The Orphan in Near-Space (The Space Orphan Book 2)

by Laer Carroll

  At his curious look she debated briefly whether to expand on that last comment. She decided it was best he learn now something that might derail their relationship. Best it be over early rather than late.

  "You should know right now, Phil Newman, that I'm an Olympic level athlete." That was an understatement; she was so far beyond that level that she verged on the superhuman. Her parent culture had cleaned its genes and improved them for well over a thousand years.

  "If I played tennis with you I'd win so easily that it could hurt your feelings."

  His face was blank as he gazed at her for several long seconds. Finally he nodded.

  "I'm not surprised. I noticed right away that you move like a dancer or an athlete, very smooth and economical, always placing your feet just right.

  "Besides, when I was checking you out online I saw those videos of you playing soccer."

  Of course. She should have thought of that. Anything put on the Net rarely disappeared. Something politicians kept finding out to their distress many years after they said something stupid or offensive on camera.

  "Speaking of soccer," he said, taking her hand and walking over to the sliding glass door to the pool area. As they exited he said, "There's a big game coming up for my women's soccer team. Would you like to join me?"

  Jane let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding in.

  "I'd love that."

  They were silent as they emerged into the night and walked over to the far side of the pool. Beyond a waist high wall the land sloped down to the low lands of Beverly Hills and the other parts of the LA flats. Lights twinkled like stars and galaxies below.

  They turned toward each other and kissed. Then they turned as one to re-enter the house, went upstairs, and for the first time they made love.

  Chapter 9 - Dating

  All the projects that involved the Kuznetsov Gang, as they sometimes called themselves, and not ironically, were accelerating nicely. This was partly because most of the people working on them were smart, experienced, and hard working. Partly it was because in the last few years the Rapid Manufacturing movement had been maturing.

  It'd had its genesis as far back as the efficiency and quality movements after World War II, when Japan took them to heart with a vengeance. It was not long before "Japanese" became synonymous with quality, and Jap cars began to catch up and then outsell American cars.

  The current generation of the movement, labeled RapMan by some who thought themselves clever, was due to two threads.

  One was the maturing of 3D printing. Nowadays there were 3D printers which could build such complex and finicky devices as microcircuits, though nanocircuits were still far beyond their capabilities. Other printers could build devices as large as small boats and medium-sized buildings. They were still not able to economically build such products in large numbers. But they were perfect for creating prototypes, which allowed engineers to quickly create improved prototypes and so arrive at a profitable product in months instead of years.

  A second thread was the maturing of the practice of making robots which could make robots. After a final prototype was accepted of such a robot it was set to producing a stream of robots identical to itself. The very different robots those produced could be assembled into a complete factory which would make a final product. This might be a coffee maker. Or a spaceship.

  <>

  Thus it was that on the first of November Boeing, the first of several aerospace companies, turned out its first SSTO, single-stage to orbit, spaceplane. Jane and her crew attended the premiere event in Long Beach.

  The mid-morning sky was clear and blue as the spaceplane floated out of the huge barn-like building devoted to making it and its fellows, three of which were already in different stages of being made and assembled.

  A band played, officials made short speeches, and a movie star broke a Champagne bottle on its prow. Then it floated to a parking spot near the barn and settled into place so that guests, mostly reporters and dignitaries, could walk through the vehicle. They were escorted by guides who could answer their questions. By lunchtime just about anyone off the street (carefully but discreetly inspected by security people) were allowed to view the insides without guides.

  Jane was one of several people interviewed by a carefully orchestrated flow of reporters. She had agreed to do five interviews. All of the questions had been pretty much the same and she'd given very general answers to them. She was soon sick of the process and gratefully ended the last as graciously as she could.

  At lunch she and her crew boarded Princess and returned to El Monte airport in time for a late lunch at JPL. Nicole was the pilot of record. By now she had caught up to the others in expertise but still volunteered to pilot Princess as often as Jane allowed.

  <>

  Jane and Phil spent time together at least once a week. On the Friday evening in the week before Thanksgiving she was Phil's date at the premiere of his space-based spy movie.

  For the event she wore a tight dress which ended at mid-thigh and had a plunging neckline. The blue material had discreet vertical ridging and a glossy surface. It glowed a subtle silky sheen in the bright lights of the red carpet.

  After the movie Phil and she attended an after-party with the principals of the movie but left after a half-hour. Jane had almost had to drag Phil away at first, but then she whispered in his ear what she wanted to do to him when they got to his home. There was no more dragging after that.

  <>

  The Hollywood Reporter Style section

  The Surprising Plus-One of Mega-Producer Philip Newman

  [TRANSCRIPT]

  "Well, Stephanie, I must confess to surprise at the plus-one Phil Newman brought to the opening of his latest secret agent thriller."

  "'Trevor, that's because you just don't keep up with these things."

  "I did know he was dating someone. Really, Steph, to think I didn't know he had a new heart throb. But what I didn't know was how different she is from the starlets he usually sees."

