Hephaestus and X-1 Fabrication team, (But am CC-ing all Department Heads, obviously.)
I am writing because we are finding yet another series of design flaws. While normally I’d pass the blame off onto one of your or my lackeys, this time I find it hard to find an easy target for the accusation. Indeed, much to your humor I’ll bet, it was my own flawed calculations on weight and structural support that are resulting in this log and the attached acquisitions reassessment.
In short, as much as I love the ease of applying liberal amounts of duplex or galvanized steel like the autonomous X-0 weapons platform prototypes, it is simply too heavy and dense to support basic muscle function and is graphed out to cause increasing risk for skeletal problems with every passing year, despite how fast the nanites can basically replace every damn cell and molecule in the body or reinforce the skeletal system with Hematic compounds. I am already aggravated that I have been forced to increase the height up to seven feet, looking already like eight. The frame has bulked exponentially for more systems, plus secondary or tertiary backup organs, so this has sent me back to the drawing board. Can you and your talented team of engineers, metallurgists, and chemists mark any design notes in the appropriate blueprint folders?
Serania has caved to Beelzebub and his theocratic traditionalists, and made it clear that she won’t accept anything based on Artificial Intelligence along X-0 lines. After the recent high council bickering, I’ve been directed officially via a top secret High Council Order to keep at least half or more of X-1 as organic – as similar to a basic human anatomy as possible for theocratic and propaganda purposes.
“Appearances.”
Bah. I know a fellow genius like yourself and everybody else with security clearance on this project, privy to this email, understands! So in addition to the new acquisitions, I want the hardware blueprints attached ready by the time I finish integrating the donor Soul Core into the embryo, please. Not sure how two different Soul Cores will mingle in foetal or tube aged development, yet, especially with one being ascended! I have already cached some of my genetically engineered organic designs for a possible X-2 project as a consequence of Serania’s annoying requirement. For now, artificial wombs and sterile tanks will do as we add to, and modify the prototype throughout with hormone treatments and a sped up induced adolescent development.
All teams please be advised: I have built the following acquisition list as follows. Please follow whatever the normal Black Ops or Eye regulations and procurement guidelines are, and acquire the materials from a variety of different sources to avoid tracing or correlation via shipping manifests, thank you. We remain top secret. Even hinting at our groundbreaking work outside the safety of The Hub’s R&D wing is an instant execution, remember! The security A.I. are watching us all closely. Thank god the Xex project lacks the restraints of any budget, or I would have quadrupled it in the first year. We are now already into the second year of our budgeted ten if anyone can believe it!
Forgive my measurements in pounds, I never really settled into the metric system from the old British imperial system. Times change, eh? You’d think a scot would hate the Brits!
Requisition List: Avoid G.O.D. Station or Ship Quartermasters. All Third Party Acquisition, Please! Or you risk giving The God of Darkness and The Eye an excuse to get right up in our business. Nobody wants that!
-30 Pounds of Hydroxylapatite, unprocessed. (For biocompatibility)
-20 pounds Polyethylene Terephthalate (Also for biocompatibility)
-5 litres of Alcian Blue (For testing)
-50 pounds of Hybtonite (For strength and testing)
-50 pounds triple walled carbon nanotubes (prototype alteration and weight engineering)
-120 pounds of Platinum group metals (20 pounds of each)
-25 pounds of Platinum Black (Useful for electronics)
-2 tonnes of Galvanized Steel (Frame and structure)
-5 pounds Enriched Uranium (for prototyping the micro-sized cold fusion reactor)
-30 pounds of Zinc (corrosion resistance)
-35 pounds of Copper, but preferably Gold (Electronics)
-75 pounds of Silicon (for a variety of uses and lubrication needs)
-50 pounds of uncut diamond crystal, least brittle you can find (for armoring experiments)
-15 pounds of diamond dust (for coating experiments)
-50 pounds 15-5ph Stainless Steel (for various uses)
-20 pounds of pure tungsten (knuckles, joints, ammunition prototypes, and the like)
-30 pounds chromium (for it’s valuable hardness, etc)
-15 pounds of depleted uranium (for density and armoring prototyping)
-20 pounds of Liquidmetal (hardness substitute, so testing vs titanium)
-30 pounds graphene (weight… Again!)
That should be everything.
If you see my stupid assistant around your forge or workshops, send him back here ASAP, as I have several hours of test footage rendering I need done, and his recent fuckup involving lactic acid removal from muscle tissue primes him for the job.
Thanks Heph, and sorry to you and the rest of The Forge and Foundry Team for the size of the list. We here in the R&D wing appreciate you a whole hell of a lot. Likely most of this order will sit in the warehouse until we need it, but at least this way I won’t have to order fifty different times, right? Fuck Julian telling us to wait and order everything across years – me, my mortal team, and the mortal foundry crew can risk somebody sniffing out a big purchase or two for some shady project if it saves us literal years of our lives.
No offense, Heph, but the disregard of most gods for mortal lifespans is pretty fucking rude when I myself am smarter than many immortals on the High Council, despite the millennia at their disposal…
Obviously, if anybody shares this requisition with any god other than Tarnos and Hephaestus, I’ll gut you myself with a broken bottle! I don’t need another long lecture from Serania or Cassius about hierarchy and respect. I’d like to think as head of The Xex Project I am beyond reproach; even from somebody seventy eight thousand years my elder.
Anywho, budget account numbers are also attached.
Yours,
The Kind Doctor.
Post Scriptum – Or do I use the codename they gave to sign emails? “Shifter?” Bah! I’m not great at these black ops things, honestly. I’m just in it for the science, as everybody fucking well knows. “Doctor” is ambiguous enough as an honorific!
