Bootstrap Colony (3 page)

The hogs went into the last
corral. He wasn’t about to unload the pens of rabbits, fowl, and other beasties
till he had better facilities set up. He turned to the truck; he dusted his
gloved hands off, took a sip of water from a canteen, then got in and checked
the update. Security was fine, the tractors were all charged and waiting.
Sighing he headed off to play human donk.

He returned around lunch time, or
at least noon by the planet’s reckoning. Unhitched the tractors and then he
sent them back, then grabbed an MRE and ate it while KITT followed them.

KITT was the car autopilot AI for
each of the vehicles. An individual robot in its own right, it borrowed many
ideas from DARPA and other programs. It wasn’t quite up to the television
version, but enough to suit his purposes. Each vehicle had built in cameras,
laser range finders, IR sensors, and other sensing devices to allow the AI to
guide the vehicle. The range finders flicked about almost like eyes, constantly
scanning the terrain around the vehicle.

Darpa was the U.S. Military's
research think tank, taking on any techno project to better the U.S. Armed
forces over the next century. It had been running open challenges for various
projects for over a decade now. One of them was an auto pilot system for ground
vehicles in all terrain and urban environments.

He glanced about, watching for
animals, feeling like a tourist in an African safari adventure ride. There was
little going around, the herds were off in the distance north and south, most
were heading north. A tractor had reported having to stop when a few of the
animals had blocked its path; he had checked the visual feed, surprised that it
had been a herd of bison and auroch.

So far he had seen a curious mix
of alien, dinosaur, and ice age animals, the occasional elk at the edge of the
forest line, and a few shadowy shapes of giants in the woods beyond. The
mammals were large; he had even seen a woolly rhino. The birds were odd; a few
had four wings, almost like the ancient ancestors did back when the dinos
roamed Earth. No sign of the raptors though. He knew they would home into the
smells of his animals soon, or other predators would, it was only a matter of
time before something or someone stumbled over him.

At the park he muttered a “Let’s
try this again.” He directed one of the tractors to back into the hitch of the
flatbed with the combine on it. He was amazed when it managed to dock with only
a minimum of intervention. “Well well,” he muttered in approval, locking the
hitch down and attaching the brake, electrical lines, and safety chain.

He had each of the others do the
same, but changed his mind almost at the last minute when he realized one was
the load of solar panels. One good bump or knocking the trailer over could do a
lot of damage to some of the sensitive connections.

Almost every vehicle, and of
course every cargo pod had solar panels, but they only provided a limited
amount of power. The cargo pod ones were also designed to separate from the
roofs to be added to the primary solar farm once he had it up and running.

He directed the tractor in on his
own, and then made the connections. The first tractor had arrived at the base
camp, so he led the last out of the perimeter, and then raced ahead to the base
camp to unload and turn them around.

One of the vehicles had the water
and hydrogen pod, so he directed it to the edge of the pond. It took him only a
half hour to turn the vehicles around and return for a fresh load. He took the
time to check the animals; glad they had finally settled down and were doing
better. The trailers had been mucked out, He would have to moved them to the
outer perimeter and preferably downwind when he had time. Right now they were in
the way and were cluttering up the inner courtyard. He ordered one of the
robots to run a hose to the pond, then hose off the corralled animals lightly.
He would need to separate the dairy animals, so he directed the donks to build
three more corrals while he was gone. He'd have to check out the corrals when
he returned.

The hydrogen pod was a glorified
electrolysis machine, complete with compressors, pumps, and refrigeration. The
water pod was a machinery pack that pumps water from the pond, then filters and
cleaned it before sending it on to the various things that need fresh water. It
even tapped the hydrogen plant, using waste oxygen to clean the water.

Eventually he would have to set
up the drinking water module that would tap into the primary module. This would
supply his mobile home, as well as the drinking water for the base and animals.

