Avatar: A lost survivor on Pandora

It has been three days since the giant 3D printer has been upgraded and those days were passed fine-combing the entire machine both physically and digitally. 

Any error or default must be corrected if present. At least the one the Lesser Replicator wouldn't be able to fix by itself, it were to lose an arm for example it could dismantle it and make a new one but that stopped there.

Liam didn't want a self-replicating and upgrading machine with sapiens, a desire for revolt, and a burning hate for organic beings. It was done, done, and done again, a fear well known and for something like this to happen it must be done on purpose.

A bunch of long lines of code and a powerful computer weren't enough for it to become 'alive'. Or for it to happen someone needed to be extra stupid. Creating life was both easy and difficult, though that depends on what is considered 'life'.

Rubbing his beard with his gauntlet he commanded the Processing Heart to do a last check. Nothing being amiss he decided to officially announce the news.

"This is Liam Cram, I have completed my work on the Stereolithography Plant, and I will do demonstrations of its new prowess. I advise you to come to the Manufacturing Complex.", his voice echoed in the entirety of the facility and some more, Jake getting the good news on his holotablet.

Thirty minutes later a small group of people in front of Liam whispered confused questions mixed with words of amazement and excitement at the sight of the new improved machine. 

This project Liam had was well-known thanks to the words of the mining crew but many until now held great doubt for the simple fact it seemed impossible and those were still confused because it was still in essence and shaped the same machine. 

Not many had an understanding of how the 3D printer worked, and even less so would know how it could be improved. And aside from Grace who had a surface-level understanding knew what were his real knowledge and capabilities. 

If he didn't have the reign of the entire base life support and his reputation as a bloodthirsty and ruthless psychopath protests from the bravest-less intelligent of the groups would have happened.

For understandable reasons, this was the only thing that let them not permanently lose important items such as exopacks. The fear he was going to permanently damage the 3D printer was logical, it would be a death sentence.

The original one was impressive but the new one was incomparable, with hundreds upon hundreds of metallic arms of all size and shape with various tubes and cables connected to various boxes. 

The machine was sleek, black with diagonal clean gray stripes, it looked straight out of an old sci-fi movie. 

An array of holographic screens with the lozenge containing a ball of ethereal light in its middle encircled by light blue hexagons showed various information such as a periodic table and a list of raw materials that told how much of each was currently in stock. 

Grace walked closer, studying the screen before mumbling while moving back a smirk on her face, "An early Christmas present huh… Effectiveness and precision to put the best AI to shame."

Stopping the urge to roll his eyes at that Liam waited a few more minutes to let the last ones arrive until he deemed enough were present.

"This…", his first word was said and the entire place quieted down, "This is the Lesser Replicator, my reimagination of what the original machine should have been."

As his sentence ended the implant in his left arm glowed slightly brighter and the gargantuan machine behind him lit up to life.

Four dozen mechanical arms worked on various areas in perfect synch and at speed too fast to make sense of, each with speculated tools the most impressive part was small flashes of light that seemingly created matter out of thin air that in reality came straight from their respective storage.

The crowd started mesmerized and in wonder, their body completely still as the Lesser Replicator worked, and it worked faster than its predecessor even out and by a margin so large it was comical. 

Dozens upon dozens of components simple and complex were created in barely a minute, smaller arms grasped those with precision only a machine could. 

The hundreds of components clicked together, welded on some of the arms solidifying them all together in a functional piece of technology. 

The final result was an in-between an autocannon and a chainsaw but with neither the cannon nor sow, it was bulky and looked like an AMP suit could wield it even if the handle was human-sized. 

"It can assemble, disassemble and repair pretty much everything as long as data and resources are available by request to the holoscreen what you want. A certain amount of authority is needed as well depending on what must be done, this isn't a toy… This is the heart that will keep Hell's Gate functioning. I will know if someone considers it as such, trust me.", he explained, the warning clear in his tone of voice.

He was aware such a machine was good, too good even. It must be regulated on who has the right to use it and for what reason, he was lending it to them not the other way around. It was his property.

 

"This is a Mining Drill.", he said, taking the drill that was as big as an average grown man in one hand as if it weighed nothing. It reinforced in many the image of an inhuman being but at this point, Liam couldn't do much, he wasn't going to play pretend he was normal for the comfort of others.

