TheBipBoop2003
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27. Who want turrets?
🕑 Added 2023-05-02 17:47:45 +0000 UTC"Day 138… Time passes so fast…", Liam mumbled under Gladius' tail, he was awake for at least half a minute staring at nothing.
It was all so insane to think about even after all this time, the possibility all of it was a dream or anything remotely similar was long since gone. It was his life. It was one of such existential crisis moments you have just after waking up.
Blinking Liam pushed the tail aside without waking up the great austrapede, it was still dark outside he remarked.
Then there was the problem of his legs being taken by the four tetrapterons, Meri and Occiden on grasping his left and Septen and Orien on his right, all respectively taking half of his leg with how big they grew while not even long ago it would have only been the finger of his hands.
'Huh cutes.', he thought as he ultimately decided to wake everyone up with a mental tug of the links, three let go but not Meri. Snorting in amusement he stood up, either way, he had things to do.
Walking to the kitchen of his small house, small as in only composed of three rooms, the first entrance led to the kitchen, the second was way bigger leading to his bedroom and the third was the attic. It was made of wood, clay, and stone. Pretty cozy if unremarkable on its own outside of it being on Pandora.
It was only the part above the ground, the top of the iceberg, more than 90% was underground, where he stocked most of his properties and crafted most of them as well.
Oh, he preferred to be in plain air but being underground had its charm as well such as better safety for his possessions, he was still salty about the thunderstorm weeks ago. He didn't particularly like losing as childish as that may sound.
A headache that was to do and still is considering there are many things to take into account for it to be usable and not collapse for X, Y, or Z reasons. The underground was of solid stone most of it impermeable but still, he couldn't dig too deep or in certain ways overall 'a pain in the ass' so to say.
He even built himself multiple small wood elevators where he lifted himself up and down, not true ones running on electricity as it's a luxury, an unnecessary one that cost more than it was worth.
Opening the upper door of a metal box half his size that emitted weak green light Liam got his face blasted with cold air, scratching his beard he picked a bottle of fruit juice, then a large mushroom salad and meats.
It was a fridge and also a freezer connected to two dozen self-recharging hydrogen batteries, otherwise named SHB V1.5, in a protective box on the roof.
Those batteries, even if calling them generators would not be inappropriate either were overall not extremely powerful when not fully charged but they were consistent as long as there was hydrogen in the air, they would function, perfect for low-consumption equipment that needed to be continually alimented and why the fridge was connected to two dozen of them.
Better than an eolian or a solar panel as one was worth nothing without a lot of wind and the other was productive. at only precise times of the day. Hydroelectric is out of the question as well as the evident lack of a flowing water source and they most likely will be gone in a few months if not weeks.
He did make a portable electric generator that ran on fuel for various tasks but not a centralized electric system for several reasons, risk of accident, the cost to have it function, and this base was ultimately temporary. And it is expensive to do in the first place.
Closing the fridge he drank the entire bottle before storing it in his inventory, giving a piece of meat to Meri still grabbing his leg he whistled and the three other tetrapterons flew in, which was followed by Gladius poking its head through the door. Too big now to go in further to the bigger alien bird's dismay.
A few hours later, far in the plain next to a recently born shallow river. Liam placed on a dead trunk an auto turret with a magazine on its side full of 50 rounds of neatly arranged advanced rifle bullets, equal to 0.3 cal bullet, and it that can shoot four rounds per second.
The turret was small, barely reaching his midsection if on the ground, fixing each of the metallic claws at the end of its three moveable feet Liam inserted five self-recharging hydrogen batteries from his inventory in their respective place.
His implant flashed with a mental flex, and the turret whirred to life as the mechanism responsible for the aim of the barrels shifted up. His glow didn't cease as he connected to the auto turret in a way not dissimilar to two devices via Bluetooth.
Nevertheless, it was unique just like how he connected to the fabricator, it wasn't all machines but only the one he crafted with that small electrical component letting it happen. It had more potential use as well, and it also made all of his machines made with this unusable by anyone else.
Mentally fiddling with the internal parameters he chose the necessary condition to be shot and to not be shot. It was simple in principle but not easy in action as there are many factors besides the current technical limitations of the machines and programs.
The turret could turn in almost all directions and had three hidden cameras that nearly gave it 360° vision for major blind spots, everything directly below itself.
Those cameras served as, anyone could guess its sense of sight by detecting shifts in temperature and movement, giving that information to the miniaturized computer of the machine. The last one was a simple recording function connecting to a small memory chip that also stored all the turret data and algorithm. And will also be used for image recognition in the future.
The memory chip was in a 'black box' of sorts, and the most important part of the machine as data was irreparable, also the reason it was greatly protected in a box made of a titanium alloy.
With this, the auto turret could detect and shoot what it perceived as a 'target' with exceptional accuracy, not deadly as it didn't know what vital area to aim at but put enough bullets and anything is going to die, if it doesn't work then that means there weren't enough bullets. Simple as that.
It was a wonder of technology for what he had on, so something far from perfect and the learning algorithm within it that will need to learn a lot.
An algorithm, an advanced one but not even close to a real AI. It reacts to stimuli following its parameter to a T and doesn't act or adapt on its own. For an AI a far more powerful computer was necessary and AI, true ones with sentience and even sapience, was a touchy subject he preferred to delve into when things are somewhat settled.