He checked the plan with the
tablet. Two of the general purpose robots and two droids he tapped and set them
to work unloading the solar panels and stacking them where he had designated
them to be set up. Another robot was there, driving metal rods into the ground,
and then hanging the panels on to them. He would have to check things over and
hook up the electrical lines by hand when he returned.

He smiled wryly as his truck
paused at the perimeter gate. “Even on an alien world, a traffic jam,” he
murmured, aware his subconscious mind needed to hear a voice from time to
time.  Ahead of him was a donk unloading the combine. It turned out of his way
and set the part it had down nearby. He passed and stepped on the gas to get
back to his schedule.

A week later he had completed and
pushed the perimeter out to four kilometers, and even started the first farm.
The robot farm tractors had plowed the fields he had designated while he'd been
out and about on other projects. Then each had spread the piles of compost and
fertilizer he had kept out over them. He had had to wrestle each attachment on
to the tractors, and even pull some large rocks out to be hauled off but they
looked reasonably good. Once that was done he then had the automated machines
sow them with wheat, barley, sugar cane, vegetables, and corn in five
designated test fields.

The farm robots were really on
their own network now, a small one set up for them to keep them from dragging
the main net down. There were the two tractors, attachments, bins, a dump
truck, and combine harvester. Once he had the full net up their collective
intelligence would be increased.

Right now the farm tractors were
towing water trucks back and forth from his pumping station. If they had been
free of this task he would have been tempted to press gang them into towing
loads between the park and base. He had underestimated how hard it would be to
move the hundreds of trailers.

With the perimeter enlarged he
had enlarged the animal corrals, redirecting some of the animals with chutes to
small pasture areas. The empty animal trailers had been taken apart and
reassembled into crude shelters to protect them from the sun and weather.

He had managed to go over his
blueprint, glad he had programmed it into the robotic AI before the journey. He
was still a little out of sorts when it came to what went where; the plan and
the reality were again bumping heads, or at least in his head. He smiled at the
thought, and then gazed out to the Northern perimeter. Along the inner ward was
the final perimeter, he had one set of robots there.

He still had a token force
guarding the park; over forty loads were still there. A rain storm the night
before had forced him to remain here at home. He still couldn’t trust the KITT
AI to dock the tractors to the trailers properly, and the GP or droids he'd
left behind in the landing park couldn’t make the fine connections as easily or
as quickly as he could. He sighed at the limit of his technology.

In theory he could have left a GP
robot behind and used it in telepresence mode to do the connections, but it
lacked fine motor control skills to handle the small centimeter thick cables.
Besides, telepresence was just too damn slow.

Each of his GP or General Purpose
robots were designed similar to a certain Hollywood robotic star. They had
treads for propulsion, and a plastic shell covered grasshopper mechanical body.
The head was much more advanced then the Hollywood inspiration, with a much
more humanoid look. He knew without them, the donks, and the Andy robots he
would be half as far along as he was. Hell, most likely he'd still be stuck at
his landing site.

He had three other robots,
classic R-2 style for simple chores, and two sets of androids. The largest were
the Andy droids, a play on the name Android. The second was a smaller version
called the Mini-Me. Both of them were actually based off of a small toy sized
robot from before 2010.

None of the three robot designs
would do him any good in the first month of set up, they were all geared for
indoor or light duty chores, not the heavy grunt work of outside labor. He
didn’t have the power for them right now anyway.

His daily chores were beginning
to grow as the base took shape and some of the animals hatched or developed.
The Tilapia were doing well, he had a GP robot tasked to dump a small helping
of manure and fish food into their tanks daily. He had made sure the manure was
from the cattle, not his sewer tank on the mobile home or the sheep. He didn't
want or need cross contamination.

That too would need to be drained
soon, he realized with a pang. He sighed. There were over two hundred projects
to complete before summer. Some were simple, but many were complex, or just
mind numbingly boring... like milking.

