CH. 3 - Discovery
It took you a few minutes to calm yourself down while plans formulated through your mind. You need more information... which means you need to somehow gain them from the broken-down and dilapidated looking computers and devices all throughout this entire floor. You didn't want to risk exploring more until you had the information you needed. And with that goal in mind, you sent your nanites off to multiply and breed in force. The mental command you gave them was to break down and use every bit of dust, grime, debris, metal, glass, and the odd bits of odds and ends to multiply; while leaving the remains of your creators alone. It didn't feel right to you to desecrate their remains. You also left the carcasses of the aliens alone for now. And, the metal floors, ceiling, and walls were also left off of the list.
With the majority of your nanites multiplying, the rest of you; which was a good 5 million nanite units, left the underground shelter. You had a destination in mind.
'How long have I been awake?', you wondered; while you walked towards one of the large rooms you found earlier.
[Query Detected: ...Answer: ...4 Hours ...31 Minutes ...12 Seconds ...152 Milliseconds …-]
'Can you mention everything from the seconds and up unless specified? I don't need the milliseconds.', you interrupted quickly.
[Query Detected: ...Answer: ...Acknowledged ...Changes Implementing…]
'Good.'
After 12 more minutes, you finally arrived in the room you were looking for. You silently thanked your advanced mapping software. Without them, you would've been left wandering the deserted halls of this underground complex like a rat in a labyrinthine maze.
The room you entered was sparse, deserted, and thankfully it had no signs of battle damage. You chose this room since it had all sorts of large computer terminals placed against the walls while some sort of large circular table-shaped computer interface dominated the center of the room. Although most of the things in this room had a fine layer of dust and rust; the strewn and tossed aside chairs included, you knew somehow that you'd find something in here of use. Maybe it was a hunch or something hard-coded into you, but it didn't matter. You needed knowledge and it was right in front of you. With no hesitation, you walk over to the largest computer terminals and tried to sync with it.
As your nanites sank into and burrowed into it's depths, a feeling of frustration bubbled up in you. The computer was too old, had no power, and most of it's inner components were too broken down; to your surprise. However, salvation for you came at hand because one of your nanites discovered something within the very deepest confines of the machine. A heavily modified and blackboxed area of the computer terminal was where you found it. When your nanite touched it, a wealth of information opened up to you. You found it...
Somehow you knew what it was the moment one of your nanites touched it. A Data Crystal. An intact Data Crystal. A marvel of computer data storage and engineering that can only be accessed through specialized and modified systems and can hold up to 100 petabytes of information and memory. It's in the shape of a monoclinic crystal that can sit within the palm of a small child's hand with room to spare. This discovery gave way to excitement. Without your knowledge, your green nanites glowed a bit more brightly through your heightened excitement.
With that, you gave your wandering nanites a secondary task; and that's to carefully extract, gather, and place all the Data Crystals found on this floor of the underground complex into your pocket dimension. With that out of the way, you extract all the crystals from each and every computer terminal in the room. And then, a part of you gains command of your main body and starts breaking down and multiplying itself using whatever you can find; following the directives and commands given to the rest of the wandering nanites.
In the meantime, the largest part of your focus was on looking at the extracted Data Crystals; of which are now safe and sound in your pocket dimension. 'Hmmm... I've got a plan for you alright... However, let me revise them a bit...'
With another quick burst of thought, another directive was given to every nanite that you had wandering around and breaking down materials. 'I need 20% of any and all dark silver material slurry to be transported into my pocket dimension for my use.'
[Acknowledged]
'And now, the wait begins...'
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On the 10th hour of your Awakening, half of the 60th floor was free of any debris, dirt, rust, dust, grime, and everything else. The only things left behind in the wake of your nanites were the remains of your creators, the carcasses that were left behind by the aliens, and the metals that made up the walls, ceiling, and floors; of which you theorized helped to reinforce and stabilize the underground complex and all of it's 60 floors. Thanks to your wandering nanites; as well as your earlier exploring, you were getting a very accurate mapping of the 60th floor.
With your surplus of dark silver material slurry growing, you decided to make something to attach and connect the growing pile of Data Crystals you were accumulating. Within a few more hours, you now have a total of 376 intact Data Crystals while the other 71 were damaged in some places; by the looks of them either acid or a powerful localized explosion of great force. This was all that your nanites could find on the entire floor, and to you it was more than enough for your plans going forward.
A quick burst of thought had your nanites focused on multiplying; and then stopping at the next even million, mapping out the entire floor completely, and breaking down what you directed them to earlier in it's entirety. While you were mentally designing the shape that you wanted the housing unit for the Data Crystals to sit in, your nanites were busy turning every speck of rock, dust, metal debris, fabric, material, and otherwise into the building blocks of your being. They swept out like a great tide of ants; leaving the metal floors, walls, and ceiling spotless and shining; except for the remains and battle damages, you could barely tell anything horrendous happened within the halls of gunmetal gray and silver.
With your final design in mind, you command 2 million free nanites to use the growing surplus of dark silver material slurry to form the base of the housing unit for the Data Crystals. It was a matter of a few hours for a 20 meter tall, 5 meter wide, obelisk-shaped housing unit to take shape near your fusion reactor. With that done, you gave your nanites the command to carefully set each individual Data Crystal into a set space on the dark silver obelisk. And like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, a small corner of one of it's sides is now filled with Data Crystals. Somehow; without your command, your nanites cannibalized and combined the damaged crystals. In total, you now have 403 intact Data Crystals set into your 'Data Crystal Obelisk'.
'Please, label this from now on as the [Data Crystal Obelisk]... And also, abbreviate the dark silver material slurry as [D.S.M.S.]...'
[Acknowledged]
With that done, you felt accomplished. And, your nanites gave you the green light; telling you that the 60th floor is now completely mapped out and cleaned; as of now. Plus, they automatically rejoined your main body after their directives were completed. 'That's good to know...'
'How many nanites do I have now?'
[Query Detected: ...Answer: ...42 million units...]
'I think I've got enough for now...'
A quick check told you that your main body now has a total of 15 million nanites making up it's entirety while the rest are just floating around or wandering your pocket dimension haphazardly; the orange and green nanites seem to just want to stay near the fusion reactor. With a thought, you send 1 million nanites to connect and parse through the information contained within the obelisk.
When the first nanite landed on the obelisk, you felt a trickle of knowledge pour through. However, that trickle turned into a roar as words, images, colors, and all matters of information opened up to you. Looks like 1 million nanites was the right choice, because it was taking all of your focus and concentration just to parse through this sea of data. It took you a few hours to get used to the bombardment, but after a while, you found the right balance.
'I need to do this slowly... there's so much data to go through. It's almost overwhelming... almost.'
A quick scan told you that this obelisk can contain up to 40,300 petabytes of data. However, only 17,000 petabytes are filled. Everything else is free memory space. 'This will definitely take awhile... I need to organize all of this.'
'Hmmm... organizing it into separate sections; just like a library, sounds like an excellent idea...'