Just a Guy and a Gate to the Multiverse - Chapter 12 (Patreon)

Chapter 12 - Upgrading a Cart

—Sanctuary, 2289—

“Here you go, kid,” the old woman sitting in her personal chair said.

Taking the fresh glass of lemonade from her, I gave her a friendly nod. “Thanks, Mama Murphy.”

The cleanup from the small war was already underway. You could say a lot about the wasteland and its people, but one thing was certain: they wouldn’t still be around if they were lazy. It was an admirable but necessary worldview in this place.

“It’s no problem, kid. That’s the least an old woman like me can do,” she replied kindly before giving me a sad smile. “I saw that I’m not going to have the chance to do that anymore pretty soon.”

“Right, you saw that. You shouldn’t use the Sight. It’s not good for you, Mama Murphy,” I sighed before giving her a serious look. “Who gave you drugs again? You know it’s going to be the end of you!”

“Nobody did, kid. But thank you for worrying about old Mama Murphy.” She gave me a dry chuckle. “Sometimes the visions want to come out on their own. There are things the world itself wants to tell me. I only need chems to force them out.”

Yeah, the world. Or whatever horrifying entity she was connected to that gave her those visions. I never gave her any chems, always avoiding her visions. I didn’t trust anything I couldn’t comprehend.

And those secret supernatural forces in the Fallout world were far too unknown for my liking. I have almost zero knowledge on them.

“Just don’t take any chems, Mama Murphy. They will be the end of you. I saw that.” In the game. “And could you keep what you saw a secret? I don’t think the people would like me leaving very much.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t at all, kid. You are their hero.” She chuckled lightly. “You restored a piece of the dead wasteland to its state before those bombs fell. Something two hundred years didn’t manage to do. And to many, that is worth more than their own lives. It means there is a future.”

“I know, but—”

“This isn’t your world. It’s not a place where you truly belong. I saw it all. You have a very long journey ahead of you. One day, you will find that place. You will experience many adventures and everything life has to offer. You will make connections again, you will love, you will live, and you will grieve. There will be things none of the people here can ever imagine. You will build empires, be a ruler, be a chef, be an adventurer, be a villain and a hero, or whatever you want to be at that moment. Remember, kid. As long as you stay true to yourself, you will never lose yourself,” Mama Murphy said with a kind smile on her aged face.

“Thank you, Mama Murphy.” I couldn’t help but nod.

“Like I said, it’s no problem, kid. Your secret is safe with me.”

After that, we stayed silent for a good while. In the meantime, the others kept stripping the remains of the Brotherhood of Steel for all their valuables and technology. It seemed like Sanctuary would add a massive airship to its forces, enhancing its mobility and a large collection of Power Armors and Vertibirds.

But that wouldn’t matter much to me.

At least it eased my worries about leaving these people behind. Even if I didn’t feel a real connection to them, I had still built this place.

I wanted them to be safe long after I was gone.

—Vault 111, 2289—

The moment that so-called war with the Brotherhood ended, I started my preparations to leave this world. I didn’t care about Cold Fusion anymore. There were other worlds I was planning to go to in the future that had the same kind of technology, and even better versions of it if I ever needed them.

Instead, I finally started a project whose design I had been working on for a while. I decided to upgrade my cart, or rather, build something completely new on an entirely different scale. I had a few different ideas, but actually settled on one of my earliest ones, which had been more of a joke at first.

I was talking about the vehicle that would transport my stuff through the portal. My mobile home, or house on wheels. And funnily enough, that was what I was going for in the end.

Of course, I had considered something more like a camper van, but that would limit me quite a lot in size and force me to leave a lot of my hard work behind. After the price my mind had paid for these things, I was trying to take as much with me as I could.

My inspiration was partly based on those tiny homes that had become a trend in some countries in recent years. With one major difference. Instead of pulling it with a car, I was just going to put wheels or some kind of propulsion system directly onto it.

Also, it would be a lot larger than a traditional tiny home. It definitely wouldn’t be something legally allowed to drive on a public street, thanks to its massive size. Not that driving it on public roads was my plan anyway. But I wanted to make the most of the size limits I got.

All I needed it to do was drive through the Gate and move a bit over rough territory so I could hide my mobile home. That was the entire idea.

Why make it complicated when simple worked?