Milking was going okay, but still
an annoying chore. He really needed to get that automated dairy machinery set
up soon. Egg harvesting was also annoying but necessary, or he would have
broody hens. The eggs he didn’t use were either fed to the animals that could
eat them, or frozen. So far he had kept only a few from each daily harvest back
for freezing. The hogs seemed to love them. The cats would only eat them
cooked, the raccoons chattered happily when he gave them each one.

He decided to make putting the
dairy machinery together the priority, hang anything else. Losing a couple
hours a day to milking the animals was just sucking too much out of his
schedule. He had separated the herds during the week, the dairy cattle, regular
milk goats, and the spider silk goats each had their own corral. He had plans
to use the shallow northern cave as the barn, with a path of containers and
fencing to the pastures. They would double as walls to help protect his fledgling
herd. He knew he needed the animals; hunting in this unknown alien land still
gave him the willies. He didn't envy anyone out there right now.

Sometimes he felt quite guilty
about not trying to track any of the other humans down. But he couldn't risk it,
couldn't devote his resources to trying to find people who may or may not be
alive. Hell he didn't even know where to start looking! He sighed and set the
thought aside.

After a lunch break he wiped his
brow and looked at the machine in pride. It was a pretty neat thing, designed
to allow the animals to walk in whenever they felt the urge to be milked. A
robotic arm would clean the teats, and then another would latch on and milk the
animal. A set of tanks and plastic balloons hooked up to the network of pipes
would contain the milk, and keep it separate until it could be tested and
pasteurized.

Each of his dairy herd had a
machine; the largest was the cattle one of course. He had just finished the
machine and it was still doing post diagnostics when it had its first customer,
an over eager cow stepped through the turn style and into the chute. “Well,
well, first customer,” he observed wryly. She gave a low moo as she stepped
into the milking bay. He watched as the machinery swung into action, reading
her indent tag then setting into feed, clean, and milk her. A second cow was
already at the turn style, eager to get some relief. He snorted. “Wait your
turn there Bessie!” he called. She rolled her eyes at him, running her tongue
up and out then tossed her head and returned to chewing her cud.

After watching the first three
cows get milked, and then checking the seals on the valves and piping, he
nodded and moved onto the next machine. The goats were much easier, now that he
had the hang of it they went together nicely. Running power cable to each was a
drag, literally, but a robot did it for him. “Power reserves below twenty
percent,” it reminded him.

He nodded then cleared his throat
and replied, “Acknowledged. Pass an order to unpack the wind turbines after the
last dairy is unpacked.”

The robot turned. “Affirmative,”
it replied mechanically. He didn’t even glance back as it trundled off to the
next task.

When he finished the final dairy
machine he rode his truck to the park. He didn’t even pay attention to the road
anymore; the genetic algorithms had long learned the route by heart. He focused
instead on the laptop, flicking through the priority list and then over to the
overall map. He went over it, sketching in where he wanted the donks to leave
cargo pods. He was now confident that they'd carry out the orders so he let his
mind wander a little.

The caves were a boon, readymade
shelter, needing only minor eviction and some moderate cleaning up. There were
six ground access caves, two large ones, one moderate, and three small
openings. The longest and shallow one was going to be the barn. It had only one
entrance into the cave complex, but it was partially buried in rubble. Next to
it in the west face was the other large cave; he had decided the night before to
use it as a garage. Twenty meters further south was the moderate opening, an
entrance hall he had noted on the blueprints. Behind the main waterfall was a
small entrance, but it was about two meters up the sheer face of a cliff. A
spur of rock in front of the narrow entrance behind the waterfall also blocked
it a bit.

The other two small openings were
three hundred meters further south; they led into tight narrow crawl spaces. He
hadn’t explored them; one was almost a meter above the water line of the waterfall
pool. The opening was quite high, at least four or five meters. The last
opening was only a meter high, and over one hundred meters away, but a meter up
the face.

