The Brink and Back - Tinker of Fiction

The next four days went by in a blur.

Samwise and I were working on our latest projects nearly nonstop. We already had the molly-maker and the material suspender, which just left the mass recycler and the activator. I managed to finish the design for the recycler the night I shook hands with Padre for our new deal, putting it together the next morning.

It was a surprisingly intricate series of filtering methods, shrunk down to fit into a tight box. A grinder worked the trash and scrap into a sand-like powder before drying it out. Then, it used a magnet to extract ferrous material, weight filtering to grab heavier elements, electrical charges to filter out specific alloys, and several other more esoteric methods to extract anything else useful. Plastic was still an issue, but upon finishing the mass recycler, I realized I could now reach a bit further down that specific branch. A quick look showed a machine capable of taking the plastics from the mass recycler and refining them considerably, making them into useful materials.

By the time I was finished putting together that machine, Padre's men had picked up the designs for the minion detector and the drone, leaving me with the rest of my payment. Immediately, I called the numbers I had researched and saved days ago, talking to four of the original landowners of Rocky Ridge. Each of them was ecstatic to sell their land, happily dumping what they thought was a useless plot of the desert for literal ennies on the eddie. It was such a significant loss for them that I asked Samwise to remember their information so that I could potentially offer them something better in the future when I wasn't so strapped for cash and resources.

With the land officially mine, I got to work on the final barrier, the suspension liquid activator. Thankfully, this was a tiny machine when compared to the two machines it worked with, just a bit larger than a computer tower from my old world. It took the inert and contaminated solution, filtered out everything unwanted, and reactivated it by applying a very gentle ultrasonic pulse and nearly negligible electric charge. Those were alternated several times a second, reactivating the solution and preparing it for the next material. When it was complete, I finally had full access to the higher-end models.

When I was mentally examining those designs, I realized I was lucky to have made the low-end molly-maker first, because getting some of these parts would have been a nightmare otherwise. They would have required high-quality custom orders, which would have taken forever and would have been nearly impossible to explain. Now, with my own molly-maker, I could just print them out.

Well, I could once I got them all up and running.

With the four machines completed, it was time to work on the suspension solution. I made four five-gallon buckets of strange liquid, which was thankfully mostly cheap. It was an interesting mixture of materials, all of which were on the cheaper end. The process of making the solution was also surprisingly simple. The hardest part was the ratios and multiple steps, which saw me creating what was best described as an artificial protein, one made to react to very specific energy signals. More than anything, they were the key to the printing process.

Once that was done, it was time to start moving our shit to Rocky Ridge. Originally, I had planned on waiting until I had a free week, but the more I thought about it, the more that seemed unwise. Between learning that Padre was the only reason people hadn't noticed my shopping habits and knowing I would have much more freedom once I moved, I decided to take the risk.

It was a bit nerve-racking to begin with, since this was a big leap out of the relatively safe feeling apartment. When it was finally time to go, the actual move was pretty easy, especially since Jackie recruited a few friends to help. They had no idea what they were transporting since everything was boxed up, even Samwise. We had the apartment cleaned out in a few hours, and everything shipped to Rocky Ridge a few hours after that.

Now, when purchasing the land, I ended up buying a couple of large chunks. The BD Shack, the garage and CHOOH2 station, which included the parking lot across the street, the one that encircled the power substation, the liquor store across the street from the BD Shack, and the solar farm to the southwest. These came with a handful of the surrounding trailers, as well as all of the junk and scrap around the entire premises. At some point, I was sure I would buy the rest of the dead town, but for now, I left it alone.

Out of all of the buildings, the garage was in the best condition, so we moved everything into there. The entire move, from leaving the apartment to moving into the garage, took eight hours. By the end of it, we had everything up and working, save the Molly-maker and its two accompanying devices. Those required too much power, and I didn't want to hook them to the already struggling solar farm.

