Taylor had decided, with a little help from Logic, that going to school was... no longer necessary. Anything she needed to learn to earn a GED or simply getting educational materials could be provided by her crazy AI. Danny, her father, unfortunately still believed she was going to school, and she was... not currently ready to tell him otherwise.
Doing so would involve cracking open a tub of worms she would much rather avoid right now. After all, their plans involved slipping a spacebound, teleporting engineer drone past the Simurgh by disrupting her connection to whatever empowered her.
Sure, that conversation would go over REAL well. Hah, not.
'Oh, and by the way, I also built an AI that now lives in the internet and could realistically bring the entire world to its knees with a slight flex of his digital muscles.' No big deal.
Ya, Taylor was going to avoid that conversation like the plague for now. There would be time to deal with that all later... like, when she had a massive fleet of ships and defenses to protect them from harm. Also it would be far too late to turn back then, compared to now. Giving her Dad time to tell her what a dumb idea this was and to stop her was definitely not the primary reason she didn't want to fess up.
So there she was, idling away on her computer, chatting with Logic about their plans while Danny was at work, when a resounding knock echoed throughout the house. Logic confirmed their first couple shipments were set to arrive today, so it wasn't too alarming. Taylor rushed downstairs but carefully composed herself before opening the front door.
An unmarked brown delivery truck had just started to pull away, leaving behind two boxes, each about 2 cubic feet in size. Both were quite heavy, so it was with a rather obscene amount of effort that she managed to get them into the basement, though she managed to nearly trip and fall more than once throughout the process.
After moving about some of the old, dust-covered boxes containing memories and old family treasures, she got a box knife and revealed the spoils of the first box. Taylor stared unblinkingly at the sight before her - more boxes. And one wireless earbud with a built in microphone.
It took her longer than she would have cared to admit to realize what its purpose was - she could hardly bring her computer into the basement and talk to Logic while simultaneously trying to build things, the cord on her cheap headset was just not long enough, disregarding the difficulty bring the whole thing down would entail.
Unpackaging it and turning it on took no time at all, and by the time she put it in her ear Logic had already connected. His not-so-tinny monotone voice came through much clearer, and was still obviously male.
After that they tore through the plethora of boxes within the shipment, revealing many of the things she would need to construct the first of their budding technological empire - a soldering iron and its holder, various circuit boards that she couldn't make heads or tails of, some manual hand tools to help shape metal, and several other things she didn't know the name of.
Some raw materials were included in the second box, including some metals that she was pretty sure were rather rare and expensive. "Are we going to get in trouble for this, Logic? This seems like it would have cost someone a lot of money."
"Oh, these were all perfectly legal purchases made through a... well I'd call them a 'black market type' but they are fairly legal. For the most part. Anyway, I rounded up a few peoples purchases and deposited any extraneous cash people wouldn't notice into an account that's definitely existed for the past 12 years. Nobody will be the wiser, and with the steps I took to achieve anonymity, people will suspect the Pope before they ever suspect us. Have no fear."
Taylor supposed she'd have to trust the AI she'd built. If she didn't what was the point in even trying to achieve... whatever it was she wanted to achieve. Being a hero? Maybe.
Saving people? Definitely.
Independent heroes struggled because they were just that - independent and without support. It would be different in her case. With Logic and a fleet of some sort behind her, she could be her own hero team with manpower to spare. She just had to make it that far first. And shuttle a teleporting drone past the Simurgh. No big deal.
"If you say so. What's the first thing we need to do to get started? And what do we want to start with?"
"A basic engineering drone! They can build just about anything else on their own, although we will need to invest some effort into making one with the necessary upgrades to both teleport and achieve a stealth field. That one will be unique, but the first engineering drone and make others, and so on. Yes, I know there's things like 'laws' and 'automatic kill-orders' for self-replicating technology, but we'll be fine, don't worry."
... Ah, yes. Technically they were only 'self-replicating' because they could make more of each other, but they were merely drones that would do nothing unless ordered to, so it was less of a grey goo worldly apocalypse scenario and more a matter of convenience for her and Logic.
"Actually, all we really need to do is build the construction beam. We could build the whole anti-gravity and propulsion system ourselves, but why go through the trouble? The construction beam with the right blueprint programmed and materials provided could just build the first full drone by itself. That would save a lot of time, now that I think about it."
"Well, I knew I kept you around for a reason. Tell me what I need to grab and let's get started."
They had several hours to tinker and build before Danny got home, and even then they were only around halfway done with the construction beam. Taylor theorized it went to show just how complicated the thing was. After all its not like they were trying to build a whole suite of advanced systems, just the one aspect of a regular engineering drone. If they were to include the rest it would take several days of work all told, but with them cheating and using the construction beam to finish 80% of the work, they could probably have their first one done by tomorrow or the day after.
Then they would just have to supply some materials for deconstruction and then bam! The significantly faster construction beam would make them a whole engineering drone.
"So, I remember you mentioned something about 37 shipments. If we're mostly done with just the first two, what's in the remaining 35?"
"Ah, those mostly contain random things, some snacks, some books, a few articles of clothing, maybe a wig in case you ever need to go undercover. It was mostly things to hide what the first two contained since I scrambled the contents of the first two in the original manifests and the remaining shipments were there to cover up the others."
Well, at least she doesn't have to wait for the rest of the packages. Though Dad might have a few questions...
Things to deal with later.
The next two days passed in a blur - either she was talking to Logic, eating dinner with her Dad, or contemplating the plethora of ships she could picture in her mind.
The construction beam was finally completed. It looked... essentially like a stripped down jet engine with a more narrow profile and scaled down to size. It rested on a stand to keep it steady, aimed at a pile of metal cubes that were included in one of the original two shipments. The exact method in which the engineering drones beams actually transported and used material still confounded her, but that didn't prevent Taylor from appreciating how much of a time-saver it would be.
With a verbal command from her, Logic initialized the beam. A thick, red beam of light lit up the dim basement, striking the cubic metal roughly in its center mass.
Rather than piercing through it like a laser, the beam halted on the surface of the metal where small wisps of the material simply began to... disappear. It was like watching ice cream melt, except nothing dripped off the side of the cone - it vanished. The blocks began to slowly decrease in size as they were consumed.
"The construction beam is much faster at applying matter than removing matter, so the reconstruction will go quicker than this. Once done, however, the new engineering drone will be leagues better than this thing we've created is. Mere human hands are inadequate to build things at the level of technology we are striving for."
While mildly insulting, Taylor couldn't really argue against it. Whatever process the beam used looked like it had incredibly fine control, whereas she was lucky if she could retrieve a screw she accidentally dropped while building their first prototype.
Nearly 20 minutes later and the block was completely 'melted' as it were, and the beam switched from red to green. Immediately, in a much faster manner than before, particles began to appear in a clearly pre-defined pattern. First the Chassis... materialized, which was roughly two feet round. It was relatively smooth, only featuring holes or protrusions where a few antenna and scanner-like devices appeared.
Next she assumed the internals were all created in the same fashion, but she couldn't see it anymore. The last bit she was able to see was the construction beam 'gun' emerging from the last visible hole left on the drone. Their prototypes green beam vanished once it was complete.
A light thrumming noise travelled throughout the basement, announcing the fact it successfully turned on. The next indicator their beam did its job right was when it began to slowly rise from the table, spinning in place as it flew under its own power.
Unable to hold herself back, Taylor let out a cheer! "Our first engineering drone is done!"
"Yes yes, congratulations. Now we just have to sneak it past the Simurgh. Then we may begin E.X.T.I.N.C.T.I.O.N. protocols!"
Taylor sighed.
