Chapter 12: Chapter 12 – Trash

The corporation basement garage where all company mandated vehicles were stored was spread out on several floors. After leaving the elevator behind him the Engineer looked for the right section that held the vehicle that he was going to be travelling on for the next leg of his work. He had no idea where Section 3A was meant to be. He hadn’t been provided specific directions and it seemed to be perfectly acceptable to allow a recovering patient to accept their belongings and leave a sterile recovery suite and be told to report to a vehicle storage bay where he would be directly taken to his job site.

His first real challenge of the contracted job was finally here, having brain surgery and sleeping for eight months was the easy part. Not that he actually remembered any of the experience, rather than any dreams it had just been a simple state of oblivion before being woken up. It was more likely for the best though that he had little interaction with other employees as possible. Remembering the confused look on the two orderlies’ faces when they had first escorted him had been enough.

The Engineer still had no clue exactly why he was meant to have a brain implant installed regardless and what if any side effects would take place. It was a shame that he didn’t gain any additional abilities like being able to hack or perform feats of superhuman strength. Then again it was all good holiday savings money, he did wish that he had set up a method of generating more revenue while he was under.

If it wasn’t risky enough, he would have considered setting up an auto system to collect all the company employee details so it could be sold on to a marketing team to better sell their products. Human resources databases held value on the black market, but he didn’t think that Contract AI 290 would be too willing to accept that little breach of corporate policy.

He looked at the wall next to the elevator which displayed a coloured diagram map that displayed the parking garage was four floors of vehicles. Next to it was a sign that said you needed to use a key fob to secure access to each floor and individual area. There was an anti-intruder system in place that would react if you attempted to break through secure areas, the key fob would provide the data that gave you the authority to pass through security checks without issue.

‘A challenge!’ thought the Engineer. ‘It must be part of my secret training program.’

This had been one of the reasons that the Engineer hadn’t worked in a fixed job role for a longer period of time. Occasionally, very occasionally he would assume that a situation in an employed setting was set to record job satisfaction targets.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out his portable personally modified fabricator. Activating his DNA signature, he unlocked it while also putting his password, anyone else who tried without either would find it had completely shut down and not permitted to make any further attempts.

As a joke he had built a small program into it that when someone was tampering with gave the warning that it was going to self-destruct in twenty seconds, a countdown and alarm would ring out and a message would flash across the main screen to stand clear of the area as the power unit would explode and to avoid danger, they needed to take at least ten steps away.

It was just made to scare away any potential thieves and would just enter power-off mode as well as for his own sense of amusement. He had a few small dealings with criminals in his youth and the shift in the world economy had created the scavenger class who often picked over the remains of abandoned areas that had been left behind by both companies and governments. For a heavily modded portable fabricator that had been customised to produce semi-legal products it was an essential for any individual or group looking for additional product. Not that anyone stealing it would be able to replicate the design plans and changes that he had made.

‘It’s going to need some additional feedstock as resources.’ He muttered aloud.

The Engineer had done some serious softmodding to his dddddddddddd portable fabricator, due to commercial rules it was meant to accept specific items that followed standard regulations. The cost of buying the brand version stock was far too high for his tastes. Spending money so freely didn’t save up for holidays. Feedstock in this case meant any physical materials that would be rendered down into basic component atoms and then reformed into useful materials.

He had decided to make a few modifications to the fabricator so it would be able to accept different sources which could be directly put into the machine. In theory, having a machine that was able to break down most sources of matter would be a pretty dangerous weapon if it was mass-produced but the Engineer didn’t concern himself with that, he wasn’t a person overly interested in weaponry.

‘Now, what can I use…hmm. Ah!’ He spotted a marble-faced stainless-steel trashcan next to the entrance to the elevators. It was spotlessly clean with a stylised gold-leaf pattern running around the top. By looking at it you could tell the quality of service that the company strove for in their products. It looked relatively expensive to the eyes of the Engineer.

Walking over to it he immediately raised a leg and gave it a hard kick, knocking it over to see if any useful trash or random debris was inside. Remains of food, wrappers, bottles, and tins were all scattered across the floor. A shiny metal glint was seen among some rotting bananas. The Engineer reached down to pick it up, someone had dropped some metal chains into the trash can, he wiped his hands clean and realized that he should be wearing gloves if he was going to dig through garbage and rotted remains of staff lunch packs. It wouldn’t be hygienic to be picking up trash and trying to discard it, not unless it was absolutely necessary of course. He’d only had to do that one or twice before.

Let’s see how much material is left for me to work with. I’d prefer not to cannibalise my clothes or shoes. They cost money. Trash is free money for the educated individual.

Checking the small front green glowing screen of his portable fabrication device that had been removed from his backpack he set it on the floor to run a diagnostic.

+Feedstock gauge at 30%.+

The amount was far less than he had originally thought but given that it had been stored away for eight months and he hadn’t been shopping to top it up it was understandable. If he knew that it was running as low as this he would have looked for used medical supplies and waste products back in the recovery suite to fill it up. Not entirely sanitary but recycling helped the environment as well as his savings account.

‘That’s enough for a pair of cheap gloves. It’ll stop my hands getting dirty at least digging through that rubbish.’

The Engineer checked the feedstock machine blueprints that he had available, most of them had to be purchased from an official store. For basic weapons such as knives, he had sourced them through alternate methods, or his designs. Scrolling through he found the blueprint for a basic set of gloves, thin and cheap plastic things that would last for a short time at least. It would reduce his feedstock by 5% to make them though, the trash would help him top it up a bit though.

