The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life

Once A Jolly Swagger Apple Camped by a Billabong.

I didn't go to Australia just for sightseeing. The System gave me a very troublesome notification.

> The World Tree requires a direct connection to the world core. Unless it is moved back to the world before the end of the next year, it will die and the quest will fail.

I needed a place to plant the seed and Australia seemed like the best one. No volcanoes, far enough from troublesome cnidarians.

Australia appeared in sight of my aircraft. No longer a blimp, it resembled a space shuttle with oversized wings. With six hundred feet of length, hundred eighty feet of both height and width, with two hundred feet of thick wing on each side. The wings were hollow and filled with a vacuum. Can something be filled with a vacuum? Well, it was. Other compartments were also vacuumed to create more lift. That left little need for aerodynamic lift though it had it too. The propulsion was the same as the NASA shuttles. I just Replicated fuel in the tanks and let the craft blast forward. Finally, the transformation sequence was similar to a certain cartoon character that was also inspired by the space shuttle.

Anyway, Australia appeared behind me and I set the craft to do a lap around the continent-sized country. The coastal cities were devastated. I could see the salt left behind by the tsunamis. Half of Sidney and Brisbane were underwater. The last survivors had fled to Canberra, where they united against the Infernali.

I did two flybys of the region, counting the people on the surface with a Domain beacon. They had around thirty-five thousand people. Probably the last survivors. Just like South America, Australia was lucky to have no volcanoes in its territory. They were in the middle of a solid tectonic plaque. The nearest ones were in continental Antarctica. The Tweed hadn't erupted. The distance to the volcanoes also made the air around relatively clean. It was still a hazy smog but on par with a cloudy day, and not at the doomsday level of the other continents. The ozone layer above the place was also relatively consistent. UV radiation was rather acceptable for people above level sixty.

I flew around Canberra a third time, shooting lasers at the Infernali nests around the city I could detect. I waited for nightfall to negotiate without the UV radiation from the Sun. Satisfied with the surroundings being clear, I landed outside.

"Marshall, get ready to do some diplomacy," I called him and Rta into the shuttle's cockpit. "I'll go first and make sure they can't hurt you."

Marshall snorted and smirked. I bet he was thinking he was invincible with his ridiculously-high level.

Rta just nodded and added, "I'm ready to summon the Einherjar if needed."

People fired arrows at my craft. They obviously bounced harmlessly on the Dungeon Walls that composed the outer hull. The only part of the shuttle that wasn't wall was the exhaust port. Good luck invading through that. I turned on the floodlights, shining on the walls.

The city had a wall made of stone. It probably took the locals decades to build it but it was the sturdiest city walls I've seen that weren't crafted by me.

"Please refrain from hostile action. This craft is perfectly capable of defending itself." I shout through the speakers and cast a Domain Beacon on them.

"Move, you morons!" An old man shouted. "What the hell do we have here? An American space shuttle? Impossible! The people in space never got back down. And the size is wrong!"

People were in space during Ragnarok? Perhaps in the ISS. Anyway. I opened the passenger door and leaped out on Blackjack Six. I ditched the wings in favor of vacuum-filled limbs and torso and a stronger jump jet. One small burst and I get ten seconds of free flight.

"Hold your fire!" The old man shouted. "Stop right there, cowboy. Who are you?"

I wanted to test this old man. Was he the real deal? "I came from the dawn of time. Living many secret lives..."

"That's from Highlander," the old man laughed. "Seriously, who are you?"

"Allow me to introduce myself... I'm a man"

"Of wealth and taste. Sympathy for the Devil. We got plenty of devils around here. Don't need a new one. Also, why do you look like one of those Japanese TV robots?"

"Before that, were you born before the world ended?"

"You can bet your dead presidents I was, lad. I was born in 2017. Was 21 years old when the world went to shit."

Wait. That meant... "Ragnarok happened in 2037?"

"Ragnarok? Yeah, sure. Why would it matter what you call it? Yes. Survived the onslaught of Sidney. Got a good Class that gave me lots of Constitution. Here we are."

"Hey, old-timer. Catch!"

I Replicated a smartphone above him. It dropped and he deftly caught it. he pressed the power button and the green trashcan robot appeared.

"Android? How? All computers fizzled out sixty years ago!"

"I can make computers. They work with magic."

He looked. "It has a signal! How?"

"Antenna in the shuttle."

He stared at the phone and for the first time looked his age. "Did you come down from space? Did you come to rescue us?"

I called Marshall over the radio. He came, dressed in his usual military uniform. "Greetings! I'm unarmed. Name's Marshall."

The old man pocketed the phone and walked to greet the Lord. He chuckled after they shook hands. "Now that's a genuine Yankee. What's the deal with the robot?"

"He's mute and has to use a voice synthesizer. To answer your questions, no, we didn't come from space. We came from America and we went over all the continents rescuing as many people as we can. You Aussies are the last stop."

"We don't have much food to share," the apprehensive old man started. I raised a hand.

"Don't worry. We are the ones sharing food with you." I stated. "We will also share our technology and knowledge with your people."

He halted and stared at me. "What do you want in exchange? Those gifts seem too much. And how do you have smartphones for everyone?"

"We do." Marshall grinned.

The old man grinned. "Only android, or any Apple phones?"

