How to Date an Android

How to Date an Android Chapter 16 Part A (revised!)

But now I wish I had a gun.

And what if someone found out I had seeds and ability to produce my own food and they didn't while they had those same guns I needed?

I've always thought I would be standing up for what's right. But does that including having to defend things with weapons? I haven't ever wanted to actually shoot someone in real life.

But you can't get a gun now anyway without a three month background check minimum. The law was changed thirty years ago to...still not inhibit gun rights but make the background check more extensive and have time involved to weed out people that were using guns for a quick shooting spree the next day. What a joke. People can't wait 3 months when they have a self defense event.

It also included a medical check that barred guns from being acquired by people with certain conditions such as domestic abuse, schizophrenia, violent crime history, homicidal tendencies or history, extreme bipolarism, history of suicide, and a few other conditions which I couldn't explain since I wasn't a medical professional.

So bottom line my chances of acquiring a gun legally before all hell broke loose was really slim to none. Unless somehow the rest of society were to somehow keep itself together for three months...

But people would notice whole states dropping off the map...like what half the dairy and grain stuff I knew of was somehow connected to the mid-west where this was already happening.

And trying to get something illegal would probably just me shot or picked up by the cops since I didn't even know the science of how someone does that without getting into trouble.

I could still work out other things to acquire. I'm sure there were things I'd missed.

Like a water tower. I needed like several water towers. You could never have enough water. And you needed to know how to purify and clean the water up too.

I needed a lot of bricks without breaking my android budget. And hopefully there wasn't some kind of restocking fee bullshit for them having to get me a new android for them not having tight enough security but stuff like that happened in real life.

I should beef up my wall, I thought as my paranoia was running full throttle. Paranoia was also a defense mechanism right? It was built into our genes for a reason.

My wall, it needs to be like...taller. Like a lot taller, and look un-climbable with nothing that could be grapped onto for a foothold. Or I could hook it up to electricity since there were metal bars going through the front that were interlinked.

Years ago when dad had installed it, these types of metal rod fences were popular. Because they were really tough. That would require some voltage calculations however. I had to also make sure it really was a life or death situation before shooting electricity through the fence in a residential area, or I could just go for non-lethal voltage right?

And maybe I had to also think about if the wall was thick enough that it could withstand a pretty good sized mag car impact hitting it. Though cars were much lighter now days than they used to be they had a lot more efficient power designs.

That wouldn't be fun to figure out.

I also had to consider what if the wall might fail? Or if someone got past it?

That was also a possibility no matter how well I built it.

But I had to invest in survival. Things like seeds, food storage, and food production. I'd have to convert as much space to productive space as I could, but also having it be protect-able space. So I couldn't just go out to some field that didn't have any barriers.

This was difficult...

So the wall calculation... my lot size was about 6900 square feet. That meant the perimeter was ... wait a minute. I'd have to look up how to work this out. Perimeter can't actually be obtained perfectly from a non-square area and I didn't any reasonable ability to emulate geologic surveys or land surveying. It's imperfect. It can be obtained from a square but most yards are rectangles not squares.

But I wasn't a calculus master either, though I'm pretty sure you could figure out a way to calculate this with integral calculus or other advanced math taught in colleges. I remember a problems similar to this in one of my calculus classes but it'd been so long since I'd looked at a math book that I wouldn't even be able to remember setting this up.

I didn't have time to go figure out how that would work. I had to estimate.

It's reasonable that anything extra from concrete or brickwork would be valuable to use for inside the house too in shoring up a good defense. If I use the square perimeter from area conversion it would have an error percentage but would give me a quick calculation I needed while time was running out.

Punching in my 6900 square feet in my datapad I found it would convert to around 332 ft of perimeter. If I divided that by four it would give me the front wall calculation. Of...wow, eighty feet and some change?

The pricing of both brick and concrete surprised me. Anyone on even a small paycheck can build something. The building prices are a lot less inflated than people think! At least now. That's probably because they are fighting for business though.

Quick pricing showed cinder blocks to be $17.50 a brick. Damn you inflation! That brought on a shit storm of swearing until I'd collected myself again.

OK, trying again...

A 16 by 8 by 6 inch brick is not quite a square foot. It's actually off. Plus I have a huge extensive amount of brick wall in the front yard that is already in place but just not high enough. I needed less than half the front wall calculation to add another four feet or so and fill in some gaps, and some other things.

Doing the calculation for straight bags of cement is going to be too much work and too messy. I don't know how I would even contain the concrete without some forms and rebar. The brick idea is better in many ways. When I do a concrete calculator it's estimating like so many bags of cement that I'd be completely lost and it would be unmanageable. Plus I have little experience with concrete. But I do have some experience fixing stuff around the house and it's not that different than fixing cars.

The idea of using the cement as a mortar is workable. It's final. I'll need like less than eighty bricks and about eight or so bags of cement for mortar. That would build up the front wall, but not every wall of course. That would buy plenty of time.

I could put in an order and maybe hope it goes through. But there's a chance none of this will work out before all the trouble hits.

I worked on mag cars at home jor a job, but it didn't mean I had a good shop with a lot of yard space. It was mostly a tin shed garage which was separated from the house with part of the main floor of the house used as a converted garage. I always had to be careful about space here. It was lockable but not as sturdy as the house itself. That was a problem. It wouldn't be as helpful in this kind of situation since I couldn't exactly convert it to a greenhouse...or could I?

If I was going to have to survive and be in a survival situation of societal collapse it wouldn't be needed as a mag car shop. I could fix a car on the front lawn or the driveway in front of it if I really wanted to.

I would also need to figure out a way to setup solar panels, and order the parts from a hobby store of some kind. Naturally delivery on this and the other items will be a must.

I wonder if this was even going to work.

The delivery was expected to be the next day.

I feel depressed.

...

I saw those gangsters driving around in their truck again. They did drive in front of my place. But I'd not had any changes or lights on that suggested someone was here. And they thought other targets were better.

Shit... is that them? I think they are patrolling again.

I hurriedly turned everything back off and got ready to hide again.

Are they coming here specifically or looking for any 'fish'?