Project Overworld

Making a detector was not that hard for Keith to make. He already doted his automated turrets with movement detectors a few month ago, and improved quite a bit in electronics since then.

Designing a filter, though, was a task he deemed much more challenging to accomplish. Keith needed to think of way to make a detector able to differentiate between coal and other resources.

However, what actually was coal? How may we be able to describe such a concept to a mere electronical device?

If Keith decided to make a photos.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e lens which could discern colors and colors only, then obvious problems will emerge eventually. In fact, his drills will dig up coal from rock formations which may result in a piece of coal being hidden from the filter's lens and end up going into the storage units instead of the generators. Worse, a rock containing parts of coal may end up in one of the generators and seriously damage the machine.

All of this strained Keith's mind as he could not think of a solution besides manually supplying the anthracite-powered machines. As a matter of fact, even if his filter did work, Keith was thinking the generators might overheat due to the huge influx in fuel.

'What am I hesitating about? Shouldn't I make better structures so that such problem would not appear in the first place?' Keith finally let out.

Keith decided to fix one problem after the other. First things first, he would be making a whole power plant which would be sturdy enough to manage a huge supply of coal.

After that Keith thought it would be a good idea making an artificial intelligence. If a filter could not differentiate between a rock embedded with coal and an actual coal piece, then he simply had to teach it.

This project would be requiring a lot of time from him, but it would be much more valuable in the future than manually-supplying several small generators. Keith has been experiencing it lately, the more he put effort into something the more it actually proved useful to him.

In the end, it only took him less than a month to finish the factory-like building. He improved his conveyors in the meantime as well as implementing the generators' idea into a larger-scale one. Keith installed the power plant near the ocean so that he could easily pump large quantities of water to cool down the giant generator.

Large chimneys came out of the roof of the building to evacuate smoke farthest away from the generator, making sure nothing would be damaging it.

'It is gross looking at. I'm making the same mistake as men did before they started corrupting the whole world with some disgusting smog. However, I can't deny the fact it is cost-efficient and that it will be producing enough energy for all my future needs. The silver lining here is that other people may not start polluting this much before a long time.'

Hundreds of miles away from there, a large crowd started cheering for their favorite competitor concerning the showdown taking place before them.

The mayor of Midgard recently decided to orc.h.e.s.trate a fair to properly welcome all new players and inaugurate the construction of the city. Since she was elected as the city's leader, she had been occupied a lot by her responsabilities. She had to go somewhere to resolve a conflict, then go to another place to give her agreement for the construction of a building, and she could not find the time to organize such an event.

Amber finally freed some time off here agenda to make it happen, and she was now enjoying the festivities. Citizens seemed very involved in making this fair a success and lots of stands were erected around the central place to sell stuff for people to enjoy. Some were selling sweets and fresh lemonade like you would expect in a real life fair, even though players could not feel anything inside a virtual reality game. Others were selling some tools and home-made products, everything that was small enough for it to be put on a stall. Players were actively talking to each other, giving off advices or just enjoying their time altogether.

In the midst of this agitation, actors were giving their most convincing representations, dancers were displaying their latest choreography and artists were depicting their best landscapes. All of them were hired by Amber herself to bring life to this event.

However, she was impatiently waiting for the 'Invention showdown' where the best inventors of the city would compete for the award of the best creation of the month. Amber decided to organize this part of the event in a competition rather than a plain presentation for the sole reason of entertainement. She knew people would be actively cheering for their favorite creations, contributing in making the fair a good reputation, and her to an extent.

'Politics is all about making people think highly of you.' She explained to her secretary when she brought up this idea.

Now, all she could say is that this idea was really successful. On top of witnessing some really good inventions, players were all watching this event unfold before them while betting on who would be winning the competition. Some had their fan base, like the player who already invented the wooden bike some months ago while others were complete strangers.

However, at some point in the competition, a young man presented a fascinating creation which could revolutionize the industry even years after the start of its mass-production : a motor. The man pulled a string from the machine and a loud whirring invades the place. People became silent and everyone was mesmerized by what the young man had invented.

After a few seconds this silence only occupied by the machine's buzzing, Amber spoke up in an official tone : "Looks like we have a winner. I can't really proclame his victory this early in the competition, but it will be hard for the others to do better than this."

After asking the young man's name, Amber resumed the competition. Some of participants gave up immediately while the rest continued presenting their inventions before everyone's eyes. Those were not as impressive as the motor, but the rest of the event was enjoyable nonetheless.

'Well, seems like this fair was really successful. I should organize something similar every month from now on.' Amber concluded after sitting down in her office. She then went back to her doc.u.ments and studied the matters troubling the city.

Keith was currently working on the filter that would be selecting coal for the power plant. The artificial intelligence was not that complicated to program, as he only needed to modify the filter's inputs so that he would only let the grayish color of the coal pass through. For now, he did not want to make something as complicated as refining every rock to extract coal from it and he would do it manually if the generator did not have enough fuel.

What he currently had troubles with was the filter's camera. The camera used by his late turrets were simply checking if the luminosity in the territory they controlled suddenly changed and move the turret's canon in the general direction of the luminosity change.

For the filter, however, he needed to craft a camera that could detect movement and colors at the same time.

'How do cameras work exactly? I should check a video on the internet.' After having that thought, Keith safely disconnected from the game to satisfy his never-ending curiosity.