NOVEL NEXT Chapter 7 (The sound of progress)
Quickly flying to see what the noises were about, I almost screamed in horror when I saw what had become of my beautiful factory.
The machines that had looked so dependable in their inactive state were now going haywire all about, the bots which had been almost at the stage of completion, only needing a little repair work to be finished, were being haphazardly thrown onto the floor of the factory as long arms picked them up, compressed them, and sent them on a huge conveyor built along with other hulks of melted metal into the next room.
Inwardly cursing my overconfidence I flew behind the conveyor belt into the next room of the factory. As I entered: three giant metal pots seemed to be boiling with something sending sparks of red hot iron flying dangerously close to my drone, as the large conveyor belt split into three, feeding each pot or well, foundry with metal. Flying my drone closer, a temperature warning popped up to me as I realized the air around the foundry was nearly 100 degrees centigrade. The foundry then began compressing and melting the metal scraps into bars of metal which were put onto another conveyor belt and ferried back into the factory, it seemed. Following the metal along, the conveyor built my drone slipped by watching as they reemerged at the factory. The bars seemed to glow blue, emitting sparks of the same color as they were fed into several machines along the line, which began in an odd twisting and squirming motion to almost print the bodies of the robots I had seen hanging on the line before.
Watching as lasers and cutters and all sorts of tools carved out the hulks of the robots, as then their inner frames were assembled and a large current was run through each one, charging a fuel cell that was roughly shoved in with wires at the same time. It was an odd sight as unit after unit was hollowed out, filled with internal parts, and covered in armor right before my eyes. Flying to the very end of the line, I noticed that the mountain of scrap that had been there before was now properly cleaned up. in its place was the quickly forming line of new robots, which I will dub! Uhh, new nu1’s for short. Yes, no need to praise me, it's a very creative name. The entire time I flew about the robots happily, watching through my sensors with glee as my army—uhhh, new companions were assembled one by one. Looking at the robots, the excitement that had been extinguished in my heart was slowly building up again.
Suddenly, I heard the reassuring heavy fall of boots as B1 accompanied, strangely enough by another robot that looked very similar, though it didn’t seem to have a gun on its arm. Instead, it had a round hose on its hand which connected to a container mark with hazard symbols on it’s back and a large shield. Flying over to it, I immediately felt it attempt to establish a connection with me. In that split second, a stream of information flooded my brain; it was a B2 unit, a heavily armored engineer that was used to repair things on the battlefield. Walking over, it stood next to the other units, as B1 dropped two heavy boxes from its back that were filled with ammunition and other items, and almost smirked as it pointed towards the fresh nu1s.
The next hour or so was a blur for me as B1, B2, and the nu’s started fixing up the factory. B1 and B2 were very similar in their abilities. Both smart and in control, as they commanded the lighter nu’s to bring up everything from the armory to be smelted down and reformed, as well as the fleet of flying drones to be repaired. Apparently, they had attempted to bring the tank as well; however, decided not to for the time being. I felt like a bit of a fool the entire time, like a manager who could only look over at her employees’ shoulders while they did all the hard work. But when everything was done, I had in front of me 12 nu’s all armed with rifles, one nu who was carrying a heavy machine gun like B1 lined up perfectly saluting me by B2. I, however, was having way too much fun to care about their show of force, as I happily flew my 5 new drones around, viewing the world from all of their cameras at once, like I was some sort of giant fly, giggling to myself I however, as I flew the drone around a bit longer my thoughts turned to my next move. Hmm, for now, I decided the best thing to do would be to head to the top floor and the communications room, since while I may not have enough power for the long-range surveillance equipment, I should for the short-range communications equipment. The only issue was the core had lost contact with this room due to a technical error long ago, meaning I would have to go In person to investigate.
And so, full of confidence, I led my new group of friends, or robots, uhh, yeah friends, out the massive factory door, onto the next leg of our adventure! Or well to an elevator which led to it.