Chapter 11: Chapter 10
Walking away from Yuka's apartment, Jacob couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. He had kept it together, even punishing people for the first time, which had surprised him. As he thought about it, he realized they had spent a lot of points today.
"Genesis, how many points do we have left?" Jacob asked.
"35 GG points, Sir," Genesis replied.
"Well, that's not ideal. I hope nobody breaks any more bones ... Let's head back to the storage facility," Jacob said.
With that, Jacob and Genesis headed toward the imposing black tower, peeking over the nearby apartments.
As Jacob walked, he noticed people were congregating and forming groups with each other. He knew that many had isolated themselves, trying to cope with the situation. He could see this on a map that Genesis had discreetly shown him, with the locations of all the AI marked. Many were in the apartments, just milling around.
Jacob even heard some laughter as he walked, which surprised him. The AI translations were so good and fast that people had quickly become accustomed to them, and the voices of the foreign speakers overlaid perfectly on the recipients' AI.
Jacob was a bit more shy, usually going unnoticed. He had always enjoyed sneaking up on his friends back on Earth and scaring them, so most people didn't bother him. Only a few looked up to give him a nod or a greeting as he passed.
Finally, Jacob arrived at the storage facility and walked inside one of the open doors. It was a high traffic area by this point, with Diego setting up rations and a fire going in the front with pots of boiling soup. They had used the printers to their advantage.
Jacob didn't mind, he knew this was a great idea. He knew it was important for everyone in the colony to be proactive. It was his job to encourage and direct them, and he had to keep reminding himself of that, or else he would get overwhelmed and have a panic attack in his apartment. Disappointing others was like a stake in the heart for him, and as an introvert and compassionate perfectionist, he was prone to becoming a depressed mess.
In fact, back on Earth, Jacob had gone to therapy and taken courses in hospitals to fix himself. He had learned that he could pull himself out of negative spirals, but he couldn't prevent them from happening. He was ashamed of this weakness and wished he could be more confident and sociable with the colonists, but he kept his head down and only waved and said hello as he passed.
Shaking off these thoughts, Jacob looked around to see where everyone was. He saw Sophia, Diego, and Akiko sitting in the facility's corner, close to the graphene printer.
"Hey, everyone. How are things going here?" Jacob asked as he approached the group.
"TERRIBLE!" Sophia immediately jumped up and yelled with enthusiasm. "You know how bad it is to use the washroom here? I do not know if some monster is going to snatch me up! WE. NEED. PLUMBING."
The others nodded in agreement. Jacob shrugged his shoulders. "Well, honestly, I can't fix that immediately. But maybe we could print out some sheets of metal and weld them into an outhouse. People can use buckets and then throw it out... It's disgusting, but does anyone know a piping company that does sewers?"
Sophia's eyes brightened. "Actually! With the graphene filters, we could create basic toilets. The filters would allow us to save water and send it right back into the units when we clean them. They would still have to be emptied, but we could make it easier and a little less gross than just using buckets." She rolled her eyes at the suggestion of using buckets. "But thank you for the inspiration! I'll get the metal printer on it ASAP."
"Would you like me to call for some manual labour, ma'am?" Silver asked Sophia.
She nodded and walked over to the metal printer, using Silver to design a life-sized hologram of the outhouse she planned to make. She highlighted the walls and decided on the thickness, knowing that her welding laser would make the larger connections fast and more effective. She just needed the manpower and the actual materials.
As Jacob watched the metal printer, he was surprised to see how quickly Sophia could get the basics ready.
Diego had told him you could just print in bulk, and that the printer's faster but less accurate settings made it easy to mass print some rudimentary shapes. It took them only 20 minutes of heavy pedaling to make 1000 forks and 500 bowls.
While Jacob had been dealing with his first conflict, a lot had been accomplished in the two hours he had been gone.
Diego stood up and handed Jacob a metal bowl with a simple screw-on lid. It was hot to the touch. Jacob unscrewed it and saw a stew inside, made from the various food items they had in storage. It was still steaming, kept warm inside the bowl.
"It's the last ration we made for the day. The rest of the colonists already came and ate. We announced the food schedule for the days. Two meals a day for now, one in the morning and one in the late afternoon," Diego said, returning to his seat and picking up his cup. "Thanks, Diego. This is amazing. Did you have any issues with the food drives?"
"Other than the incident in the square, there wasn't much. There were some arguments about the amount of food, but most people just accepted it for now," Diego replied. "Anyway, just enjoy some food. I haven't seen you stop to eat or drink once today. It will kill you if you don't. We made it about an hour ago, so if you don't eat soon, it will get cold and not so tasty."
When Diego mentioned it, Jacob suddenly realized how thirsty he was. His stomach growled as he caught the smell of the food, and he realized he hadn't eaten that morning on Earth either. He walked over to the empty crate where Diego had set the bowl and grabbed a spoon, saying, "Thank you for today, honestly."
