Project Overworld

Keith connected back into the game the following day. His rocket had traveled all the way to the EOSS during the night and he just had to unbuckl his belt and get out of it. He had warned his friends that he was coming back, so they moved the space shuttle away to make space for a rocket to dock in its place.

'It's been a long time.' Keith thought as he paced through the various modules of Spacol's space station. It seemed like most of his friends were not connected yet. 'They must have stayed awaken late into the night.' Actually, Jim was Australian while Xena was Indian, so it must be around night time for them at the moment.

In fact, it was only eight and a half in the morning for Keith, so he did not really expect his friends to be connected at all. He got quite surprise by seeing Xena still working on one of the three-dimensional printers, but he himself often stayed awake late into the night when focused on a project.

- "Hey!" He exclaimed.

- "Oh, welcome back Keith!"

- "So, how is it going for you?"

- "Leyla did a great job at managing everyone. We've finished constructing one of the induction furnaces you've designed and this 3D printer should be done by tomorrow. As for the robots, we've made two drilling units as well as two gatherers as of now."

- "Nice job! We should be able to launch these four drones to the Moon once the next rocket is launched from our land base. Afterwards, I want you to focus on these induction furnaces. We should be able to use them directly to help us build everything we need for our Moon base." Keith explained. "Good to see you, though. How have you been recently?"

- "Pretty good. I really enjoy working with everyone from all up there." She replied.

- "And what about your studies?" He inquired. Xena was three years younger than him, and she was not done with her academic years yet. She decided to focus on computer science, but it seemed like she was having a breeze through her courses.

- "Not bad... My grades are quite stable." She humbly responded. However, when Keith questioned her a few months earlier, he discovered that most of her grades were hovering over the top and that she certainly was one of the first of her class, if not her promotion. Reassured by the fact she did not drop her lessons although she spent so much time inside Project Overworld, Keith decided to help her with that three-dimensional printer until she went to sleep.

- "By the way, is Jim here?"

- "Yeah, he's been working on the space shuttle since you left."

Keith did not want his friends to overdo themselves because they might be getting tired between their real life activites and this game. However, as long as they liked what they were doing, he could not quite prevent them from staying awake that late into the night to be working on the EOSS and their future projects.

After Xena left, Keith continued working one the three-dimensional printer for the rest of the morning. At that point, Leyla had already connected into the game and joined him in his tasks.

- "It's good having you here." She pointed out.

- "Yeah, I've been quite lonely these past few weeks..."

- "Lonely?! You've stayed all by yourself for several years and you're only realizing it now?!" She interjected. However, upon seeing Keith's face, she realized he was being sarcastical.

- "Haha, but more seriously... I feel quite fortunate about having you all working with me."

- "Yeah, obviously. What could you have be doing without us, huh? I wonder..." She exclaimed in an ironical tone, because he has been able to accomplish so much even before recruiting new members for his company.

- "Not that much, unfortunately." He replied in the most serious tone she had known of him.

- "Now, you almost made be shed a tear. Let's get back to work, though!" She continued mocking him. Not so long after this little exchange, Tyler and Michael connected into the game in turn. With the four of them, they managed to finish working on their printer before focusing on making more induction furnaces.

Induction furnaces used the conducting properties of the metal to heat up, letting their user more control over the temperature they wanted to reach. Furthermore, this type of furnace only used electricity as a supply, so it did not consume any oxygen in the process of smelting resources. For that reason, it was essential that Spacol members built as many of these as possible, be it for their current use or for the automatic assembling of their Moon base.

For a whole week after Keith returned to the EOSS, the company Spacol managed to build another large induction furnaces that could be smelting half a ton of materials at once. The goal was to supply their three-dimensional printers with the stuff that would be melted in the smelters so that their printers could start building some dwellings that would pre-registered as designs within their computer. By the time they traveled all the way to the Moon, their base would be mostly assembled already.

At least, that was the plan. However, they would not be able to check the progress of their machine until they got there themselves, and if a problem ever occured they would not really be able to fix it. Leyla insisted on equipping some of their robots with cameras so they could somewhat check on the construction of their base. Maintenance would still be mostly impossible, but they could be replacing faulty machines using these images.

For now, this was the only solution Keith agreed to. Alernatively, they could have built some maintenance robots and other impactful machines, but the latter refused as he explained it would be using too much of their resources trying to build so many robots.

In any case, as long as they brought several oxygen tanks with them on their way to the Moon, Keith was not that concerned about being able to fix any problem once they got there. His only goal was to send the facilities needed to start excavating resources and be self-sufficient energy-wise on the natural satellite. Anything else would be irrelevant to him.

During this time, their land base sent to them the first new generation rocket Keith had not participated in the elaboration. Since he has been on the previous one, he obviously tweaked it and improved its structure so he could be building a c.o.c.kpit inside it. These new rocket were called 'EOSS Supply Rocket' and could be launched towards the Spacol space station every week. On board of it were stored several dozen tons of various materials and resources so they could be working a lot faster than before.

It seemed like Keith did a good job with that 'Rocket assembler' because it boosted its efficiency by about thity-five percent. Around fifteen percent were gained as total construction time, while twenty percent were gained as effective space inside EOSS supply rockets.

Since most of their limitations were due to the resource supply, this almost boosted their working efficiency by the same amount. On top of that, the first induction furnace they made had been helping them a lot in recasting some of the parts they messed around with and further improved their overall working experience.

Even though they could be smelting metals from space directly now, it was still more efficient to be launching manufactured parts from their land base because they weighted less than raw resources. This was mostly due to the fact that raw metals were not really pure and contained both dirt or other kinds of minerals within in their clumps.

In the end, the furnaces were only used to recycle broken parts. It was still really useful, as they could be focusing on optimizing their machines without having to wait for the next supply of resources.

In any case, the company Spacol made a lot of progress during the following weeks. They managed to launch their first two rockets towards the Moon. The first one contained a bundle of robots equipped with batteries and solar panels so that they could be performing for at least a few months before running out of power. This fact was inevitable because of the impurities that would be deposited on their solar panels over time, but Keith was not that concerned about losing his robots.

They planned on installing themselves on the Moon in two months anyways, so the robots would still be up and running by then. Their second rocket transported an induction furnace where the robots would be depositing their resources.

Further down the road, Spacol planned on launching a three-dimensional printer towards the Moon. However, since this machine would be too big to be transported inside a rocket, they instead planned on attaching it to the top of the shuttle and hope it would not be unbalancing the landing process too much.

At least for now, everything was going according to Keith's and Leyla's plans and he could not be more relieved by that fact. 'We will finally be able to establish a base on the Moon, something real-life astronauts are still dreaming of.' He breathed out before focusing back on his models.