Project Overworld

After the first week of work for the Spacol industry, the group assigned to the expansion of their Moon base started running out of crafted parts. A few days later, Keith, Jim and Tyler stocks of metal sheets were totally depleted and the construction of the pipe had to be stopped for the time being.

They had fotunately sent a supply rocket just before embarking onto the 'Triple S', but it did not seem to be enough for the six of them. Their first automatically sent rocket arrived two weeks after they landed on the Moon and their work could resume for good. Since they had turned off their 'Rocket assembler' while they were building the new 'Rocket extender' for the EOSS, there has been a pretty long calibration time for a new rocket to be build in their Earth base before being launched towards their space station.

After this delay, though, since the whole assembly of a rocket only took about six days in total, it made it so they would receive supply rockets every six days from now on. By the time a rocket was lanched from the EOSS, another one would almost be ready to dock to the station to be resupplied with fuel there. It seemed like their work would be a bit slowed down by the amount of ressources they would receive, especially since they have been using so much materials during the first week already, during which they had been using both the supply rocket and a bit of their space shuttle's cargo a furnish themselves.

However, six days between each rocket coming was not that bad of an eventuality and Keith was quite confident in having enough resources to finish their Moon base project by the start of the following month, so in thirty days at most. Obviously, there was also the fact a rocket would be made to resupply the EOSS with fuel from time to time, but it was not that much of a concern anyways.

'In any case, it wouldn't be a bad thing that we'd have a bit of free time every now and then.' Keith meditated. 'I could even be organizing funny events every Sunday just like we did back on Earth.' He concluded. Though, now that things had developed this much for them, he was much more looking forward to meeting the five of them in person.

He had already thrown some parties with Amber and his two longtime friends, Michael and Tyler, but he had yet to meet Jim and Xena in the real-life. The distance separating them was over eight thousand miles so he has had a hard time finding the right time and the right place to do so, especially since they were still focused on their studies for the time being. Jim was even underaged, so it would be quite the challenge to make him travel even a portion of that distance. That was why, their meeting should be taking place in Australia, which was even farther away from the United States than India was.

For now, the Moon would be a great playground for their Sunday morning and Keith decided to stick with it.

- "Hey Tyler, bring me that sheet over here." Keith ordered after being done with the previous one.

After the man handed the part over to him, Keith simply slid the sheet into position and the magic of space did the rest of the job. Since the Moon had no atmosphere, two non-oxidized parts of the same composition could be melded together just by touching each other. This process was called cold welding and was really useful for the trio of man working on that aluminum pipe.

This creation would be several miles long once it was done, so they had to use aluminum as its main componant because it was a metal they had large access to and it was also a lot lighter than other metals, meaning they could fit a bit more onto their supply rocket. However, compared to the Earth, the Moon was constantly hit by meteorites and an aluminum pipe would easily leak after a few impacts. That was why, Keith had planned for a weird structure for their pipe.

First, an aluminum cylindrical structure would be made to transport water from one point to the other. On top of this metallic pipe would be placed several burlac bags containing fine moon dust. They would be acting as sand bags to slow down impacts from meteorites and prevent any real harm to the aluminum underneath. Overtime, small meteorites would be burried inside the large moon dust bags, reinforcing the structure as a whole.

The only problem would be large meteorites but it would be extremely unlikely that such an event would occur in the near future. In any case, they would be doing daily tours around the pipe to check whether there have been any violent impact during the night or not.

In fact, most of their work consisted of constantly maintaining the pipe while waiting for the next supply rocket. Also, a big portion of their time would be reserved to the crushing of Moon dirt to obtain more of that fine dust they used as sand, without forgetting about the meticulous job of bending the aluminum sheets into a rounded shape.

However, they usually ran out of metal only three days after the previous supply rocket landed on the Moon, so they mostly spent the rest of the time making burlac bags and filling them with dust. This process was fastidious, but necessary. In fact, Keith even planned on putting another layer of bags onto the previous ones, just to be safe.

Fortunately, this process was enough to keep them busy for the three days separating them from their next supply.

- "Hey, Jim! What did the grain of dust say when I turned on the vacuum?" Tyler asked with a smirk pointing on his face.

- "This sucks." Keith responded to his friend. "You've already told that joke to me twice before, man."

- "What? No fun, Sherlock! Let Jim have some fun too!"

- "I meant that joke s.u.c.k.e.d Tyler, not the dust. Try to find another one."

- "What do you mean? You haven't even tried yet! Do you know how hard it is?"

Happy to have Jim in his audience, Tyler would give his heart out on every Saturday to find new jokes to tell the young man. It did not usually make anyone laugh, other than Tyler himself, but it did cheer their discussions up.

In any case, this was the usual routine the trio has been going through, recently. Their job was not as interessing as the previous ones did, but they got to know each other under another light and they would be discussing various subjects for hours straight. In fact, most of these subjects were game-related.

- "Hey, we should try and play another game tomorrow." Tyler offered. Their next rocket supply was supposed to land in three days, so Keith did not find any inconveniences in trying new things out.

- "Yeah sure, I'll ask the others if they would be interested."

Focusing back onto their work, the crew spent several hours together until Jim had to disconnect for the night. As for Keith and Tyler, the day had only started and several dozen of burlac bags awaited for them.

_______________

- "Has Vartiair shipped the A-11 towards Yggdrasil yet?" Amber asked to her second.

- "It's on the way madam." He responded.

- "Good, how is it going on the Shyram side?"

- "A new prototype of cargo ship is being tested. This one should be over two hundred and fifty feet in length so it will help a lot in the future."

- "Nice, another good news. Tell the press I will be organizing a meeting concerning the next Project Vanilla edition."

- "I'll sure do, madam." He said while leaving the office she was working in.

It has been over three weeks since they last organized a game of 'Project : Vanilla' and she has planned on marking the hit with a few teasers regarding the improvements that have been made to the arena.

This has not been the primary focus of the munipal team of Yggdrasil, though, and Amber let the organizers of this place make sure everything would be perfect for the next event. Instead, she planned on organizing another Inventopia with computer science as its main theme.

Recently, those have been widely sold and about thity percent of the cities' population now had access to at least one. Amber have been really excited about what they could be accomplishing with computer science and wanted to take advantage of the popularity of Inventopia to boost this domain even more.

In any case, it has been quite a while since she last organized one and people were beginning to wonder whether this competition was officially dead or if Amber planned on reviving it.

'Let's see, I've contacted some computer science related companies and they started working on the making of a World Wide Web. Starise is also focusing on launching load of satellites communicating with each other, so the Internet should not be a distant dream anymore.' Amber realized while going through the paperwork she has been working on recently. 'Afterwards, space exploration should be our next big milestone. This game is so exciting!' She rhapsodized while going back to work.