Tunnel Rat Chapter 376 (Patreon)

A second pot of coffee gave me enough twisted thinking for another chapter.
Warning: This is totally raw. I just kept downing the caffeine and writing. I'll be fixing errors and polishing it later. Tomorrow is a Butcher writing day.
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The alphabet sat in a circle in the middle of the trees, discussing their situation.

"If he's a supervillain, he's doing it right. I never considered that route for us because they always live in gloomy places like hollowed-out asteroids, gloomy domes in a swamp, or old chemical plants. Milo has a small town down here."

"A small, very American town. I'm sure it hasn't been lost on you that we have scale models of Monticello and other important American homesteads lining two streets with a park full of trees older than all of us?"

"It's a theme. All villains have themes."

"Doesn't work, that's two themes: History-obsessed and Rat-Armor."

"He stole someone else's lair. Probably a superhero. That makes it all work. A rich superhero."

"And somewhere in here, is his hidden Fusion Reactor, powering all of this.

"Not so hidden, we get a tour later today."

"OK, so it's hidden for now. My question is, how did he get it? Build or steal?"

"I was going to laugh at you and ask 'Who hides a Fusion Reactor?' but the theme of the buildings is sort of making me feel silly."

"Government facility? That explains the furniture in the security kiosk."

"Maybe. Or anti-government? Shadow-government? Puppet-government. Is Milo controlling the President like a marionette?"

"No chance, the guy is dumb as a brick, as usual."

"He's dancing, but to the tune of the corporations that got him elected, as usual."

"We should take over the world, but it's so much work!"

"I'd rather take the tour of this place, and let the world run itself for a day."

"Agreed? Ok, let's find Milo"

This was fairly easy, Milo was asleep under a tree at the other end of the park. He cracked an eyelid as he heard them coming and sat up. "Feeling better?"

They looked at each other, and Nina replied, "Yes, your clever plan to drain our anxiety with food, bunnies, video games, and the promise of unveiling your hidden secrets worked. Now we are curious about this place and ready to pillage...Oh, I mean visit...your secret stashes of unknown technology."

"Excellent, then we can move on to stage two. I'm sure by now you've postulated that I didn't build this on my own. I didn't. I found it while looking for a place to build my own underground base. As you can guess, I gave up on those plans and settled for moving in here, instead."

Bork was having trouble staying anxiety free. The thought that this might be part of the US Government was causing turmoil in his head.
"But who made all of this?"

"Oh, the US Government. Doesn't the theme give it away?"

"Ahhhhhhhh!!!"

"Bork Alert! We need extra bunnies!"

Bork took three deep breaths, "I think I'm ok. Milo wouldn't be here if he was afraid the government could find him. But why is that?"

Milo said, quite calmly, "They hid it too well. It's old and has been rebuilt several times. The last group in control limited knowledge of it for their purposes. And when they left, they intended to destroy it for good to cover their tracks. This is where the story gets odd because they think they destroyed it but didn't. I found tons of explosives at the one entrance, and the Fusion Reactor on melt-down. That was fun to deal with."

"Meaning, 'not fun'? And does that mean..."

"Yes, there was an operational Fusion Reactor here. I didn't build one. But I've got a lot of ideas on how to improve their operations, now that I've learned so much about this one. I'm going to start with the one in Limerick. It's barely operational at less than 1%. I think I can safely bring it up to 20% and supply a lot of cheap electricity to the electrical grid. But that's a long-term plan. Let's go visit some other parts of the place you'll find interesting."

Milo led them to the end of the corridor leading out of DownTown, "The atmosphere is Argonite gas. Double-check your own air supply, and your partner's. Bork, you're with me, and check on everyone now and then." With survival suits on, and ninja suits off, they went through the first set of double doors that served as an airlock, and then the second. Milo had stored one of the electric carts at this point to save time and keep the group together.

For the next ten minutes, he drove them through row after row of storage areas, pointing out the tons of frozen food, fresh water, furniture, bedding, clothes, and everything else necessary for a community of two hundred people to live on for years. He admitted that he'd never gone through it all, and the statement gave his siblings the idea for a combination inventory and looting excursion. Milo had to admit that would be useful.

