An Engineer In Night City

After a short walk, Mark is standing in front of the habitation office of the Megabuilding 04. After knocking a few times on the door, an old man with a balding head, a five o’clock shadow, and a wife beater shirt opens the door. “What do you want?”

“I was looking for an apartment to,” before Mark could continue he was interrupted by the man.

“You pay rent every Friday; utilities paid separately. If you want to pay monthly, you need to make a three-month deposit first, and if you leave you don’t get your deposit back. Any questions?”

Mark looks strangely at the man, before carefully staring at his eyes. “Do you have a Homeowners association here?”

The bald man immediately straightens up, and utmost seriousness he answers.

“No.”

“Oh, thank God!” Mark sighs in relief, “I will take the apartment.”

Mark catches the key to his new apartment before taking the stairs. The Megabuilding is the size of a large city block at the base, and has several floors, allowing to house approximately 8000 apartments.

“If each apartment was made to house a family of three, that’s at least 24.000 residents.” Mark comments to Solvernia, who silently listens to him.

As soon as Mark arrives at the door of his new apartment, his neighbor also returns home. She’s a woman with long red hair tied in a ponytail, tanned skin with a pair of red markings on her right cheek and wore a bright yellow jacket. They both stare at each other for a moment, until Mark awkwardly waves at her.

“Hey, I’m your new neighbor. My name is Mark Henderson.”

“Oh, hey. Nice to meet you, my name is,” she tries and fails to stifle a yawn, “sorry, I just came back from the night shift. My name is Gloria Martinez.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Looking at Gloria appearance, and remembering the state of his clothes, he opens the door to his new apartment. “You’re clearly tired, so I won’t hold you up. I will come to invite you later for a homecoming celebration later if you’re up to it. It’s only right to be nice to your new neighbors.”

“That’s sounds lovely,” Gloria responds hesitantly, then more firmly, “you wouldn’t mind if I bring my son David, would you?”

“None at all,” Marks answers simply, “I’m still getting settle, but once I’m done I will give you a knock.”

“Great, I will be waiting. Oh, just so you know, every apartment comes with a standard issue water hose. Don’t ask.”

“Heh, thanks. See you later then.” With a final wave Mark enters his new home. When the door closes, he takes off all his clothes and place them on the nearby washing machine. After transferring some money with his Agent, the washing cycle starts while Mark makes a beeline for the shower.

“The place is more spacious than I expected. I was honestly expecting a Little John tier apartment.”

Letting the water of the shower hit his body, Mark feels like a person again, and he starts making a mental list of things to do. One of the first on the list it is to find a bottle of alcohol and other cleaning agents to give Solvernia a good bath.

“After re-stocking, it is time to work.”

...

Mark next destination is the district of Pacifica, and thanks to the integrated Map View of the Factorio system he can look for the perfect area to start his operation. The Municipal landfill counted as a large “Scrap Mine” in the same way that Iron and Copper mine appear in the game. The same goes for Pacifica, though with a more modest volume that’s fitting for a Starter Base.

Setting a single burner miner, Mark proceeds to break down the nearby walls and other remnant dilapidated buildings around the area, recovering enough materials to form Stone Walls inside his inventory. It takes a while, but Mark manages to harvest enough materials to build a proper smelting stack, while the higher end materials are stacked in a steel chest for later.

Those looking above would be surprised at the sight, as several stone furnaces are being fed iron and copper ore oxide, which is somehow turned into clean cut plates. Those plates are taken by mechanical robot arms and feed into what, the onlookers would assume, is a coal powered 3D printer, and from the arcane machine a large gear would appear, put into conveyor belts that carefully send their items forward despite the lack of any source of energy. Those plates and gears are then placed inside another burner assembler to be transformed into strange, glass-like vials with red liquid that is ultimately thrown into another building to seemingly burn into nothing.

“I wonder if you guys looked at the Human Domain technology on the Persean sector the same way I see the Factorio System in real life.” Mark comments to his companion, who he placed on top of his steel chest. Unfortunately, Mark can’t hear the any response with the noise the machines are making.

“If I remember correctly, part of the pollution is meant to be noise pollution. Thankfully, the uniform comes with sound suppressors.”

As Mark continues to toil on his new factory, the new Engineer places some rudimentary defenses of his budding factory. The inner wall is made from the scavenged stone walls, with the primary purpose of obscuring his activities from prying eyes, while the secondary wall is made from stone furnaces to help hide the few gun turret placements, and finally a few stone furnaces are placed near the edge of the gun turrets range, marking the effective kill zone of his defenses. To make sure dumb idiots won’t charge on the killing field, Mark places text plates using his precious resources on the ground to signal the killing field ahead.

“Hopefully, no dumb animal will come during the night and activate the defenses.”

If she could sigh, Solvernia would sigh at Mark’s statement. As it is, she can only silently judge her dumbass friend while he continued his labor.