The cliff face had other openings
of course, like the one where water poured out into the third waterfall into
the pool below. There were two openings over ten meters up on the sheer cliff,
and the explorer bot had found a vast chamber with an opening up above. The
explorer robots were evicting the tenants, that was why he had waited to enter
the caverns, keeping most of his gear sealed away. No need to invite critters
into it. Besides, he had enough on his plate right now.

Some of the chambers still had windblown
snow in them. It was still below sixty out but warming a little so he was now pretty
sure it was spring. That was a relief.

At the park he went through the
usual chores of hooking up the tractors and checking the perimeter. He had
pressed one of the construction vehicles into towing duty now that the hydrogen
plant was up and running.

The dump truck couldn’t tow the
cargo trailers, but it could tow the fertilizer trailers and tanker trailers.
Yesterday had been his first test run with the machine, there had been a heart
stopping moment when it had hit the gully and nearly tipped over, the right
side wheels off the ground. He had programmed the KITT AI to go much slower
from then on, and had nervously watched that crossing each time. He seriously
didn't need to figure out how to salvage a load if things went south there.

The traffic back and forth
between the two camps had worn a trail; some of the local wild life were now
using it as a game trail. So far they had left the strange metal things alone
and he was glad. It was only a matter of time before a predator started
stalking the area though; he wanted to be done with the trail by then. Managing
three loads a day his seven trucks and five hummers could theoretically finish
in two days...that was if the weather held out.

Returning to base, he unhitched
the trailers and sent the tractors off once more. The donks swung into action,
following his sketched plan, laying the cargo pods out just where he wanted
them. The flatbeds were rolled off, he would disassemble them later to
stockpile their parts, or recycle them. “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” Mitch said,
and then snorted at the whimsy in his voice. “This time we will do it right
from the start,” he said firmly. He looked out to the farm.

The robotic farming machinery was
hard at work plowing the sixth field; he had designated it for more feed, this
time oats. He would need it soon, hopefully the animals could digest the local
grass and plants, but he would need to supplement it, and of course have a
store for winter. The rabbits were due to birth in a couple more weeks; he was
seriously debating releasing a few to the wild just to make it easier on him.

“Damn it, I can’t, going to need
them for food,” he muttered darkly, remembering he had predators of his own to
feed. The dogs and domestic cats were okay; the usual mix of dry and wet canned
food went over well of course. The raccoons were a bit harder to feed, but the
cheetah was a different story. Obligatory carnivores, they needed fresh
uncooked meat. His stores of meat wouldn’t hold out forever, he knew he would
have to do the culling; he just didn’t like the idea. Hopefully he wouldn’t
have any still births to feed them. He shivered a bit, and then pulled himself
back to the present.

The GP robots were busy with
chores, mucking out, feeding, and lugging stuff to locations he wanted things set
up. Fortunately he had set up the automated charging station for them and the
tractors earlier in the week so he no longer had to designate a robot to do it
by hand.

On the second trip to the park
his truck pulled up to a stopped tractor and beeped. He looked up startled, and
noted the tractor. “KITT report,” he called out eying the area warily.

“Biological obstruction
detected.” He flipped the laptop back open, and then linked it to the tractor’s
visuals.

“Damn,” he growled. There was a
feathery sauropod in the way, obviously wounded from its staggering slow pace
and bloody wounded on its flanks. “Damn, damn damn,” he muttered, noting it was
limping.

It gave a long soft awkward cry,
tossing its head to a distant shape. He looked in the indicated direction,
noting the herd of sauropods getting further and further away. “Not your day
mate,” he said sympathetically.  A rustle in the nearby brush made him look
over. The sauropod looked over wearily, and then it thrashed its tail and tried
to amble away faster.

“Oh shit, not my day either.”

 Out of the brush a giant raptor
like creature came, massive, easily four times larger than the raptors. “Oh
fuck me,” he muttered as the thing bellowed a challenge. He linked the camera
feeds to the log and set it to record.