31 days until deadlineMeshanblov muttered in dissatisfaction, "If the simulations are to be believed the particle beam is far too limited. This will have to be worked on. But later, as always"
"Now what useless garbage has my supersoldier stolen from my inferiors. I'd be surprised if they even managed to do anything of value in such a short time period"
Examine the USB contents. Be prepared to laugh condescendingly
Continue working on the reactor. Heat can be a source of energy and a weapon. Plus the robo-body should have a higher heat tolerance than something organic
Continue working on the Quantum Brain
First thing on the USB is technical specifications for a type of electroactive polymer and blueprints for production. By specs it is nothing to laugh at, thin strands can excert considerable amount of strength depending on the way electricity is flowing, meaning it can both pull and push based on input. Strength by volume is greater than in your cells, however your artificial muscle cells less prone for wearing themselves out.
Second thing is unnamed alloy. Half the density of strongest steel yet strength far beyond. Clearly superiour material for any structural support purposes. Actually it's superiour material for many purposes. Production notes mentions high temperatures required for production, so it will be a bit of pain to produce. Structure on molecular level is quite interesting too, because there isn't any iron involved. It's... not bad. Nothing you couldn't come up by yourself, but not bad. Most useful out of all techs here.
Third is design for small fuel cell and its rather toxic fuel. It doesn't come close to capacity of your fission reactor, but then again the myomers are somewhat energy efficient. You could presume your rival doesn't intend to use any high power weapons, or these are for separate devices. It unfortunately doesn't come with notes what these are planned to be used for, nor any other higher level designs.
It's one of those days again. You know, those when your brain doesn't quite work right. Perhaps it is occupational hazard of super geniuses like yourself, or perhaps you just didn't get enough sleep. At best you can think how to direct heat on demand for another systems, but that doesn't really help. Well, it does, but not as much as you would like to.
Research in progress:
Miniature fission reactor
Quantum brain
To be researched:
High density capacitors
EMP hardening
Modular design
Research done:
Armored exoskeleton structure
Artificial muscles
Digital brain copy
Electricity driven cells
Particle beam
Unnamed alloy
Myomers
High capacity fuel cell
Test subjects expired: 19
I wonder what Calm Ocean does. Maybe not best to test right now.
Yes, I'm missing a few body parts, but the show must go on! Make sure that the SCP is firmly disconnected from any power sources, and disassemble it to see if it had any manufacturing errors. If not, I'm putting it up to supernatural effects.
Oh, and get myself an MMI. It'll make up for having only one arm.
Hell if you know what it does. Could be just what you intented, but better test and see by yourself. And by that you mean maybe from few kilometers away in bunker with magnetic shielding. After tuning transmitter power down.
Supernatural? No such thing exists. There's only things science has explained and things it has not.
Anyway, today you wake up in rather nice hospital bed. It's quiet here, so most likely this is a private room in hopefully private hospital. Soon after you wake up your agent arrives and explains situation to you as well as he can. Your lab is mostly useless now, so they'll get you a new one. Luckily there's one not too far they can give you after moving current tenant somewhere else. They have recovered all your research data and will set up automatic backups to secure company servers for all S-class contractors like yourself. They can't take risk of losing fruits of their investments. The only intact device in the labs was dismantled and packed for your later inspection, because based on rather spotty records they presume it was the cause of this incident. Additionally they have photographed all walls and ceilings with weird shit. You know, just in case some of those happened to yours. To quote good old Bruce Feirstein, "the distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
They ask you to employ greater safety measures in future because they "lost many very valuable employees. Please avoid hurting them in future."
You were also given a brand new experimental regenerative and anti-infection drugs, so you may even recover your lost arm. It has already done wonders for your face considering you have two functional eyes again. A quick check up proves this to be true. Gashes on your face are also gone, testicle is almost grown back and missing toes are no longer missing. Broken bones are set and healing very fast, you can probably alrady walk but you better wait for tomorrow. Don't risk it needlessly. Your missing arm is regrowing at much slower rate. They don't quite know if it will ever fully come back, if the regenerative drug was advertized right, it should. So eat a lot of meat and calcium rich food. But keep eye on your health, it is experimental drug after all. Oh, and you are addicted now. While you'll never get bacterial or viral infections again, you have to keep taking the drug which made that happen for rest of your life. Don't worry, they provide you what you need.
