Chapter 15
We had finally reached the point at which there wasn't much we could do to make sure the factory was retooled. We were left with simply continuing to fine-tune the medium lasers and sell those while waiting on the construction to finish while also stockpiling enough that they'd be able to start construction on 'mechs as soon as the equipment was in place.
Which meant this was probably the only time period that i was going to have free for the foreseeable future. So, after talking to everyone at Siler's, I packed some stuff into my truck and headed for the mountains.
The old, beat-up truck that I'd bought when I left Quikscell still worked fine, and it's four-wheel-drive was exactly what I'd need when it came to the snow. I had been a teenage the last time I'd goe skiing or snowboarding, and I was looking forward to spending sometime alone in the mountains. My old employees had always done trips like this. It was time I enjoy something similar.
After all, I hadn't taken a vacation in nearly fifteen years if you counted my last life. In my first life, I hadn't been willing to let go of my control of everything until I'd had a board, and then they'd stabbed me in the back. At least here, I had joint ownership with one person that I could trust.
Back on Earth, my family hadn't really been interested in my business. Sure, they'd listen, and did their best to understand. They just didn't have the drive to build something like I did. Instead, my little brothers had all done 'normal' things. Not that they weren't successful. They just weren't as ambitious as I was.They'd all settled down, gotten married, and started their own families.
It was actually kind of funny. Now that I wasn't home, I envied them. They had people who loved them, cared for them, and would miss them when they were gone. I had a few close friends and I knew my family would miss me. But I didn't have any kids or a legacy to leave behind. Not after the board shattered what was left of my company in a push to time the AI boom and collapse.
The strange thing about all of this wasn't even the odd information that popped into my head. It wasn't the 'mechs or any of the other things that stuck out to me. Instead, it was how easily I had moved on from my 'death'.
Something about that memory and the tangled web of emotions just felt off. Part of the reason I was willing to actually take a week or two for myself this time around was so that I could finally sit down and sort through my own head. I needed some time to sit down and figure out exactly what the limits were of this strange new ability of mine. I also needed to finally process all of the shit I'd put off. Burying myself into my work was a good way to distract myself from it. Reality doesn't care what traumas you have, so I'd pushed past the worst of things to get the company established and us in a position to where we could execute on our ideas and secure ourselves.
Now we were stuck in that holding pattern. The waiting game that always seemed to drive me nuts when I was younger. It didn't bother me as much as it used to. We had done our parts, the rest of it was in the hands of the construction company.
Turning on the radio, I found a station that was playing some odd mix of blues and eighties rap and began humming along to the catchy tune. Sometimes, driving alone was enough to begin sorting through your emotions.
–
–
Three days later…
I'd wanted something tangible to begin working on while I was up here. So, this first week was focused on testing the limits of what I could piece together with this ability I'd had for over a year now.
The last two days after checking into the rented cabin I'd trying to figure things out. What I'd discovered was somewhat interesting. Words didn't trigger or produce the information dump into my brain. I could read something with the word Atlas mentioned and not have anything other than the satisfaction of a good read.
However, if it was an image of a design, it was like every note, text, document, etc involving the design process, manufacturing of the factories, and every step of those processes filling into the back of my brain.
However, like I'd already proven and figured out over the last year and a half, the information didn't linger for very long unless I was glancing at it for a longer time period. The longest I could retain information past the dump was three to four hours depending on how long I'd spent staring at a design.
That was something that I was testing now. Just how long could I retain the knowledge of how to build something like an Atlas or an Orion. So far, it seemed like each hour of studying an image equaled an hour of knowledge. Or at least close enough to it that it didn't matter beyond that.
The next few tests I was going to be doing involved things other than 'mechs and tanks. I hadn't 'triggered' the ability when looking at civilian vehicles. So, what was the cutoff? Where was the line that my brain or eyes decided that something was worth dumping the information into my brain?
So, I reached into my suitcase and pulled out a new folder. Jotting down some notes into my notebook before opening the folder with photos of various things. I knew what they were, but I hadn't looked at them yet.
Technicals of all types didn't trigger the dump. So, I flipped to the next image and nodded as the text began to spiral. Lumberjack: Inner Sphere Industrialmech. Nodding at that, I flipped the page. So, it worked on aircraft too, that was cool. Next page, small craft and shuttles, no issues there. So, that left one final page that contained the pictures of dropships, jumpships, and other interstellar transports. So, I closed my eyes, and with a deep breath, flipped the page.
Opening my eyes and glancing down, I jolted, unable to look away as my head began to scream in pain, filling with mountains of data that jumbled together and began to compound. The more I looked at it, the worse it got, the migraine increasing until it felt like someone was taking a sledgehammer and slamming it between my eyes.
I couldn't look away, my body wouldn't respond to me, it was like I didn't have control of my muscle groups anymore. Seconds, minutes, hours, I didn't know how long I stared as blood began to drip down my nose before my body twitched, spasming and causing me to fall backwards.
Rolling over, I retched and closed my eyes, laying my head down in the pool of bile and chunks before my brain shut down, leaving me in the dark.
Light hurt…
There was something sticky on my face, and it smelled like the factory when we were in the middle of welding something. The metallic tinge of iron and steel overpowering something else that smelled sickly and sour.
Keeping my eyes shut because the light hurt my head, I slowly sat up, peeling my face off the floor from whatever it was that I'd slept in. Then I reached around for, and closed the folder. I now knew the majority of the limits of my ability. Jumpships and dropships were off the table. Something about them was incomprehensible to my brain. Whether it was the science behind them, or the sheer amount of parts to manufacture I wasn't sure. What I was sure of, was that I needed to deal with this headache and clean up whatever it was that I had slept in.
But in order to do that, I'd need to open my eyes, and that felt like an impossible task right now. So, I sat, pulled me knees into my chest, and rested my head on them. I just needed to take a small break, wait for the man with the sledgehammer to take his union mandated fifteen and then I would open my eyes and get started on cleaning myself and the cabin up…
When I opened my eyes again, it was dusk instead of day. My head still hurt, but it wasn't nearly on the level of what it had been however long ago. Looking around, I winced. There went the deposit for this place. I'd leaked blood and vomit onto the hardwood floors, and it was going to take a lot of cleaning to get that sort of thing out of said floors.
Thankfully, I'd somehow avoided getting any blood or vomit on my notebook or the folder. Standing up on shaky legs, I shuffled over and picked the two books up, swaying as I did so before setting them down on a nearby coffee table.
Then I turned to the bathroom. I could clean up the mess after I had cleaned myself up. Turning on the shower, I didn't take off my clothes or wait for it to heat up. Instead, I stepped into the freezing water and allowed the gross stuck fluids to wash down the drain. The red blood and yellow of the bile falling off me in a sickly brown color.
After the water began to heat up, I pulled off the soaked clothes and let them rest in the bottom of the tub. Finally, after the water had started to work wonders on my head and the shivers from the cold had stopped.
When I was done scrubbing until my skin was a bit red, I stepped out and threw the soaked clothes into the hamper nearby, a towel wrapped around my waist covering everything up while I headed for the bedroom to change clothes.
Pausing, I carefully stepped around the pool of grossness and noted that it wasn't quite as big as I had recalled. It looked like I might end up getting my deposit back after all!
So, with my head no longer pounding, and a whistle on my lips, I got dressed and began working on cleaning up the mess I'd made. I now knew the general hard limits of this ability, and I still had the better part of a week and a half to enjoy the slopes. Things were looking up for once.
Now I just needed to wait and see what was going to go wrong this time…