tesla_bot

It's been a long couple of days.

Majestic 12 attacks. Dedicated orbital surveillance.

Truckers, CB radio fans and hackers smuggling him to Japan.
(No chance to get to the Advanced Topology Division, no way for them to know they should be shipping a mobile unit out.)

So now he's on an island with two of his least useful Action Scientists, a British Secret Agent, a ghost city and a cabin that used to be in Bletchley Park and ridiculously wired into the telecom system.

All his recent problems have condensed into one. It is a sort of progress.

Machines whir. Servo arms and waldoes extend, trim, pull and twist. Lasers flash.
"Julie? How's he looking?"
"Internals are a mess, but more's salvageable than we estimated. Still, I'm projecting a 30% rebuild. Minimum."
"If he survives I'm gonna kill him."
"Careful we're near the core."
Phil leans back, tugs at his ponytail, "It's technology a hundred years ahead of out time. And it was built a hundred years ago. In secret. By one man. In what was probably his garage."
"And if it breaks?" asks Julie, tabbing through reading and charts on the monitor.
"Best case scenario: Robo dies. Worst case: Robo dies, we die, and a chunk of New England becomes a radioactive wasteland."
"Figured."
"Yeah. If he survives I am going to kill him."

---

KNOCK KNOCK
"Come in."
"Robo?"
"Have we heard from Bolden yet?"
"Well, I think the more important question is... WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"
"Phil."
"Do you know what my job is here?"
"I--"
"I make sure your experimental power source no one really understands doesn't kill millions of people! I sign paperwork saying your heart doesn't violate some very important international laws! And I'm the one that goes to War Criminal jail if you do something reckless and stupid and start leaking radiation! Do you know how close you were to melting down?"
"I--"
"Shut up, no you don't! Neither do I! Because your temp gauge melted!"
"Phil!"
"All right, okay!"
"He gets it, okay?"
"Sorry, I know. It's just--"
"Just what? Just that I spent twenty-eight hours putting humpty dumpty back together again--"
"Hey!"
"--Because he's so damn dumb he fell four hundred kilometers and damn near got himself killed!"

One thing that a lot of people forget is that Tesladyne is more than a think tank.

They prototype their own designs.

They make limited production runs with and of new technology.

They test things other people simply will not work with or even think about.

So when Robo tells Ellen he, ‘should be able to get my hands on a few wind generators’ what he really means is he will send a memo down to the alternate energy division asking for what they have that can be built out of scrap metal and run forever with minimal maintenance.

After he filters out the ranting about how there is no such thing from the reply he picks out a couple of things that look like decent compromises and puts together another memo for a set of five wind generators to be put together using spare manufacturing capacity and a full copy of the plans to be bundled with the instructions.

After that it is a matter of putting together the references for dealing with radio signals to and from orbit.

He probably goes overboard there too. Alas.

The bunker has a pair of generators and a pile of gear in one of the corners. The whole arrangement is fenced off with yellow caution tape and blast shields. One of the downsides of making your own way to Milliways is that you have to keep making your own way. The rest of the space is full of other support gear: paramedics, radio operators, stocks of food and water and plenty of video feeds. Most of those cameras seem attached to be on balloons or something else flying given the way they look down at the woods, but a few others target larger clearings and trails.

"Sorry about the lack of space," says Robo, "This was the best place in the area to get through. You mind waiting while I give the trainees one last talk before I bring you out?"

The door is a free standing frame on a small plywood dais at the focus of a tremendous amount of cabling and particle emitters. The whole area smells of ozone.

"Watch the step. The platform's cheaper to replace than the floor if the focus wanders."

Tesladyne's high energy (dimensional) physics area is done in early twenty first century institutional - white walls, semi-random grid of light, but varied floor tile colors. The framework is from a school of design that favors being able to clean an area with a pressure washer, The drains are a hint. Decorations are spotty. Beyond the collection of calendars with scribbled notes and the cork board spotted with envelopes and scraps of paper it's still mostly bare. The warning signs are clear, bright, unobstructed and supplemented with signs like 'Do not look in laser with remaining eye.'

There are no windows and only one door to the rest of the facility.

"Welcome to Tesladyne."