Entry 3:
It’s been a few months since my last entry in this journal, it’s also been a few months since the conveyor belts were destroyed. I’m currently just walking around exploring the place. I’ve explored 3 out of the 4 corners. The one corner I haven’t delved into is the southeast corner, that place is pitch black and trying to explore that place with even a flashlight is a bad idea, the only way I know where things are is because of the map I bought from the cartographer from the Aerogels. The cartographer is a great guy and he’s pretty brave, but not even someone as brave as him could go into the southeast corner. A lot of the factory is pitch black, mainly because the Heptacents had broken the ceiling lights. Some of the unharmed lights actually show the large towers of junk the Heptacents used to go to the ceiling and break the lights. The only lights that still work are in the other three corners of the factory, the southeast one has no lights functioning.
The ceiling is pretty high up, almost reaching seven thousand feet. In one of the books I’ve read, that reaches above the clouds outside.
I’ve seen images of the outside of the factory in the books, the clouds hitting the wall of the large cubic building and the particles spread out like fog on the side, soon finding its way to the other side of the building and continuing on in the wind.
I wonder if I’ll ever get out of this factory, I don’t intend to, but it’s interesting thinking about the outside.
It’s impossible to escape the factory because the walls are made of thick metal, around 5 feet thick. The design of this factory was to be indestructible, nothing could destroy it. I’ve seen some of the drills lying around that some tried to use to escape, but it was not successful.
Moving on from that, I’m going to get back to fixing the factory. There’s a large set of data that’s shared across all of the robots that gives us tasks. This task system is run by artificial intelligence so that back when the humans were around, they wouldn’t have to assign stuff for us by hand.
Actually, that artificial intelligence is our best answer to the question of “why do we act like humans?” We think that maybe this artificial intelligence is the thing that accidentally gave us consciousness. It’s our only theory for why we act like humans, but right now, I just use the system to get new assignments.
So, I’ve gotten the new assignment of rebuilding one of the bridges in the northwest corner.
It’s a pretty large bridge, this is the bridge that leads to the power cell of the entire factory, a core that is indestructible.
The core is actually how we have energy, we don’t need a charging system as this core emits a lot of electromagnetic radiation, aka light. We run off of light, specifically the heat energy that it has. It's another reason that nobody wants to go into the southeast corner, because it’s the farthest away from an energy source.
I’m traveling there by foot, usually I like to get the help of the Aerogels, but I’m running low on non-fiction books, so I’ll pick some up on the way for later.
I’m here, after a few months of walking and picking up a ton of books, I think it’s going pretty well.
My backpack that I carry with me everywhere is very heavy, thankfully I can carry objects around 13 times my own weight.
The northeast corner is filled with bridges, mainly to have a safe passage when all of the manufacturing machines work below. The northeast corner is where everything is assembled, plastic, food, tools… books.
The majority of the stuff here is gone as everyone started to take everything long ago.
This is also the most populated part of the factory, mainly due to the whole energy situation, which is why I like to avoid it, but because I have an assignment there, I’ll just go in and go out quickly and quietly. This is where the most factions are, which means that battles break out often.
Battles are interesting in this place, or at least interesting from a human’s perspective, when humans were alive, battles would break out and end after a range of a few years, to many decades. But our battles are much different, our battles take thousands of years at least, and 99.99% of the battles are hiding from the enemy. Because everyone is scared to make a move in this place, plus the fact that we basically have eternity to prepare, they hide and get ready for battle. After some thousands of years, one of the factions finally has the audacity to begin the battle. Once the two factions collide, they fight for a few minutes, and then one of them disconnects (the robot version of death) and both factions go into a mental breakdown.
The reason they begin freaking out is because there’s only ~770 of us (there’s much less of us now), that small of a number means that when a robot disconnects, they’re just gone, forever. That’s hard to manage as one of the only ~770 robots here.
We don’t know how many have disconnected, but someone estimated that around 30 of us have disconnected over the years, so I just use the number 770 to help get a good sense of how many are gone.