The first thing I had to do was calculate how big I could make it with my Multiversal Gate having a radius of ten meters. That turned out to allow for a square a bit over fourteen meters in length on each side.

To fit safely together with the wheels, I decided to make it thirteen meters in height and width. Since length didn’t matter, as the Gate only closed once everything had passed through, I simply decided to go with twenty meters. No particular reason. I like it rounded.

I didn’t want to go too overboard with the size. Or rather any bigger than it already was. It still needed to be able to hold together. That wasn’t something I was too worried about, even if I wasn’t a qualified architect. I figured I could just go all out and use the best materials I had.

Even then, I still got a bit less than two hundred and sixty square meters per level if I included the space the walls would take, which was huge. With thirteen meters of height, I could easily fit three levels to live in and one smaller utility level where all the boring tech could be hidden.

So, my tiny home idea literally turned into a big house on wheels. A not so tiny home...

I made the outer construction completely out of steel covered by a layer of aluminum so it wouldn’t rust, with several steel beams on the inside for support. Those would be hidden by walls for the various rooms. My alchemy helped a lot there.

All of that was connected to twelve crawler track chains I had collected from several different tanks and restored with alchemy before modifying them to work with an infinite Fusion Core each.

There were four tracks on each side and four in the center of the building so it wouldn’t sag in the middle.

Inside those walls, I installed piping connected to two big water tanks, one for clean water and the other for dirty water, which would be purified with a Water Chip I had liberated from an unused Vault.

This made a fully furnished bathroom possible, with a toilet, shower, bathtub, washing machine, and dryer.

Plus, there was electrical cabling, which was also connected to several infinite Fusion Cores with an electrical transformer to make it usable for my appliances and electronic devices.

Considering how I was planning to use this moving house, I only installed one window toward the front, along with the control system for the crawler track chains, so I could drive it through my Gate without a hitch.

It had one big exit door at the back fitting for an Power Armor to pass trough and a hatch on top of the building.

That was the raw structure of my new transportable home.

At the very bottom was the utility level. It held the main power generation through a network of infinite Fusion Cores, my water supply, including storage tanks and purification, a heating system, and access to the different controls and motors of the crawler track chains.

That utility level wasn’t big enough to walk around in, but I could crawl inside for maintenance access. Although the main access happened through the level above, which was the first real walkable level.

I called it the Engineering and Tech Level. For the most part, it was a multipurpose workspace, engineering bay, and laboratory. That entire level was kept pretty simple and industrial, meant more for ease of use than comfort. I could open up different spots on the floor for easy direct access to the various machines on the utility level.

At the very front was a single separate room, which was the control room housing the system used to drive the house around, although it wasn’t exactly a great vehicle. It had a really shitty turning radius. Still, it did its job.

Additionally, it contained several control displays showing the state of the different machines. There were also displays connected to security cameras placed on the outside of the entire vehicle. It had a radar system and several military-grade radio and communication devices, which should allow me to monitor and hijack communications in a large area around me. I should even be able to get an internet connection on my Earth with it.

Communication satellites on Earth weren’t so advanced or encrypted that people couldn’t break into them. For the most part, common people just didn’t have the means to build or access devices that could do so.

After raiding several former military bases, having full control over the Institute, and access to a lot of other qualified personnel, it was not a limitation that applied to me.

The rest of the level contained different workstations, held two Power Armor frames, and stored the different Power Armor parts I had collected. I had at least one set of each Power Armor type with all the available modifications, plus some self-developed ones.

I had one Cryopod here that I was going to take with me, a wide selection of different weapons, ammo, and related materials, a virtual reality pod, plus the necessary modifications for memory manipulation to play around with.

There was also a Teleporter Relay, which needed a shit ton of power and had its own network of infinite Fusion Cores to be functional. But it would allow me to teleport back to this house at any time, although outward teleportation didn’t work as well as it did for the Institute.

I was a bit constrained by space and couldn’t install the full functionality in here. To teleport somewhere, I would need to place a tracking device at that spot. That way, I could get the exact coordinates to transport myself to.

The original version used by the Institute was much bigger, but it could send stuff anywhere without that tracking device. It only needed trackers to pick people up for safety measures. Carrying one of those around was no problem for me. Originally that was my Pipboy, but I would stand out with it, and decided for a smaller device. One of my smartphones.

