Regolith

by Brent Reilly

  “What the hell are you all talking about?” Not knowing what was going on enraged Lisa.

  “Dad made a fortune. If everyone pays him, he’s looking at several trillion. Hey, dad, can I have a billion for every trillion you make?”

  “Sure.”

  David stared, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

  Instead of answering, Jackson was lost in thought.

  “David, how much longer can Sally stay on Henderson?” Sally was the most dinosaur-like creation, a sauropod that grew astonishingly fast. “She’s gonna be ready to lay eggs soon. No way Henderson can support a dozen or more sauropods.”

  Which David knew better than anyone.

  “I always assumed that your dinosaurs had to stay on an island for containment purposes. Yet these craters are surrounded by very sheer walls. Even without adding barriers around the rim, those sauropods couldn’t possibly get out.”

  “You’re not serious!” David bellowed.

  “Well, I need compelling reasons for tourism. The world’s only dinosaur park would sure as hell be compelling. We could put all the herbivores in a big, nearby crater, after we cultivate the necessary bushes and trees, of course. Customers could look at them with binoculars from the rim and from various towers near watering holes.

  “Hell, there are so many craters nearby, we might even be able to put theropods, raptors, and ratites into separate craters, after fortifying the rim. We could feed them pigs, cattle, deer, etc, via tunnels cut in the crater walls. I bet people would pay a pretty penny to see dinosaurs with their own eyes. Who knows? Maybe we could have a petting zoo with the smaller ones.”

  David was stunned into silence, but Monique clearly wanted to know what the fuck they were talking about.

  Jackson continued. “There’s something else you should know. I started two insurance companies. The non-profit handles healthcare, and the other everything else.”

  “But you said every insurer will go bankrupt.”

  “Exactly. And I’ll have everything to myself. Property, auto, mortgage, commercial, life, disability, professional liability, etc. With everyone else facing huge losses and little revenue, I’ll have almost no competition. I’ve been headhunting for months.

  “Anyways, I’m telling you this because the non-profit, JacksonCare, will cover pre-conception genetic screening and in vitro fertilization so couples can make their next baby with their healthiest egg and sperm, all screened of genetic diseases. Future generations will live longer and healthier, which we need for interstellar travel, and a separate for-profit will delve into life extension medicine.”

  David was speechless. This was a dream come true.

  “I’m also rethinking your idea of expanding the Pitcairn Islands since I unexpectedly have a few thousand ships to utilize. Until they rebuild the world’s major ports, I won’t need most of them. You could cement thick amorphous metal walls around the shallowest areas around each island, capturing the surrounding islets, then use our fleet to transport rocks and rubble as filler. For the next few years you could have virtually all the ships that don’t have roll-on/roll-off capabilities. Within a decade or two you could probably multiply that shallow area from under 50 square kilometers to over 1000. Oh, and I may try to buy Easter Island from Chile since the locals refused to leave and are now all dead.”

  David looked magically stunned by Harry Potter.

  “What else am I going to do with trillions?”

  “Trillions? Trillions!” Lisa literally jumped up and down, finally finding something she liked more than shoes.

  Lorena’s eyes looked glazed over. “Are you really gonna spend $100 million to give me my dream home?”

  “If I can. Dad, do you think they will sell?”

  The professor carefully considered it.

  “Only several thousand took up your offer to fly to Alaska. The rest were too stubborn to move and are probably dead, including the several thousand living in Mexico. The survivors will have to elect a new council, then that council can take a full tribal vote. Several thousand Indians splitting $50 million? Given current events, I’m sure they’ll take your cash. And they have several other districts they can move to like San Lucy. But don’t you think it’s a lot of money for barren desert wasteland? I mean, there’s nothing here.”

  “Oh, but there will be. Look, when it rains, that crater is going to have a pretty big lake, and I’ll dig canals to maximize waterfront properties. Plus, the Santa Cruz river should flow nearby, and even the Gila River isn’t too far north. I could farm and ranch the hell out of this area, now that it has some decent organics on top.

  “Inside this crater I could build a whole city, with casinos to attract tourists. That earthquake probably knocked Las Vegas down before burying it under regolith anyways, so Crater City will become the new Vegas. With Lake Mead full of regolith and Hoover Dam destroyed, Vegas lost its only water supply. People from around the world will flock to Ground Zero to experience it for themselves.”

  He turned to his wife.

  “Mi amor, it may cost $100 billion instead of $100 million, but I’d love to build the home of your dreams. I’ll hook you up with some architects so you can design it just the way you want.”

  Lorena, in tears of joy mixed with dust, hugged him like an alien on Sigourney Weaver.

  “Can we live here, too?” Monique asked an astonished David, who just remembered he was getting fucking married.

  “Building on that tall out-cropping where Chava is shooting would probably give you a great view of everything north of this mountain,” the professor suggested. “Hell, I wouldn’t mind a slice of that pie myself. You mind me staying with you? I could help with the twins.”

  Like David was going to refuse his grandfather, a man he treated more as his dad than his actual father.

  “Hell yeah you can stay with us. The homes would only be several hundred meters apart.”

  “Well then I want my own pad to the south,” Lisa insisted, hands on hips, dying to be treated like an adult.