At this point you make your request for the Terrorizer to be brought to you as well as all your notes so you can at least try to see what went wrong. And an MMI if they happen to find one. The agent nods and promises to see what he can do.
So you spend rest of the day twirling your only thumb around. Terrorizer comes late at evening, but you just stare at your blueprints blankly. The Company people have not yet identified any head with MMI installed, so they can't tell when you'll get one. They can arrange a brain surgeon for you on two days notice.
Research in progress:
To be researched:
Mind to machine interface - canine adaptation
Mind merging
Artificial muscles
Exoskeleton
Mind merging
Advanced medical procedures
Optical camouflage
Overclocked biology
Research done:
Stable weapon attachment point and remote aiming designator
Mind to machine interface
Dreamstream
Test subjects expired: 50 (100)
Other victims: 35
Oh, and I'll give everyone permission to gaze upon my turn, and despair.
Multitask with the drones again except this time, use them to protect the compound from any potential spies/saboteurs. Try to control the drones stealthaly
Four drones is best you can keep under your control at the moment. You keep a tablet with you to make people think it's what you control drones with.
Then you wander around the bloody gateway to hell that used to be perfectly normal laboratory compound. Peeking inside makes even your hardened stomach queasy. It's like everybody became psychopathic sadomasochistic serial killer with satanistic rituals and cannibalism as a hobby, each with intense hatred towards everything mobile and immobile. Company cleaners mention that they keep finding organs and bodyparts in very weird places as they cart mutilated corpses and pieces of corpses away.
It makes you worried that this was probably a weapons test. A weapon you are supposed to carry into combat.
Eh, find decent corporate encryption for the hive mind modules and don't really bother more than that. This is more a proof of concept.
Anyway, how's my Terrible Glory coming along? Any fascinating phenomena observed yet?
Then start testing the possibilities of the hive mind module in terms of suggestion, cooperation and more.
Sure, decent encryption added. Into the design. Opening skulls of your subjects to physically alter chips is a bit too much effort. Waste of time too.
It takes until noon before hiveminded test subjects start to exhibit differences in behaviour, so until then your work is primarily hypothetical. It starts with uncoordinated movements, like someone going over to sink with a cup, putting it under faucet and then different person in another part of room moving their hand like turning water on. Very soon they stop talking to each other and simply sit.
While this happens, data observed from transmissions don't make much of sense. You can barely indentify who's transmitting, and when amount of transferred signals grow expotentionally it gets even harder. Data transfer thankfully peaks after hour or so you can only presume they have reached the maximum shared mental state. Any attempts to inject your own transmissions results bodies twitching until you stop. Hmph. Annoying.
Somewhere along the line you are notified about irregular behaviour in your terrible glory subject. Complains about temperature and music (which was not provided). You are occupied with translating hivemind data so you let it be for now. Doesn't sound very interesting, only hallucinations. You tell the assistant to keep you updated about further irregularities.
Later on evening when you have had just enough of fruitless work with hivemind, assistants tell that people observing the Terrible Glory are experiencing shared hallucinations. Such as gates of light opening behind the subject, blinding creatures entering through and subject starting to glow. They can tell these are hallucinations because cameras show nothing of the kind. That's when the intercom call is cut off and white light starts shining through walls. Few seconds later it ends as suddenly as it began leaving spots in your eyes. You hurry to the observation room and only after few steps you can tell it no longer exists. It and a good portion of your lab is gone, perfectly cylinderical area cut out.