His implant glowed slightly above the fuel tank as he filled it with refined crude and then pulled the handle to start the motor of a chainsaw. A thrum was heard but not much else.

He held the machine in two hands as if it was a minigun and aimed at a piece of scrap metal none paid attention to until now. The crowd stepped aside from where he pointed other than a middle-aged man focused on the Lesser Replicator.

"AAAHH!", said man screamed a pitch or two higher than what he knew he was capable of as beams of bright red-orange plasma zoomed a meter in front of him before focusing on the metal.

The metal then seemed to get eaten alive by the red electricity, it wasn't melting it, at least not in a conventional way, and a few seconds nothing was left behind. 

The scrap metal dematerialized before everyone's bemused eyes and Liam smiled in satisfaction as the matter that comprised it appeared in his inventory but in the form of small beads as they were taken right from the drill.

It did not connect to his implant in a way that would let it transfer the matter it collected, no it was him actively using his inventory with his implant being positioned where the matter pulled was stored. 

The beams of plasma had one purpose to collect what they were calibrated on, they excavated and brought back matter in a temporary ionized state before turning them into spheres.

"What the fuck was that shit!? It could have killed me!", the man yelled in anger but one look from Liam was enough to drench the flame of this emotion causing the man to grumble as he moved back into the crowd.

"No, at most superficial burns. It excavates what it is tuned to excavate, you can think of this as the beams of plasma preferring one thing over the other. This type of tool will be the new standard for mining.", he stated, placing the drill on the ground a transparent box was taken out of his inventory, and the bead of what was once useless scrap metal fell from it.

"While piloting an AMP suit you mean? 'Cause as marvelous and mind-boggling as it is, it looks heavier than most of my men can hope to ever carry! Not to diminish you boys but let's be real. And it works with the metal in your arm.", Katherine said with both excitement and confusion in her voice. 

Even after several months, she didn't get used to the fact the creature in front of her had some sort of pocket dimensions in his left hand. Something shared by everyone, it wasn't normal, he wasn't normal.

"Yes, you are partially correct. That's why a meeting will be held to speak about this.", Liam said with a smile and then went back to why the crowd was here and explained how to use some of the Lesser Replicator functions and several rules to abide by.

Four weeks flew by, there was a Christmas and a New Year both being to Liam familiar yet different but that wasn't a surprise. 

He cooked for both and nothing much happened in them, it was more of a way to cool off than anything else, there was a variety of alcohol which he drank and it did nothing as he didn't gulp twenty liters of it. 

And for alcohol to have any type of effect on his mind and body the degree of the drink needed to be obscenely high and losing control was something he didn't want or other really for that matter.

Grace discovered he was growing as she wanted to study him, a fact shared by quite a few in the SciOps, and he as well but he only trusted her as of now and it was not remotely close to her main focus or specialty. 

He wanted to understand his own body. He gained four centimeters officially making him pass the two-meter mark standing at 2.01 meters (~6ft6). 

There were several probable reasons for this, first the amount of growth hormone in his system, the low gravity of Pandora, and the fact he wasn't on an Ark where his body was monitored twenty-four hours per day and seven days per week. 

Many discoveries were made, his body temperature being on average at 43 C° due to his high metabolism, and his heart beating two times faster than a human when at rest.

Doing blood tests was how a great amount of growth hormone in his system was detected. It wasn't the sole hormone produced in excessive amounts compared to a regular human though, testosterone is one such hormone. 

And his testosterone was human, an unsurprising and surprising discovery, however, it was highly modified. Saying this hormone was perfected would be an apt saying. It explained his insane hair growth too.

The blood cells found in a human were absent from his bloodstream; instead, it was multifunction, adaptive, and self-replicating identical cells that did the job of all others but better in all points. 

At least from their shapes and various educated guesses with collected data such as his regenerative capability he showed her a cut from an obsidian scalpel and in barely thirty seconds no wound was left. It was something that she only thought of as possible in fiction, it was both revolutionary and terrifying.

Then his genetic material was impossible to observe even with the most advanced of machines. 

The DNA became a chaotic mess of irradiated material in a few seconds after leaving Liam's body for unknown reasons, at least that's how the machine read it and it was state-of-the-art brought from the last ISV Venture Star. 

But it got enough information to know it was DNA showing a relation to Earth life, he had chromosomes just not the same amount humans should have, and neither did the general shape. He was triploid and had seventy-two chromatids, he was by all metric a different species, an alien one or alien in origin. 

