Chapter 2: I'm just a bit miffed is all.

Denny's is truly a despicable chain. I, a man born and raised below the Mason Dixin would never dare dine there by my own will, my heart belongs to the one true king of breakfast and blood sport, Waffle House. But I've been forced, Denny's or Arby's. With only one restaurant between these two chains, I choose the gas station Denny's. Finally, I get to sit in somewhere with the heating. I imagine there'll be colder days soon, but that is for the future, not the present.

It is a relatively small place, with a small number of older folks doting on the restaurant. From what I can put together they must come here during the morning. Grandad does the same thing, not at Deny's though. While I wait for the waitress to take my order I am drawn into the talk show on the TV, I don't recognize it, but they are all the same no matter what universe you are in.

"I'm just a bit miffed is all, why do we give the PRT our tax money if they can't stop things like this from happening? " says an old wrinkled woman. Is she supposed to appeal to the older audience who have the time to be watching talk shows at this time?

"Who else would be able to stop something like this Conney? The police? What if the police failed, would they be able to stop the repercussions." a relatively younger man responds in a slightly derogatory tone. Well, that's rude of him, I don't like him. What does the bastard think the PRT can even do to stop the Impact winter.

"Can I take your order?" asks a twenty-something brunette.

"Yeah, can I get the original combo, with a coffee one cream, and sugar, Please," I say, hoping to god she doesn't expect me to say the combo's name. Why do they like giving pancakes and sausages such embarrassing names?

"Coming right up," the waitress says in a way only gained from countless repetitions.

Food, water, and shelter. Those will be the main struggles of the people outside of my bunker. I cannot assume that I will be able to overcome the tremendous logistical challenge of moving even a fraction of the population. Assuming I even have a bunker for people to go to.

I will need a portable survival shelter, maybe an insulating foam sprayer that takes advantage of pre-existing structures. Maybe multiple types, who knows what hazards will be out there? Potentially have a high-efficiency heater attached to the shelter. An Idea hits me, gas stations. Everyone lives close to one, they are efficiently dispersed to service high and low-density areas, pre-existing gas tanks, basically the whole shebang. Supply them with radios, survival equipment, food, water, and medical supplies. They could act as localized coordination centers. The Infrastructure is already there, I just need to take advantage of it when the time comes.

Before I can spiral deeper into thought, the waitress returns with my breakfast and I thank her. Then I dig into my feast. Food represents another resource that will only get scarcer. Maybe algae and aquaculture, with chemically induced flavoring and all the necessary nutrients crammed in. GMO's specially designed for underground growth. Whichever comes easiest, or maybe both, eggs in one basket and all. Keeping the food is of no issue, but how would I go about dispersing it to

Water can be addressed, simply by purifying it. May need to spread the word about toxic snow, though I'm not certain it will be toxic to touch. The asteroid's heavy metals will surely contaminate most if not all snow. Boiling it will simply not be enough to purify it. Thankfully most people have a basic understanding of how to purify water. Water just seems to be the least pressing issue.

Should probably be writing this down. I finish my meal and wait for the bill. I pay and before I head on my way, I scrawl a few short bullet points and underline gas station multiple times. I fill a pair of steel jerry cans with gas and head on my way.

Driving back to the mill I prepare myself for what will be another long tinkering session. At some point, I'd like to contact some local authorities for assistance, but I don't think that would go well. I need at least a small bit of negotiating power before making any deals. For that I need the bunker, and also for people to realize that the moon fucking explode, seriously am I crazy for thinking that this is some pretty concerning shit.

After spending some time away and returning to my workstation I realize that I should probably have built some structure around my workstation. With the size and wear of the warehouse being what it is. I need to have some protection against the elements. The New England region is cold and only bound to get colder.

Using some lightly rusted steel rods salvaged from safety railings, I constructed a series of wall frames. It doesn't need to be complicated as this is largely to keep heat in and wind out. Welding the 10x8 ft frames together, and making roughly 30x30 ft box around my workstation. Thanks to it being located in the corner of the building, I only need two walls. I drill holes into the edge frames. Then use a masonry anchor bolt to fasten the ends to the warehouse walls. I then collect some corrugated steel panels and weld them to the frame. I go from bottom to top, as to have the sheets overlap. I haven't seen this warehouse when it rains. Who knows how well the roof will hold, I want to be prepared for when I find out.

