B2-11 (Pt. 2) - Black Goo, Black Gold (Patreon)

“Once, long ago a wise woman, living in a dark cave, hinted that I would gain fortune and salvation by defeating the dreaded Peacock Turtle,” Maya said as she, Tender, and Bell sat before a campfire. 

They were in the virtual world, Maya had been driven to near insanity with the fire in her arms and had begged Nan to shove her into the VR system to escape it. It had worked, Maya wasn’t trying to tear off the cast to get to her hand and Bell and Tender had joined her to listen to her plans. They were in a copy of a campsite that Maya had visited during her teenage years. She wasn’t one for camping, but this tale required the right setting. 

“You’re talking about Nanaseto, correct?” Tender surmised.

“Yes the demonic Nanaseto, carver of flesh, healer of wounds, breaker of hearts,” Maya said. 

“I doubt she’s broken any hearts,” Bell responded. 

“The way is dangerous,” Maya continued, “it is dark and it is filled with terrible monsters seeking your destruction, she told me. The dreaded Peacock Turtle lives in a poisoned land, it basks in the glow of mystical fire that injures all who approach it, yet it takes power from that fire.” 

“The unshielded mana core,” Tender said. 

“I know,” Bell muttered. 

“Then she said something about ‘gens’ and I completely forgot about it after that.” Maya said. 

“Veskari was totally awesome about putting down units of mana measurements for me. Anyway, this is what I learned. In the beginning, there is essence mana, the existence destroying force that the System goes out and fights in an endless battle that has spanned billions of years. The System then takes that essence mana and breaks it down into essence, the units that make up the multiverse, and mana, the units that powers everything in the multiverse. Of the two, mana is the one everyone has connection with, as it is what changes a SIL. Now essence is something that only higher Tiered SIL get to play with, as it’s the building blocks of the multiverse.

“The broken down mana becomes ambient mana or in Veskari’s words, protomana, from which is derived the ambient mana unit of measurement, promoa. This is just raw energy floating in the wind. Now, the background, ambient, levels of promoa are about the same everywhere, in the multiverse it’s about 500 promoa per cubic meter. Mana cores generally deplete the ambient mana in an area fairly quickly, but mana abhors a vacuum and therefore it tries to maintain a balance everywhere.

“Now we come to the mana cores. A Category V, or C5. mana core, like the Hangy’s core, is a middle of the road sized mana core. That type of core is designed to pull in about 1,000,000 promoa a minute within a 10,000 cubic meter area. Within the core the promoa (p) gets mande into generic mana, gens (g), the kind of mana machines use. Since it’s machine mana, it’s considered ‘lesser’ than the mana produced by biological entities. The conversion rate from promoa to gens is about 1000p to 1g. So a C5 core is sucking in about 100p per cubic meter, across 10,000 cubic meters, every minute. Which is turned into 1,000g a minute. That’s a lot, right? Wrong!

“You see because of weird mana magic laws, the more promoa that are on hand within the core, the more the of the ambient mana it is able to absorb. That means the base level of 100p a minute gets cranked up to 500p a minute, meaning the core will be sucking in 5,000,000p a minute producing 5,000g a minute. That’s 9,000,000g a standard day! 

“This is not very interesting,” Bell said, looking bored. 

“I also find it uninteresting,” Tender added. 

“Your message said that you had obtained a breakthrough that could allow us to use the dimensional cage near infinitely. Yet, you’re telling us things we already know,” Bell added. 

“Ease up there, pal. I’m covering my bases and recording this for posterity’s sake,” Maya turned ninety degrees from where she sat and spoke. “This is for you at home watching,” she said to empty air.

“What are you doing?” Bell asked. 

“Breaking the fourth wall,” Maya replied. 

“I do not understand,” Tender said. 

“One day you will understand all, Tender. Just have patience.” Maya cleared her throat and turned back to the two.  “Now we get to this dimensional plane and it’s weird lack of mana. From the scans Vesky ran, we’re looking at about 50p a cubic meter on average, not the multiverse standard of 500p. This makes the plane a mana desert.

