Chereads / Apocalypse Fortress / Chapter 3 - Lottery and Blueprints

Chapter 3 - Lottery and Blueprints

I woke up the next day happy and full of energy. I had a great night of sleep and I couldn't wait to start my plans.

Going to my desk beside the window, I opened my computer, planning on creating a website to sell my products. I had chosen last night that I am going to sell some simple (advanced) vacuum cleaners at first and then ramp it up to microwave ovens, then water heaters and so on.

The vacuum cleaners cost 900 credits each, so selling them for 1100 dollars so be a good price. A part of the sales will have to pay for the transportation, which I am guessing will be around $20 per small object.

Since I had never done anything like this before, I don't have any knowledge about what the normal prices for shipping and handling would be, so I don't know if my guess is spot on or horribly inaccurate.

Just as I was going to start making the website, I remembered that I still had a free lottery draw.

'Why do you always have to get so sidetracked', I scolded myself as I opened the lottery system.

Seeing the big, golden 'Spin' button bellow a massive wheel that looked like it came from 'Wheel of Fortune', I close my eyes and press it.

With a long series of clacking sounds, the wheel spins quickly. I have no clue what it is going to land on. There were so many different things on it when I looked that I don't even know what I want to get. All I know is that anything I get will probably be good.

As the clacking sound slows down and stops, I slowly open my eyes to see what I got.

'Wow, what is this!'

Looking at the sleek exterior design of what I won, I was filled with amazement. I didn't even know what it was, but I could tell that it was way beyond todays technology.

Looking at the description, I gasped in shock. 'This is astounding!' I thought as I looked at the 3D printer with even greater admiration. Its name should be the Godly Overpowered 3D Printer, that's how amazing it is.

'With this I can build whatever I want!'

Quickly taking out the 3D printer from my inventory and putting it on the floor, I look through the User Store for the blueprint section.

Looking through the blueprint section, something catches my eye.

It looked like solar powered triangular box with 8 propellers stuck to it.

Reading the description, it was apparently a futuristic version of the prototype octocopter drone developed by Boeing. It had a massive size of 25 by 2 meters long and wide and 5 meters high weighing in at a whopping 6 tons. It could transport up to 5 tons of luggage, had a battery life of 5 days, could travel up to 200 mph, and it could recharge its batteries to full capacity in 30 minutes when stopped.

This was what I needed. This was my delivery service.

Just imagine, looking outside and seeing this massive beast of a drone dropping off my products. It would solve both my problems of the delivery service and people buying my products.

As soon as one person bought something and told other people about the drone, or better yet, showed them a video of it, my sales would go through the roof just to get to see the drone drop off the package.

After they find out how amazing my products are, they would naturally gain even more popularity, letting me just exchange the money coming in into credits and then buying the products and sending them off.

With these thoughts in my mind, I looked at the price and almost puked blood.

'100,000 CREDITS!!! I ONLY HAVE 1000' I shouted in my mind, shooting up from my seat and banging the table.

Sitting back down and calming myself, I felt that I was acting really stupid.

'100,000 for a blueprint of this quality, this is a steal.' Realizing that the price was actually much lower than it should be, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had a little more than $100,000 in savings, and I could exchange that into credits to purchase the blueprint.

I quickly went to my bank's website and signed into my account.

When I got there, I thought to myself that it would be impossible to take out money from my account here at home, so I started to prepare to go to the bank to withdraw the money.

As I was getting up to get ready, I got a notification from the system, which was a first.

Seeing this, I was even more amazed with my system and what it could do.

I responded without hesitation, and I saw on my computer two new tabs pop up on my banking account.

'Well, this makes things so much easier for me,' I thought, looking at the new tabs on my account.

Clicking , I sent $100,000 to my system.

With a ding, my credits updated, going from 1000 to 101,000 credits.

While thinking about all the money that I was going to make and how I would spend it to make the best fortress in the world, I went back to the , and when I purchased it, its blueprint was transferred to my Inventory.

Now that I had the blueprint and the 3D printer to print it, all I needed now was to get the materials to build it.

Looking back at the 3D printer I had put on the floor, I couldn't see any opening that could be the Import that the description talked about.

Turning the machine on by pressing the power button next to a touch screen, the whole machine lit up with a bright, fluorescent light.

Examining the touch screen, there were three options.

Reading over the options, I pressed on the . With a soft hum and the turning of gears a funnel shaped object rose up from the top of the 3D printer, breaking its perfectly square appearance.

I found that trying to look inside the funnel to see what was down it was futile, it was just complete darkness. Even using the flashlight on my phone couldn't see through it.

Looking back to the touch screen, it said to insert materials for sorting.

Thinking about it for a moment, I remembered that it said the 3D printer could sort any object that was put into it into its base elements, and that it could combine these elements into what was needed.

Testing to see its effectiveness, I went outside and scooped up bucket full of dirt from our lawn and went back inside.

Dumping the dirt into the 3D printer and watching all the dirt magically disappear into the funnel, I waited with baited breath for something to happen.

~Ding~

Within that dirt, there was some iron, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and many small traces of other elements.

'Wow, I didn't even know that dirt contained so much stuff,' I thought to myself, looking at the long list of random trace materials contained in that single bucket of dirt.

Looking at the blueprint of the drone, I couldn't help but feel exasperated at the amount of materials it needed. It wasn't that most of the materials were hard to come by, it was just that there was so much that the drone needed to be built.

If I had to get all these materials by just putting in bucketfuls of dirt into the 3D printer, it would take days to finish, and that was just with common elements.

I sat there, mulling it over in my head, trying to come up with an idea to quicken this up.

Then it hit me! I could just go to scrap yards and junk piles and stuff all of that into the 3D printer! Then I could easily get all the materials that I needed. It would just take some time.

I then realized that it would be very awkward if someone saw me sifting through a pile of junk, but it was the only way that I could think of to get the needed materials.

Sitting in my chair, thinking over all of this again, I had another revelation. I could just buy the materials from the User System and put it into the 3D printer! It saves time and also my dignity.

The only downside is that I have to spend some money to get the materials, but they are really cheap. All the materials together would only cost around 5000 credits, which is an astronomically smaller cost than what it should be costing to make it.

I swiftly turn back to my bank account, transfer $5000 to 5000 credits, and purchase all the materials for the drone.

Looking at my Inventory at all the materials, I see that there is an option to transfer them to the 3D printer, which is a pretty handy feature.

Transferring the materials to the 3D printer, I select the print button. After that, it asks which blueprint I would like to choose, which is of course the drone as it is the only blueprint that I have.

After selecting , the machine comes to life with activity.

When I look inside the clear side of the printer, I see a tiny version of the drone being printed.

I think that it is so tiny because of the dimensional space that it contains, making it look smaller than it is.

After waiting around 2 minutes, the printer finishes the drone.

'That was really fast', I thought, as I looked into my Inventory.

Sure enough, the newly printed Octocopter Multipurpose Drone was there. I'm practically trembling with excitement, a feeling that I have been doing a lot these past two days.

Calming myself, I think over what I am going to do in the next few days.

I must hire someone to make my website look professional. I need to rent a warehouse to stock my products and fly my drones from, and I need to get my company licensed.

Thinking about it, I need to name my company.

"Eh, I'll do it later." I say out loud as I go downstairs to get lunch.

'I'm going to be very busy for the next couple of days,' I think to myself walking down the stairs.

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MakerBot Replicator Z18: https://www.3dhubs.com/3d-printers/makerbot-replicator-z18

Octocopter Drone Prototype by Boeing: https://www.fastcompany.com/90157147/the-worlds-biggest-octocopter-drone-is-basically-a-flying-truck