Those advanced lifelike AI imitations of Engramic Matrices mostly come from the Tekgram such as the Tek creatures he had the inner working of, and they use a language that reminded him of DNA but without its flaw.
If he was a programmer or simply worked with computers all that much before all of this happened he would be literally mentally blown away by it, yet he still understood the sheer adaptability and potential of it, to a large degree but he didn't, couldn't truly understand it's true nature as trying made him feel headaches.
Something that shouldn't be possible with his current understanding of reality. He seriously doubted it was made by humans and for humans, the likely possibility was that it was transhumans in origin, Homo Deus being the sole possibility. A language that also reminded him of those strange scribbling in some of the game's notes, all Tek-related ones as well.
That potential and adaptability are only truly shown by Tek as well, it was a language deeply connected with the Element after all, but still replicable to a lesser degree in other machines and that's what those turrets had, with a bit of binary behind as well.
Anyway, a lot of progress needed to be made as the one from the games worked so well because it was within the Ark where everything was chipped with some form of microchips and overall a well-oiled machine, most of the time, sometimes...
As per usual it also meant he wasn't limited in number or bound to any rules for them to be modified at his will such as doing a mounted shoulder turret, but his resources, imagination, and time were limiting factors. He could do everything at the same time, sadly. The future heavy auto turrets won't be limited to advanced rifle bullets.
Another aspect it has was a sensor serving as a key part of its system that detected his implant so he wasn't shot and emitters sending a particular electromagnetic signal from a device in the form of leg bands that would be put on his tames.
The turrets at the moment were incapable of telling them apart from wild animals. Quite the significant problem if he wanted them at his base.
"First one… From here nothing seems amiss.", Liam said before tossing a stone up in the air, the machine instantly locked at the stone, low rhythmic bip were heard for one second and then three gunshots echoed in rapid succession.
Three bullets flew of which the first hit their mark, blasting the stone in two pieces and the two other bullets continued on their journey to land somewhere and not hopefully on something or someone.
Nodding pleased with this result he walked twenty or so meters away, put his left palm in a way it faced the grass, and brought out a blood-soaked organ originating from a viperwolf that was comparable to a liver in its function but also a part of the digestive system from the numerous butchering he did.
It fell on the ground, the nauseous smell directly entering his nose and spreading in the air, a bait.
It was the first of four turrets, he was placing them to train the algorithm and test them as well. All will be placed in mapped and fully known areas to not shoot Na'vi or cause the anger of a herd of big herbivores.
After all those turrets were different than in the game and preventing any potential malfunction or error was a must when preventable.
This was what the next two days partly consisted of outside of his normal very, very active routine of collecting resources and crafting, as he had tons of other projects he worked simultaneously on, such as a better forge that could melt pandorium/unobtanite as he supposed it could be used to replace black pearl and so much more.
"What was that…?", Liam said coldly with a furrow of his brows, Meri sitting on his head cocked its head in curiosity at the blocky pixelated and greenish image shown on the small rectangular screen in Liam's right hand connected to a small titanium box by a thin cable.
It was the footage from one of the turrets' cameras, the last few minutes of it to be exact, this one was placed not far from where he bloodletted the trees that produced this red silicon-like substance.
He was exclusively going over the one when the turret reacted to something entering its range or/and shot as he wasn't going to go over nearly 40 hours of footage.
His implant glowed slightly brighter and he commanded the video to move backward, zooming the image of what looked like a smaller version of the helicopter he saw a few weeks ago. His expression hardened, mood switching from curiosity to annoyance but also increasing worry and a strange feeling of palpitation in his chest.
Breathing calmly he let the record play again, the auto turret hidden below a tree instantly locked onto the drone a second later and rained down hell from below.
A salvo of bullets blew its entire left rotorblade to bitterness, instantly causing the flying machine to spin uncontrollably downward as it couldn't hover anymore.
It then continued its fall, getting shot five more times, causing more damage such as the destruction of the mounted rifle then it disappeared out of view falling on the leafy crown of a relatively tall tree.
'No need to panic, chances are it's completely unrelated to me… Even if slim… And who am I kidding? It was gunned down by me either way, there will be consequences.', he thought, but the gut feeling the drone was here because of him didn't go unnoticed and ignored, you don't ignore those things. Particularly here.
Switching back to the drone, even with the bad quality he could see the presence of cameras on it, a pair of thin metallic multipurpose 'hands', and a small mounted rifle bellow.
It wasn't a war machine that much was obvious from how it was shot down by the auto turret with laughable ease, its metallic armor was thin and light and didn't give much if no protection at all against his bullets.
Its exact size was unknown but he estimated around a meter in length and two in diameter with the rotorblades, it was a scout or something with a similar purpose. It explained why it was taken down so easily.
'Go scout there with Septen. Be careful as well. I will prepare and arrive.', he didn't even need to command the tetrapteron resting on his head to connect its neural queues with his implant for it to do it.
Such was how deep their connection between them and all of his tames as well were. It was an incredible feeling, to put it mildly.
Meri right after getting what it must do flew toward the window and opened it with trained ease, the tetrapteron then flew toward Septen who was also arriving.
The two connected, sharing information about the sacred and very important mission 'Father' just gave them, and how important it was for the two of them to do it to perfection. Disappointing 'Father' was after all the gravest of sin even if they didn't know what it truly meant or was. They simply knew it was bad.