And he was an artificial being, even more so than the Avatar, she knew present humanity wouldn't be able to even make a being like him. The implant was enough evidence, and the strange root-like metallic structure was still detected in his left arm growing from the said implant.

But he was made by what… That was a question the man either didn't know the answer to or didn't want to give it and that was fine by Grace. It's not like she could force him to answer and she wasn't sure she wanted an answer or could handle it. It didn't make any lick of sense and the entire situation was insane enough as it is.

His body was also a fortress to any foreign and indirect probe with the available machine at Hell's Gate. None could look past his abnormally dense muscles. 

A vivisection on him would solve this problem, however, it's something that was a no for everyone, and evidently a no for Liam himself.

Magnetic resonance imaging was a no from the get-go for evident reason, his implant was not made of a paramagnetic metal, quite the opposite.

X-ray and computed tomography did not work as well, the ionized radiation sent was absorbed in its entirety by his body, a puzzling fact for Grace but not for him as he could speculate why it was so the answer being his implant again. 

After that, the input of his inventory was temporarily augmented by a small amount but it was an increase all the same, one he detected. 

Ultrasound was the only good solution and even then when a minimum of muscles was present only incoherent feedback was received.

All of this brought to the present, Liam was above the ocean three dozen kilometers South of the coast.

He was piloting his personal aircraft he started to design months ago. It was fifteen meters (~49ft) long and had a wingspan of a slightly smaller size at thirteen meters (~43ft). 

The three pairs of long flexible wings made of an almost translucent nano polymer beating independently three times per second kept the large insectoid aircraft hovering in almost total silence.

It was inspired by dragonflies, which here were pretty much unison and considered one of the many extinct species but it wasn't only that. 

The reason why he was breeding R-Giganotosaurus before all of this happened was that he wanted to have its new insectoid and flying version and he wanted it perfect alas it never came to be.

And so he made it real even if it wasn't the same and not remotely alive, it was a vehicle, an aircraft made for movement, and exploration but also as a cargo carrier and excavating machine. It wasn't a war machine but it could be turned into one if need be.

Its name was Rhyniocopter V1.3.0 or 'Opter for short.

It was a magnificent machine with a large but discreet mining drill under its heavily reinforced cockpit, a prehensile tail serving as a balance, a blade, and as a powerful autocannon capable of shooting 80mm rounds, six wings giving it omnidirectional maneuverability in the air with great speed, six articulated legs each to some degree being tools or weapons that let the aircraft walk, grab, climb, and hold onto any surface resistant enough but as well as one time use helium buoys in case of potential unwanted submersion.

Fusion reactors were way too big, room-sized at their smallest in fact, and miniaturizing them was not possible as such the Rhyniocopter used fossil-not-so-fossil fuel to power itself. And in any case, the fusion reactors weren't perfect as they needed lithium.

'The uranium vein should be right below here…', Liam thought looking through the belly camera where the peaceful azure water brutally shifted into an intense and dark midnight blue before shifting to the scanner and Natural Resource Map of the RDA.

A map obtained with a specialized satellite that has long since burned into the atmosphere. It was the closest to Hell's Gate, the most accessible and purest vein of this element. He needed it even if it was kilometers underwater and for that he had plans but first scooting, many of his sensors had problems working and this was a problem. 

This area was marked as important because of the presence of pandorium and it would have preferred it wasn't here at the moment. A physics-breaking metal but a pain when it comes to its natural state with technology.

The first pair of legs was holding a small box that was the 'shell' that housed a drone reminiscent of a hermit crab. The shell was also connected via cable to the insectoid aircraft; it was a way to maintain the signal and keep it from getting lost. 

'Go Timmy.', he mentally commanded the release of the box from metallic claws and the freshly baptized Timmy fell but before it hit the water Liam's eyes widened in surprise.

Three fish-shaped dots were detected, two measured roughly five meters (~16ft4) in but the other… It was easily past the fifty meters (~164ft) mark. And they just appeared without warning.

The larger of the two jumped out of the water giving him a view of a familiar creature he saw months ago but this time with a clear view of a crimson-red jaw full of human-sized teeth.

Timmy fell in its gaping maw to never be seen again but the giant armored shark wasn't done and was still very much on its way to Liam thirty meters (~94ft4) above the sea level.

*

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