After going through the top floor he drove down a ramp and repeated the tour. After five levels, none of the alphabet was bothering to take notes or try to map. The job was getting delightfully huge and they would need to approach things differently. Through two sets of double doors and down five levels of a spiraling ramp the little cart went, finally coming to doors labeled 'Power and Engineering.

"Here we are. This was all dark and shut down when I first got here. I had to bring a battery cart to open the doors. Make sure you have ear protection on. It's noisy inside." Forewarned, the alphabet followed him through two sets of soundproof powered doors and into the vast room filled with machinery.

"This is huge, at least the size of an entire hab section."
"It needs to be. Look at those diesel engines! Ten of them? Why would you need ten of them."

Milo pointed to the central area. "Nano Diamond Storage Batteries act as backup power if the Fusion Reactor is shut down. The diesel engines can also supply all the power needed for the hab, and to supply the power needed for the initial fusion reaction. We barely need all this power. I'm repairing the diesel engines and doing years of maintenance on them, then letting each one run for a week to test for worn parts. Once we get all of them fixed up, the system will just need a checkup every six months. The storage is completely full."

Zander loved the idea of redundant energy systems, "This is perfect. Defense in depth for any foreseeable problem. We need this at Rhebus, it could power all four sections."

Nina stared at him, "You do realize that we can simply run more power cables from here to our sections and supply our needs that way?"

Zander looked crestfallen, "But that's the easy way and no fun. I want my own giant diesel engines! Those are awesome."

Milo sighed and looked sad, "Well, I do love tinkering with them, but if it would make my brother happy, I could give it up and let you have all the fun of maintaining them. It's hard though. I doubt that only one in a thousand boys could do it."

"I accept! Thank you!"

Onyx turned to Algernon, "I believe that tonight I shall reread a story from a wise man named Samuel Clemans called Tom Sawyer."

Algernon agreed, "One should always keep up on such classics if you don't want to be fooled by the Dreaded Pink Ninja."

Zander glared at them, "Not the same. Engines! Big Engines! Much Vroom!"

Nina poked Milo, "What else is in here that you need help with?"

"Well, lots of equipment here. Small electric vehicles, construction equipment, fabricators, welders, and who knows what else."

She made a note on her datapad, "Got it. Treasure Hunt in Engineering. What's the central building."

"Let me show you and Algernon." Zander and Onyx were off to look at 'Much Vroom' and Bork was enthralled to look at the Nano Diamond batteries. Milo led Nina and Algernon up to the central observation building with its jury-rigged airlock.

"This was made by someone else, obviously. There used to be a breathable atmosphere in the facility. He snuck back in after things were shut down to keep things from blowing up. This is where he lived for a few months until he went deeper into the facility."

Nina and Algernon explored the little set of rooms much like Milo had. They found the notes and started piecing together the story. "Milo, did these people ever get here?" She had a sinking feeling in her stomach.

"No, only as far as the security room. One of them betrayed the rest and then died to security robots. Jeremy was here alone, trying to fix things."

She looked at the names. "Jeremy? Milo, is he still here? I think I know who this is."

Milo said, "Dr. Jeremy Cooper and his friends were Dan Gurgens, Dorian Radcliff, Bobby Benson, Taylor Markenson, Ravi Singh, Wilma Bernstein, and Istvan Turr. The person who killed them was Bill Jerkowitz."

Algernon and Nina were collecting and stacking all the small notes, notebooks, and everything else in the room. "I have to go through these. He was beginning to do work on the Overmind concept and alternate ways to make AI. Those were brilliant people!"

"They were, and their genius was used by some very evil people. But if you want to know more about Jeremy's overmind project, you should do his tutorials. But I'll warn you, they break your brain in ways I can't begin to describe."

His brother and sister just smiled and Nina said, "Sounds like fun."

"What's fun?" Bork was climbing to the top floor, followed by the others.

Milo looked at them all, "Torturous brain exercises designed to help with creating an overmind. Devised by a master torturer named Dr. Jeremy Cooper."