Rest of evening is dedicated for figuring out what the actual fuck happened there. You have no recordings from the observation room because both cameras and the computer their feed was recorded on have disappeared. One security camera from hallway leading to disappeared area recorded single frame of whiteness, so you can presume at least some of the light was real. There's very little to study other than the hole left behind, and from that you can tell few things; whatever it was, it cut things down on molecular level and the hole is perfectly cylinderic. No radiation in any spectrum. No traces of exotic materials any more than is naturally present. Nothing. Only a hole in ground.
Well that sucks. You need a new lab. And few new assistants. It seems few of them are missing.
((You dodged a bullet here.))
Research in progress:
Hivemind testing
To be researched:
Research done:
Improved coordination
Improved cooperative bonding
Improved learning ability
Improved reaction times II
Terrible Glory
Hive mind
Major Technologies:
NERVOUS SYSTEM DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING
Test subjects expired: 33
Other victims: 7
Railguns, alright! Except railguns already exist, so there ain't really anything new to invent other than make it portable while keeping projectile speed on high standards. That means your railgun is gonna eat shit ton of power for each shot, though size of armature makes big difference. Bigger bullet, more power, heavier gun. You don't have powered exoskeleton yet, so you don't even know how big you can make your gun.
You spend whole day speculating possibilities without actually doing anything.
Research in progress:
Rail-guns
To be researched:
Reverse chemical formulation
Improved exoskeleton
Improved training speeds
Intelligence increasing treatments
Research done:
Layered lighweight armor
Matter annihilation power plant
Test subjects expired: 6
Give the camo a dazzle mode that makes you as visible and attention getting and possibly startling as possible. Because it's traditional to give everything questionably useful special features.
Keep working on the batteries. And putting those batteries in holodrones.
Dazzle mode added. With this you can be king of dance floors. Full blown discolight features and speakers blaring shittiest skrillex. That actually gives you idea for new distraction based weapon. A dazzleball. A sturdy device shining very hypnotic patterns light, designed to capture and hold attention of every human seeing it.
Holodrone frame and its ingenious hover system is completed, though battery is still missing. You test it by attaching couple of power cords into battery slot and more traditional car battery. It moves pretty nicely, identifying obstacles and moving around them.
Work with your battery tehnology doesn't go anywhere. The inspiration, the focus to work is missing. So instead you watch cat videos while vainly waiting for motivation to come.
Research in progress:
High density battery
To be researched:
Dazzleball
Brain integrated chips - Improved reaction speed
Brain integrated chips - Imprinted knowledge
Killing emotions
Associate obedience with joy
Researched done:
Reaction time study
Optical camouflage
Mobile holoprojector
Test subjects expired: 15
I keep forgetting to distinguish between the robotic body and the nanobots.
use the myomers on designing and building he robotic body, along with teh larger structural bits, which should be bade of the new material. In fact, definitely design some interlocking parts which could form directional armor using the new alloy.
continue developing a counteragent to the corrosive fuel. also, determine it's function. is it actually a fuel?
Rather than robobody it is a lego frame. But adding myomers on it requires additinal powersource and control systems, though nanites can form latter on fly if preprogrammed with it. Limiting usage only on joint parts you can keep the modular skeleton still reliably modular, but it also limits benefits of strength you can get out of it.
Then you make a mistake of googling kitten videos.
Research in progress:
Nanobot functions: Limited Edition Gray goo, Corrosion resistance
Robotic body
To be researched:
Nanobot production: Extended raw materials
Armor
Multibrain control systems
Distributed neural networks
Research done:
Nerve interface
Brain in a jar
Light and strong non-iron alloy
Myomers
Highly volatile fuel
Robotic body
Major Technologies:
Nanomachines
Test subjects expired: 19
Bah, so many distractions. I'll deal with the sick subject later; that technology might be unnecessary soon anyway.
I tell the company I'll offer them my panacea and cancer healing, and create a dose of each if that is needed. I also mention that some additional testing resources would be a great way to compensate me for my time, as I am on the verge of a big breakthrough and all. Perhaps some tissue samples from people with rare conditions, especially anything growth-related. I'm not demanding payment, just making sure the idea gets put out there.
