System Overclocked 3 -ch 8-

Wrench didn’t know what to do.

Or where to look

Everywhere around him were Hume.

Hume, large buildings, large rumbling machines moving down smoothly paved walkways, and a great deal of other strange things.

Looking down at himself, Wrench realized he was a bit oddly dressed in his Fixer coveralls.

Breathing out he noticed a mist from his breath and he noted that it was actually quite cold out.

A woman in a skirt that barely managed to cover her rear end and a heavy jacket strutted past him. She had a number of piercings in her face and ears as well.

Maybe… I’m not so strange after all.

Then again I’m not wearing a helmet so.

Turning Wrench looked to Edmund.

The man was nodding his head as he looked around. The tablet was gone and his clothes had changed. He was dressed in a similar way to the vast majority of people moving around.

“Is this a really big Hume Hab?” Wrench asked, looking at Edmund. “Also, why do you still have your helmet on?”

“Hume Hab. Hm. No, no… this a city. A Human city. You’re a human. Or you were at one point. You’ve all been so heavily modified by the Tongsta you might be more like… Human plus, I guess,” Edmund said, sticking his hands into the coat pockets as he moved to stand next to Wrench. “Helmet is fine. They’ll just all see me as me. My face, that is. It’s fine.

“It’s easier than taking it off thats for sure. Alright. We’re just waiting for a friend of mine and then you’ll be off and running. They’ll be taking care of you and walking you through everything.

“I’ll honestly be busy getting other things ready and… well… fixing timelines.”

“Timelines,” repeated Wrench.

“It’s like splicing wires together by taking sections out of other existing wires,” Edmund said, pulling his pockets out of his hands and holding them in front of himself. Gesturing with them as he spoke. “You take from here, put it there, rebind it all, then do it again. Over and over across multiple wires. Forging it together one strip at a time.”

“Doesn’t that ruin the wire you’re taking from?” Wrench asked.

“Absolutely. I did say I might get eaten by a black-hole after all,” Edmund reminded him and then laughed, putting his hands back in his pockets. “Don’t worry though, nothing you have to worry about or even concern yourself about.

“Your world is pretty separate to all of this. If you did see something come out of it, it’d be something akin to hundreds of thousands of years deep into the future.

“Ah, there’s my friend. His name’s Oz. He’ll be able to take you back and forth between your work site, here, and anywhere else you need.”

A rather nondescript man with brown hair, brown eyes, an average build, and an average height, walked up to Edmund. He had a flat neutral expression and looked to be somewhere in his thirties.

“Edmund,” the man said coming to a stop in front of him. Then he looked to Wrench. “Wrench.”

“Hey,” Wrench said then held out his hand to the man.

Tilting his head to the side Oz stared at Wrench’s hand. Then reached out with his own hand and grabbed Wrench’s hand. He shook it though in a very mechanical way.

Each hand pump being the exact same as the last in a strange way.

“I will be your assistant,” Oz stated.

Wrench turned to look at Edmund and found the man was already gone.

Errr… what?

Frowning, he looked back to Oz.

“Edmund is very busy,” Oz stated. “Shall we proceed to shop?”

Oz released his hand, then gestured to the glass doors nearby.

“I don’t even know what I’ll need,” Wrench lamented.

“That is fine. I have a list of suggested tools, equipment, nutrients matched to caloric needs, and rest and recreation items,” Oz proclaimed. “We can purchase anything you wish and I can have it delivered without a concern.

“Shall we begin, Fixer Wrench? This building is attached to a large shopping center and we should be able to facilitate all purchases within a small area. Though I do think it will take a significant amount of time.”

Wrench blew out a slow breath and then nodded his head.

“Do I get to keep anything I bought?” he asked.

“Yes. Anything you purchase you could take back to your own world,” Oz confirmed.

“Really. Then we’re going to need a lot of storage. I’m going to buy a whole bunch of clothes for my Hab,” Wrench murmured, watching a woman walk by in what he would consider little better than a swimsuit.

“That is fine, it is not a concern. The current state of this city would benefit from high spend,” asserted Oz. “Anything you need after this, we can come back for.”

“Then… let’s shop, I guess,” Wrench mumbled. He had no idea what this was going to be like.

Over the next four hours Wrench had his assumptions dashed repeatedly.

Every time he thought he had a grasp on the situation it just slipped away from him with another thing to do, look at, or buy.

Especially when it had come down to food.

Food had been an incredibly different experience for Wrench in comparison to what the Hab offered. There was even food that while sounded good, smelled good, but tasted terrible.

Which was a new experience for Wrench given everything in the Hab had been constructed to be ideal for a Hume in many ways.

Today was a day of firsts.

Except for Wrench screwing up.

Looking around the massive warehouse, Wrench was wondering if he had maybe overdone it.

The warehouse was massive. Easily seven or eight times that size of his Hab. When he and Oz had come to drop off the first purchase, he had realized he didn’t need to hold back.

Now, with more than seventy percent of the warehouse filled, he realized he had screwed up.

There would be nowhere to put any of this in his Hab.

