Despite all my improvements the ground had noticeably sunk when I had finished pulling all the minerals out. I knew no one would mind as it was the area that few things could survive in due to the tremendous heat that would have come had I not just pulled out all of that wonderful ore. There would still be plenty of hot spots, just not in the location I had been trapped in before. Making my way back to the house took some time, despite my best abilities it was difficult to carry the amount of weight I had added to the pack and I had to rest quite a few times before I was comfortably back in my workshop. The complexity of the design would cause the device to work much slower this time, there were so many little things to do in the refinement and construction of each part. The capability of the device had never been pushed this far, but I was sure it could handle it, at least once I finished programming the steps in. Once started all I had to do was wait comfortably in my bed, envisioning larger construction devices that could make this process go a lot faster. Slowly but surely the device spat out pieces here and there on the floor, then pulled them back in and assembled a finished part, which would wait until the next set of parts were done and then pull those in to put them together according to the design. It was fascinating to watch the thing work, no additional input needed once it had all been started. As the form of the technology slowly took shape my excitement grew, if this thing worked as I anticipated it would completely change the things I could do on this planet.
I'm not sure how much time passed, or when exactly I fell asleep, but the sound of boards breaking woke me up pretty quickly. It was dark in the room, I wasn't sure if the sun had gone down or if something had just covered the house, it sounded like something were crushing it. The boards continued to moan and creak under some great weight, it wasn't until I heard the sound of the device still working that I realized my error, the thing I was constructing was much heavier than my floor could handle. I couldn't stop the process now, it must be nearly done to have that much weight in one spot, plus, so long as it didn't cause the house to fall I could just repair the damage it caused later. I fumbled around a bit looking for one of my light sources, when it was on I could see the construct before me and the screen on the device showing how far along it was. From what I could tell of the progress it should all be done within an hour, and then the real fun would begin.
My second error was realized once I had entered the control area of the device. I had not planned on a way to get it out of the house and so I could not just walk out. I climbed back out and scanned it back in to storage. Refined materials were much lighter, but the pack was still heavy once it was stored again. Luckily I only had to take a few steps to get out the door and deploy the unit once more. The moon reflected off of the dark metal, it would have been hard to see if I hadn't made it so shiny, but it was probably better that it could be seen for now. I climbed back in, closed the hatch and started it up. It took a moment for all the components to draw in the necessary power I had in the makeshift battery but soon all systems were up and running. Before I could take it out on a test run I needed to run it through some diagnostics to make sure things at least were theoretically running properly. I entered the sequence of commands and waited, the screen showed lots of useful information with only a few minor problems that I was sure I could fix. When it passed all tests within my acceptable margins I slipped into the controls and began testing the sensitivity, the mechanical suit moved almost as well as I did, though within the limitations of the joints. It would definitely do for now, but future improvements would give it much more agility. Even though it was still dark I decided to start working on the next part of my plan, the suit would allow me to hold a lot more materials and while it worked on extraction I could easily fix the flaws I had found already and begin designing and constructing the first upgrade.
I want that suit!
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