If there's still time in the day, I delve back into my work on fleshcraft. These effects are highly educational, but I need something fit for war.
Naturally. Ask and you shall receive. The agent mentions that the wounded employee is missing entire arm, so you pack him an extra dose in case one is not enough. You haven't really tested it on so extensive damage.
Of course there's aplenty of time left so you focus on the study. Or try to. The interruption has completely broken your focus, unhinged your train of thought. All you manage is writing two more pages for your hypothesis. Assistants sense your annoyance and report status of the gorillaman on a paper. Apparently cancer has spread on his whole skin and is spreading on all internal organs.
Research in progress:
Fleshcraft
To be researched:
New nerve pathways
Research done:
Targeted hyper cancer
Inline DNA manipulation
Artificial Siamese Twins
Monster maker
Rapid healing
Extra bodypart attachments
Panacea - Immune system replacer
Major Technologies:
?
Test subjects expired: 34
A thought occurs on reviewing the accumulated research data and lab conditions.
"If it wasn't for the super-soldier research, this lab could make a decent profit as an official R&D organization. Wonder what the Company would think of that."
Ponder.
Continue with the same work plan as yesterday, programming the simulation engine interspersed with breaks for more work on the fuel cells. It would be good to finish at least one of those today.
If the gaggle of tech-savvy assistants has nothing else to do, have them start putting together a dedicated supercomputer on lab grounds. The cloud-processing provided by the Company is good and all, but for the upcoming tasks we'll need dedicated hardware that's cut off from the network. If we can't have it the size of Greece, we'll have it as large as we can make it.
And do ask the Company representative, what would they think of this lab becoming publicaly known, as a materials and robotics research group. We have the (mostly) consumer-friendly products, the lack of shady business and research practices, and even the lack of on-site deaths or other major accidents going for us so far. All the supersoldier research is basically a private backroom experiment with the tech we're developing, it isn't hard to conceal, and maybe we'll even attract some more business opportunities if we go this route.
((I basically want to wage a "hearts and minds" kind of war against the others. With the sort of experiments and practices they're undoubtedly resorting to to achieve their goals, it's likely that not all of their personnel are very happy - maybe some of them would be more happy working for me instead? :3 ))
What would they think? Well, they probably already have R&D department. Considering their ability to get things fast it's probably a grade above usual level. But if you were member of it, it would rise twenty five grades higher overnight. And considering they want super-soldiers, they clearly make profit from war. Weapons traficking would make sense, expanding with your work into mercenary business. Or they are a government subsidiary, preparing for war. Either way, military technology is clearly their greatest interest.
Simulation program is finished with time to spare, so you add few cool extra features, such as simulation of chemical reactions with other molecules and reactions with various forms of electromagnetic radiation. And because you still have extra time available, you upload the program and set it brute forcing optimal material for wear protection.
Next you nerd out with the flexible fuel container and make a masterwork fueltank. Flexible, stretchable, near completely unreactive inner surface and compartmentalised inner structure makes sure you can pump it over maximum safe limits and still be safe even if it is punctured. Of course puncture means at least one compartment of fuel will leak out and fuck up insides of your soldier, but at least it won't go all out, which is pretty good.
Building very large supercomputer is slow work and unfortunately also very visible work. Acquiring parts may be possible, but even they cannot hide it from eyes of the world. Especially as large computer as you are planning. And using biggest room in your labs doesn't make it very large. So they are bit hesitant to do it. At least give them reason worth of the attention it will get.
Agent smiles at your suggestion about hiding in plain sight. That's exactly what they are doing. You are the private backroom experiment. Or, well, not you specifically, but this whole super soldier business is.
((Considering they freely give you kidnapped humans as expendable test subjects and it doesn't really bother the employees, you could say they pretty much expect you to release your inner monster and have made peace with it.))
Research in progress:
Wear protection - outsourced
Research to do:
Wetware AI
Research completed:
Structural skeleton
Myomers
Muscle layout
Cooling
Molecular simulation
High capacity fuel cell