As he tasted the food, he realized it was disgusting. He had always been a picky eater, but on Earth he had the luxury of being able to choose what he ate. Here, he didn't have that choice. There was no soda to wash the food down, so he decided to just breathe through his mouth to make the taste a little less bad as he shoveled as much of it down as fast as he could.
When he finished the disgusting meal, he realized that the sun was setting. He walked over to Sophia, who was well on her way to making an outhouse. She was deciding to place the frame in the square, close to one of the smaller storage facility doors, and volunteers were helping her hold pieces while she welded them. The frame was looking solid, with only some parts still being represented by holographic placemats while they put in the actual materials.
Jacob couldn't help but think to himself, These AI have really changed many things for us. Even a baby could do construction with blueprints like this. He noticed one worker standing beside Sophia, watching her as she welded. She looked at the worker and nodded, and he pulled out another welding laser and welded, emulating Sophia.
"Hey Sophia, how is the outhouse going?" Jacob asked.
"It's great! I'm teaching these guys how to use the welding laser, too. I purchased another one from the store," Sophia said, smiling. "That way, I don't have to become a construction worker. It's fun to make a design into reality for the first time, not the millionth. And these AI are great! Once I create the blueprints, someone else can download them and their AI can guide them with holo's. Even on Earth, I've never been able to build prototypes so fast, knowing exactly where each part goes and when. This holographic construction blueprint is a revolution!"
"This is definitely amazing!" Jacob nodded enthusiastically, also understanding the impact this would have on the colony's development. On top of that, it just looked plain cool! He looked around and thanked all the volunteers. "It's awesome that you're all willing to do this."
"Don't thank us. We also would prefer a somewhat normal bathroom. This is as much for me as it is for anyone else," said one worker holding the sheet metal, and the others all nodded in agreement.
Thinking back to their work earlier in the day, Jacob turned to Sophia. "Sophia, how many panels did you make so far?" he asked, looking at the solar array, which had clearly gotten larger.
"Nine! It's slow, but speeding up. I think in a day we'll have enough to have the printers operate at normal power and output. That means in two days we should have power to the facility!! Unless tomorrow is cloudy..." Sophia replied.
Jacob knew that the fundamental weakness of his choice for energy production was that the sun didn't always shine, and even when it did, sometimes things impeded the photon's path. He knew they would have to figure out how to get enough points for the printer that could make iron batteries, while also prioritizing all graphene production for solar.
Deciding to stick around and learn how the welding laser worked as well, Jacob watched both Sophia and the worker, who he learned was named John, from a small town in Michigan. John was familiar with welding, but not so familiar with high-tech laser welders. He wanted to be confident in his new mainstay tool, and lessons from a globally renowned genius were more than he could have hoped for.
After another three hours of work, with the sun finally disappearing over the horizon, they had finished the outhouse. It was a rectangular box with a basic door and lock, like you might see in many places on Earth. However, it was not made from plastic; it was all made from alloys created in the basic metal printer, so it had a dark metallic sheen. You could open the hatch on the back to pull out the metal box. The box itself had handles on each side to assist with moving it. The interior was also very basic.
The toilet bowl was a square box, with half of it separated by a graphene screen that was hydrophilic on one side and impermeable on the other. This allowed the pressure of gravity to separate the water from the waste slowly, so it came out cleaner than purified water on Earth. It would be reused by the colony.
They grabbed some large leaves from the grove between the colony and the ocean as toilet paper. Not ideal, however. What else could they do?
They had used up the rest of their day making a bathroom, while Sophia got to enjoy the first trial run of the facility. A couple of the volunteers and the welder all stated they would make more of these tomorrow throughout the town. Three thousand people need a lot of bathrooms.
Jacob remembered that in the old times during the industrial revolution, London was abandoned for a few years because the sewer system and smell became terrible. It was unlivable.
He did not want their colony to face issues regarding waste disposal, so he knew that this was a problem they needed to tackle sooner rather than later. And this makeshift outhouse construction team would help him achieve that.
He also realized he would have to convince volunteers to take out the waste containers and empty them...
"That's an issue for tomorrow. I'm not dealing with that shit." Jacob laughed as he joked to himself.
An hour after the workers left, Akiko and Diego both got up and head back to their apartments after chatting with Jacob for a while, about their lives on earth and their hopes for New Eden.
Diego had to get some sleep, considering he would wake up early for the morning food drive. Sophia was out cold; she was already snoring on some crates near her precious printers. Having passed out soon after, she tested her prototype.
"I guess I should get going too."
With that, Jacob turned and walked out of the storage facility. He looked around. The sun had set. It was dark, but the ground was illuminated slightly.
When he looked up, he saw 5 moons. Two were as bright as earth's full moon. It caused a nice illuminating glow on the environment. The sky was full of stars and nebulae; it was beautiful. With no light pollution and a new planet, Jacob was one of the first humans to experience and take in this majestic view of their new sky and constellations.
Maybe this planet won't be so bad after all.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
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