Fallout Wastelander

Chapter 53: Chapter 53: Taking A Dip



The next day I awoke from my sleep feeling well-rested and more than recovered from the previous day's affairs. Pumped to begin my day, I checked the time on my trusty Pip-Boy 3000 to see how many hours I would be working with till everyone eventually wakes up.

Nice, it's only 2:07 AM. That should give me plenty of time to work on some things in the facility before Amata gets up and we head for the vault again today to finish the last three trips back and forth. But before I get up and start getting ready to head downstairs to the first floor, I gotta see how my robots did during the night whilst I was asleep.

Upon completing that thought, I utilized my ever-increasing number of thought processes and checked up on my robots and the many machines and mechanical constructs I had total control over. Moments later into the process, I got an overall view of what took place and what I discovered was that my workforce had finished the construction of the water purification system and the jumbo walk-in freezer slash refrigerator.

Great, with the completion of the water purification system, we'll now no longer have to be entirely reliant upon the vault and can grow our own food. And that's not all. I'll also be able to begin cultivating the many modified plants I used in my drug synthesis production back at the vault. The very same ones I used to produce my modified Buffout, Med-x, Radaway, and Stimpaks.

Along with those benefits, our access to running water now means Amata and I can actually start properly using our bathroom. Which will also eliminate the need for us to make trips back to the vault to load up on clean non irradiated water for cleaning and drinking.

As for the walk-in combo freezer and refrigerator, that big guy will allow us to store all the food we will inevitably produce when it comes time to harvest the crops. That said, the cold space has its limits, thus we'll eventually have that thing filled, although that won't happen for quite some time,

Nevertheless, when it does indeed occur, I'll just try to sell it off the excess to the nearby Tenpenny Tower. And if not them, I'm sure some of the other wasteland settlements like Megaton, Rivet City, and Canterbury Commons would be more than happy to take the goods off my hands. I can probably make a decent profit from the trade whether that be as caps, scrap or some other kind of resource.

Besides those two projects being completed, my guys finished assembling the automated weapon magazine manufacturing machine as well. Which had produced a number of freshly made magazines for the 5mm Miniguns and several other weapons I had in my arsenal.

Even though there is still much that needs to be done before I can accomplish my goals in this life, I'm nonetheless inching ever closer, one step at a time.

Happy to have woken up to such good news, I reassigned a small portion of the freed up workforce to the hydroponics to begin farming and sowing seeds. As for the rest of them, I distributed them across a few of my ongoing projects, specifically the conversion of the existing fusion power plants to fusion breeder that was still ongoing, the revamping/remodeling of the dining area, and the construction of arc furnaces and arc kilns.

Which I'll be needing in a minute here for the processing of raw materials that I'll be obtaining via mining and the scraping of more junked vehicles that are just sitting around the wasteland collecting rust.

Following my check in on my robots' progress and assigning new tasks for them to complete, I briefly used my recently obtained ability Ghost to get out of Amata's hold of me and got off of the bed. From there, I walked to the bathroom and hopped into the new shower to test it out and enjoy letting the water run over me.

...

God knows how many minutes in, as I was finishing up my shower, a thought occurred to me.

You know what I feel like taking a nice hot bath and since I've gotten a ton done recently; I think I'm more than deserving of a little bit of me-time.

Taking a short break for myself, I headed over to the big ass tub we had installed and turned on the hot water, releasing a continuous stream of fresh clean water from the tub's faucet with not a hint of contaminants in sight. After several minutes of waiting for it to fill it was finally done, so I turned that faucet off, stepped in, and got comfortable.

"Ahh, that hits the spot." I thought aloud euphorically whilst the water spilled out and over the sides of the tub.

As I sat there relaxing in the hot water, my mind wandered to what I was going to do next and what ways I could utilize to further hasten my already fast progress.

Now that I got a moment to myself to relax, I can use this short break I have until I need to head back to the grindstone to plan out some of what I want to accomplish this morning. And while I'm at it, I'll see if I can't come up with some ideas to improve my progress even further.

The first thing I want to start chipping away at when I head downstairs is changing my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle's bolt action over to a semi-automatic action. The bolt action no longer makes any sense to have since my stats are more than capable of keeping the weapon locked in place and on target even if I fire the whole 10 round magazine in short succession.

As for how long the conversion will take, it shouldn't require all that much time, given that I now have a fully automated weapon manufacturing machine that can essentially handle all the milling and other processes for me.

When I have the new design fabricated and in hand, I'll look into designing several heavier weapons to make when we're done exploring and clearing out the nearby metro station. An even larger anti-material rifle doesn't sound too bad and I think this time I'm going to make a 20mm so I'll be able to take out larger and sturdier mutants more efficiently like Mirelurk Queens, Radscorpion Queens, and Super Mutant Behemoths without having to resort to throwing mini nukes at them.

On top of that, the rifle will allow me to take out targets from even further ranges than my A-21 Anti-Material Rifle would allow. It'll also be able to take an even wider selection of loads when compared to 50 cal that I'll be able to make use of to deal with all sorts of situations.

Following the completion of the 20mm anti-material rifle, I'm going to set my sights on designing a gauss minigun with six barrels, a variable fire rate of 1,000 to 6,000 rpm that is controlled by a dial just like my Mulcher gatling gun... Other than those features I'll spare no expense and implement drastically better coils and electronics into the weapon's design compared to other gauss weaponry to improve the weapon's various functions and performance.