A few of Jackie's friends, ones requested by Padre, set up shop in the BD shack to act as guards, thankfully on the fixer's dime. He promised me it was simply him protecting an asset, not trying to influence me into partnering closer to the Valentino's. I didn't care as long as they didn't try to interfere with my work or spy on me.

While Jackie and his friends were keeping an eye out on the surrounding desert, I got to work on the larger scale production equipment. Rather than go for the all-in-one device and sacrifice efficiency and size, I decided to make a rather large molly-mixer, at first running it off of the smaller filter and material suspender while using it to make larger versions solely for its use.

While I was designing and working in my new workshop, I sent Samwise out to do some work around our new property. His first task was cleaning off the solar panel farm, which by itself massively improved our power situation. I was still going to run all of the Molly-makers and associated equipment off Elerium, but it was still an important success. After he did a quick check of the power systems to make sure we weren't going to burn out anything or the time spent with no maintenance had set up a ticking time bomb of missable damage, Samwise got to work cleaning and scrapping stuff around the garage, making more room for our projects.

I had no concern for efficiency, so basically everything that looked even remotely junky went into the mass recycler, from rusted car parts to bags of trash. The machine was loud, so we had it running in the shed behind the garage, where it wouldn't bother anyone. After a few hours of working, Samwise walked into the garage with boxes of metal powder, organized and ready to be poured into the material suspender.

By the time the sun rose and Jackie walked into the garage with a cup of coffee and a bag of food, I had the original molly-maker, as well as the suspension and filtration system hooked up to an Elerium power core. It was essentially an oversized Elerium node using several full chunks of Elerium to generate massive amounts of power. The molly maker was already going, with multiple reservoirs running through materials quickly as it worked hard to make its bigger and better brother.

I was passed out on the floor on a few of the cushions from the couches in the other room. This was the first time using the molly-maker, and while I was sure I had done it right thanks to the plans in my head, building, moving, installing, and then immediately and extensively running a complicated and delicate piece of machinery wasn't exactly the best idea. The machine had plenty of warning buzzers and beeps though, I just needed to be close by to hear them.

The fact that Samwise was nearby working the fabricators and had been since the previous night showed just how tired I was. I woke up slowly to the sensation of Jackie nudging me awake, handing me the large coffee before I was even fully upright.

"Dammit, Jay, you look like hot death," He said, helping me to my feet. "You're lucky I promised, or I would have let you sleep."

"I know, I know," I said, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and taking a drink from the coffee. "Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. Got a lot of what I wanted to do done, though."

Jackie looked around the interior of the garage. The large space was almost entirely cleaned out, all of the trash and scrap having been removed and recycled by Sam. Other than that, the space was clearly in a transitional state, with things pulled out away from the walls and machines running while sitting on the ground.

The molly-maker and its two extra machines were against one wall, with space for its larger brother once I was done printing the parts. Once that was done, I would stack the smaller machine in the corner and upgrade the Elerium power core so it could run both of them.

When I finally completed the larger device, my ability to produce whatever parts I needed, whatever I could design, would skyrocket. Already, with just the smaller, less efficient version, I was close to cutting production time by a full twenty-five percent. And that didn't include how much time I would have spent trying to finagle parts to do things they weren't intended to do.

All in all, I was hoping that I would be ready to start powering through more Titanfall tech by tomorrow morning. The spare set of hands that Samwise was making would certainly help.

"Hey, listen. So Padre sent someone over to serve as your dedicated bodyguard," Jackie said with a wince. "The boys he paid are muscle, but they don't have that kind of experience."

"I thought you were my bodyguard?" I said with a smirk, the larger man rolling his eyes.

"You know that's not what I'm looking to do, Genio. I gotta stick to my dreams, you know?" he said, shaking his head. "I'm gonna keep working in the city. Don't worry, I'll keep-"

"You say that like I'm not going to be running them with you," I said, turning away from the computer to look at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Well, choom… you got your set up, and you got income from your deal with Padre-"

"Jackie, I told you we are in this together. You're not getting rid of me that easy," I assured him, slapping him on the shoulder. "Give me five days, and we can start running jobs again.