Most importantly, I stored all kinds of technologies I had collected all over the wasteland, including technology from the Institute and some of those matter-replicating vending machines from the Sierra Madre, to use and study here.

On the roof of this level, I also installed several hologram projectors, which I could program to let the holograms perform repetitive tinkering tasks and even clean for me. Or I could simply activate a preprogrammed defense mode that would fight off any intruder if one ever found and entered my place.

I did that on all levels, of course. At least I wouldn’t have to handle the cleaning myself.

The second normally accessible level was my living area. Ignoring the holoprojectors that created hard-light holograms of women in a French maid outfit to clean for me, it was overall a normal, spacious apartment.

Unlike the Engineering Level, I put real flooring onto the floor. Wood for most of the rooms, besides the bathroom, which used tiles. The metal walls were also clad in wood or tiles for a more homey feeling.

I had a big, luxurious bathroom with a toilet, shower, and large bathtub. There was a separate laundry room, three bedrooms with small private bathrooms in case I ever had guests, a dining room connected to an open kitchen, and lastly, a living room.

These rooms were only partially furnished since some stuff was missing, which simply didn’t exist in the Fallout world at a level I found acceptable. Like a proper sound system, a TV, and additional hardware. Gaming Consoles for example, now that I could afford all I wanted, of course I would get them.

The Fallout universe, while more advanced in many different areas, was less advanced in consumer electronics than my Earth before the 2000s. If we ignored the fact that it had household robots with actual sentient intelligence.

I was planning to get a proper TV and other electronics compatible with the hardware from my original world, which, at this point, I was able to maintain in perfect condition thanks to alchemy.

Honestly, I didn’t want to lose them. They contained so much knowledge at this point. I had several safety copies by now, so I wouldn’t lose any of it.

My kitchen was fully furnished with the best equipment I could find and restore around the Commonwealth, but it deserved a proper upgrade in the future. I would love to own some professional-grade kitchen equipment. But those were much rarer to find than normal household appliances and still weren’t comparable to the stuff I was used to from my old job either way.

I also had a food processor from the Institute for whenever I was too lazy to cook. It could turn all kinds of edible matter into nutritious food paste of different flavor types. The consistency was something you had to get used to, but it tasted pretty good.

Finally, the top level was simply a large storage area with several rooms.

I had a lot of stuff and needed to put it somewhere, not to mention that I was planning to get more in the future.

For example, I had an entire room filled with gold and jewelry. Not gold that I had transmuted from other metals, but actual gold I had collected myself all over the wasteland. There was just a satisfying feeling in owning gold you had earned or looted.

Those Secret Service guys, who guarded most of it, hadn't been very happy with my visit.

Then there was a room for perishables. You could say it was simply cold storage, but it was actually better. I repurposed a bit of the cryogenic technology from this Vault, removed the life support systems, and changed the shape into something more usable that resembled actual refrigerators, turning them into storage devices.

They were freezers that kept things fresh for far longer and could freeze and unfreeze anything in a matter of moments without damaging the structure. Some were empty, others were filled with fresh vegetables, and others held the more exotic crafting materials from this universe that I had collected during my time here.

No mutated meat!

Several rooms held random materials, ranging from usable metals to more weapons and armor, collector items, and so on. Stuff that could be useful, and was harder to get.

One room was a server room that held all kinds of data, like different brain scans from people in this world, including members of the Institute. It also held research data I had gathered from all the Vaults I had visited and the different remains of advanced facilities all over the Wasteland.

The servers were connected to my internal network here, and I could even access them with my normal laptops. I had spent quite a bit of time early on making my tech interface with the technology from the Fallout universe.

Then there was a room where I had put a ton of Synths. Literally, the room was piled with Synth bodies to the ceiling. If anyone ever stumbled into it, they would think I was some kind of mass murderer.

Those bodies were fully functional but had no software installed on them. In other words, these biological robots were working, but they had no intelligence yet. They weren’t meant to be fighters but a qualified workforce once I needed them.

All those brainwashed Institute scientist brain scans needed a purpose.

Lastly there was an emergency exit to the Roof, which I could reach with a Ladder. It's not even needed for an emergency, just for when I want to chill on the Roof. Or an exit if I have to bury my home to hide it from others.

All three Levels are connected trough a circular staircase in the center around the thickest support beam.

I would say I was pretty well prepared for my future journeys.

[ End of the Chapter ]