Chapter 71: Chapter 68

My trip back to the kitchen was short, but it felt like it took forever as I ruminated on how these people must be used to being treated. My position of authority over them seemed normal and absolute to them, but any sign of kindness or taking responsibility seemed to create severe bewilderment and confusion in everyone except Axle.

I shrugged as I approached my remaining cardboard box and flicked my knife out. They’d get used to it, or I would. Once the flesh-tape was all separated and discarded out the sliding glass door, I pulled apart the box's lid and got my first look at the atomic dismantler gauntlets inside.

The shuttle outside started up its engines again and I snatched Cube’s box off the counter before it could start screaming for me to hold it. Then I peered down into the box on the floor.

They were beautiful. Blued steel in color, the gauntlets looked heavy. The armor encased the entire fist, in overlapping plates. The gauntlets were on a small stand and were facing down into the box, so I got a good look at the starfish structure inside one.

On the inside wall of each gauntlet, a series of thin, whip-like arms rose and waved around in the air. They appeared to be searching for something, and on an impulse I reached down with one hand to touch them.

“BOTH HANDS!” Cube immediately shrieked.

I gritted my teeth and held the little creature’s cardboard box until the shuttle had gotten far enough away for me to set the noisy little bastard back on the counter. It smacked its lips and went back to sleep, as far as I could tell.

I reached back into the box as Axle approached the glass doors. With a small exertion, I lifted the first gauntlet from its stand in the box and hefted it. Axle’s eyes widened as he entered, and the tendrils extending from the glove increased their movement.

“I must admit, I have not seen or heard of a device quite like yours before,” he said, big furry arms crossed in thought. “I would very much appreciate the chance to study it.”

“Yeah, sure thing,” I grunted. It was awkward trying to avoid the waving tendrils. It felt almost like they were looking for something and taking the gauntlet out of the box made it worse.

I held the gauntlet up and looked at the fingers quickly. It was the right, so I held it up with my left and carefully extended my hand toward it. As the seeking tendrils made contact with my fingertips, their movement became more intentional. They began reaching and stretching across my fingertips and knuckles, seeming to seek something.

As soon as the first tendril from the gauntlets touched metal from my own starfish suit, it reacted. The plating on my own hand opened and accepted the tendril, and instantly the rest of them knew where to go. The dismantler gauntlet hauled itself forward, engulfing my hand entirely.

It slid over my knuckles and the fingers were gently guided into each awaiting channel. Axle watched all of this with fascination and then looked up at me.

“Is there any pain?” He asked.

I shook my head and lifted the gauntlet. “No, but I have this built-in painkiller system anyway.”

It suddenly activated, and the painkiller rushed through me, to my confusion.

“Which just hit me with a dose, strange,” I said, before collapsing to my knees in pain, clutching at my right arm.

Something was sawing at me, inside the gauntlet. I could feel rotating blades cutting away at my skin, muscle tissue, and bones. Then came heat, in solid lines. Something was being welded into my body, and the pain was so sharp I could do nothing but gasp for breath. It cut, sawed, and burned itself onto the back of my hand, wrist, and fore-arm, while I clutched at the counter with my good arm and gasped for breath.

The painkiller did little more than keep me from passing out.

Axle watched, carefully. He stepped closer when I collapsed against the counter, but he didn’t intervene. He simply watched, in obvious concern.

The pain suddenly stopped. I took a deep breath and blinked away a few preformed tears.

“Wow, that was nasty,” I said, staring at the new gauntlet covering my arm. Just as I was wondering if it was permanent, the entire structure of plating retracted and vanished into tiny, lifted sections of metal jutting from my arm and hand. 

I stared. 

The metallic sections on my forearm all looked like extremely miniaturized hangar bays and were filled with rainbow light.

Once the gauntlets were gone, the bays all sunk under the skin, and all that was left was a thin strip of metal running down the topside of my arm. I focused on wanting my gauntlet back, and the strip of metal rose again. 

The entire process happened in reverse. 

Metal plating protruded from the embedded bays in a sparkle of rainbow light, and within a second my fist was covered in the heavy gauntlet again.

I looked up at Axle and grinned. He didn’t see it through the helmet, but he smiled, nonetheless. “Dimensional gateways, embedded directly into the body. This is incredible, what is that material made from?”

