Sending the necessary instructions and blueprints to the manufacturing facilities, DrOS informed the advisors and engineers that he would provide the software and they simply needed to complete the hardware. After a long week of labour, using as many engineers as were available, they managed to complete the robot. DrOS, who was in charge of the central imprint database, compiled the necessary software which was a mix of programming created specifically for the occasion and relevant portions of Trisha 767's later mind maps, most prominently of her last year at age 42. DrOS dubbed the Trisha project Long Range Unit 42, LRU_NULL for short. The AI wasn't above making jokes with itself, knowing full well no one would ever hear them or even understand them.
When the engineers announced to the AI that the robot had been completed to specifications, it uploaded the necessary programming, which took around an hour. The rest of the day was spent testing the robot's mind and physical prowess, making sure it was indeed capable of doing what the AI had foreseen, tweaking programming and specs where necessary.
After this was done it announced to the Chairman and the relevant parties that LRU_NULL was ready for deployment. IT also added that by its calculations Melissa must have reached the surface a maximum of three days ago and that LRU_NULL would be able to make up this time difference within the day. Chairman Briphet saw this as good news and demanded immediate deployment of what he himself continued to call the Trisha-bot. DrOS obliged, ordering her to wake up from her demo mode. She opened her eyes, and without question or further instruction, left the manufacturing facilities. She found her way to a hatch that had been unused since the early days of the colonies. This access was deep within the upper layers of the colony. Going through would lead her to a seemingly endless staircase, which itself would lead to large cavernous metal structures that were once used as missile silos in days long gone. She lunged the stairs with magnificent grace and mechanical ingenuity and when she reached the silo, ejected wings and boosters from her back that would carry her up the silo into the surface world, in search of Melissa 1337.
Meanwhile on the surface, much to DrOS' credit, Melissa had been wandering for about three days in what had seemed like an endless desert almost entirely devoid of any signs of life. Not lacking in food pills or hydration packs to last her for at least another two weeks, her only concern was shelter from the blistering sun during the peak noon hours. The first day she had found rock formations to hide under, but sadly found no structures of any kind anywhere in the last two day of her journey. At this moment the heavy sun was on its way down, allowing her to roam the desert freely once more, which she did with the kind of glee that would have seemed like madness to anyone in the colony. Her glee stemmed from being able to experience the outside world, probably the first of her kind in nearly two centuries to do so, how exciting she thought to herself. Incidentally it was this feeling of excitement that had propelled her thus far in whatever direction she felt right when she exited the small, well hidden hatch that had been her escape route.
She traveled further until the sun had become a gentle warmth and the breezes around her were no longer scolding. Quite some distance ahead, further than she could see clearly and still distorted by the warm air, something that didn't seem rock-like could be seen. This would be her destination. She reached it by the time twilight started settling in and what she saw left her in awe. She saw vegetation, naturally formed, for the first time in her life. The ground was no longer made of sand but instead felt harder, though not quite stone yet. She wouldn't have known living in a mostly metal environment her entire life but she was now standing on a clay plateau which connected out of the desert where her colony resided.
She ran much easier across this plateau and made much better time hurrying towards the vegetation further up ahead. It started with small patches of grasses and bushes extruding through the cracks in the clay, with further ahead even trees. She touched every single one, and tried tasting the leaves of each one as if she was a child seeing things for the first time. Most of them tasted foul but something about the variety of tastes felt natural, untouched by machines and grow houses, not enhanced by supplements or food pills.
Her curiosity led her deeper into the vegetation that was growing more dense, to find at its centre a small body of water. This small pool, oddly shaped and at most 20 meters wide in its shorter side, looked beautiful under the twilight-turning-dusk colours of the sky, and for reasons she herself didn't fully understand, made her cry a little. Not only had she never seen naturally growing plants but water, though not necessarily in short supply in the colonies, was never so openly available. The combination of this natural pool of water with the sun she had only seen simulated underground made for a remarkable sight.
She dropped her backpack containing her supplies and jumped fully clothed into the lake, learning only later when she came back out what a bad idea that had been. But at the time she wanted to bask in the water, feel what it was like, experience this pool untouched by human hands. Night time was crawling in and while neither the clay ground nor the water was getting any colder, the air around certainly was. Melissa got out of the water when she started feeling uncomfortable about the lack of visibility in the water. While she had not been able to tell the depth of the body of water when she jumped in the first time, it was now so dark she couldn't even see her feet. She quickly found her backpack to eat some food pills and laid her drenched clothes on the clay ground around her to dry. She herself, too, lay on her back on the warm clay to stay warm, gazing up in awe at the stars slowly popping into sight overhead.
Luckily for her it didn't take long for the clothes to dry, allowing her to get dressed and look around for a good spot to rest. As soon as she found a spot that looked comfortable she attempted in vain to count all the stars she could see appearing over the clear night sky. She had barely reached the count of a hundred before she was fast asleep.