“Oz,” Wrench murmured, looking at one of the literal clothing store he had purchased just for the sake of throwing all of it as his Hab. He knew Stripe and Tickaht loved clothes as much as all the School did.

To them, there could never be enough clothes.

“Yes, Fixer Wrench?” asked Oz.

“I can’t fit all this in my Hab,” he deadpanned with a grimace. He felt like a fool who had taken a box of oat-bars, opened them all, then ate only two.

“I will oversee the material tranfers,” Oz stated. “It will not be an issue. Much of this will be consumed by your Hab so that it can be recreated at a later time. Is this not correct?”

“I… yes? Yes. Almost all of it would be,” agreed Wrench.

“I will oversee the transfer of the materials directly into the Hab systems. Rather than the materials being put into the Hab and you performing the function yourself,” Oz offered. “It will not be an issue. You should concern yourself more with which items you wish to present directly as presents.”

Wrench’s eyebrows went up at that.

It was a very good point.

“Thank you Oz,” Wrench said then turned to look at the strange man. Wrench was under the impression he wasn’t quite Hume.

Or, he supposed, Human.

“Alright. If you’ll be fixing that for me, then I should get to work, shouldn’t I?” he asked with a nod of his head.

“It would be advisable, though there is no deadline to the work. Edmund did leave a note to remind you to pin your aging process as well as he would not want you to age while you are here on his behalf,” Oz stated.

Wrench had a momentary strange thought as he listened to Oz speak.

The man didn’t breathe except to take a breath to speak.

Otherwise, he didn’t.

Nor did he blink.

“Are you a robot?” Wrench asked as he called up his systems window.

“Of a sort,” Oz confirmed.

Shaking his head, Wrench tapped into each system and did as Edmund had advised him to do. He tuned the regeneration process across the whole to a point that it would take more calories to do, but it would be a perfect copy.

It didn’t tell him that this would make him immortal, but he didn’t doubt Edmund either. He figured it was just something beyond his understanding.

I’ll bug Squeak about it. Maybe she’ll know what’s going on.

Clapping his hands together, Wrench then grinned. He was eager to see what kind of machines he would be working on.

Without warning, Wrench was standing in a new warehouse.

This one was filled with shelves upon shelves. Each of them filled with a great many objects and strange machines.

A single work-table was at the center near where Wrench stood. A number of the tool-sets he had purchased had been set up beside it.

“They are all unique and without instructions. Nor do they have any type of manual on how to repair them,” advised Oz.

Walking over to the closest one, Wrench picked up what looked for all the world to be some type of display.

“Most of them will be similar in construction to existing objects, but they will be abnormal,” finished Oz.

Wrench flipped over the back of it and didn’t see any screw holes and then reached to his pocket where his small metal pry-bar was.

He had already loaded up his pockets with all the common things he might need.

Prying the back off, he saw a number of components inside that had most certainly been made by hand. Each and every part would require him to carefully inspect, catalogue, test, and verify the result.

Grinning, Wrench took it to the table and set it down.

Picking up an electronic testing tool he started to tap it to traces to see if it matched the board.

He heard nothing of what Oz was currently telling him.

Wrench was in his element and thrilled to be here.

With everything that was going on in his life, he could really use a vacation and just fix things endlessly.

***

“Haaaa, bitch. Bastard. It was you. You!” Wrench growled and held up a very normal looking resistor that was also tiny. Tiny to the point that in the sea of forty of them on the board, it’d taken Wrench a while to narrow it down to this one little bit.

Clicking his tongue, Wrench set it in the “trash” square on his electronics mat and then picked up the replacement with tweezers.

Laying it into the flux on the board and atop the solder he held it there. With a deft touch, he tapped the tip of his iron to the solder and held it there for a moment. Then moved to the other side.

Pulling the iron away he set it to the side on it’s mount and waited.

Staring at the resistor as the solder solidified completely.

Using the tip of his tweezers he gently pushed at it.

It was solid and in place.

“Well, you nasty fucker. Let’s see if that did it,” muttered Wrench and set his tweezers down. He flipped the strange ball shaped machine over, popped the strange battery into the slot, reconnected it to the device, then closed the battery bay.

Moving the ball around he checked the power trace and saw the greenlight that indicated it had power was lit.

“There we go. Shit. That was horrible. I feel like I rebuilt it from top to bottom,” Wrench complained. He closed up the panel, ran the screw back in with a quick run of his screw gun, and then put it on the trolley nearby. “Oz, six-hundred-and-four-C, is now finished. Was a near complete rebuild. Should be good for a while. Based on it’s components, it seems like some type of measuring device but I don’t know where paired readout would be.”

“That is more than adequate. Thank you, Wrench,” stated Oz. “You asked me to remind you when you completed a shift. I am now reminding you that you have completed a shift.”

“I have? Shit. Went by so fast,” Wrench murmured and then stood up. He stretched one way then the other, then twisted his back.

He’d been here working in this warehouse for the better part of a month now.

Endlessly fixing things.

He couldn’t deny he was missing those he was close to, but the sheer joy he was experiencing at constantly repairing new and strange things kept him going.

“What’s my projected complete time?” he asked and let his shoulders slump and relax.

