Regolith

by Brent Reilly

  Time is money, and Jackson killed two birds at the same time: as soon as he got his construction permit, he prepared it with streets, sewers, and home foundations while thousands of homes were built and shipped from China. Jackson could therefore not only build a community at far less cost and at a far greater profit, but in far less time.

  Families loved them because the electricity was free -- up to the state average. The micro-windmills and solar roofing charged the ultracapacitors, which powered the home at night. Since every home had an ultracapacitor, they collectively could store a hell of a lot of electricity. Jackson wired together the entire community with superconducting wire, which has five times the carrying capacity, yet does not lose any electricity in transmission, so that homes with surplus electricity carried homes that ran out. All automatically. The bigger the community, the more stable their power supply, without high voltage tension wires.

  What most residents didn’t appreciate is that Jackson deliberately maximized solar and wind electricity generation in order to sell the excess to the local utility. He covered every bit of roof with organic solar, installed four residential windmills per home, and topped every street light and utility pole with a mini wind turbine. Electric companies even paid Jackson a pretty penny for the option of tapping thousands of residential ultracapacitors during peak hours. Not actually tapping that electricity, which cost extra, but just the option to tap that energy. It cost the company far less than brownouts.

  But Jackson generated the most electricity by covering the streets, sidewalks, backyard patios, and driveways with organic solar. 6% energy efficiency wasn’t much, but it produced a lot of megawatts when it covered several square kilometers. He had to pave the streets anyways, so he might as well build them in a way that allowed him to cover them in white organic solar. It cost more up front, but generated cash flow for decades. Some critics argued he was building power plants in the form of residential communities. As if that was a bad thing.

  Building thousands of homes, however, led to a lot of garbage. So he turned lemons into lemonade. Instead of paying someone else to haul away all this trash, he bought the local garbage company to take advantage of his captive audience. And instead of paying someone else to let him dump his trash into their landfill, he installed a $200 million plasma gas trash-to-electricity plant that could burn literally anything short of nuclear waste without emitting greenhouse gases, which were chemically altered into solids and used in construction. Jackson bought out landfills, dumps, and trash haulers in Southern California in order to keep the plasma gas plant operating at optimum capacity. Although it required a lot of capital up front, this trash-to-energy business looked so profitable that Jackson wanted to take it national.

  The irony is that his plasma gas plant cost a fraction as much as a dirty power plant, required a fraction of the time and hassle getting permits, yet generated almost as much electricity as the average coal-fired power plant. Even better, coal plants average 12.5% downtime, or 46 days every year, for maintenance while his plasma gas power plant rarely needed to be shut down.

  A large coal, natural gas, or oil-fueled power plant costs nearly $1 billion and takes a decade. Even getting permission for solar or wind power plants took years, with local interest groups fighting over water or environmental impact reports. Getting permission to build homes, in contrast, was relatively quick and easy because it only involved the local city. So Jackson found California utilities who promised to buy all of his excess electricity at favorable prices rather than build another power plant. They also paid more for clean energy because California mandated 20% clean electricity generation by 2020.

  Next he wanted to make three story tall amorphous metal apartments, stores, and offices, all with a maximum weight of twelve metric tons. He had built demo models for several variations to get them approved under the nationally recognized Uniform Business Code.

  His apartment building’s first floor had one large 2-bedroom apartment for large families -- parents of small kids did not want to climb flights of stairs. The second floor had two one-bedroom apartments, and the third story had three studio apartments. He chose three stories since anything higher required an expensive elevator. And instead of laying an expensive concrete foundation, he could simply lay them back to back, on level compacted dirt, then landscaped concrete walking paths and artificial grass around them. Once blessed by the Uniform Building Code, Jackson wanted to make thousands of them.

  It pissed Cooper off that Jackson and his customers were going to get billions in federal clean energy rebates, tax credits, and incentives. Especially since he was the one who promised, if elected president, to provide them. Doing so just made his biggest rival that much bigger.

  Of course, this was Henry Fucking Jackson, who was not content to stop there. No, once he became DNC Chairman, he made homelessness a moral crusade to boost a new business he bought, score cheap political points, and burnish his image as someone who helps the little guy.

  Jackson bought a majority share in a tiny El Paso, Texas company that built 320 square foot homes out of used shipping containers, mostly for maquiladora companies on the Mexican side of the border who suffered 10% monthly employment loss because the rural migrants who flocked to the border had nowhere to live. Juarez was growing by 60,000 people a year and most lived in shelters built out of wooden crates and scrap metal. The container homes sold for $8000 which, even in Mexico, is cheap housing.

  The idea first occurred to Jackson in 2006 after hearing that a California architect named Peter DeMaria designed a two story structure from shipping containers that received approval as a structural system under the Uniform Building Code. That interested Jackson because the United States received thousands of containers a year that were not worth sending back, and therefore sold for just $1000. So Jackson hired experts to put two standard containers together to make a 640 square foot residential unit.

  Now that’s a mobile home!