"I… alright, Jackson," he said with a nod, surprised by happy about my statement.

"Good… now what was this about a bodyguard?"

"Oh, right. He found someone neutral who had experience and could act as your shadow. He paid for a month of her services. After that, you gotta keep paying her," He explained. "He seemed pretty confident that you would happily pay her out of pocket by that time."

For some reason, the mention of the bodyguard's gender tickled the back of my brain. A bad feeling started to come over me as I fixed Jackie with a look.

"Who did he find?"

"Well… technically, she had already been watching over you for a while now, and-"

"You're taking too long, big guy!" A familiar voice said from outside the garage.

From around the corner came Kaytlyn, a smile on her face as she leaned against the open garage door frame. She was dressed in much more professional clothes than the last time I saw her, including what I was pretty sure was a black, reinforced jacket over some chest armor, militech by the looks of it. She gave me a wave, her smile morphing into a smirk.

"Kaytlyn, good to see you," I said, my tone blank. "So…"

"Yes, I was being paid to look over you and keep an eye out for trouble. Though I am actually friends with Misty, and I do actually get my cyberware from Vik," She assured me, her tone shifting to something close to understanding. "That was just a coincidence."

"So you weren't my neighbor?"

"Kinda sorta?" She explained with a shrug. "I was really out of the city on business, but Padre brought me back on a favor. I lived in the same megabuilding, but I was lower down, so I traded rooms with your old neighbor. I even had a plan to use the excuse of a sibling to explain away the random guy you might have seen using it before, but you didn't even notice."

"I'm a busy person," I explained with a shrug. "How much is he paying you?"

"Twenty-five grand for a month, but like Jackie said, he's pretty sure you would keep me on at the end."

"Why is that?"

"I'm damn good at my job," She explained with a simple shrug. "You certainly didn't see me coming."

"You keep telling yourself that," I said, shaking my head. "So, you gonna report to him if he asks you any questions?"

"Well…. Considering he is signing my paycheck…" She said with a wince.

"Bonus points for honesty, at least," I responded, scratching at my cheek. "What do you shoot?"

"... I usually strap an SMG or a sniper rifle," She said, now looking curious. "Depends on the job. Why?"

Instead of answering, I walked into the garage's side room, the door opening automatically as I got close. Spot had already tuned my keyfob into the security, giving me access to all the buildings I owned. I returned a minute later carrying my custom sniper rifle and a bag of ammo for it. I passed her the rifle and the bag.

"Go outside and play around with this for a while," I said. "Come back when you're out of ammo."

"Uh… wait, what?" She said, accepting the powerful mag weapon and looking confused. "What is this, I don't recognize the model?"

"Just go out and try it."

"... I'll be on the roof," She finally said. "Don't go anywhere."

I gestured for her to leave, turning back to my work and ignoring her. After a moment of silence, I could hear her footsteps as she left. A few seconds after that, Jackie spoke up.

"What was that about choom?" He asked, looking confused.

"Padre doesn't hire useless people," I explained, turning back to look at my partner in crime. "So she is worth the effort. But you know I can't have people snitching on me. So I'm baiting the trap. Just give it some time. Oh, and warn you buddies about the gunshots."

Jackie looked confused but shrugged, his eyes glowing as he messaged his friends. For the next twenty minutes, I chiseled away at some prep but mainly focused on mediocre to poor food Jackie brought. I also finished the decent coffee, all the while listening to the sounds of Kaytlyn firing out into the desert.

When she was done, she came back down, her footsteps considerably faster.

"Where did you find this?" She asked urgently. "It's got no telemetry link, but I was putting shots on target almost double what I usually manage."

"Do you like it?"

"It's a preem piece of hardware," She said with a nod. "Where can I get one?"

