, and separate the detritus, spitting a recovered item. There's a certain variety for the recovered items, but some of them being mysterious to the staff on the recycling center.

Most of the Wube Inc. process is automated, but they still need to record stock and the movement of goods for bureaucratic purposes. The are also has a security team patrolling the area against potential infiltrators using stolen identification cards, though violent incursions proved to be ineffective thanks to the literal wall of turrets defending the area. Another function of the staff is to check the conveyor belts and make sure that it isn't stuck into a deadlock in case the inserter arms can't sort the items in time.

Another function of the staff is to notify the Engineer when the unrecoverable refuse spit from the recycles in the forms of Contaminated Scrap reaches a certain point. Then they call one of Wube Inc. haulers to send the items to a different processing plant for storage, away from Night City and deep into the Bad Lands.

Once a certain type of reclaimable item reaches the desired production, a Hauler is called to transport it to the Factory. From there, the large vehicle travel through the streets of Night City under a heavy escort of the "Buggy," a fast vehicle armed with a mounted machinegun, which can house up to four security guards under the employ of Wube Inc.

On an entirely different direction, a different convoy travels through the Bad Lands, a heavy armed escort following the Haulter towards a forgotten oil field. In the past, that area produced hundreds of thousand of barrels of crude oil per day, until the oil dried up to the point that it stopped being economically viable to extract. Since it is inside the "no man's land" of post-war America, those capable of exploiting the field and defending it are the effective owners.

The oil field defenses improved since Mark first set the first oil pump, and the Hauler driver sets the vehicle on the storage area, and its primary cargo of Empty Steel Barrels is transferred to storage, then a mechanical loader spits the barrels on the conveyor belts, which disappears underground through the Underground Belts towards a sealed off area hidden behind an electronic gate. The driver moves towards another storage area and collects the Steel Barrels filled with Crude Oil. Once the vehicle is full, the trip back to Night City starts.

While the cargo is precious, no Nomad clan or opportunistic parties succeeded in harming the Oil Haulers thanks to the addition of another vehicle from the Wube Inc. garage: the Warden. Through means unknown by the present witness, any broken vehicle near the Warden would be restored to pristine condition given enough time. Combined with the exceptional range of the machineguns mounted on the "Buggy," nothing that came close with malicious intent survived the encounter. When such encounters happen, the Warden runs over the fallen bodies and debris, somehow cleaning everything up and leaving no evidence of altercation ever happening.

Eventually, regardless of where the Hauler came from, be it the Night City Landfill, or from the badlands, they would all return to Pacifica were reconstruction efforts are being done. The Haulers enter through the gates, being greeted by what the locals call The Factory. The previous stone walls now have a smooth surface, made of durable concrete. The Engineer upgraded all walls surrounding the factory while using the old Stone Walls to section off the area overlooking the sea, as he undergoes a special project.

The Haulers deposit their precious cargo on the marked storage area, where most items transfer to the inner factory while the remaining goes to packaging, where several workers pick up, sort, package, seal, and separate the items for delivery to the Corporations. From there, the items are stored in a conventional warehouse, then shipped using vans towards Wube Inc. clients.

The items that went into the factory travel through the conveyor belts until they are picked by the inserters, processed inside the assemblers together with other items until they turn into Chemical Science, and together with the Science already being produced, they travel to the Science Labs. Once, the labs were close enough to the edge of the factory that people could hear the faint music produced as technology advanced, but now the factory expanded further than that area. The Engineer moved the "Rave Zone" to a different area where he installed speakers that could play music, but for the moment those remain unused.

As the labs use the Science packs, they unlock new technological progress on the Science Tree of the Factorio System. Weapons improvements, new buildings, improved productivity, new intermediaries, until finally the technology that the Engineer was waiting for.

Rocket Science.

The Engineer finally unlocked Rocket Science and with it he can send satellites to space. With eyes on the sky, the Engineer will be one step ahead of his competitors. Before Mark can take this next step he needs to prepare himself, after all this game changer will attract a lot of attention from the entire world.

There are at least two loose ends that Mark feels he must take care off before starting Rocket Science in earnest: first, he needs the data on Biotechnica scientific discoveries to produce a substitute to Legally Distinct Spice™, or Vitamelange, and with it become capable of cleaning the growing stockpile of Contaminated Scrap, and while Mark could buy the data, if he doesn't at least try to engage in corporate espionage the other corporations would consider Wube Inc. weak and start harassing Mark. Second, Mark didn't forget the gang war sent his way by DeShawn and is patiently waiting for the best time to return the favor.