  Except he rented them as apartments. Or, more specifically, apartment buildings. He stacked them four stories high so he didn’t need to buy an elevator and rented the single containers as studios and two containers as two-bedroom apartments. He saved millions in construction costs since he didn’t need concrete and steel to support the buildings. He covered the building and parking lot with organic solar, installed lots of micro-windmills, then sold the excess clean electricity to the local utility.

  With chemical toilets to minimize plumbing, Jackson included wireless internet and all utilities in the rent, although he didn’t provide landline phones since everyone has cell phones. He generally formed them in the shape of a U to maximize the number of units, then built a pool and playground in the middle so that kids would have a safe place to play. They shared a coin-operated ground floor laundry to eliminate the need for natural gas pipelines. For economies of scale, he made sure he only bought land large enough to house several hundred units.

  Only Las Vegas offers apartment housing without a rental check, credit check, or signing a lease. Jackson filled a niche by not requiring a lease and renting them weekly or monthly. University students loved them. The market for cheap no-lease apartments turned out to be huge, so he bought and refurbished hundreds of thousands of container apartments over several years.

  Critics labeled him the country’s largest slumlord.

  To counter the slumlord criticism, Jackson championed the homeless problem, arguing to veteran and homeless groups that the solution to homelessness is cheap homes. His critics ridiculed his apartments as steel coffins, but he correctly pointed out that he filled a market need for cheap housing for people who cannot pass credit or rental checks. He dismissed his critics as clueless snooty elites who preferred families on the streets. Which was great since most of his critics were Republicans eager to tear him down. As the head of the DNC, Republicans had to grill him -- that’s their job, which gave Jackson the opportunity to paint them as hypocrites since he was using the free market to get famili
es off the streets without government intervention or taxpayer dollars.

  The controversy gave him millions in free publicity.

  Jackson indeed had the solution to a problem. Not the homeless problem, since most homeless were dysfunctional due to addictions and/or psychological problems that made them unable to hold a job, but a solution for living on cheap land off the grid.

  Watching Jackson build another billion dollar company while championing the homeless bugged the hell out of Cooper. Especially since it made Jackson look so good to the far left liberal base whose support he needed. What he didn’t know was just how the hell he was going to get out of his promises to the one guy he needed most to get elected president of the United States.

  Shivering in the cold inside the house, Monique impatiently watched Cooper covertly from the window, wondering what the fuck he was waiting for. He kept staring at Henry’s car as if he wanted to either steal or destroy it. Waiting was making her antsy, and gave her second thoughts. She felt her anger morph into rage. Cooper continued to stare at the car like he’d gone psycho.

  And this guy wants to be president?

  Just as she was about to give up, Cooper finally opened his car door. What happened next scared the shit out of both of them because Jackson’s dog, Chucha, attacked Cooper as soon as he put his foot on the ground. The damn dog must have been hiding, waiting for this opportunity, the entire time. Monique gasped in shock as Chucha latched his huge jaws onto Cooper’s leg and bit down. Once the husky has something – or someone – in his teeth, it takes a blowtorch to pry him loose. Cooper yelped in shock and pain. He anxiously tried to get his leg back into the car as Chucha, snarling viciously, tried to swallow his ankle. The next president of the United States looked like he was going to be eaten alive before her eyes.

  Monique threw off her fur coat and sprinted out the door.

  6

  Monique flew out of the house, screaming in French at the Alaskan husky. When Chucha didn’t release Cooper’s ankle, she kicked him as hard as she could. Chucha bounced into the air. Man and dog shared eye contact. Man was scared. Dog was pissed. Chucha turned on Monique as soon as he landed, snarling as he made ready to pounce. Monique, however, continued to scream at him, motioning with her arm for him to get the hell out. Chucha, recognizing her awesome scent, paused. He had known her for years and previously felt very protective of her. And it’s not like Chucha had never been kicked before.

  The moment passed and Chucha lost the argument. Instead, he turned on Cooper who was desperately rolling up his window. The dog leaped at him with the window still half down, scratching the car door with his claws. The tall Hummer saved him, because Chucha probably would have jumped in a lower window. Suddenly the dog disappeared from Cooper’s sight.

  In shock, Cooper stared through the window to see this skinny girl drag the muscular dog away by his collar. She didn’t even let him get all four feet on the ground, and he was a big dog. Since she was pulling his collar up, his barking became hoarse and uneven. He clearly was still pissed, though. Cooper lost sight of them when she dragged him around the corner to the side yard.

  Cooper had no idea who she was. She clearly felt at home, man-handling Jackson’s beast. Cooper labored to get his breathing back. He honestly thought, for a second there, that he was going to be eaten alive. He loosened his fancy tie and wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his dark business coat.

  Who the fuck was she?

  As she walked into the light towards him, Cooper spied the hottest girl he had never yet fantasized about. Thin, narrow, and big-chested, she had more curves than a NASCAR track. She walked with the grace and style of a model, though her brisk walk screamed anxiety. Trance-like, he could not stop staring at her.

  Every now and then Cooper would come across a woman, usually on TV, and think to himself, “that’s as good as it gets.” And he wondered who she was giving it to, because only unattractive people don’t have sex. So seeing a simply stunning woman always reminded him that someone, somewhere, somehow, was fucking her. And it wasn’t him. Every beautiful woman you see is fucking someone. Else. This was just the first time it happened to him in person.