"You can have it, a matching SMG, and a set of under armor that is more comfortable and more protective than what you're wearing," I said, pointing to her militech armor. "If you send Padre his money back and work for me directly."

For the first time since I had met her, the blue-haired woman was at a complete loss for words. It took her a second to realize what my angle was, but when she did, she nodded.

"You don't want me hanging around while working for someone else's eddies. I can understand that, but why not just find someone else?"

"Cause Padre wouldn't have hired you if you were bad at your job," I explained. "You were honest about reporting back to him. Most people would have pretended to be loyal to me. And you didn't try to sneak a listening device into my stuff when you gave my delivery back."

"That's it?" she asked, putting her hand on her hip and raising an eyebrow. "If you're that quick to trust, this job is going to be harder than I thought."

"Trust is earned. I'm giving you the chance to do that," I explained before my lips curled into a smirk. "But honestly, I'm mostly trusting Misty. She seems like a good judge of character, and wouldn't put up with you shit if you were a psycho."

She snorted and shook her head, but eventually, she nodded. I could see Jackie nodding his head in agreement, obviously trusting his girlfriend as well.

"Alright, I can see that. She doesn't mess around with stuff like that," She accepted with a nod. "Now I'm happy to take good gear as payment, but I still need some eddies. I can't buy food with a sniper rifle. Well, not without making a mess."

"Then you can go with Jackie and our borg friend on jobs," I said, looking at Jackie, who winced for a moment before finally nodding. "Having a third person would mean they could take larger jobs and earn more cash. You'd get a fair share."

"Bodyguard and some jobs on the side?" She asked, her eyebrow raised. "Gonna be hard to guard you if I'm leaving you alone to go on gigs."

"Give it a few days, and you won't have to worry about me at all," I assured her confidently. "Got a lot of protections I plan on building around here to make it safe."

"...I need to think about it. Padre isn't gonna be happy taking his money back," She pointed out.

"He won't care if you explain you're still working with me. Or I guess he will have to be because the only difference is that you won't feel obligated to report my secrets back to him. If that's a problem for him, he can pound sand."

Kaytlyn laughed, even as Jackie winced. We chatted a bit more about the deal, assuring her that I would have an SMG just as good as the sniper for her within the week. I also pointed out that I would probably be offering her more gear in the future, since it was in my best interest to keep her well stocked with goodies. After we were done, she left the town in a modified Quadra Type-66. It retained most of the original design's body but had several upgrades built in. It kind of reminded me of a halfway step to the nomad version from the game.

"Well… at least she's got style," I said, watching her drive off. "Think she'll sign up?

"Maybe? What are you gonna do if she doesn't?" Jackie asked, standing beside me by the entrance.

"Probably post her up on the roof with the rifle," I responded with a shrug. "She will probably be up there for a while anyway. The only thing that changes is if we trust her with the big secrets."

Not long after that, I got back to work. With the parts still printing for the large, improved molly-maker, I helped Samwise with his project, the first of three MRVN units. They would be Samwise's workforce, with AIs that were much more simple. They would take quite some time to develop into real sentience, during which they would help Samwise with the projects I assign him. We completed the first one about an hour and a half after Kaytlyn left, and they immediately went off to continue collecting and recycling the trash around the garage, moving on to the BD shack when it was finished. It was eventually joined by two brothers over the rest of the day.

When the parts for the large molly-maker were done, I worked hard to put it together, only stopping to get the molly-maker working on the suspension and activator machines.

When I was finally done with everything, it was much later that night. I barely managed to make it to the off section of the garage, where I collapsed into the couch with a smile on my face. My near nonstop, single-minded work had finally paid off, and I now had the infrastructure set up to produce a significant amount of my own parts. It wasn't exactly a hundred percent independence, since I would still occasionally need specific materials, exotic stuff should I require it, and some rare metals would probably need to be restocked since the recycler wouldn't be able to keep up, but it was a huge step in the right direction. For example, I would be able to make nearly ninety percent of a MRVN unit myself, and most of what I couldn't make was the hydraulic fluid.