“You ask as if I know,” I laughed. “I ordered something to help me survive a BuyMort bug attack, and this is what came.” 

My decision to keep the nature of this affiliate’s primary mission to destroy the BuyMort system from Axle wasn’t exactly conscious. I just knew I was different to what he expected, and I wanted to figure out more of the mission before I trusted anyone else with it.

Survival still outweighed anything else I wanted to do anyway.

Axle nodded though, still peering at my gauntlet. He looked up at my helmet. “May I record you applying the next one?”

With a silent groan, I nodded and looked at the other gauntlet in the box. It had tendrils still seeking, slowly writing in the air above the hole my hand would go in. I looked up at Axle, and he hurriedly dug a device that was clearly a camera out of his pack.

It had a square body and telescoping lens, the assumption seemed safe.

He pointed it at me, and then pressed and held a button on the top of it. A small red light on the top lit up and the Knowle nodded at me. “Ready when you are.”

I lifted the gauntlet from its box, turning it in the air so Axle could get a good view of all its sides. After a deep breath, I slid my remaining hand into the gauntlet. 

The process repeated, with my left arm being sawed into as I received another dose of the painkiller. I held the gauntlet up so Axle could more easily see it this time, and he made sure to get every angle he could while the device attached itself to me.

Once it was over, I nodded and stood up straight, before willing the gauntlet away. The tiny bay doors lifted, and each sheet of metal retracted inside until there was nothing but a thin metal line on either arm, extending from the elbow down to the tips of each finger. 

It reduced the overall presence of the starfish suit from my elbows down, but the rest of it was in place as normal.

Flexing my hands just right would bring out the gauntlets, as would thinking about them hard enough. Once I had performed the trick a few times for Axle’s camera, he seemed satisfied and put it away.

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“You must tell me more about the affiliate you purchased that wonderfully bizarre item from,” the Knowle said.

I opened my mouth but closed it again before saying anything. Looking up at him, I nodded. “Yeah, some time. Right now, I’d really like to see the new facilities.”

His claws snapped and his eyes went wide. “Of course! Everything should be finished building by now, Jada was overseeing the last of it when I left. We should go now, while there’s still daylight.”

He walked to the garage door, passing by the still dazed prisoner on the couch, and I followed. The golf cart ride back to the campground was nice, with a beautiful sunset forming to the west. It tossed rich, orange colors across the entire campground and cast everything in a beautiful light. The first thing I saw was my own house, which was the only word I could think of for it.

Axle merely drove me into the space and then back out, but it was enough. I was beaming, a house of my own. Being a home-owner before BuyMort had been a pipedream. 

Pure fantasy. 

My new house wasn’t terribly pretty, but it looked great to me.

A simple bungalow style rectangle of mud-crete had been poured on one side of the campsite. It was longer than it was wide and had a small second story that appeared to open out onto the roof for a make-shift terrace. Doors and windows were already installed, and I turned in my seat to stare at the upstairs balcony as we left the site.

Once we got past Phyllis’ area, the residential block was up next. Several sturdy looking mud-crete huts were in place, one per site. There were humans milling around several, and hobbs working on several others already.

“I like this design a lot,” Axle explained as we slowly cruised from the backside of the lot. “It allows us to build larger structures around the initial hut.”

The Knowle pointed at one. “We can build up on the huts for the next level of housing easily, and then once we need to build apartment buildings or the like, their walls can be filled in with mud-crete, rebar, even steel girders. Depending on the size of building you end up needing, these designs provide a very stable foundation.”

Each hut was furnished with a simple wooden door, and three windows. The bathroom was in the center of the hut, and each of the other three larger rooms were built around it. Each bathroom had a simple cast mud-crete shower bath with plumbing installed, but none of them had shower-heads. 

Simplicity had been king during construction, and the pipes for water and power were visibly jutting from the backs of each hut, to vanish into the ground nearby.

Jada waved as we cruised through slowly, walking toward us. She nuzzled Axle as she got in the backseat of the golf cart, and we continued our tour.

We approached the parking lot, which was crammed with items and people. I leaned out of the golfcart to get a better look, but all I could see was an impromptu flea market with no vendors.

