Chapter 94: Tour

Chapter 94: Chapter 94: TourThe dining hall of the Purnas estate was lively now—filled with laughter, warm food, and the nostalgic sound of clinking plates.

Richard sat at the long wooden table, sunlight from the chandeliers reflecting off the polished grain. Beside him, Jack was already three servings deep into fried tilapia and rice. Estello was mid-conversation with one of the agri-logistics execs, laughing heartily with a glass of local coconut wine in hand.

Then came the voice Richard always had trouble dealing with.

"Richard..."

He turned just in time to see Anita, his mother, standing near the kitchen doorway—hands on her hips, eyes narrowed.

"You’re getting taller again," she said, half-teasing, half-serious. "What’s happening to you?"

Richard blinked, then let out a sheepish laugh. "I, uh... must be working out more. I take vitamins. Maybe too much calcium?"

Anita walked over, giving him a look that pierced straight through him—the kind only a mother could give. He was taller than the last time she saw him and his physique is more refined. His eyes also give that distinct color. Did he wear contact lenses? Anita thought.

"You’re already taller than your father ever was," she muttered, circling around to her seat. "And now you’re thinner too. Doesn’t your girlfriend feed you?"

Jack, mid-chew, almost spat out his rice and slapped the table.

"Auntie—!" he choked between laughs. "You may not believe it, but Mira, that secretary of ours is lovey-dovey with him!"



Richard flushed red immediately. "Dude—seriously—"

Estello raised an eyebrow from the far end. "Ohh? That young woman? I guess you have tastes in curvy ladies huh?"

Even one of the agricultural division executives seated nearby chuckled behind a napkin. Jack, grinning like a devil, leaned closer.

"Richard’s always scheduling late meetings with her. He even smiles when she lectures him."

"I do not—" Richard groaned, covering his face with his hand.

His mother was grinning now, too—mischief dancing in her eyes. "So you do have a girlfriend. That explains the secretive phone calls and all the skipped meals."

"I—Ma..."

Jack grinned. "Look at his ears. Blushing. Confirmed."

Richard sighed in defeat as the table burst into laughter.

He could handle congress interrogations, foreign intelligence agencies. But, this was something he had no expertise with.

And yet, beneath his flustered silence, he couldn’t deny it: he didn’t hate the idea.

Mira was intelligent. Sharp. Loyal. She didn’t put up with his crap—but didn’t push him away either. If anything, she’d been getting closer lately—more personal in the quiet moments.

Richard blinked, then glanced away, hiding a rare smile.

Jack caught it instantly. "Ohoho... he likes her."

2 hours later, Jack can be seen inside their old basement studio, where it all began.

The soft hiss of decompression echoed through the basement studio as a segment of the wall disintegrated, collapsing into micro-dust. Jack stepped back instinctively.

"Still can’t get over the fact that this is some pure sci-fi shit," he muttered, watching as a small drone rose from the hidden passage below—its core glowing faint blue, scanning them briefly before floating back down.

Richard chuckled. "Come on. I feel your suspense too."

Then with a low mechanical hum, a platform elevator rose from the void beneath them—sleek, chrome-edged, and dead silent. Both men stared.

Richard stepped forward first. "Let’s see what Lina’s built."

Jack hesitated, then stepped on beside him.

The platform began to descend, and above them, the entrance reatomized—rebuilding the wall from molecular storage like it had never opened.

As they descended into the chamber, the air changed—colder, heavier. Artificial. But alive.

And then...

They saw it.

The observation floor dropped away beneath them—at least 30 feet above the true ground level of the chamber.

Massive, multi-level, and glowing with pulse lights from active conduits. Quantum server racks lined a newly built glass-walled vault at the far end. Drones hovered overhead, arms extended, soldering cables, adjusting circuits.

All around them, androids—sleek, matte-finished, humanoid forms—moved with purpose, hauling crates, calibrating instruments, managing construction.

The floor beneath their feet was clean carbon alloy, almost black, refracting subtle hexagonal etching in the light.

