A/N: apologies for the late release,i forgot to release the chapter.
"Well, that took quite a while." Houston exclaimed, dragging the wagon full of scrap behind him toward the base as the sun began to set.
"A day on this planet seems to be a bit shorter than Earth's." Houston said, checking the rugged watch he'd built the day before to track it. *It's about twenty-one hours, huh.*
He neared the base and looked out at the setting sun — a bit smaller than Earth's, but still dazzling to watch. "Guess I kept my appreciation for sunsets, huh."
Once back, he started feeding the scrap to the printer, and a dozen minutes later all of it had been refined into basic materials — steel, copper, and the rest.
"Now that I think about it — what would I actually *do* with that drone?" Houston muttered, trying to puzzle out a use for it in its base form. "It's only good for scouting like this. I'll probably need to customize it if I want it collecting scrap."
"Problem is, the printer's got next to no features for designing or customizing anything. The wagon only worked out because it was simple — just basic shapes." Houston said, irritated, holding his head. "And I'll still need to program the thing too — the blueprint only came with scouting behavior built in."
"What a headache." He paused. "Although — I might be able to build a rugged computer. Use that to build a *better* computer, and use that to actually design and customize the drone." He said, brightening at the idea.
"Do I even have the capability to build a computer from scratch, though?" A flicker of doubt. "Well. Nothing wrong with trying."
Houston got to work, thinking through the parts list. "CPU and GPU — the rudimentary chip can handle both." He crossed them off. "Memory and screen — the scanner's already got those, so I can just strip them out and rig them into the build."
"That leaves storage. A floppy disk should do for version one — easy enough to make. Then I'll need a motherboard, some input and output — keyboard, mouse — and finally a PSU." He listed it all out. "Quite a lot, but the printer should manage it."
He got moving — printed the rudimentary chip, then a scanner, then built a larger version of the scanner's screen. After that came the floppy disk. "Ceramic steel should do the job." Houston muttered as the casing came out of the printer. The read/write components were simple enough, and a few minutes later the rest of the parts followed. He assembled it by hand. "512MB storage should be enough for now." He said, turning the finished floppy disk over in his hands.
An hour later, he looked over the parts laid out across the floor — all that was left was assembly, and then an OS and coding language to actually run on it. "Guess assembly still comes in handy." He thought, remembering the elective he'd taken back in college — the one that let him build his disastrous "inventions."
He started putting it together. First the rudimentary chip onto his self-designed motherboard. "This thing really looks like a Threadripper." He muttered, easing the oversized chip into place. Then the RAM, stripped from the scanner. Then the rest.
A few minutes later, it was done. It looked hideous. He hooked it up to his self-made monitor — bulky, boxy, like an old tube TV — then connected a keyboard and mouse.
"My masterpiece." Houston said. "Though it looks like it might catch fire any second. Alright — let's boot this thing up." He plugged it into the custom adaptor socket he'd rigged to siphon power from the printer's battery. "This thing should be able to run both the printer and my computer for centuries, easy."
The screen flickered on, and he got to work on the software. Nearly an hour passed. "I could probably replace an entire tech team at this rate." Houston mused, looking over the finished build — its wallpaper an ugly scribble that vaguely resembled a window.
"I'd probably be a rich man if I had this kind of speed back on Earth." He muttered, turning over just how absurd what he'd done actually was — a team of software engineers might spend months building a functioning OS. He'd done more than that in under an hour.
He hadn't just built an OS — he'd thrown in a handful of other rough utility software besides, and even designed his own simplified programming language, which he'd taken to calling Scrap Code: something like a hybrid of C and Python.
"Now — time to build something better with this." He kept working until midnight, when the second, superior computer was finally done.
Using the first machine to design the second, he replaced the floppy disk with high-speed, high-capacity SSD storage — 10TB units, soldered directly beside the rudimentary chip for speed, and not just one of them, but ten, shrunk down small enough to fit. Every other part got the same treatment: redesigned, rebuilt, far beyond what he'd started with.
"This thing could probably outmatch an entire server rack." Houston thought, admiring it. This one didn't look ugly — it looked like something out of a software engineer's daydream.
"Now, time to design the custom drone." He booted it up and opened the blueprint app he'd built for himself, pulling up the CK6's base design.
"This thing really isn't all that impressive, huh." He studied the spider-shaped drone — about the size of a car, four legs. He started reworking it: elongating the frame, reshaping the upper body until it read less like a spider and more like a six-legged, truck-bodied ant, its back built out into something like a cargo bin. Then he added three crane arms, designed to gather scrap and load it straight into the container.
"Ugly, but it's done." Houston said. "Had to trade off a bit of speed for it." He'd also relocated the solar panels from the top to the sides — a minor concession, but the panels were efficient enough that it shouldn't cost him much.
A dozen minutes later, the programming was finished too — simple work for him now.
"Time to actually build the thing. It's big enough the printer will have to print it in pieces — I'll handle the assembly myself." Houston said, rubbing his metal hands together, practically giddy. Sunrise was close, though the sky outside was still dark.
"Let's go." He fed the printer the auxiliary parts first — another rudimentary chip, the rest of the components — then queued up the drone itself. Soon the printer's glow was the only light in the base, and Houston watched it work, waiting for the build to finish.
A/N: Im not much of an expert so there'll probably a few mistakes in this computer building arc.