“So, a weird thing happens when you have a full core and it’s pulling in the max amount of promoa from the air, if the mana isn’t drawn out the generic mana begins cannibalizing itself, the gens get torn back down to promoa, but then an even weirder thing happens. Instead of turning 1g into 1000p, it makes a tiny bit more promoa than it used to create the gen. No one knows where that extra promoa comes from, but it is created. It’s not essence mana because there is no essence mana here and the cores are still working like they should be.”

“I had not considered that,” Tender said. “All I understood was that the cores were working as they should be.”

“Well, Vesky is paying off dividends already with all his knowledge,”Maya said. “That extra promoa is being created by every one of the nine million gens being produced. They’re being torn back down and with every tear down, it’s producing a free 1 percent increase.

“Now as exponential increases go, this is scary. That original 1000p will be doubled within seventy tear downs and rebuilds. Then after another seventy cycles, it’ll double again. And again. And again. Until its producing so much generic mana that the sheer condensed power will create an unstable mana vortex that will destroy everything in a hundred kilometer radius, then all that generic mana will shower out like some horrid poison. Making life a serious hell for any low tiered suckers caught in its wake.

“But that rarely happens, mostly due to the fact that the core will blow before it reaches that critical event. There’s more math behind it, but the big deal is that a C5 core can create up to ten times what it says on the box. Instead of a simple 9Mg a day, it’ll be producing 90Mg a day. That’s how these cores are able to power a big ole space ship. 

“The common multiverse consensus is to run a core at eighty percent of capacity, any higher and you’re looking at the risk of boomy-boom-booms. This is where mana batteries come into play, they pull the generic mana off the top and store it, allowing the core to run at eighty percent. “

“Why are you telling us all of this?” Bell asked. 

“Because I’m getting to the good part. Mana batteries are a safety valve and that means somewhere on the Hangy is a giant ass mana battery.” 

“Ah,” Tender said. 

“I’m not talking about those heavy ass emergency batteries, I’m talking about one that can store all the energy created by a C5 core. That’s a lot of battery there.” 

“Would it not have been corrupted by mana?” Bell asked. “As what occurred to the emergency mana batteries.” 

“These big ole batteries are meant to be the real power source behind the ship’s function. Once they’re fully charged, they’re supposed to power everything. Mana cores are just supposed to be used to collect mana, not store it.” 

Everyone was quiet as they digested that bit of information. 

“Then that would mean…” 

“Yup. We were totally using the cores wrong. Veskari was correct in saying that it was bordering on criminal mismanagement. We have been draining the entire core every time we opened a threshold, to the point where it had to start all the way back from effectively zero.” 

“Meaning that it’s been relying on only ambient mana to recharge itself.” 

“Yeah, apparently there needs to be a ‘critical mass’ that allows the core to tear down the gens and gain that little boost. Just as the cores were reaching that point, we pull the plug and drain the whole thing to get back to Earth. We should have been letting the cores run hot and then pulling the excess into mana batteries, which then we would use to power the cage. We have just been doing what Shen did and that guy was a total moron when it came to engineering.” 

‘That’s all well and good, but why the big explanation?” Bell asked. 

Maya grinned. “I have a plan.” She looked to Tender.

“She has a plan,” Tender said in a ‘spooky’ voice. 

Bell frowned. 

“We have six awesome crafted mana batteries.. We have three C5 cores that can charge two of those bad boys up to full. There is some weird efficiency loss when changing raw gen mana into stored mana, but no biggie. 

“Veskari said that the cores were competing for promoa because they were too close together. A C5 core needs a good 10,000 cubic meters of free space around it to work effectively. By having all these cores clustered together, we’ve been hampering them.” 

“I think the reason Shen didn’t have any batteries or a set up to collect excess mana is because he didn’t open these thresholds that often. Well, he couldn’t but he was trying to brute force them open using the cores, which burned out the mana channels on all the poor people he captured. Veskari also found logs that showed he was just releasing mana when it got to dangerous levels.” 