The next morning, I woke up and walked around the exterior of the garage. It was miles ahead of what it had been the day before, entire cars had been mulched in the mass recycler for materials. We had several large crates of said materials, just waiting for me to use, and dozens of blocks of plastic set aside for later. The MRVNs had even made significant progress in cleaning around the BD shack as well.

As I continued to walk around, I spotted Samwise leading two MRVN units, working with them to repair the partially collapeed corner of the BD Shack. A welder, one left behind in the garage, sparked as Samwise welded things together, staving off any more damage.

I checked the interior of the BD shack as well, unsurprised to see that Jackie's friends, and Padres men, had left, helping themselves to a few bottles of liquor from behind the bar. With the place empty, I had to admit it was a little less secure feeling than I would have liked. I could feel that we were alone out here, exposed and vulnerable.

The sound of a car running through the town, stopping nearby, pulled me from my thoughts, and I headed out into the street, my hand resting on my pistol. Luckily, the car was familiar, as was who climbed out of it.

"So, what's the verdict?" I asked as Kaytlyn stepped out of her car.

"You were right," She said with a smile. "Padre didn't care. He just took the money back."

"That's good news. So you're on board?"

"For now. I reserve the right to leave after the first month," She said, leaning back to sit on the hood of her car. "There's only so long that a girl can work for upgrades and armor, as nice as it is."

"I wouldn't worry about it," I said, waving off her worries. "Jackie is coming back later today with a shipping truck of stuff like beds and furniture. If you're gonna be staying out here with me, call him up and let him know we need at least another bed. In the meantime, feel free to explore the grounds."

I went over what I owned, the trained bodyguard leaving to inspect some of the nearby trailer homes. I hadn't gotten the chance to look through them, but there were several on the land I owned. Two of them were obvious losses and would eventually end up getting put through the mass recyclers, but the rest at least look passable.

As she walked away, I returned to my garage. I was glad to have someone else join the team, both as a bodyguard for myself and to go on Jackie's side gigs. That said, it was going to be an interesting process, keeping her out of the loop for some of the things I was building. Eventually, I might let her in on just how crazy my tech was, but for now, she was too erratic, and her allegiances were clearly up for sale.

I sat down in front of my computer and let out a long sigh, spinning around to see the final state of the garage. No longer was it a mess of things ready to move in.

The two molly-makers and their accompanying machines were against the far wall, hooked directly to the Elerium power core. The original workbench had been extended with the one from the apartment, with the original now just a table for the 3D printers and the Elerium generator. Both of the fabricators were stacked next to that and bolted to the wall to reduce vibrations. The fabricators had been upgraded again, with the auto feeders arms receiving substantial programming update from Samwise, as well as a small container on each side of them, for the arms to grab and deposit material.

With the molly-makers done, they would be getting much less action, but they would still be useful.

The workbench we had moved over was more or less the same as it had been, only significantly less cramped. It was set up to form a right angle with the original work bench, which had been slid closer to the far wall.

After cleaning out all of the junk, and moving out most of the tools we wouldn't be using very often, like the tire tread changer, we managed to fit almost everything in one garage bay. This meant I could park the truck in the second bay or, more likely, use the second bay as a place to build larger stuff. I had plans to turn the CHOOH2 fuel station area into an outdoor garage already.

Who knows when that would happen, though.

With everything set up, Samwise and his younger brothers doing general repairs around my land and Kaytlyn looking through the trailer park, it was time for me to get to work. I had five full days left with the Titanfall tech tree, and I planned on making the most of it. I wanted to crack their shield systems, expand my robotics and AI development to include the methods created by the frontier Militia, as well as pad my general technological understanding with whatever I could make from the universe. There were dozens of things I wanted to add to my repertoire, and not a whole lot of time to do it in.

I was going to need more coffee.