After the letter was written, we each went to work. Carla went hunting again, and I started making a second room. From what I could gleam from the letter, our future arrival is most likely a guy, so I can't just place a second bed into Carla's room. I actually started construction of a bunch of things. First of all, excavation of four more rooms, one in each cardinal direction, began in order to expand my bunker. I am planing on this being a more of a security checkpoint/transport point in the future, and digging deeper for the actual important stuff, so it's best to start the planing now. One side will be a moderate housing complex (suspended until needed), one will be a transfer point for goods (I will focus on that), one will be a transportation hub with metro or something similar (also suspended), and the last one will be a sort of souvenir/commercial zone for rare stuff, and branch off into a security point that goes deeper. It's a large project that will probably take years, but I have nothing but time on my hands, so that's not a problem. For now, the space will be used for printers and the mini-factory (most likely multiple). The reason I want to go deeper is simple. Reactors. I want them to be as safe as possible. Carla said that a magician could probably break through my current walls pretty quickly, so I would like to hide it as deep as possible. We don't need some lunatic wishing to see how it works, or not liking how it looks, or something similar, opening it up, and killing everyone due to radiation poisoning. No, thanks!

So, as for the top, considering I don't need to hide anymore, as the village church should have already reported the fluctuations, and even if they believe that I am just a tree, they would want to look at it sooner or later, and I must be ready. I am not planing on using the wing system for the top, at least not at the start. I have a couple of things I will need to construct. A housing complex if I want many people to come here, which is pretty much inevitable knowing me, a shopping center to serve and support those people, a medical center for obvious reasons, and from then I will need to see as things are needed. For now, I am making a temporary room on the opposite side of the Carla's room. I will connect these rooms to make something like a greeting hall, but that is for the future.

On to the now, Artyom made me a drawing of my box on top of a mountain. It is now hanging on a magnet on the fake fridge that I made just for it. He is ecstatic about it, and is currently making a tiny fridge out of not-wood. On the more serious note, Fred encountered a problem, that is quickly becoming worse. In the good news, we will not need to dig any further for thermal power, on the bad side, our mines are currently being flooded by magma. What we end up doing is flooding it with the water from the table, but the resulting steam explosion destroys even the nanobots intended for high pressure, and all turbines, except one thank god, need a full rebuild to be operational again, so we are temporarily on low-power mode. This is nothing for me, but Fred is kinda freaking out. Basically, almost all our plans are on hold until we get the power back, and this time we are planing to go straight for thermal, so we are basically frozen for the next half a month. Even Artyom is currently without access to a printer as all of them are busy making parts, and Fred is forced to use only one tenth of his usual processing power at this point. I am the only one not affected, as I don't draw a lot of power, like, at all, and rarely use the printers. I asked Clara to chop down trees around me for materials for Artyom, and also introduced them to each other. He can't really speak, so I made a basic translation program that interprets his output, and tries to construct words out of it. It's far from perfect as he mostly speaks in concepts, but it's enough.

So, we started mining again. The mines remain flooded, so it's difficult with all the steam, but we have to reach that chamber if we want a good output, and having a second lava flood wouldn't be good, so there is nothing we can do. It should take around five days to reach the location if we just dig out old tunnels. The magma is basaltic, which means both more power and harder excavation, but long-term rains over short-term in our situation, so it's fine. Carla is cooking a bunch of different stuff on Artyom's request because he wanted to know how to cook, and as soon as we have power I am thinking of making a rail system with a robot on it for us to operate. I honestly don't know why I didn't think of making a humanoid robot until now, but I won't be making a full on human. The design is extremely inefficient and complicated, and it's hard to control the balance, so for now, it's either four legged or pseudo-stationary robots only. On more optimistic, although unrelated, news, one of the squirrels is pregnant. Fred already deleted the recordings of the process, not to traumatize me, so now they all mostly stay inside. They are still a tiny bit scared of Carla, but some of them sometimes come up for scratches, and it's incredibly cute. Carla says that they are not normal squirrels, but smart squirrels, and have intellect about equal to that of a five-year-old, so that explains why they behaved the way they did. Neat. There also started to appear more 'monsters' around here. By monsters, I mean classical stuff like horned rabbits (no idea how they are not extinct yet), red boars, and stuff like that. What makes them monsters? Their urge to kill. A normal boar will not attack you if you don't provoke it, be it scaring it, or being on its territory, a red boar, on the other hand, will seek out things to kill. They are also a lot stronger than the normal counterpart, but tastier as well, if the noises when Carla was eating a red boar roast are of any indication.

The alarm just tripped. While we are low on power, the cameras are off and only turn on when there is movement. I at first thought that it was just an animal wandering the night, but that was quickly dispelled, as was Carla's sleep as I told her dog to spit out a jumble of sounds to wake her. Someone was running toward us with a compass with wires leading to a gigantic backpack in their hand.

Bleary-eyed, Carla looked at the screen hanging in the main room;
"That's probably Roland." -She sleepily said before shuffling back to her room and falling asleep.

Thinking that I should probably let her sleep, I called out to this Roland;
"Hello there, impatient much?"

He tripped and fell face-first into the ground, the compass flinging off into the trunk of a tree with a bang.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, are you ok?"

He quickly shot up, on guard, looking around and holding a hastily pulled out short-sword.
"Who's there?"

"Oh, allow me to introduce myself, my name is Sam, might I take a guess that you are a friend of Carla, Roland?"

His eyes widened as he saw what was speaking to him - a camouflaged camera mounted on a tree. (Before you ask, yes it looks weird, but it is mostly hidden by the branches) His grip on the sword visibly loosened, and his look was now more of fascination than of caution, though it didn't disappear entirely;
"Yes, and where might she be?"

"Oh, just keep heading in the same direction and you'll see it, although she is asleep, as it Is night."

"I apologize for disturbing at such an hour, I just was too impatient to stop for the night."

"So, what you are telling me, is that you didn't sleep the entire almost five-day trip?"

"How did you- oh! The letter! I- kinda?" -He said avoiding eye contact and being startled at finding another camera.

"Eh, what do I do with you? Well, go on, there is about half an hour walking, but at your speed it should be a couple of minutes. The couch is currently free, you can crash there."

"Oh, thank you very much!" -He said as he bent down to pick up the dented compass;
"Damn it. It's broken."

"Sorry for that, let me lead you instead." -I said from a camera up ahead, making him drop the compass again. Quite jumpy, isn't he?

Noonegoodsir

I feel like something is wrong with this chapter, but I can't tell what. Little help?