  She finally reached him and, as he held his breath, she desperately asked him something in French. And he had no fucking idea what it was. Oh hell.

  Cooper spoke decent Spanish, especially when written out for him, but he never studied French. And if this beauty didn’t speak English, then he was totally fucked because there was nothing more that he wanted to do than talk to her. All the adrenaline streaming up his spine now flowed directly to his penis.

  When he didn’t respond, she gently tapped on the window, still looking worried. Cooper rolled down the window as if a traffic cop pulled him over, feeling stupid. He couldn’t seem to come out of his trance. Even with the window down, he still couldn’t speak.

  “Blah blah blah?” her soft warm eyes asked of him.

  Now that speech was unavoidable, he swallowed, coughed to get his voice back, then said the only thing he could think of.

  “Gracias.”

  He immediately kicked himself. You meet a total hottie and you tell her, “gracias?” She sure didn’t look Mexican.

  She smiled, though, relieved that he seemed all right, and he just fucking melted. She had one of those thousand-watt smiles, the kind that light up the entire face. White teeth filled her perfect mouth. His heart was still pounding, his palms still sweaty, but everything was just a-okay. She said something else, but he had no idea what. His neurons were still not firing. She could have said it in Chinese, for all he knew.

  Monique had freaked herself out by taking on Chucha. Sure, the dog normally loved her, but she risked ending her modeling career if Chucha so much as scratched her bare legs. It was like a world-class pitcher risk losing his throwing arm. She didn’t know what to feel, but the cold, hard knot of sheer terror at what she risked for his fucking politician began to grow like a weed in a garden. She recognized that it would soon overpower the instinctive relief she felt that he was unhurt. She didn’t care, per se, if Chucha ate him for breakfast, but she knew how important he was to her cousin Henry. Having just saved his sorry ass, her emotions quickly changed as her resentment for risking her career for him struck home.

  She looked back at the side yard where she heard Chucha, tied to an orange tree, snarling threats. Then she tried to open his car door, which was locked.

  Cooper, puzzled, stared at the door, never having remembered locking it, what with the dog attack and all. He was so out of it that he could have pissed his pants and not yet noticed. With the window down, however, the girl of his dreams simply reached inside, pulled the lock up, then opened the door.

  With that, something clicked inside him, like a dislocated shoulder snapping back into place. Cooper instinctively got out of the car, and the girl gasped at the tear in his pants leg near his left shoe. He looked down and saw blood. His blood. Not much, but that fucking dog indeed got him. As dizziness set in, something told him he was going to need vaccination shots.

  The girl sounded like she wanted to cry, like she shared his pain and felt somehow responsible. No sooner did he plant his second foot and get his balance, than she fiercely hugged him while babbling an apology in French. Cooper, on autopilot, naturally hugged her back and gently patted her lower back, as if she were the one the dog attacked.

  Red faced, ankle bleeding, pants torn, chest heaving, Daniel Cooper could not remember feeling better.

  When her sobbing eased, she looked up at him with the biggest puppy eyes he had ever seen on a hot chick. Her dark eyes perfectly complimented her jet black hair and bronze skin. She looked at him as if he were the hero, and not her. God, she smelled good; clean, but without that alcohol-perfume odor that too many older women put on.

  Their faces were just inches apart and, before he knew it, she kissed him slowly, without a care in the world. If this was just a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very gratef
ul. Her kiss scratched him where he itched the most. He naturally responded in kind, then eagerly as the kissed continued. Cooper had heard about Five Minute Kisses before, but he had never bothered to try one himself. Anyone who had seen his wife would understand. He felt her arms wrap around his back and head as she pulled him closer to her. A warm breeze enveloped them as the day dawned. He gladly yielded to her full embrace, and they kissed literally until the sun came up. What was left of it.

  He probably would have continued kissing her until election day if his big, hard dick didn’t unexpectedly kick her between the legs.

  Startled, she abruptly broke off the kiss to see what kicked her, then laughed at the sight of his huge boner. He sported enough wood to reforest the Amazon. His dick looked like a lollipop looking for a sucker. Never, ever, had Cooper felt more embarrassed. Not even that time when he mistook a shit for a fart during a floor debate. He flushed deep red and began to pull away from her when she unexpectedly grabbed hold of his pecker and growled in pleasure. Well, she might as well have used a magic wand. And as soon as she moaned, he felt his dick start throbbing. He mentally kicked himself for not beating off last night so he could think straight today.

  Just when he couldn’t imagine this getting any better, she smile seductively and took his left middle finger with her right hand, and slowly flew them south. She grinned as his eyes opened in shock, as she pushed his hand down her shorts and under her thong underwear. From there, he did not need a Google map to foresee where his finger was going, even if he still couldn’t believe it. As her hand returned to massage his hard cock, his middle finger found the cave he so desperately wanted to hibernate in. Fingernails digging into his flesh, she threw her head back and moaned loudly as his first finger penetrated her. Bingo!