Several minutes passed as the product was remade repeatedly—not because they were producing multiple units, but because Bastion kept revising the design, perfecting it further.
"Elara!" Bastion called out when the priests were done.
"Your Grace!" the girl answered, her face pressed to the floor.
It was strange behavior, but Bastion had grown used to it. Even lobotomized creatures like the servitors bowed when he passed, so this much was expected from her.
"Send a servitor here. It should deliver what is given safely and bring it back," Bastion said, handing her a piece of paper containing the coordinates of the exchange point.
"By your command, Your Grace," she replied, collecting the paper and running off.
Given the speed at which humans functioned in this world, he expected it to arrive soon. Humanity here was only efficient with small tasks, but larger, more important ones were frustratingly slow—even for him.
Several minutes later, Elara returned to the room with a small box. Inside was a ring, perfectly sized for his finger.
"Thank you," Bastion said with a smile as he put it on.
Connecting it to the cogitator before him, he felt an instinctive connection to the system. It felt strange to see his thoughts projected onto the screen, but he quickly grew accustomed to it.
After familiarizing himself with the system, Bastion connected to the Noosphere through his operating system, granting himself administrator rights. He took a deep breath as a massive wave of emotion washed over him—intense and overwhelming. Yet, before it could overpower him, his mind processed it all.
Suddenly, he felt an extra presence in his mind. It didn't feel normal—it was heavy and numerous, as though it were a combination of many minds. Yet, for some reason, he felt neither overwhelmed nor bothered.
In addition, there was a strange, fleeting presence that soon faded as he took control of the Noosphere's structure. The Noosphere was a peculiar network, operating around certain nodes, all connected to one central hub.
Extending his reach to its core, Bastion quickly wove together a new set of programs and deployed them, allowing him to take over the central node. As soon as he did, everything went dark—not for the real Bastion, but for the part of his mind he had sent into the Noosphere.
The real him felt slightly lightheaded and inexplicably hungry. He hadn't felt hunger or strain before, so the sensation was unfamiliar. Thankfully, there was a nutrient pack in the room, which he hurriedly consumed, restoring himself to normal.
Meanwhile, the part of his mind in the Noosphere came back online, finding itself in a strange, wire-covered room. Each wire seemed connected to the surroundings and attached to his body. It was an odd sensation, especially since he couldn't feel any external stimuli.
"No wonder he was comfortable installing a copier in his body," Bastion thought, standing up from the weird throne-like chair he had been sitting on. He had successfully taken over the mind of the Fabricator-Locum.
Through the eyes of a servitor in the room, he saw his current form in full—a grotesque mass of heavy wires and machinery that could easily pass for a horror creature.
"And here I was thinking they forbade A.I. research… But are you guys experimenting with AI when you can't even figure out a simple operating system?" Bastion mused as he reviewed the data from the Fabricator-Locum's mind.
At the same time, across the planet, several large mechanical beings suddenly slumped to the floor, only to stand back up with a new mission in mind.
Without a shred of humanity for the people he was taking over, Bastion quickly shut down every forge complex as he reviewed the information he had gained.
Turns out, the Mechanicus was working on many things—one of which was an Ork spore. He didn't know the rationale behind researching the spores, but he couldn't have been happier about it.
Above all, there were the fragmented pieces of knowledge they called STCs—Standard Template Constructs.
These were essentially repositories of knowledge meant to preserve technology for future generations. Each one held blueprints for incredible technologies.
Yet, rather than using them as a foundation for research, the Mechanicus placed them on pedestals and worshiped them—following the instructions blindly without questioning how they worked or how they could improve the lives of Imperial citizens.
"No wonder an entire section of you fell to Chaos when you're this rigid and dumb," Bastion said, referring to the Dark Mechanicum—a faction of Tech-Priests who sided with the traitor Horus during the Horus Heresy.
Briefly glancing at the history, Bastion dismissed it as irrelevant to his current concerns.
Instead, he focused on the many new things he had learned. First, he had been wrong about the Mechanicus—they were an incredibly powerful organization.