Now to the difficult part, roofing. First I make seven long poles. Each pole reaches from the warehouse's interior corner to a point along the shack's wall while at an angle. The longest is at roughly 43 ft and the shortest is a pair of 31ft poles. The shortest are for the two shack warehouse corners, the longest for the far corner, and the others are for in-between. Instead of welding them Immediately, I tie the ends of the poles around a 13 ft pole and lay their ends against their respective welding spots Then weld a small metal plate to the end of the 13ft pole. Once done I take the 13ft rod face it straight up, and walk it to the warehouse corner. I secure the 13ft pole by anchoring the small metal plate to the concrete floor using anchor bolts. Once done I have the frame of the roof, with roughly a 10ft gap between the ends of each pole.

Using a ladder that was abandoned at the mill at some point. I weld the roof poles to the 13ft pole. Then take seven more poles, to connect from the 8ft mark on the corner pole to the walls. I form right triangles, to the warehouse corner. After welding the poles to the corner, and wall frame I begin the process of welding cross beams and various other supports along the roof frame. Followed by attaching corrugated steel sheets to act as roofing.

Now for the final touches, I extend and run the generator's exhaust pipe through the roof to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. Then I detach the various lights from the stand and attach the lights to the roof's exposed structure. Followed by stealing a door and its hinges, and attaching it to my door frame. Lastly, I steal the least musty rolling office chair and a filing cabinet.

It was a tedious process, but I finished my workshop by six pm. It looks… well It looks like it has character that's what. It'll serve its function and it will serve it well. But now it's not the time for construction. It's time for the meat and potatoes of tinkering, Robots. The real question is how. What are the hurdles I need to overcome to make it?

First I need a power source, which surprisingly will not be hard to acquire. Not to say Lithium batteries are an option because they most certainly aren't. But the second best type of batteries are. You see I need only a few select elements to produce a Nickel-metal hydride battery. Nickel, Vanadium, Chromium or Iron, Water, and Sodium Hydroxide. These are all things needed for the production of Nickel-metal Hydride batteries. Excluding Sodium Hydroxide these are all commonly used in the production of steel alloys. Sodium Hydroxide is an incredibly common cleaning chemical. The actual process of making these batteries is simple.

Secondly, I need locomotion, which is also incredibly simple for me. Electric motors are far simpler than their combustion counterparts. With my access to aluminum and copper, though not nearly as vast in quantity as the other metals. I can make the motors easily and efficiently without much difficulty. The hardest part is sourcing the lubrication. With the relatively small amount of movement, the lubricant probably won't ever need to be changed.

Now cameras, which once more have a relatively simple solution. All I need to do is turn zinc into zinc oxide, as it's photovoltaic. Then use electrochemical deposition to form a thin film, on a silicon wafer that has been already etched. The slight differences in electric charge will be used to determine color via a series of analog circuits that then reconstruct the image. Which will be translated into digital signals to communicate with the robot's computer.

Finally, programming, which will most likely be the most time-consuming part of my tinkering. Now the locomotion and balance are actually relatively simple. However, the image recognition programs will easily be the most difficult. Though I could create a simple analog chip for performing the differential equations involved in image recognition models, the actual training for those models will have the most difficulties. I would need a huge curated and properly tagged image set that I can use to train my model on. Wait a minute… Does Earth Bet have something like Pinterest?

I need to find the nearest MCdoanlds, community college, or something like that. I need good free wifi. The earlier I start training my model, the quicker I can make a robot. Rushing into my car I speed off towards Albany, I figure I can just figure out something on the way. On my way to town, I spot an exit sign indicating Duncan donuts. I guess they'll just have to be my host. I pull the wiper lever forward, which reveals the secret control panel underneath the center console roughly where the cigarette lighter would be. I then flick the toggle switch for my car's privacy setting, it works by a thin layer of electro-chemical tint. I love my car so fucking much, I'm not gonna a lie I am basically James Bond, but better because I think James Bond was canonical Scottish or maybe it was Welsh. Eh, what's the difference one fucks sheep, and the other wishes he was the sheep.

I pull off into the exit and go for a short bit till I find a strip mall with Dunkin' Donuts, and pull into the parking lot. My car's computer should have more than enough space to store the necessary data. Largely because it relies on parallel computing, as its multiple computers frankestined together. With the relatively advanced computing of Earth, the data storage has already evolved past hard drives onto SSD not m.2, but still good. Their normal hard drives are still good for bulk data storage anyhow. Normally I'd be heavily reliant on this place's wifi download speed, but I have a trick. I foresaw something like this happening. So I gave my onboard computer the ability to pretend to be multiple different computers when downloading over wifi. Though it will look incredibly suspicious. But the point isn't inscrutability, it's speed.