  “Sold!” her mother immediately agreed, stunning Jackson more than the asteroid impact itself. “The three of us,” apparently referring only to the women, “will design our own homes. After all, we’re gonna be neighbors.”

  “Are you freakin’ serious?” Lisa could not believe this, her depression temporarily gone. This was not like her mother. She must have a concussion. A home of her own? That she designed? At 16? Kiss my booty, Britney!

  Her father, however, understood. Lisa just lost her fiancée and she needed something to look forward to. And giving her a home next door would tie her to them and prevent her from starting a new life far away. In the corporate world, this was called a golden handcuff: you are free as long as you stay right fucking here! What Lorena wanted most was to keep her family together. This sealed it.

  “Congratulations, mi amor,” Jackson offered his only daughter as he hugged her tight. Then everyone else hugged the two of them, happy to be alive and together.

  Then Chava returned, smelling news like wolves scent blood. He filmed the family hugging with the smoking crater in the background. Jackson shushed everyone quiet as Chava approached through clouds of smoke and dust. With his helmet, gloves, and camera, Chava could pass for an alien with a ray gun.

  “What’s going on?” Chava asked suspiciously.

  “Just finishing a group prayer,” Jackson lied. “A family that prays together, stays together.”

  “What about Governor Cooper’s offer?” Lisa wanted to know. “Are you still gonna run for vice-president?”

  “What?” Lorena’s shocked look reminded Jackson how busy he has been. Since he assumed Cooper wasn’t going to survive, he hadn’t given it any thought.

  “Right on, dad!”

  At least David liked the idea, since he rarely called him dad. Monique looked at him like some alien bug.

  “Cooper offered me the VP slot,” Jackson sadly informed them. “But Palin unconstitutionally ordered the Air
Force to steal everyone’s planes, which left Cooper stranded at Ground Zero. In effect, Palin indirectly killed Governor Cooper, along with a million others that we were flying out of harm’s way. And, if I didn’t have the foresight to bury sheds under the garage, she would have killed us as well.”

  “So you’re not going to be vice-president?” Lisa asked, totally bummed out.

  “Sorry. I also resigned as chair of the Democratic Party so they wouldn’t be leaderless if I didn’t make it.”

  “Ah shit,” David suddenly remembered. “What about Governor Naples?”

  “What about her?” his father wanted to know.

  “Well, I sort of promised to get her. She’s in one of your asteroid shelters in the Grand Canyon, along with thousands of state workers, police, and national guard. The Arizona Air Guard are in Fairbanks, so I prepared a dozen of our heloplanes to go after Naples. I told them I’d go first to discover how dangerous it was to fly. By the time we get there, the heloplanes should be ready to leave our base in Chugwater.”

  Talk about buzz kill. He spent countless hours conferring with Naples and her staff on preparing for the Worst Case Scenario, which was why she was suppose to be at Arizona’s alternate headquarters safely in Montana. He quickly worked through several emotional responses like denial until he found something constructive to do.

  “Dad, they’re 400 miles away. How bad will it be?”

  “Well, the heat and the pressure wave won’t be too bad with them inside your hangers within the canyon. The earthquake probably threw them pretty bad, causing internal bleeding, but there’s no way regolith is going to collapse your roofs. They could be buried, though. Not just from regolith, but the canyon walls could have collapsed around them.”

  That certainly left them no choice.

  Jackson felt so weary. His exhaustion kept finding new depths. Will this day never end? This was the longest day of his life.

  “Is that the Sun?” Jackson asked, pointing east.

  Everyone looked because, really, how do you mistake the fucking Sun?

  “Well, you don’t see that everyday,” Lisa quipped, which melted her father’s heart as if she just woke from a long coma. His little girl was back, baby!

  Sure enough, the clouds of dust, gas, and smoke to the east were getting much brighter compared to those to the north or south. As one, they checked their watches. Jackson was amazed to find it was exactly 24 hours ago that he and Cooper started their epic battle. It seemed so long ago. Whatever they talked about felt trivial now.

  He was now dead, of course. Stupid fuck went to Butler’s instead of staying with them in his underground shed.

  Crap. Now he needed another candidate. Maybe Naples would consider running. She was a natural politician, dynamic and polished, although short for a president. Hillary Clinton wasn’t exactly an Amazon, but nobody perceived her as short. Could Naples even win the nomination or the general election with his full backing? She probably didn’t even want to run.

  Of course, he himself could run for president. He certainly had the money and organization. But the idea was laughable. Running for president is an 80 hour-a-week job, he was months too late, and he was planning to rebuild the Southwest, buy hundreds of large companies, dominate entire industries, force thousands of foreign financial institutions to pay what they owed him, as well as start a dozen clean energy cities to employ millions of Democratic voters. And no one can do two 80 hour-a-week jobs at the same time. Not even Henry Fucking Jackson. Which left Governor Naples, if she was even alive. Well, time to find out.

  “Hey, everyone. Let’s go rescue our governor!”

  A shout went up as they rushed back to the heloplane.

  One long day finally ended, but another just began.

  THE END

  The paperback version is available direct from the author at www.BrentReilly.com. He welcomes feedback. You can also find the author at Twitter.com and Facebook.

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