The main downside to a fabricator was the power source. You could either keep buying and changing batteries or plug them into a mains source. There were alternates, of course, kinetic power or solar power but they were able to charge quite slowly. By simply walking around it would gain additional power but the rate would be so small that he wasn’t a major fan of it.

If you imagined having a backpack that regenerated energy through the power of movement, would you be willing to walk for one hundred miles just to fully charge the device? Or by using solar power, it would have to be left in the sunshine for a week or so remembering how many hours of daylight there are during the day.

By contrast, plugging it into a mains power supply meant that you could have it fully charged in five to six hours. Portable fabricator batteries could last over several days depending on the usage and the type of products that you wanted to create. More complex designs required a higher power supply. It would be an idea for him to crack open a power supply here and plug it in but again it wouldn’t be the best idea. Better to try that in a more isolated area. If this was going to function as a training exercise then he doubted that shorting out the local electricity supply would be permissible as a physical hazard. Health and safety rules would be maintained.

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The personal modifications that the Engineer had made overrode some of the in-built safety features of the machine but also increased the demand for the power unit. It was a questionable choice, but he was happy with the results. Certain restricted items such as small explosive devices could now be produced in a civilian machine that was meant to be used for day-to-day usage. It also reduced the lifespan usage of the machine, but it paid off in other ways, such as being able to come up with necessary components or parts in an emergency situation.

You had a limited choice for buying blueprints unless you directly worked for the military, or you chose to source them from the grey market or chance your luck and download them directly from an unknown source. They could have viruses or deliberate errors built into them which means that during the process that an item was being made it would waste additional feedstock or an error would be inherently built into the item that had been created.

Trying to cut a watermelon with a knife where the blade shattered apart once you had divided it into two pieces had put people off buying off-brand blueprints or trying to create their own. It was also the same for any basic weapons, yes you could use a civilian fabricator to build a weapon but then find out that during the testing stage that a dangerous malfunction occurred.

It would be the exact same for a crimal gang or group of scavengers that tried to illegally source and create weapons for any form of violence or attacks. Guns and other weaponry would have a high chance of exploding in your face and if you didn’t mind losing a hand or an eye then the risk was well worth taking.

Drawing his attention back to his portable fabricator the Engineer took his time to check out the power supply. He had been told back in the recovery suite by that medical technician Brian that all of his personal belongings had been sterilized and safely secured away. Given that his communication device was running on a full charge surely the same should have been done for his fabricator.

‘Let me just check someone had plugged in and charged up the battery on this thing.’ He said to himself softly.

+Bob the Fabricator Power Level at 99%. Welcome back God-Level Mechanic.+

The Engineer chuckled to himself; he had made the message so it would display every time he checked the power supply. It had reminded him of a book he had once read. As for the name Bob, it was a great name to call anything. He had initially toyed with the idea of entering the name of the fabricator Bob the Bob but that had seemed excessive.

‘Right now, time to make some cheap gloves to dig through this trash.’ He chuckled lightly to himself, now clearly happy that he had now found a minor solution to a minor problem.

He activated the fabricators' creation function, scrolled through the blueprints that he had installed, and found what he had been looking for. A design for a pair of extremely cheap and disposable gloves. They would break shortly but they were a far betterr alternative than using his bare hands. You never knew that would be dumped into a trash can, even one as fancy looking at this one in the vehicle storage area.

+Bob the Bob will use up 5% of feedstock to create item <Cheap Pair of Gloves>. Confirm y/n?+

The Engineer happily pressed the yes button and watched as his portable fabricator began to whirr and manufacture his item. For something simple it usually didn’t take a long time, more complex items could take several hours to produce depending on available materials.

The orange plastic gloves were a straightforward basic design that didn’t leave much to the imagination. Similar to cleaning gloves if a little thinner, they would be produced in several minutes. He stood with his back against the wall humming a nonsense tune while lightly tapping his feet against the floor. Waiting was always hard but he’d had eight months of rest already so for him minutes felt like nano-seconds. He had enough energy to spare.

*Ding*

+Item produced. Please take it. Bob the Bob entering automatic sleep mode.+

‘Brilliant!’ quipped the Engineer. He reached into the dispensing part of the fabricator and pulled out a pair of orange plastic gloves before putting each one in his hands.

‘Thank you for your service, Bob the Bob. You’re one great completely non-sentient portable fabricator. Sorry for tampering with you so much.’

Placing the portable fabricator unit back into his backpack and made sure that it had been placed in power-conservation mode he stepped ver to the pile of trash that was strewn all over the floor. The once pristine floor outside of the elevator entrance was now a complete mess. Any cleaner would have felt bad their hard work had been undone in a matter of seconds.

Frankly, some of the trash smelled bad. Especially the rotting food. Remembering the shiny metal glint that he had seen earlier near the old banana peels he reached in with his now orange glove-covered hands and pulled out a collection of old-style metal keyrings. Sadly, there were no keys on them. The Engineer felt a slight tinge of disappointment wash over him.

‘Keys would have been a purer type of material to work with, but beggars can’t be choosers. Let’s see what we’ve got with these keyrings.’ He thought to himself.

One of the keyrings was in the shape of a small ancient handgun, another was shaped like a flatfish. There were around twenty or so different styles made up of plastics with a few metal components. They all looked pretty useful to him but he was more interested in the value of the materials that could be repurposed than the design style.

He dropped them on the side of the trash near the elevator as one of many piles that he planned to make, sorting out the discarded items into organic and inorganic types, metals, plastics, and miscellaneous. Then he would put them into his fabricator and increase the amount of feedstock.

The Engineer didn’t realize that his actions were being tracked by others inside the building. Given the fact that he was inside a private company headquarters it would be quite unlikely that a random employee digging through a trash can would go unnoticed.

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