  "I know what you mean. Jane Kuznetsov is a scientist, inventor, an athlete, and - I was especially impressed by this - she's a military woman."

  "I found that out when I researched her. Apparently she's a super-duper pilot, already a legend. She qualified as a pilot in four different types of aircraft in only six weeks. I can't even imagine how smart you have to be to do that."

  "And she looks and dresses like a model, Trev. Did you notice those shoes she wore? What did you think of them?"

  [CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE]

  [RED CARPET IMAGE]

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  Thanksgiving was a busy time for Jane. She spent the morning and afternoon with her parents then drove to Natalie's for the evening and to stay overnight. The day after she flew Princess to Washington, D.C., with Phil as her passenger. There he visited his ex-wife, the campaign manager and chief of staff for a California congressman. Visiting from New York for that long weekend were their two kids, a daughter who had just begun graduate school and a son who was in his first year in college.

  Jane got along with his ex-wife. Phil got along with her boyfriend. His daughter, on the other hand, was cool to Jane though civil. Jane guessed it was because she and the young woman were only a year apart in age, but that was only a guess. The young man was outwardly the friendliest. He was quite impressed with Jane. He asked a lot of questions about what it was like to fly a spaceplane. And to travel to the space station and work there.

  The ex-wife put Jane and Phil up at the house she'd rented for the duration of the congressman's current term. It was big enough for her and her boy-friend, her children, and two other guests (or four if the guests were couples).

  On Sunday noon when Jane and Phil left for California his ex-wife pulled Jane aside just before she followed Phil out of the front door.

  "I may not show it very obviously, but I'm really happy for Phil. You seem to have done him more good than the women he's gone out with before. Bless you. I really love him,
just no longer in a romantic way."

  "Thank you for telling me. I wasn't sure."

  They hugged and Jane went out into a grey day with snow beginning to come down.

  <>

  Christmas was another busy time for Jane since she had in effect two families (or three if one counted her crew as quasi-siblings). She wanted to buy presents for all of them and spend time with them. The presence of Phil in her life was yet another complication. She solved that by including him in most of her interactions with her two (or three) families.

  By the time Easter came around the Jane "Gang" had nearly finished most of their participation in various projects. This was fortunate because Jane was the only person living who fully understood the VM or virtual-matter theory and the radical mathematics which described it. She had finally completed a complete analysis of the virtual-matter shield proposal and designed the technology needed realize a shield. And her bosses had OK'd the experimental project to create shields and to run the experiments on the Moon.

  Thus the fourth Monday in April in the New Business section of their regular morning business meeting Jane spoke up.

  "We are now ready to launch the Virtual Shield project. I've had Kate set up a database for it on our private server. On the server I've placed a preliminary schedule. I want you to flesh it out, Klaus, with whatever help you need from the rest of us."

  She gazed away from Klaus toward the rest of the crew. "We're going to use the same approach to building our experimental facility as they used to build Luna City."

  They all knew what that meant: find a nice deep crater, build in it, and cover it with dirt and stone to protect it from meteorites and extremes of heat and cold. Most of the core structural material of steel and aluminum had be prefabricated on Earth and shipped to the Moon.

  There autonomous robots had constructed the skeleton of Luna City with occasional supervision from Earth by engineers. They had done so using vears to give them a virtual presence on the Moon. Thus they were able to handle events that the robots were not smart enough to handle.

  Klaus would be the lead for construction of the shield project because he had written a detailed plan for his senior year civil engineering thesis. It was to build a second Luna City using much more locally produced material. This included 3D printed bricks made mostly of Moon dirt. He'd also suggested using some iron and aluminum mined on the Moon, something that had become possible as more of the geology, or selenology, of the satellite had been understood.

  One other factor he'd included in his plans: Lunar water. The year he'd graduated from the Academy a bombshell discovery had been made: the Moon had once had a thin atmosphere and substantial surface water. Most of the water had evaporated into space as the air was lost eons ago but enormous deep deposits of water had been left behind. And many of those were under the rest of the Moon as well as the shallower water at the poles.

  "Boss," said Riku. "We're really going to do this?!"

  "Yes, we are," said Jane. Riku and Klaus did high fives.

  <>

  The last weekend in May Jane flew herself and Phil to San Francisco for the weekend. After settling into a hotel near the northern waterfront of the city they freshened up and ambled down the slope to a restaurant right on the water.

  From their seats near huge windows looking out onto the Bay they could see the Golden Gate Bridge to their far left. It looked like a distant bright line of light in the night. To their far right they could see another such line in the Oakland Bridge.

  "One of my favorite cities, San Francisco," said Phil. Jane thought that in his leather jacket and blue denim shirt and jeans he looked more like a movie star than a billionaire mega-producer who hired movie stars.

  He raised Jane's hand that he'd clasped between his hands and kissed the back of it. His lips sent a shiver through her nipples down to between her legs.

  Briefly she became JANE. From the godlike heights of her cyborg state SHE felt amusement at the primitive reactions of HER biological component. Then she became Jane again. Her amusement remained as she wryly agreed with Jane+Robot at how like a silly schoolgirl she had become.

