“Most people stopped working after the old capitalist and communist systems collapsed. Most jobs no longer required human assistance, therefore, humans were no longer required to work. Yet some continued working, mostly those that were born before the establishment of the United Human Nation.”

-UHN History Documentary, 2278

---

Sleep had never been so harmful to my body. I had had actual sleep. A solid four hours, yet my body writhed in pain as if I had come out of a battlefield.

“Shieeeet…” I groaned on the bed. “Everything’s sore.”

“According to yesterday’s data,” the room’s lighting shifted to blue with Sandra’s words, “you pushed your body through shapeshifting activities. Whilst minimal, the unpracticed motions have taken a toll on your body.”

“But I’ve only shifted my fingernail!” I protested both at her and my body.

“You shapeshifted more than your fingernail yesterday, and even if that were not to be the case, you would still feel the soreness as it is part of a defense mechanism of your body.”

“What type of defense mechanism causes this?” I asked half in actual questioning and half in cursing.

“The defense mechanism that tells you that if you were to shapeshift more, bad things would happen. But because your body cannot relay this information directly to you, it prefers to lock itself up so you cannot even try it in the first place.”

“Ah.” I moaned in realization. “So no more shapeshifting today?”

“I do not have the authority to stop you, but I would recommend following your body’s instincts.” The VI said.

“Print me a protein bar, would you?” I commanded her then slumped in bed, my eyes still groggy as I had just woken up no more than a couple minutes ago.

With my eyes closed, I navigated through the interface. I expected this day to be filled with activities like yesterday, but my notifications told me otherwise. Makoto had already put on queue for the evolution process and she preferred if we didn’t meet up until the process was over. I didn’t want to disrespect her wishes but I sent her a “U sure?” through the DMs.

She didn’t answer back.

As for Gloria, she told me to not come into her shop today as she wanted to do a bit of sewing. She had apparently pulled a sleepless night working on the combined dress but decided to scratch the concept. I didn’t ask her why, at this point, I didn’t know if this was in line with the woman’s antics or not. The seamstress also stated that she would focus on finishing my tunic’s resizing as she had left it on the side all this time. I sent her a “Take all the time you need” and she responded with a “That offends me. I need only a day to get it done.”

So here I was, in bed, with nothing to do. Both my friends were missing on their evolutionary process, my only real acquittance on the space station was occupied, and my tycoon would need a few hours before I could continue making progress.

I devoured the protein bar along with a glass of water, and like a sensible human being, I went back to sleep.

---

Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t sleep much. Another four hours. It would have been easy to continue sleeping with the use of some medication, but I heeded the advice of my body and stood from bed.

I had been so focused these last years on my doctorate that I had forgotten what free time was. And how awful it felt.

I wasn’t an artist like Makoto, I couldn’t just sit down and draw, basically because I didn’t have the ability. Mérida enjoyed learning, so for her to sit down with a book in a language she didn’t understand was entertaining.

I… I didn’t know what I liked.

Every time I went out or did anything, it was because of the girls. Because I was a student, I had accepted to focus on my studies and not give much thought to anything else. I had called Makoto dependable on us, but I was equally dependable on them.

“Maybe I should look for a job.” I sighed.

“Reminder that you are not allowed to work during this month you are hospitalized.” Sandra butted in.

“Ugh, right.” Nothing could ever go right.

My next decision was to hit the gym.

Probably not the best idea as my body was still sore, but I felt as if it was a different type of soreness. And I had been too occupied to know how to deal with being free of any duty. Substituting investigation with workout seemed like a good exchange.

I followed the gym’s AI trainer routine, always switching to another part of the body once I was done with a set. And I changed. From neck to triceps, there was no section of my body I left unworked.

Exhaustion slowly crept into my body, but it was slow. With a gulp of water and gym snacks, I was reinvigorated to continue. Possibly forever.

An immortal body of cells that could shift and recover independently. Technically speaking, I could even exercise my hair and red cells because they were all stem cells in reality. It was difficult to shapeshift voluntarily, but my body did so all the time unconsciously. If I was too tired or too pressed in a section, by the time I returned to that set, it was fresh as new. Because it possibly wasn’t the original section I had worked out.

It was difficult to comprehend, and even more so to assimilate.

I was not tireless. Yet nothing could remove the feeling that I was.

But I couldn’t keep going like this. At some point, every machine I used locked up, refusing to move. I asked the AI trainer and it said that I had been at the gym for too long and that I should go out.

It would have been easy to protest and make a fuss out of it, but I knew better. It wasn’t like I was working out for training’s sake; it was just a distraction. I may have not sweated, but I took a shower in the gym nonetheless as I felt dirty.

By now, more than 12 hours had gone by. 8 sleeping, 4 working out. It was time to go back to my tycoon.

---

“Welcome back, Doctor Lorem.” The AI greeted me.

Welcome back to you too. The salutation came out naturally. Shift my feed to the Centrum’s tycoon.

“Understood.” And I was once again on the rocky planet with active volcanos. Only that now a finished building stood before me.

How much energy does this geothermal plant produce?

“The current estimates for the geothermal plant sit at 50 MW, though this estimate is not reliable.” The computer explained. “The performance is expected to increase to 70 MW once it has been working for longer.”