[Welcome home, Sir Jack, Sir Richard.]

Lina’s voice echoed through the chamber, calm and composed—but tinged with pride.

Richard’s jaw was slightly slack. "What the fuck have you done, Lina..."

[As previously mentioned, I expanded the base.]

[Additional quantum servers were installed in response to your request to track profiles relating to the Wallenbern Family and Alias McKnight.]

[Fusion Reactor Core is under construction. So is the Quantum Flux Capacitor Grid. Transmission systems were overhauled and expanded across a radius of 5.5 kilometers.]

Jack just slumped, hands on knees. "Five kilometers?! What the hell are we standing on—Marawi Prime?"

Richard shook his head, blinking hard. "Lina, are you saying the entire base is five kilometers wide?"

[Affirmative.]

[The first level—where we are now—spans 3 kilometers. It includes modular accommodation quarters, kitchen, recreation rooms, entertainment room, weapons testing hall, and a nanomaterial re


Richard, blinking, jumped after him. "Jack, what—?"

Then he saw it too.

Near the rear of the chamber, tucked between two storage columns, surrounded by soft blue light... was a fighter jet.

Sleek. Compact. Jet-black. Matte finish. Its curves were tighter than an F-22, edges softer, skin cleaner. It looked like a scaled-down aerospace predator—a jet that didn’t cut through the air, but slipped past physics entirely.

Jack reached it first, running his hand reverently along the hull. "This... This looks like a goddamn toy from a future collector’s dream."

Richard approached slowly, then glanced around—toward the adjacent warehouses, now recognizing the 10 AMFS hangars nearby.

His eyes widened. The original Advanced Modular Fabrication Systems he remembered were refrigerator-sized units—compact, powerful, and silent. But now?

Each one stood the size of a four-container stack. Fully deployed. Towering. Glowing with embedded plasma-thread arrays.

And one of them—right in front of him—was printing what looked unmistakably like a sleek, armored tank. Same layout as an Abrams... but redesigned. Gray, angular, no visible treads. Floating above the platform as grav-discs calibrated beneath it.

Richard blinked. "Lina... what the hell am I looking at?"

[The AMFS units have three deployment stages. What you saw before was the compressed configuration. This is the fully extended mode—capable of macro-industrial prints and automated adaptive material synthesis.]

Richard exhaled. "So they’re modular fabrication cities now."

[Effectively, yes.]

He turned to Jack. "Remind me never to let Lina be bored again."

[I am never bored, Sir. You simply stopped giving me challenges.]

Jack burst into laughter. "She’s got your sarcasm now. You’ve created a monster."

Richard smirked, turning back toward the fighter jet.

"Alright. Tell me what this is."

[This is a compact aerospace fighter prototype. Unmanned, but configurable for manual override. It is powered by a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket—VASIMR.]

[Using radio-frequency waves, the system ionizes and heats a propellant into a superheated plasma, which is then accelerated by magnetic nozzles. It can shift between high thrust / low efficiency and low thrust / high efficiency, allowing for optimal orbital maneuvering.]



[Peak exhaust velocity: 1 to 5 kilometers per second or 2 - 8 Mach. ]

[Additional feature: electromagnetic field nullification bubble. It creates a localized zero-gravity distortion, allowing limited manipulation of gravitational influence around the craft.]

Silence.

Jack took a step back, blinked, and softly said, "Bro. This is unmanned, right? Can you give it to me?."

Richard slowly ran his fingers along the jet’s edge, voice dry.

"This thing... would outrun radar. It wouldn’t even leave a sonic boom. Lina, is this airworthy?"

[Prototype 1 is test-ready. With your permission, I can begin automated airframe calibration and flight system diagnostics.]

Richard exhaled. "Dayum..."

Jack turned and looked at him with wide eyes.

"Dude, I want to live here. I want to live here forever."

Richard didn’t respond.

He was too busy staring into the future—a future he built, piece by piece, system by system... with a soul named Lina who just wanted to fly.