Zander grinned, "You're only making us want to do them more."

Onyx looked at him, then Nina and Algernon, only Bork didn't look thrilled. "Samuel Clemens was really on to something."

Milo sighed, "Don't say I didn't warn you. But now that we've visited engineering, let's get moving. I've got one more interesting place we have to get to."

"The giant mechanical mole machine we can use to tunnel to Rhebus?"
"Oooh, the Fusion Reactor?!"
"The hanger deck with your space cruiser?"
"Please tell me you have a giant mecha! Or does the whole place turn into one?"
"Raptor breeding pens."

The last was from Algernon. The others turned to him, "Bad idea the first time, bad idea the second time, and never again."
"But they were so cute! And we have a lot of room down here. They'd make great security personnel with a little training."

Milo shook his head, "I have armed Roomba and impressive Human-Hunting robots for that."

"Where are we going then?"

"I'll tell you when we get there." Milo was stubborn after that, ignoring all please and questions of, "Are we there yet?" It turned out to be a very short drive to a closed door. Milo opened it and walked in, followed by the others who saw the room was already occupied.

Once the door was shut, Belinda took off her helmet. "Hi, I'm Belinda Seimovich. We have some history together."

Bork said, quickly, "If you are referring to the small borrowing of your uncle Victor's money, I have to let you know that we're protected by Romanian law from prosecution."

She laughed, "Don't care. Happy it happened, and Milo did it too."

Zander took a deep breath, then spoke, "Your father made us, and then he made you."

Belinda nodded, "Call me Batch 4.5, one of a kind as far as I know, and messed up from the start. Milo has been a big help, and I hope you will be too, but something's wrong. I'm getting worse. I noticed it today."

Milo was immediately concerned, "Noticed what?"

"Just like my mom. I'm getting smarter. My thoughts are going quicker. And I think the increase is exponential. It's slow now, but it's going to get worse and worse. We need to find a way to retard the growth with some of the drugs my doctors were using, or that my mother wanted me to use for my early years. You saw what she was like at the end. I don't want to go through that. I've been going over the data, but there's so much of it."

The alphabet looked at the rows of data discs and drooled. Outside of their own data files at Rhebus, this might be the biggest treasure of information on human biology in the world. And helping people was what they did.

"We'll help. Engines and other things can wait. This takes top priority. You're family."

The large screen came on, showing a red-headed boy of about sixteen. He had a ridiculously long red beard and a huge axe over his shoulder. "You have my axe!"

Milo shrugged. "And my Spikey Stick!"

"You have my bow!"
"And my big-assed sword!"
"My howitzer."
"My Mega Motostryke Motorized 10-Dart Blaster.
Bork paused, he'd wanted to call dibs on the Dart Blaster. "My nuclear chainsaw!

Everyone looked at Bork. He glared at them, "Don't question the magic!"

Rusty raised his axe in the air, "Awesome! I get to go on a quest!"

Belinda smiled at them all, then said, "Everyone, this is Rusty. He's been helping me with my research. I don't think I could have got through a third of what I've accomplished without him."

Nina said, "Oh, the person who wants to put on the Broadway show."

Rusty said, "YES! My beloved Kei and Yuri will dance across the stage, to the applause of millions." The screen split into many scenes accompanied by music Rusty had composed. "I've worked on it non-stop since Milo kindly offered to fund my show."

Zander looked at Onyx, then at Rusty, "While helping with research?"

Rusty smiled proudly. "Yep. It's easy. Part of me is researching and other parts are doing the choreography, composing music, and writing the stories. And watching over the Fusion Generator, of course. That's job number one now that ICARUS is gone."

The alphabet was silent, with blank faces.

Milo said, "Rusty and ICARUS are two of the AIs that Jeremy created. They were here when I arrived. ICARUS was under orders to destroy the Quantum Fortress, and Rusty was trying to stop him."

Rusty said proudly, "But Milo tricked him and we all won. I helped."

Onyx turned to Milo, "You have a Quantum Fortress?"

"We have a Quantum Fortress. And we have a lot of work to do."