Project Overworld

'That's amazing!' Leyla thought while going around in space. If it was not for the security rope, she certainly would have derivated a long time ago.

However, she felt so elated being able to go up there yet again. It has been so long since that Moon race and she got really frustrated after the Starise group decided to partner with Midgard's municipal team to focus on building satellites.

- "Hey, focus up a little." Keith admonested her. "We've got a lot to do today."

After showing her how to maintain the 'EOSS' using blowtorches and other kind of tools, Keith led the both of them to the rocket they had used to get all the way up there. He jumped inside the c.o.c.kpit and pressed another button to decouple the module that was still in there.

- "That's basically how it works. After you've decoupled it from its launcher, you should find on of these buttons onto the module itself." He explained after showing it to Leyla. "Basically, it's equipped with several tanks of gas and pushing this button in any direction lets it out, propelling the whole structure in that particular direction."

He then proceeded to demonstrate the whole process by moving the module towards a location he wanted to assemble it to his base.

After giving out all the explanation concerning the coupling to another module, Keith finally decided to bring out his space shuttle to commute between each launch remains.

Leyla was not that surprise to see this shuttle from up close since she has already had the occasion to see it when they met each other on the Moon. However, she was really excited to climb on board and witness how it worked.

- "It's not as impressive as you may think." Keith tried to lower her expectations. "It's basically like a rocket but with more side engine to get a more control within the three-dimentional plane that is space."

Although he said that, she still was in awe before such a well-designed vehicle. Its size was not that imposing, but it really resembled on of those spacesh.i.p.s she saw in movies.

- "Anyways, the NASA has already built space shuttles in the past and it's not that impressive of a feat to be able to reproduce it in a game." He continued even though he felt really proud of his work. He was just afraid she would be dissapointed once she got inside and realized it was really bland.

In the end, he worried for nothing. Leyla was really impressed by the finishes of the space shuttle and they even managed to both fit in there, albeit a bit cramped.

While going towards the closest launch remains he could find, Keith explained everything needed regarding the controls of the vehicle. This allowed them to distribute the tasks so that there would always be one of them commuting between the base and the modules scattered everywhere.

As an added benefit, this process familiarized Leyla a lot with this vehicle so she could more or less find each componant of this build on her own. Since the main goal of Keith this time around was to design a more powerful space shuttle design, this would prove really useful for when they started working on it.

By the end of the day, they managed to gather every module that Keith launched in space during those two months spent on the Earth. Although they did not have time to assemble all of them to the station, most of the work has already been done and they were pretty happy about it.

Leyla was the first to disconnect from the game.

- "See you tomorrow. We're gonna work on my space shuttle then." Keith said as a farewell.

- "I'm looking forward to that, see you!"

He still had a few more things to take care of regarding the maintenance of EOSS so he did not disconnect yet. By the time and finished his tasks, it was almost one in the morning. Tomorrow would be a working day for him, but he was not that concerned about it.

'I guess it doesn't matter if I'm tired for this kind of work.' He meditated. Recently, he has been staying up really late into the nights even though he had his job to attend too.

However, it was so uninteressting to him that he did not care if he did yawn for the whole day. 'Let's take a shower now so I may be ready for tomorrow morning.' He decided. The hot water usually cleared his mind, letting him think about various subjects without focusing too much on them. 'I wonder how the others are doing on their own.' He thought about his friends he left at the land base. After all, he was still really concerned about progress of the project he left them with.

_______________

-> Amber?

- "Erm... Michael?" Jim started. "I don't think Keith would be pleased about us doing that."

- "Hey, he's having fun with Leyla out there in space, why can't we have fun too?" Michael replied.

Jim was actually kind of worried about the repercussions it could have on their group. If Keith was here, he would certainly get mad or something.

As for the others, they were not really that concerned about being found out. First, Keith had planned to stay in space for at least a week, if not two and it has only been three days since they left. Then again, this matter was not to be worried about. They were simply having fun while constructing new devices.

I would be a shame not to put their knowledge to good use and Keith would certainly agree to it.

After having finished optimizing the resource collection system of their build, Michael had suggested the idea of building some remote controlled toys and have a contest on who did the best job with building theirs by organizing a race around the base.

It has only been three days, but they all more of less managed to build a skeleton for their vehicle while having their wheels activated by a battery. Fortunately, Keith had left some in his storage room so they did not lose any time crafting their own.

However, Michael, Tyler nor Xena knew a lot about radio or ultrasonic waves so they have had a hard time trying to control their toys from a distance. This race was not going to be easy to organize, in the end.

As for Jim, he could not resolve himself to engage in such stupid matters and decided to start automating the creation of the next parts that would be required to build a rocekt. He has had many ideas in that regard, but chose to automate the contruction of spoilers for the time being. Since he was going to be alone for a while, he thought that it would be the simplest part he could try and produce in numbers.

First things first, he needed to gather all the necessary resources to the area where he would be building his machine. For that purpose, he kicked things off by installing yet another conveyor splitter next to the raw resource line. Since the spoilers had such a specific shape, Jim has had the idea to construct a mold through which melted aluminum would pass in order to reproduce the same aspect.

Jim has not been able to experiment a lot with programs and such, so he was not confident in being able to make a camera that could specifically detect raw aluminum. Fortunately, Keith has already made such a system and each raw resource was being split off upon entering the 'automated crafting room' as they started naming it.

Jim simply connected his splitter to this aluminum conveyor belt to have access to this type of resources. The conveyor splitters were really rudimentary in the way they worked. A cl.u.s.ter of aluminum first got to the splitter, activating a mechanism which blocked the way to the first conveyor attached to it. Instead, only the way to the other conveyor belt was being left open, until another cl.u.s.ter of resource got there and and reversed the mechanism.

Keith had been teaching them everything regarding the conveyor belts and resource gathering so they would be able to do everything autonomously. This paid of a lot since Jim has been noting everything on his computer so he would not forget anything about these processes.

'So, it there any furnace not being used around here?' He wondered while looking around the room. However, he was not able to quite find what he was looking for but extended the line routing raw aluminum cl.u.s.ters almost all the way to the furnaces area.

However, he suddenly realized that he was completely out of conveyor belts and that the machines producing them were not going to print enough for him to finish his job in the near few hours.

Instead, he decided to focus on building a new furnace so everything would be ready for when the conveyor parts would be produced.

'Looks like I should be able to manage all of this on my own.' He thought while turning towards the room next door where his crewmates were having fun building remote controlled cars. 'Maybe I should join them?' He started to consider, before immediately rejecting this idea and focusing back on his current work.