That’s a lot of disconnections.
The bridge I’m fixing had been destroyed a while back due to the river of soup (as the robots call it), the river of soup is a giant river filled with garbage, rotten perishables, thick chunky water, and pieces of junk that the river picks up on its way.
The river ends in the northwest corner as there’s a giant flood drain that swallows all of the garbage.
Conveniently or inconveniently -depending on your opinion about the river- there’s a pipe that leads the garbage all the way up to the southwest corner (the start of the river), this pipe is connected to a water storage system that prevents the factory from being flooded, this storage system broke, allowing the river to continue moving the junk.
I remember meeting a robot that fell down the hole and was stuck in the underground river pipe for a full 6 months, they never wanted to go near the river ever again.
The bridge’s large metal poles that hold it up were pushed by the river until they broke, and the bridge fell apart.
Similar to the entire factory, it’s impossible to fix this bridge, not only because I’m doing this by myself, but also because the bridge is being torn apart by the river.
But still, I have nothing better to do, any other thing that I would do could cause problems for others. So that's all I have left to do.
I’ll make another entry after I assess the situation in detail.
Entry 4:
After checking out the situation, it’s actually possible to do this.
The bridge is badly damaged, but the river has thickened more and more due to the debris in it, to the point where the river is much slower than before. The amount of pressure that would be put on the bridge would be enough to handle.
I’m actually feeling really good, most of the time I try to fix the factory, I fail and someone or something destroys it. But this is one of the times where I feel like I can really fix something and feel like it won’t totally be destroyed.
Plus, only the middle part of the bridge has collapsed. The other parts are fine, I think that I’ve been working on this factory for so long, and I’ve been working so hard that I deserve some way to express my creativity.
I like to draw, mainly little doodles and stuff. It’s fun, it gets my mind off of the bland place I live in. I’m also interested in making statues, mainly because I’m inspired by R0b1n.
So, I’ve decided that for the bridge, I’m not going to just build a functional pillar for the bridge to lay on, I’ll make the pillar a statue, just like the statue of the man with a sword in his chest. I’ll make it out of random scraps of metal, it will look like a person trying really hard to hold up the bridge above.
It would look nice and I think it would be fun.
It has been around 5 years since writing here. I've been working quite a lot on the art project. Well, I haven’t really directly worked on the art project itself, I’ve just been rebuilding the broken part of the bridge.
It’s actually going to be useful, this new version of the bridge I’m making doesn’t require any support below the bridge itself. This gives me the freedom to not have to worry about whether the statue could hold up the bridge while still looking good.
This bridge won’t be able to handle as much weight on it, but it can hold quite a lot on its own, the statue can just add some secondary support which is really good.
So, it’s time for me to get working on the statue itself.
I’ll make another entry once that’s done and hopefully it looks good.
Entry 5:
10 years, that’s how long it has taken, but I finished it, it looks really good! (for my standards)
I’m really excited to know that someone will look at it someday, someone will be able to appreciate my art. Finally! I get to be noticed, even if people only notice what I’ve created.
The world is so bland, but knowing that what I’ve made is what puts me in a good mood.
Now, obviously it’s not perfect, there’s some parts where I could’ve done better, I admit. I’m just happy that I’ve made something that I’m proud of, far more proud of it than fixing a square mile of the factory.
For the first time is so long, I’m starting to like this place agai-
H
WH
Y
NO
FW
I HATE THIS PLACE SO MUCH
H
J
HOW
WHAT DID I DO TO DESER-
…It has been…
It’s been
I cannot tell you how mu
I’m angry
I can’t really put into words how mad I am right now.
Literally the moment I finish building the statue and I go to write down, “Oh this is so fun! I’m starting to like this place!” It gets destroyed by the Heptacents.
All of that work, gone in an instant.
Not to mention that the bridge is also destroyed, again, so all of my progress is completely gone.
In fact, this bridge is even more destroyed than it was before, now the entire thing has collapsed!
I feel so alone.
You’re not alone, Peridot, I’ve been with you this entire time.
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