Titan of Industry
21 Aug 2017Rex Snipes
Alioth, Irkutsk:Titan. His parents had seemingly meant it to be symbolic or some such nonsense. His birth aboard the family Anaconda on the surface of Titan in the Sol system was a bit too tongue-in-cheek for his taste, but a titan in industry he was becoming.
Snipes made his way to the aft lower deck of his inherited Anaconda, Mulo Sumadji.
In sharp contrast to the fancy lights and futuristic technology all abuzz in the station around him, he stepped into his antiquated forge, its ancient anvil a symbol of the good old ways. Before the operations of business, the trappings of wealth, the military, the long sleep, and even before the trauma of losing his family, he was at heart a tinkerer and a smith. His Clan, God rest their souls, had descended from a proud line of Kalderash Romani, and Snipes was no stranger to working the ore and metals of the various worlds they visited into contributions to better the lives of his Clan and family.
This project was something else. He knew that despite whatever effort he devoted into avenging his Clan, he was still just one very mortal man. He was getting spread thin, and there were simply never enough hours in a day, regardless of whatever system he frequented. To alleviate his conundrum, he had tried to clone himself (which would be much to the dismay of various system authorities should they have discovered him).
Perplexingly, it seemed that regardless of cloning method, his blood type prevented him from accomplishing that pursuit.
Vexing.
Thus was the idea born for maintaining his sphere of business interests through technology.
On a table in front of him were various Achilles robotics parts and Cerberus prototype technologies. He glanced sidelong at the bulkhead near a fabricator where six other project prototypes were at various stages of development.
He looked down at the model in front of him on the table. "Lazarus model-7" was engraved along its torso substructure. Fitting. Life from unliving.
This particular model was his closest success thus far, having taken the better part of a year of R&D and several instances of needing to silence those involved in acquiring the AI remnants employed into the android's neural processors.
Upon completion, this project would perform admirably, and it would justify the work involved.
He could be in Terminus, yet have a unit stationed in a distant system like Inara, utilizing the consolidated hologram and telepresence projectors to make the automaton appear as his own facsimile, while the neural maps taken of his own mind would allow for patterns of his logic and decision-making skills to come as second nature to the unit when not engaged under direct control. As a secondary boon, it would make an efficient tool for espionage when programmed with the appearance of others.
Snipes rubbed his hands and went to work back at the forge to fashion a piece of ablative plating for the exoskeleton should it need to be deployed from orbit or to handle radiation in a deep space scenario. He needed to be thorough and try to account for every eventuality, whether through a sense of perfectionism or paranoia.
As he struck one of the plates to reshape it, he flooded back in memory.
He was sitting in front of the campfire again.
No, I can't see her right now...
"Well I love you too," Snipes leaned outward from where he and his wife had been sitting, trying to hide his awkwardness. He fought the trembling as he reached into his pocket and produced the ring. "Please make me the happiest guy in the stars."
She practically tackled him with her hug. "Of course, you dork!"
The campfire had shifted to the forge where he had crafted her ring. It was a simple design; he wasn't a rich or well-off man back then, but he had gone through great lengths and attention to detail to get it perfect.
He wiped his face in his arm, then looked back at the table in front of him. The ring had returned to a humanoid frame.
"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time..."*
He activated the form in front of him, and it flickered to life as its servos and gears began to articulate.
It stood from the table and looked directly into Snipes' eyes.
"Who am I?"
Snipes smiled to himself, reaching out to grasp its hand.
"The future."
He input a few commands into his wrist console and the android's projectors began to fabricate his own countenance around its frame as the neural network began to provide the unit with it own "memories."
Snipes gestured to the unfinished units along the wall, "We have work to do."
((*quote by Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Thanks to Phisto for looking this logbook over for me!))