“What does this all mean?” Bell asked. 

Maya grinned again. “Those mana batteries we found, they can hold 20Mg of mana. A fully operational C5 core will be producing 90Mg a day! Well, theoretically.” 

“Theoretically?” Bell frowned again. 

“Low mana in this dang place. We’re getting 50p a cubic foot, not 500p. So technically a fully operational C5 core would be making 9Mg a day in the RSH,” Maya said. 

“RSH?” Bell asked.

“Rainbow Sky Hellscape.” Maya said. 

“Right…” 

“There’s also something weird about the dirt here. The ambient mana saturation is a lot lower in the dirt, so we’ve been kicking ourselves in the butt by burying the cores. Which is weird, because in the multiverse, ambient mana levels are pretty much standard everywhere, even inside of a star’s core. The only place it really changes are around Tier 2 point of contact worlds and naturally occurring mana saturated areas.

“With Tier 2 POC worlds, you’re looking at anywhere between ten to a hundred times the ambient mana in the place. It’s wild out there, but this far into Integration it hasn’t stabilized yet. This is where my awesome plan comes into play,” Maya grinned. “We’re gonna charge up those batteries, then we’re gonna build us a black goo mana net.” 

Bell sighed. “What now?” 

“There is an abundance of rogue AIs here, they all have this black goo inside of them that is a kind of combo mana battery and passive mana collector. These are attached to a condenser and thereby creating a workaround mana core. It’s a pretty ingenious adaptation by the rogue AIs. The black goo is not efficient nor is it powerful, but it’s free generic mana.” 

Maya stood up and waved her hands, the scene changed from the campsite to her standing in an empty gray dirt void. Above them was a rough image of a net of cloth and metal that stretched for kilometers. 

“I present to you, the Black Goo Mana Net!” Maya announced. 

“I don’t get it,” Bell said. 

“According to Nan, we can create durable tubes out of the duracloth. Whole miles of them. From what Tender and I discovered, the rogue AI black goo looks like liquid, feels like liquid, but it really isn’t a liquid. It doesn’t freeze, boil, or evaporate. It’s a mixture of mana stones and eleven herbs and spices.” 

Maya waved her hands again and they were standing in the dark void of space, below them lazily spun Earth. 

“My plan is to create a few miles of the black goo net and then attach it to a mana core. Then we fly up overtop of Earth and chuck that core out the front door.” 

“So that you can take advantage fo the higher ambient mana levels?” Bell asked. 

“Righto, buddy. The thing with C5 cores is that they can only go up to 10k cubic meters, but if you attach a mana net, which is a thing, they can get up to 30k cubic meters to draw from, meaning they’re tripling the amount of ambient mana they’re pulling in. Therefore… instead of 90Mg, It’ll be 270Mg a friggin’ day! That’s 9Mg an hour! That’s what one of these cores produces in a day, in this place.” 

Bell raised an eye ridge. 

“This solves a lot of our problems. There’s no scary rogue AIs in space around Earth, there are currently no space whales in our universe, and the high concentration of mana in the area could be ten times what is considered normal. So, instead of 270Mg, it could be 2700Mg! Or even more! Actually it can’t be any more than 350Mg a day, otherwise the core will burn itself out and nasty boomy-boom-booms occur. So, we’re looking at maybe a 350Mg or nearly 12Mg an hour. That would mean one of the crafted batteries will be charged in less than 2 hours, or just a bit under 21 hours RSH time.” 

Bell perked up at that.

“Looking at the data, we’re burning nearly 2Mg an hour to keep the cage operational. So if we toss both cores out there, that’ll free us of the fear of them being snapped up by rogue AIs and it will also charge up two whole crafted mana batteries every 21 hours. Which can then be used to power the cage.” 

“But the two charged batteries will only produce 20 hrs of cage time,” Bell said. 

“Well, see according the newly organized and correlated data from Veskari, we only really need about 16Mg to open the threshold, any fewer gens and it’ll not form. We’ve been waiting for it to reach 40Mg before opening the gateway, which gave us twenty hours to play around in the multiverse.