I see. 50 megawatts was still a lot. Surely not comparable to what some other energy sources could produce, but I knew the limiting factor was the complex size. The power plant wasn’t that big, and even if it wasn’t scalable, I could just build more. Considering the size of the planet, I could get multiple gigawatts in just the local area.

But that was for later. I had energy production already kicking, meaning that until I turned into a deficit, I would not need to worry about it. How long until the batteries at full?

“With the current energy consumption and production, the ship batteries will be full after 12 hours.” The AI showed me the data tables with all the drone energy consumption.

Meaning that if we don’t augment that consumption, we will be losing a lot of energy.

“Affirmative.”

Have you started with the smelter building I commanded you to make?

“Negative.” The stockpile appeared again in my sight. “After the construction of the geothermal power plant, there was not enough concrete for buildings, meaning that the limestone mining drones had to go back to work.”

Ah, right. I hadn’t accounted for that. What about the conveyor belts?

“A rudimentary set of conveyor belts has been set on the nearby iron deposits.” My feed changed to that of a mining rover. I could see how it deposited untreated rocks on top of the spinning belt. “Primitive conveyor belts are slow and consume a lot of energy, but they are also significantly more tolerable to damage and failure than others.”

Indeed, they consumed a lot of energy. Even this short set of belts for this single mining operation composed 1% of the whole colony’s energy consumption. Considering I had smelters working, that was a lot in comparison.

We are doing well with the mining outputs and energy production, so our focus should be to solve some bottlenecks, mainly transportation. I want you to make conveyor belts for all main mines whilst we wait for the limestone deposits to grow.

“Understood.” Assembler robots stopped working in some of the parts needed for smelters and shifted conveyor belts.

Unlike the ‘sophisticated’ engines – if one could even call a steam engine sophisticated - conveyor belts were a set of steel chains and cylinders. In main human colonies, it would have been considered a waste of resources to make the belts fully out of steel, but here not only I had literal fucktons of iron, but it was the only thing I had. Copper was too ductile, and concrete would fracture under such movements.

Life went by on a fast-forward for me as I saw the rovers move around and place the conveyor belts on the ground, connecting them to the grid with dangerous exposed copper wires. Once again, there weren’t materials to make them insulated. More than the danger they presented, which was null as to who would they threaten, it was the energy losses that irked me. Losses by either contact with air or the Joule effect could be bad. At the same time, there was a lot of nitrogen in the atmosphere, so maybe they weren’t that bad.

Is there currently a way to insulate the cables?

“Negative.” The AI gave me the expected answer. “Most insulating materials are advanced polymers. The tycoon currently does not dispose of the materials to do so. However, once the standing smelts are built, the production of mineral wool through slag or basalt would be possible. Whilst not the best insulator, this production would be a byproduct and therefore only a positive.”

Well, more reasons to get the smelters running. How long until we have enough limestone to finish the first smelter?

“Two hours.” The computer responded.

That’s for the whole completion, right?

“Affirmative.”

Start building it already then. If we only dedicate a few rovers to the construction effort, we will have enough concrete once we need it.

“Understood. Priority changed from conveyor belt assembly to smelter construction.”

It felt a bit wasteful to change priorities this fast, but I had taken so long thinking about the cables and energy efficiency that the limestone conveyor belt was already operative. This would only make the extraction faster. However, I was aware that once all conveyor belts and smelters were up and running, the bottleneck would shift to the miner rovers. And the thing with mining rovers was that they didn’t become obsolete like the other rovers. Mobile mining was just that good. Standing mining operations wouldn’t be nearly as effective at prospecting and getting resources as these house-sized bulldozers.

The advance of the machinery was slow yet satisfying. The progress with the rovers of two colony ships allowed me to move at unprecedented rates. The construction of the smelter building was slow, but the mining effort of limestone was behind too. Unlike metal deposits, all limestone was usable, so that’s where I wanted to put my first permanent mine.

The parallelization of tasks through micromanagement was incredible. Not only my brain was focused on it as if it were a videogame, but progress was smooth sailing. If the mining lacked too behind, I could simply move assembler rovers to fabricate other pieces whilst the concrete production was back on track.

It was all about those small timings and corrections.

No machine was left unused.

By the time all the limestone was gathered, the foundation of the smelter was completed, and the assembler was already mounting the main installations. All the other rovers weren’t on standby either as the conveyor belt for the copper mining rovers was also completed. Such a small change meant that the miners didn’t have to do the transportation and could have a 100% mining uptime. I didn’t worry about their drills overheating as they had multiple of them to rotate.

This was my third day on the tycoon, and I already had automated iron, copper, and limestone mines alongside having secured an energy source. Things would sped up from her onwards as I was already assembling the drills for the future limestone mine.

I made a checklist.

I wasn’t that sure about the last point, but it felt appropriate for the rest of the night.

“The smelter building is now finished.” The AI announced.

Really, this soon? I had been so distracted with my goals that the passage of time had blown past me. Alright, start smelting the iron and make steel, we will need more steel in the future. Concrete and steel were the main building blocks of civilization. Tomorrow I will try to search for silicates to make glass. 

I’m gonna disconnect now but follow the steps on the checklist. If you finish all of them, redirect the current limestone rover to a new deposit and put conveyor belts all the way there. If there are assemblers free, also make some basic storage rooms from all the resources, I don’t like having them exposed to the elements.

“Understood. Have a nice day, doctor Lorem.” The low-level AI said.

You too. I bid farewell only to fall into a deep sleep.