I gave shelly the rest of the day to cool off. I had the feeling that trying to talk to her right now would get me deleted, instead, I started to try to experiment with my powers a bit. My abilities were somewhat easy to use, while they had a tendency to take a second to get used to, once I learned how to use them was almost instinctual. I could also mess with my powers in ways not listed, but that was much much harder. For example, I could use my spacial warping to make a box I found in one of my rooms bigger on the inside, while it stayed the same size from outside. It was only by a few square inches, and just the effort of that was so strenuous that my lights flickered, but I could technically do it. Something that was easier was using my technopathy, it was still difficult but doing it didn’t make me want to shut down or give me the equivalent of a searing headache. I could comparatively easily manipulate any computer I was connected to and turn the few that weren’t part of my system on or off. I could even transfer small files to them, although I hadn’t yet figured out how to take anything off without connecting to them directly.

What I could do with my energy manipulation was the most interesting though, it was mind-meltingly difficult, like ‘if I was human shit my pants and throw up from the effort’ difficult, but I could siphon some of the energy from the battery of my drones, which were infinite thanks to my self-powering trait, and I could make that energy almost a sort of sphere that could then be shot like a bullet, the projectile could be made to be pretty much any type of energy I wanted with some effort. Electrical, heat, kinetic, or… t-that’s all I could do… Okay, maybe not ANY type of energy I wanted but it was a start. They were all terribly weak anyway. At most the heat-based projectile may make someone wince but little more. It also took me like a full minute to even create just one of these, so it wasn’t the most useful skill. Another thing I found I could do (very accidentally), If I was willing to sacrifice a drone, I could send it flying forward while amplifying its kinetic force. This resulted in what was for all intents and purposes a missile powerful enough to leave a significant dent in the room I was testing in (oops… on the bright side I have a templet for my drones now…)

I decided to spend the rest of the night entertaining myself in various other, less destructive ways. Mostly, manga, comics, TV shows, and anime that I found on the computers in the lounge, many of the shows were missing episodes or entire seasons but I could make do. I really needed to get an internet connection. Well, I’ll just add that to the list.

I was halfway through season two of Fairytail when Shelly woke up.

“morning, Bac…” she yawned

{um, morning. You feeling better?}

“I’m not mad at you anymore if that’s what you’re asking. Don’t do it again though. Okay?”

{Okay, Sorry again.} I agreed {Now, we need to figure out what we’re going to do.}

“what do you mean?”

{Well, as I see it we have two options, we either connect the next floor to the rest of the system or go out somewhere and get what we need to fix this floor, plus whatever help we can get. We’ll need money…}

“I have a bank account; I was pretty well of beforehand, and fifty-seven years of interest couldn’t have hurt. Plus, whatever I… I inherited… from Doc, she wasn’t the type to let all that cash disappear along with her.” she stopped, “I think we should see what’s going on, on the next level down, the more of the building we have under our control the better, if we cant handle it right now we get this floor fixed and get help.”

{good idea.}

The door to the stairwell was at the end of the hall farthest to the left of our floor, it was, fortunately, one of the area’s I had access to, I opened the door and we stared down into the bowels of the former ‘DocLabs’. Unlike other buildings the facility progressed downward rather than up, this meant that the second floor was underneath the first, with our floor being the only one above ground. This, according to Shelly, meant that the floors below us were likely to be much more warped than ours, on account of the leakage not having anywhere to disperse to. She sounded much too happy at this prospect for my tastes but, hey, we both had our bits of crazy.

At the bottom of the stairs was another door, whatever short or damage in the system down here, had knocked the entire floor off the grid, so I couldn’t open this the normal way. luckily, I had been practicing. With a bit of effort and a flex of my technopathy, the door was opened.

I wish I hadn’t done that.

Behind the door was… something… it was an animal of some sort. Definitely a predator. Its body was lithe and sleek like a panther, its fur a dark gray spotted with crimson, its six legs long and ending with plate-sized paws. A razor-sharp claw sprouted from each toe like a trap ready to spring, it’s head was somewhat fox shaped but its teeth seemed like they should be in the mouth of a bear. Its three yellow eyes locked onto our drones, the two tails beginning to swish behind it as it readied itself to pounce.

“Close the door! Close the door!” Shelly screamed.

With I happily obeyed, as the thing launched itself forward. the door was slammed shut in its face. There was a ‘Thump!’ as it crashed into the solid metal, I could still hear it growl and make a hissing-barking sound from the other side as it began bashing itself against about 600 pounds of steel to get to us. [567.78 lbs.]

{so… shopping it is then…}

“I have two different reactions I need to get out of the way first.”

{go ahead.}

“First, ahem, Holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit, that thing was scary! And also, did you see that thing!? That’s so fucking cool! Did you see it had SIX limbs? That’s not a thing mammals do! What is it eating down there? are there more!? Of course, there are. how could one creature survive by itself for that long? Why was it so hostile? Territorial maybe? What purpose does the second tail serve? What-”

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. She goes on like this for about a full five minutes, I’m not going to subject you to that.

Eventually Shelly agreed that going to get the things we need to fix the first floor was really our only choice right now. We would hopefully find some powerful metabeings while we were out to help deal with the newly discovered infestation on the second level.