“For the time being, we’ll be only doing short hops back to the multiverse. Less than eight hours, which will be about forty minutes MVT.”

“Multiverse time?” Tender asked. 

“Got it in one, buddy. Using the minimum amount of time needed, we can hop into Earth space and collect the charged mana batteries. Reset them and start all over again. Then we build up a stockpile of all six of them, maybe also put together all the mana batteries we’ve been able to salvage, find the big one in Hangy and then we’ll have oodles of time back in the multiverse, enough that we don’t even have to close the gateway, we’ll just be collecting mana from the goo network. Perhaps if we build a big enough goo network, we won’t have to use cores anymore. It may be inefficient and slow, but the black goo doesn’t require mana channeling to create. Plus, y’know, space is huge.”  

“How easy is it to create the black goo?” Bell asked. 

“Just mana stones and some other ingredients. Tender ran an analyst on it to see what’s needed and it looks doable. Zono’s got all the stuff we’ll need packed away in his dimensional storage, all we need to do is… buy it. If we can create the black goo, we’ll be able to make a knock-off mana battery. No Tier 2 machinery or arcane knowledge needed. If it’s good enough for rogue AIs, it’s good enough for us.” 

“Rogue AIs created the black goo?” Bell asked. 

“Yup. But before you say ’Tis evil, this black goo’, it’s really not. It’s just black goo. Nothing roguish or evil about it.” 

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Bell said. 

“Really?” 

“Yes.” 

“Really?”

“I have a question. If the C5 core needs 10,000 cubic meters of space and if the promoa concentration around Earth is ten times what normal ambient mana is, why would you need the black goo net?”

Maya paused. “Uh…” 

“If the promoa concentration around Earth is say… 5000p a cubic meter, then that would mean the cores would be producing…. 90Mgs, which will actually be 900Mg a day. As a C5 core, it can only produce 350Mg a day. So why the black goo net?” 

“You’re right, in Earth’s ambient mana saturation, it might not be needed. But in any other place, the black goo would be a major boon. It’s collecting and creating mana, but it’s also extending the range of the C5 core.

“We probably should just toss out the cores over Earth, but long term the black goo is a mana collection and storage device. From Tender’s analyst on it, it can store up to 40,000g per liter, with the tube size, we’ll be needing about a liter for every twenty square meters. So if we create a twenty thousand square meter net, it will be able to store up to 40Mg. That could also act as a stabilizer for the mana cores, drawing off what is needed or supplying extra gens to keep it running at peak efficiency. Plus, we’ll always need more power. We’re gonna be expanding our base of operations soon, once I get that Economic Module Token spent. ” 

“So this is what you have been spending the last four hours doing?” Bell smiled. 

“The VR is pretty cool these days, with my Tier upgrade, my lack of mana channels, it’s not so much headache, brain destroying craziness as it once was. I’m starting to like it in here. Plus the last forty hours of VR time has been spent figuring out how to manufacture the tubes we’re gonna need. We won’t need much, just a small dab of black goo per meter, but it’s still gonna be a lot if we’re looking at creating forty thousand square meters of netting.” 

“Indeed.” 

“That brings up another thing.” 

“What’s that?” Bell asked. 

“We’re gonna need to become Vampires, the creatures of the night, the terror of the Rogue AI! Until we can begin production on our own, of course.”

“You want to drain rogue AIs of the black goo?” Bell asked. 

“Yup. You down for some exsanguination?” 

“I am,” Tender said. 

“That feels wrong, somehow,” Maya muttered. “But we still have some stuff to do. I’m putting going back to Earth on hold for a few days, we’ll charge up two batteries, move the cores so they aren’t hampering one another, begin production on the black goo tubes, patch up the parts of Zono he needs fixing, salvage the rogue AIs we have on hand to collect goo and parts, then, “ Maya sighed, “then we move the ship to the Hangy. That’s where the real fun begins.” 

“That’s a lot of work,” Bell said. 

Maya grinned. “Stay busy or… I don’t know… stay in bed?”