  "And now it's become one of mine," she said through lips curved into a smile. His eyes focused on her lips for long seconds, then he squeezed her hand and let it go.

  "I'm crazy about you, Jane Kuznetsov. A total idiot. I'm seriously wondering if you've bewitched me."

  Jane's smile slowly faded but her face was no less happy.

  "I feel the same way. But you're a full grownup and I'm just an impressionable young girl. I'm supposed to be silly. You're not!"

  He grinned briefly and picked up his menu. "Let's see. I need something that will fortify me for the work I intend to do tonight back at our hotel."

  Throughout ordering and the main course and dessert their conversation rambled as it often did.

  One frequent topic was music. At one point it drifted to his favorites when he was a teen to his mid-twenties.

  "That was 2000 to about 2010. I imprinted on several singers, mostly hot women but also a few male singers and groups."

  "Who?"

  "The Backstreet Boys and N' Sync were favorites. Madonna though she was a little old for me. Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé. And Britney Spears. I fell hard for her. The others figured in my masturbation fantasies. But Britney-- I loved her. My heart broke when she had that year or two when she had a dark period. When she cut off her hair."

  Jane grasped one of his hands and held it. She thought back to those times. She had been drifting through the asteroid belt, secure in her rescue module, in suspended animation where time was slowed thousands- or millions-fold. That was a few years before she ended her own dark period, adrift in the blackness of space for a big fraction of a million years. Or maybe several millions; Robot was still unsure of the time span.

  He squeezed her hand and used his freed hand to pick up his wine glass and sip from it.

  "That was when I decided to become a music producer. I might get to meet her and rescue her. Up to then I was determined to follow in the path my father and mother had set out for me. I had gotten my MBA and had a responsible job with a big investment firm.

  "Then Pop died and his millions went to Mom, me, my brother and sister. I now had the money to become an entrepreneur. I borrowed a couple of million from each of them-- They could easily afford it and they believed I could pay it back with interest. And even if I didn't--well, so what? It had made little brother happy."

  Jane tried to imagine what it would be like to blithely refer to "a couple of million" dollars as little more than pocket change. Then jolted and realized she didn't have to imagine. She was a multi-millionaire headed for billionaire status herself.

  She looked out at the dark waters of San Francisco's North Bay, pondering that reality. What would she do with that money? Right now what she had and what was coming to her was broken into two halves. Each half was deposited in banks or invested by two investment firms who competed to see which would do the best jobs of investing that money.

  "I set to becoming a music producer with great passion, determined to become worthy of becoming Britney's rescuer. But by the time I got to the point of actually being able to do it she no longer needed me. She had pulled herself together and was stronger for her breakdown or whatever it was."

  "Did you ever meet her?"

  "Oh, yeah. And all the other women I had lusted after. And I met the guys too. I've even done business with them occasionally. I can introduce you them, well, some of them. If you're interested."

  "Sure. I'd like that. But you were in the middle of your story. How did you get into movies?"

  "Let's walk on the jetty. It's a great sight and we can talk there."

  They walked east because the businesses and the crowds lessened there and it was easier to hear each other talk.

  "My involvement in movies came about because Britney starred in one. Other of the hot singers had movie roles too. So I started producing movi
es, little ones at first. That increased the chances I might meet them. But I'd always been a movie fan. My parents had to push me to go out and develop socially and physically. And a good thing too."

  The waterfront curved southward and the crowds dropped. They began to walk by short piers which lined the bay here. They could see yachts and other small boats resting in slips between the piers. There was little activity on the boats on this Friday evening.

  She led him to talk about his early days being an entrepreneur music and movie producer. They left the slips behind and began to walk beside a long building edging the water made up of commercial establishments, all of them closed.

  Robot sensed three people following them. Jane turned to face them, saying "Best we get back to our hotel."

  Phil quieted as they approached the three men. They were in their twenties, a café-au-lait black, a Latino, and a white-as-white-bread Anglo. They were all dressed in expensive "street" fashions.

  "Hello, night people," said the middle man. "What a nice day to walk. We're here to collect a toll."

  Jane stopped, as did Phil beside her, and became JANE. SHE eyed the three would-be thugs clinically.

  Phil started to say something. JANE put an arm out beside her and laid it across his chest.

  "Let me do this. I'm trained for it."

  "I can't--"

  "I'M TRAINED FOR THIS. Please."

  "You don't understand, bitch." The Latino took a knife from a pocket and flipped it open. It made a threatening Click! "We're--"

  The cyborg closed with him as fast as a jaguar after a deer. SHE swept the knife arm aside with one fist and struck his breastbone with the other. SHE only struck with a small fraction of HER strength. All of it would have caved in his chest and killed him.

  SHE spun on one leg and swept his feet from under him with the other, overkill as he was already falling. Then SHE pivoted to face the other two, standing with feet slightly apart and open hands hanging by HER sides. Stock still. Perfectly relaxed. Eying the two to see what they would do. HER face was absolutely without emotion.