The nearest town, if things hadn’t changed too much over the last fifty-plus years, was called Caliber city and was about 20 miles from here, that was about 40 minutes by car, unfortunately, we would be using small drones barely capable of going 10 miles per hour at their best, and I mean if they were pushed to the point of breaking down, let alone carrying a few droninjas just in case. Let’s just say it would take a while to get there.

“ROAD TRIP!”

We didn’t have much we needed for our little quest. We didn’t need any supplies and even if we did, we were technically staying here even if we were sending our drones out into the world. Neither of us could really move.

Before we knew it we were at the door. I was kinda nervous, I hadn’t left the facility before and all the information I had was 57 years old, including my shows, I had to know how Star Vs The Forces Of Evil ended I’m sure it's as satisfying and amazing as the show deserved. With that little bit of motivation, I opened the door.

Outside was… well, it was beautiful in a way I could hardly describe. We were in a large open field with trees sprouting from the ground in random places. the sky was so blue. The grass was so crisp and green, everything was bright and new. It was one thing to see a picture of the outside world it was a whole other to see it yourself.

{Woah, it’s…}

“I know, right. It’s a spectacle the first time, I bet your tiny little mind can barely comprehend it.”

I barely could.

The facility had a long path leading to the nearest highway, from there we would fly 20 feet high above the cars and trucks until we made it to the city. We wouldn’t have to worry about return time since I should be able to create a wormhole back once I had seen the city. We were about two hours into our journey when shelly started singing ‘ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall’, after a minute of listening to that I checked out. Luckily, unlike other drivers, I could do other things. I didn’t have to stay ‘behind the wheel’ I could just leave a copy of my consciousness to do the driving (and listening), I would still get the memories (plus any memories of hating myself for it) but for now, I could focus on something else. That something else was a menu I found while playing around with my status.

[Templets available to create:

Drone

Type: surveillance and mobility unit

Special traits: multi-terrain (unit can function both in the air and underwater)

Meta-characteristics: N/A

Components available: No (click here to see necessary components)

-----

Droninja

Type: combat and stealth unit

Special traits: molecule thin-edged blades (this unit has blades that are a single molecule thick at the edges, increasing cutting power dramatically)

heat rage (these units become frenzied and destructive when overexposed to extreme heat, while they cannot attack the AI linked to them, they cannot be controlled in this state)

Meta-characteristics: shadow-walking (this unit can move through shadows and their portion of the second dimension to appear in other shadowed areas)

Components available: No (click here to see necessary components)

-----

Dronsumo

Type: combat and defense unit

Special traits: Unit commander (this unit is capable of commanding and controlling other units (droninjas) on AI instruction)

hardening armor (this unit becomes harder to externally damage the more damage it survives)

Meta-characteristics: shadow-walking (this unit can move through shadows and their portion of the second dimension to appear in other shadowed areas)

Components available: No (click here to see necessary components)

-----

?^()#?? (Fragment)

Type: ???

Special traits: ???

Meta-characteristics: ???

Components available: ??? (******^^%(ERROR)*&Y%%&)]

Wait, what? the system governed what I could make too? That didn’t seem right. Something about that made me uncomfortable. it felt like…like I was being watched. It was probably nothing. And what was this fragment? Was it what I thought it was?

My attempt to ask Shelly about it, and subsequent inability to, proved my theory. This was the fragment from the computer in the storage room. I assume it being here meant it was a design for something, but what was it for?

I popped back int my drone, receiving an image of a specific hand gesture from my other self as I reabsorbed it.

“47 bottles of beer on the wall, 47 bottles of beer on the wall, take one down pass it around, 46 bottles of bee-“

{Shelly.}

She jumped

“Ah, Bac what is it?”

{What does the Metabeing system actually control?}

“oh, ummm… everything and nothing.”

{what does that mean? That means nothing.}

“It controls all things powers. And can have an effect on anything affecting your powers, but that’s different for different people, I guess. It tends to give alternant menus and stuff like that, or different types of stats depending on what you can do. It doesn’t really apply to me much since advanced mind is a pretty simple power, which doesn’t mean its not better than your three in every way, but I don’t have a need for extra stuff when my main power is being smarter than you. But doc for example had something she called her experiment list in her menus. It would give her extra information on the experiments she was conducting. And help predict where they could go wrong. She always hated it. ‘felt like cheating’ “she ended her statement with a laugh and a shake of her nonexistent head. “most scientists would kill for that kind of ability; I’d give an arm and a leg… well you know if I had them… but not dear ol’ Doc. Noooo, She tried to ignore it!”

She went quiet.

“Sorry, I got off-topic. In conclusion different menus for different powers…”

It was silent for a long moment. It almost sounded like the air itself had read the mood and decided to remain still

“why do you ask?”

{its nothing, I’ll explain later.}

So, all this was normal. That was good, I guess. I looked at the menu again… I don’t know why but it still bothered me. But what could I do? Plus, I couldn’t deny it seemed useful. It seemed strange that the droninjas would keep their powers after being printed, I assumed that was an effect of this system specifically. It was best just to not think about how I felt about it and move on.