“Ahh, good, it arrived,” Axle muttered. “I had them drop these items off near our new storage barn, to make it easier to put away whatever remains.” 

A new mud-crete rounded barn was in place at the front of the parking lot, near what little remained of the ruined office. A smaller shed structure was built beside it, and together they consumed roughly a third of the parking lot.

The shipment of furnishings we had purchased was piled in the parking lot, in different sections. Apparently the pod that delivered them had burnt their section names directly into the blacktop of the parking lot.

A series of small refrigerators, coolers, and catering racks were in a partition labeled “cold food storage.” An area named “meal prep” was filled with small propane BBQs, counter-top sandwich grillers, hot plates, rotisseries, and other various kitchen utensils and appliances. 

“Living spaces” was the biggest by far, and it was full of an eclectic assortment of couches, loveseats, beds, and lounge chairs. There were curtains, sheets, blankets, and the worlds least uniform collection of pillows.

“Toiletries” had been popular and was already mostly picked over by the time we arrived. I jumped out and grabbed a pack of toothbrushes and a new razor for myself, tucking them into the small cargo compartment at the front of the golf cart.

People of all kinds from the campground picked through the mess, taking items, and discussing the options. I saw one older gentleman use a handkerchief to wipe blood from a vinyl covered couch before showing the furniture to his wife. We needed these items, and it wasn’t like I could do anything about how they were acquired, but it still felt bad.

The next stop on our tour was the spider ranch, which had changed dramatically. I could see the walls from the residential district, but once we got there, I was properly impressed. Axle got out and opened a double wide metal gate for us, before driving the golf cart directly in. Everything was different.

The entire area was encased in fourteen foot mud-crete walls, which Axle explained were larger than average to ensure our mordren spider rancher would have privacy. The building he’d had built hunkered on the close side of the compound, and the road led directly from the gate to an oversized barn door.

The building was like a barn with a large apartment attached to the side of it. A tall, rectangular building with several windows was connected to an oversized, round-roofed storage warehouse, similar to the unit in the parking lot.

A small pond had been dug, directly in the center of the spider trees. It was empty, but Axle assured me that once we filled it with water, plenty of insects would come to feed our spiders. His crew had also reinforced the walkway through the trees, turning it into a drivable path, but I declined a tour.

I had no idea how the gobbs worked in such close proximity to the spiders without any incidents, but Jada reported that it was an easy job, and none of the hobbs had complained about their gobbs.

As we left the spider ranch area, Jada herself explained the new additions to the primary compound wall she’d had made. Each corner of the wall now contained a guard shack built into the corner. 

A small building had been built into each for storing arms, armor, and ammunition. Each guard shack was secured with a thick metal door and featured a new staircase that could only be accessed from the inside of the shack.

Jada explained that this proved helpful to secure military portions of the compound from civilian interference and injury as we drove. She also pointed out the new portions of wall she’d had installed. 

All along the top of the wall had been a wide walkway. Jada had overseen the addition of an additional chest high wall atop that, much thinner, and facing out. This ensured our hobbs could patrol the entire wall without threat of being shot from outside. 

She also assured me the defenses were thicker around the gates as well, but we were heading in the opposite direction, and it was getting darker.

Finally, we reached the well as the last stop on our journey; the new well. It was larger than I had been expecting. A foundation of mud-crete was in place around a large metal vat that had been sunk into the ground. One small door on the nearest side allowed access to the vat, and on the inside was an area for gathering water, with a hose that would fill any container, and a series of controls for the water storage area.

Axle and Jada talked with me a bit about potential upgrades to the system, and I noticed that pipes were already snaking from the back of the vat to various points across the compound. When I asked about them, Axle explained that the residential block already had water connected, and that my new home and the spider ranch were expected to have them hooked up either later that night, or the next morning.

“Speaking of,” Axle said as we wrapped up our tour. “We should go get that power station installed. It should be simple, and I can get us all powered up and running tomorrow. We just have to pick a place to store Cube.”

I thought it over but ended up sighing and shaking my head. “Cube better stay with me.”

The little metal box with a mouth had been riding along with us the entire time, content in my lap. I had no interest in leaving that strange little block with anyone else, it felt wrong just thinking about it. 

There was a connection growing between me and the odd little being, and I needed to be around to answer its demands.

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