Hmm, what else can I add... Well, seeing how all my gatling type designs all share backpack magazines or power units, this gauss minigun design shouldn't miss out thus it will also be receiving it. That will ensure that I have the ability to take out literal hoards of armored hostiles easily and efficiently, like anyone wearing power armor such as the not so friendly brotherhood of steel Outcasts and Enclave, for example.

The second I've completed the gauss minigun design, I'll begin working on designing a belt-fed gauss machine gun next that will have a fire rate of around 1,200 rounds a minute. And as soon as I have that design drawn up, I'll move on to design a plasma minigun. Once I'm finished with all those designs, I'll begin working on drawing up two new robots specced out for combat with what little time I'll have left after all of that weapon designing.

Moving onto my ideas to improve my already fast progress rate, I haven't done anything with Mentats, the intelligence enhancing drug thus far. So I can see about adjusting the chemical structure of the compound to rid it of its negative side effects. Such as its addictiveness that was added to the chem so it would get their users hooked to increase sales for Med-Tek.

And while I'm messing around with the formula, I'll need to figure out how to make the permanent intelligence bonus adolescent youths receive from taking the drug permanent across all ages. I don't know how difficult that will be to figure out, but my stats are already leagues above what normal humans would be able to possess, therefore it shouldn't be all that difficult to do.

That said, the main time-consuming part will be modifying the plants that will be required to produce the compounds and actually growing them. So I shouldn't expect to see any real results from this until at least a month later when I begin harvesting.

...

After going over everything in my head again, that should be all I can get done before Amata gets up... Time to go back to relaxing for a while longer.

Sometime later, I rose from the tub and rinsed myself off with a cold shower.

I'm so glad we decided to add this huge tub, I'll definitely have to add this to my regimen going forward since it seems to relax and lessen the tension in my muscles.

From my cold shower, I went and took care of the rest of my daily hygiene needs, heading downstairs via the elevator to our improvised eating area. While I was taking the elevator down, I took control of the new robots and turrets that were produced during the night.

Taking care of that business swiftly, I arrived on the main floor and proceeded to the improvised eating area. The second I did, I wasted not even a second and began preparing a meal and once it was hot and ready; I hoovered it down. Done having my fill of a high-protein meal, I made my way over to my workshop located in the manufacturing portion of the facility next and got right to work on the projects I wanted to get done.

...

Hours passed as I busily worked on my multiple projects and when I accomplished just about everything, I wanted to get done for the morning, I noticed what time it was.

Damn, it's 7:03 already... Time sure flies by when you're having fun.

With it becoming that when everyone gets up, I paused my work there and began going over it while I waited for Amata and the ghoul brothers to come down. What I obtained for my efforts first off was a new and improved anti-material rifle.

| A-22 Anti-Material Rifle |

Damage: 120

DPS: Variable

Fire rate: Semi-Automatic

Capacity: 8, 10

Reload: 2.5

Weight: 25

Ammo Type: .50 BMG

Value: 15,900

Attachments: Bipod, Laser sight, Suppressor, Night/Thermal Variable Zoom Scope, Vertical Fore Grip, Weapon Sling

Item Description: This weapon is a 50 caliber A-21 Anti-Material Rifle that was redesigned to be semi-automatic, and in the process of the redesign, the designer decided to make several additions to it to improve the weapon even further. Those additions include a quad rail for attaching different attachments, a mounting point for a bipod, a heavier barrel for sustained fire, improved rifling for better accuracy, and mounting points for a weapon sling. Designed by Harold Todd Woods.

In addition to that, I gained several new designs for weapons and robots that will provide quite a substantial upgrade to my overall capabilities and firepower once they go into production. But that will have to wait till I have a decent amount of resources flowing in consistently. Which will happen as soon as I find a decent amount of resource deposits within the earth to mine and process.

But in the event that I can't reach them immediately or within a short period I'll have to resort to trading with the local settlements and scraping the nearly unlimited wrecked vehicles around the wasteland to keep up with my current resource expenditure that will continuously grow as time goes on.

Along with those accomplishments, I made headway with the Mentats formula by modifying the chemical structure. From the modifications I made, it should have removed its addictiveness, the various neurological disorders that it causes to different people when they overuse the drug, and the other known undesirable side effects. Besides making those changes, I also found out what part of the chemical structure of the compound was providing permanent intelligence increases in adolescents and modified it so it would provide those very same benefits to any human, no matter their age.

Other than that, I also genetically modified some plant seeds I had on hand with one of my specialized machines and sent them off with my Worker Bots to sow alongside the rest of the plants we'll be growing.

And from my work on the drug, I even got the sudden bright idea of pursuing research regarding the possibility of increasing the intelligence of other creatures through the use of the drug. However, after thinking about it for several seconds and weighing the pros and cons of such an idea at the time, I decided against it. 

This was because it would be a hell of a lot easier to just simply genetically modify a creature and make it smarter that way than it was to try to increase their overall intelligence via the use of drugs over a long period that would more than likely require years of drug exposure and training.

...

Looking back on things, I sure got a ton done this morning. Nevertheless, let me go over everything again to make sure that I didn't forget anything important and that there are no issues with any of the designs I came up with over these last several hours.

As I went over my work, the Hill brothers eventually woke up and began making their way downstairs. So I finished up what I was doing and proceeded over to the improvised cafeteria to meet up with them and chat with them for a few minutes before I head upstairs to wake up Amata and begin our loot runs back and forth from Vault 101.

______

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