“At this rate, you will be finished with every single device in another two months. Edmund has scheduled you to go back to your own world for a week at your leisure. Another will be provided after another thirty days pass,” advised Oz.

Oh? Oh.

That’s nice.

Hm.

Maybe… maybe I should go back and just see how things are.

I mean, it’s not like they know I’m gone but… errr… they don’t know I’m gone.

I don’t have to go back. Do I?

I could just stay and work.

There’s a lot more to fix after all.

Scratching at his jaw, Wrench was pondering that.

There was a sudden and violent boom that caused Wrench to stare off toward the far side of the warehouse. It had sounded a lot like when an oxygenator got over compressed and blew out a hatch.

“There are enemies on the compound,” Oz reported. “It is curious. I do not know where they came from.”

“Oh,” Wrench said in an almost stupid way. He had no idea what to do or say to that. This wasn’t something he was expecting in any way while doing the work here. “Should I go hide?”

There was no response from Oz.

The man machine that had been speaking to him from the PA system didn’t respond to his question. Which had never happened before.

“Uh, Oz?” Wrench tried again.

Again, nothing.

“Alrighty. I guess I have to fix some people, too,” Wrench muttered and picked up a large socket wrench nearby. It was easily as big and awful as his preferred pipe wrench and would do an adequate job he figured.

Grasping at his systems he dialed them up to to a level that he could maintain in a pre-combat disposition. Right up until he needed to push himself over and into a different level altogether.

Given it’d been a bit since he had fought last he wasn’t quite sure how he’d feel about this.

He hadn’t had a reason to actually dial his systems up for any particular need in quite a while.

Moving forward Wrench was somewhat surprised. He felt like he was moving faster than he previously could handle but didn’t feel much strain.

There really hadn’t been much change since the last time he’d done this, other than Squeak taking care of him.

Then again, I’m eating something close to twenty-thousand calories a day. This world is rich in calories.

Wrench reached the door and threw it open. Bounding outside and then spinning on his heel.

Leaping upward he grabbed part of a scaffold that’d been left out there and hauled himself up.

Once he got his legs under him he did it again, jumping up, grabbing, and pulling.

In no time at all he was on top of the warehouse and looking out at the compound around him.

It was a rather large storage depot, really. There were warehouses in nearly every direction all of them filled with various things.

On the outskirts of the depot were giant earthen mounds.

Beyond that was a very thick impassable jungle. One that Wrench hadn’t even considered going into given it looked extremely overgrown and lush.

It had made the aerial-habs look like civilized really.

Distantly, Wrench could see people in strange armor moving about. They had things in their hands that reminded him of weapons.

He wasn’t going to put himself on the end of it if he could help it.

Taking in a breath he let it out quickly.

There was a small group of people moving off to one side that Wrench knew wasn’t a location that went anywhere, despite it being part of a large building that wasn’t a warehouse.

One of the few that were here.

It was just an empty shell with nothing in it but old furniture. You wouldn’t know it unless you’d walked the rooms but the building was worthless.

It was also filled with dark corners, torn out ceiling tiles, and a number of weakened floor beams.

Wrench clambered down from the warehouse and started off in that direction, moving quickly.

His goal was simple.

Kill these four, take their things, use them to kill others.

As far as he’d seen so far, everyone on this world seemed terribly mundane in comparison to Brawlers, let alone himself. He wasn’t going to underestimate the enemy but he also wasn’t too terribly concerned.

Turning the corner, Wrench rocketed past a tower of partially used oil-cans and bounded into the courtyard beside the large building.

He could hear the group as they slowly thumped their way into the back of the building. Taking slow and measured steps.

Or at least, they sounded slow and measured to Wrench.

Belatedly he realized they were probably moving quite swiftly and silently.

Reaching the front door, Wrench stuck his socket-wrench into a loop on his coveralls.

Then he bent down low and then kicked up, easily reaching the window above without any issue at all.

Squirming into it, Wrench glanced around.

It was darker than he’d expected and dialed up his ability to see in the dark without much of a thought.

He was in an attic-like space of the building as best as he could tell. It was mostly a strange type of over-crawl space with tiles and metal beams that ran across it.

It couldn’t support his weight at all and the few times he’d explored up here, he’d been forced to hold on tight to the metal infrastructure that was part of the ceiling itself.

Holding onto it, and putting most of his weight on it, Wrench entered and began moving to the back of the building. He briefly heard several creaks from the supports as he moved along but it was faint. Faint to the point that he wouldn’t have heard it with his normal senses.

Wrench saw flashlights then through several missing tiles.

Sweeping back and forth across the rooms ahead as they worked at clearing the building.

Moving to to the point in the hallway where it intersected another, Wrench came to a stop, and waited.

The spot he had decided to ambush them directly below him.

With a blink, Wrench pulled out his socket-wrench and waited.

He had no idea who these people were, what they wanted, or why they were here.

None of it mattered.

At the moment, he was here to help Edmund because he owed the man and was also earning a favor in return. Regardless of the reasons for them to be here, they were here, and had been stated as enemies.

Sorry.

Nothing personal.

But things that need fixing, get fixed.

Slowly, the squad drew closer to Wrench.