You know in hindsight it may have been a bad idea to go straight away. I've been wearing these clothes and doing labor for about 24 hours straight. Do I even have running water back at the mill? Do I need to rig something up, for that? Like a well or somethin', I'll solve that after completing this first and sleeping. Yes, 10 pm is a bit early, but I've been up way too long. Sleep deprivation causes you to lose an IQ point every day you remain sleep deprived. I need every neuron I have firing at full capacity.

So this place has a password, shit, ok I'll just go inside and order a donut or something. Remember the password and head back into my car and find a website like Pinterest or some other photo website with tags and jack millions of images as I sleep. I go inside, and to my surprise, I recognize the cashier.

Brett, I think her name is Brittany, but Bretts is what she goes by. I worked with her for like two months before she quit. I think she goes to a community college somewhere around here though I never asked about what. She has black hair and blue eyes and is a somewhat skinny twenty-something. I walk up to the counter, as she seems to be in thought, which I assume is her trying to remember my name.

"Dude, do I recognize you from somewhere, up up up don't tell me I'm trying to remember. You worked at the Exxon right? '" Brett asked certain that she pieced the puzzle together.

"Yeah I worked there I quit though," I said somewhat curtly.

"Bro, did ya become a mechanic or something? " She asked curious, I think I have an idea where the conversation is going.

"Yeah something like that, decided that switching gears was a good idea and all," I responded, I mean I'm technically not lying. Better than saying unemployed man living in an abandoned steel mill.

"That how you have that cool ass car? What even is it?" She asks once more. I thought she would want free auto repair but I didn't know she was cool like that.

"DMC Delorean, fixed it up myself," I say

"That's sick bro, anyway what do you want?" she asks.

"I was just gonna order a donut and bum wifi off of here, do you know where the password is," I tell her, no point in overcomplicating it.

"Not a good idea man, the internet sucks here. I'd go down to the McDonalds, it's like a half mile down the road." She really is cool like that, I better get going though, "Wait but buy some food from here first, the manager has been checking the cameras and I don't want him to think I don't do my job. " Right after I order a glazed donut.

Once that short interaction is over I head to McDonald's, and bum the wifi from outside. I guess I'll finally use the Not!SpaceBattles

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Topic: A New Thread

In: Boards ► Capes ► Images ► Any alternative to Pictography

SeeTheAction (Original Poster)

Posted On Aug 14th 2009:

Says it on the Tin, any alternative to after they banned cape photos? Preferably with the same kind of tagging, I don't want to learn new tags.

(Showing page 1 of 1)

►Hammal (Banned)

Replied On Aug 14th 2009:

Just use retard.

►InkOut (Moderator)

Replied On Aug 14th 2009:

If you cant be pilot don't post at all.

Muted for 24 hours.

►Hammal2 (Banned)

Replied On Aug 14th 2009:

Fuck you

End of Page. 1

There we go found our site. is this world's Pinterest but like 100% focused on people places and things, tagged and ready to be downloaded en mass to be trained on. Just need a simple scraper and we'll be good to go. I only need about two Terabytes of images, and at 100 mb total download speed, it should only take about six hours. Bad but not that bad especially since I plan on spending the night. I set an alarm on my computer to ring at eight hours, or if it loses wifi.

I'll Just keep the car in neutral and sleep while the computer runs. The to-do list for tomorrow is simple. Build the Robot, then contact a couple of non-government local leaders like a logistic company or/and a construction company, show them the robot, and show them the numbers on the moonshot to try and get them to understand the severity of the situation. After that offer them a spot in the bunker, and bada bing bada boom workforce and resources acquired all in one swoop.

With their help, I might approach the State gov, not the PRT though. Cauldron puppet and I think Cauldron has probably skedaddled by now. Which is honestly good, but I don't think the old leadership has been cycled out by now if that's the case. Fed is even more supremely incompetent in this world than the last. Local governments have more autonomy than back home which is good for the US in my opinion.

I'm worried though, capes are an unpredictable variable. From what little I paid attention to they never seemed rational. Capes just seem to act based on "If I can kill the person in charge why listen" and that doesn't make someone capable of functioning in a society. Humans need a reason to depose someone, parahumans depose authority if they think they can take said authority in a fight. From the structure of parahuman gangs, it's never the most intelligent person in charge, it's always the strongest in charge.

I don't have high hopes for Capes, they just seem like they need to be forced to cooperate. If they aren't facing an immediate threat to their lives that they can't beat alone, then they don't seem to be able to cooperate in any valuable manner.

I probably haven't looked enough into it though to make any accurate assumptions. I'm just some guy after all. Leaving the car in neutral I extend my seat back and begin to drift off while listening to the computer and the engine's soft purr. I wake up with a dry mouth, half delirious to a police officer knocking on my window.

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Thank you for reading.