I played "chuckle.wav". "Old man, they are all Apple's phones."

Rta walked down from the ramp bringing two fat cows. The old man's eyes bulged.

"Cattle? After all these years, you still have living cattle?!? I thought the Infernali had devoured all of them!"

"We have all sorts of food," Marshall retorted and took an apple from his storage ring. "There's plenty where this came from. You can have it."

Rta approached them while the man devoured the apple without chewing. "If you are unwilling to trust my Lord's gifts, we can take them elsewhere. Your land is wide open and we will have no trouble settling down a few hundred miles from here."

The old man glanced behind his back, at the people on the walls that were glaring daggers at him or drooling at the two cows. "No, you are welcome, so long you come in peace."

"Then it is settled. Let us offer a feast to celebrate our alliance!" Marshall boomed. "I swear that tonight, everyone will eat to the point they won't be able to eat even one more grape!"

*

*

Using my Control stat, I moved a thousand cows out of the shuttle and had them march straight into their settlement. They killed only six hundred, which was more than enough to give each person two pounds of beef. Trucks loaded with vegetables and grain came after the cows, as well as two trucks with coals and five with folding barbecue grills. We did good on Marshall's promise and as sunrise neared the horizon, people could barely move. The only thing we didn't offer was beverages but they had their own potato moonshine.

Sunrise announced the time to go underground or indoors, to avoid UV radiation. The old man escorted us out of the settlement and we returned to the shuttle. There, I sent Marshall and Rta back to the Inner World and put myself to work.

First, I flew with Blackjack Six (I know could fly with my "equipment" so long it was man-sized with no problem) some five thousand feet above the settlement. It was below where the smoke clouds would gather. There, I started making steel balloons like those on the dirigibles again but this time It was rather flat ones. I made the lower layer 0.2mm thick which was twice the top layer, putting the center mass of the balloon low enough that it wouldn't flip. Then I started to expand it, forming a massive floating pizza of Dungeon Walls. Whenever two balloons were ready, I would weld them together. The disc started to grow and in hours, it was large enough to cover the whole settlement and more. I kept growing it, this time using beacons because the whole disc was my Dungeon. I added propellers on top to allow the thing to stay in place and not drift away with the wind.

My intent was to shield the settlement from UV radiation and allow people to work and live during the day. Checking the shadow of the disc on the land below, I decided it was wide enough to cover the city and a few miles of land in the north-south axis. Now I could extend it only in the east-west direction to give better coverage during the whole day. In the center, I put a single DCSC hanging from the bottom. By the time the sun started to set on the other side, the sunshade cover was large enough to block sunlight on the settlement from one hour after dawn to one hour before dusk.

To give it the finishing touches, I installed solar panels on top and LCD screens below. Batteries and a computer cluster to process sensor data and control the propellers. Lastly, I added lasers and railguns all around the edges to defend the settlement against the Infernali.

Night came and I turned the LCD display on, showing a starry sky. I flew back to the shuttle but now, with an eye in the sky, I could see they were killing the remaining four hundred cows. It didn't seem they noticed the fake sky I placed over them.

*

*

It didn't take long for the Beacon to sense people coming to the aircraft. They are armed and look strong but by their auras, even the weakest Rangers can deal with them.

"Hey, metal man!" One of them shouted. "Come out, we want to talk!"

Some of the men snicker.

The airship was tall enough to hide the other side from these people. I Replicated a Raindrops mecha there and flew inside the cockpit.

"Are you going to hurt them, contractor?" Larry asked.

"No, just making sure they know they aren't the strongest ones around. I promise I won't hurt them."

Larry nodded. "That's good, contractor."

"Are you looking for me?" I boomed from the Raindrops speakers. The giant mecha walked around the giant airship, intentionally blocking the way back home for them. "What business do you have with me?"

"Shit." One of them said. "You didn't tell me the metal man was this tall."

"We want more food," the one that seemed the leader shouted back at me.

"We gave you one thousand cattle heads. Whole trucks of food and seeds to plant. What did you do with them?"

They ate it all. Some people even got sick from overeating after starving for so long.

"We want more food!" The man demanded.

I took two steps back and turned around. I set a slow walking pace toward the city. Raindrops' slow walking pace would get it ticketed on most USA roads. I treaded carefully, trying not to wreck the place.

> Your knowledge and training improved your Mecha Operations Skill to rank VIII - Normal movements cause (8*Rank)% fewer damage to the surroundings.

Hooray, a Skill rank. It was taking so long. The effects were immediate. Raindrops left shallower footprints, raised less dust, demolished less houses, and so on. It was still a 200-foot-tall mecha.

It walked over the settlement walls and then into the city. The LCD panels above changed from a dim starry sky into a bright blue sunny sky with faint clouds. I dialed the volume to 11.

"Citizens, listen to me. I am Garfield Babbage and I have an offer for you."

The people who fled into their buildings peeked. I started to pay for the promo video on the big screen above. Long story short, I convinced eighteen thousand people to move in and start a new life in Speranza. Some idiots tried to attack the giant robot's foot and ankles, doing the same damage a toddler with a rubber ball could do to a car. I mean, they gave the shiny fuselage some smears. I swear it was not blood.

I had promised Larry not to hurt them.

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