by Bob Blanton
“You’re three hundred years old?” Natalia asked.
“Yes,” ADI said, “almost 200 years just on this mission. It took almost one hundred years to get here from Paraxea, and we’ve been here over seventy years.”
“I guess it does add up,” Natalia said. “You ready Catie, or do you want to stay and chat with ADI?”
“I don’t have to be here to chat with her,” Catie said. “Let’s clean up and go have a celebratory dinner. I’m buying.”
“I can roll with that,” Natalia said. “Do you think Deogene’s is open yet?”
“I saw their notice in the Gazette this morning,” Catie replied.
Chapter 8
Board Meeting – Jan 6th
“So, are we calling these Cabinet Meetings now?” Blake asked.
“We should,” Samantha said. “We are, after all, the executive branch of the government.”
“But do we separate MacKenzie Discoveries’ issues from the government issues?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Right now, they are essentially the same, and I want to keep calling these board meetings for now,” Marc said. “But we do need to start to tease the government function apart from the business functions. Has there been any motion on people asking to run for parliament?”
“We have a few who have expressed interest,” Samantha said. “I would suggest you appoint some for a short term and see what happens. But you need to give them something to do.”
“Why don’t you appoint a few and find out what they think they should do,” Admiral Michaels suggested. “I would think they should at least manage the constabulary.”
“Let’s designate a space for the parliament building,” Marc said. “The government can use tax money to build it. And we’ll see what else they come up with. I know I’m going to regret this.”
“Hey, who wouldn’t want the government to come and help them,” Blake said.
“Back to the meeting,” Marc said after he gave everyone a moment to finish laughing at Blake’s joke. “Sam, can you recap the agreement with the Chinese?”
“The Chinese have agreed to buy up to three hundred fusion reactors from us,” Samantha said. “Their scientists have been here for a week reviewing the design and making plans to convert their coal-fired power plants to fusion. We’ve agreed to start with one power plant without preconditions, and to expand that once the issue with North Korea is resolved.”
“And a resolution of that would be?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“A unified, demilitarized Korea,” Marc said.
“Wow,” Blake said. “You think they can make it happen?”
“I’m sure they can,” Admiral Michaels said, “the question is, do they want to.”
“I would think that the destabilizing influence of North Korea is as distressing to them as it is to us,” Samantha said. “They don’t want the U.S. to have a power base in South Korea right next door to China. We’ve agreed to install fusion reactors in North Korea to give them an economic leg up after the unification.”
“Interesting,” Admiral Michaels said. “That would help to avoid a rush of people from North to South. Virtually free energy would pull in the necessary investment to utilize their labor force.”
“But that sounds like a lot of capital investment,” Blake said. “They can’t afford to turn that economy on a dime. They’ll still need fuel for their tractors and cars.”
“That is why I’m happy to announce that one of my side projects has been completed,” Marc said.
“What side project?” Catie asked, surprised that her father was doing something that she didn’t know about.
“Your father has several side projects going with the scientists,” Liz said. “I don’t know anything about them other than what resources they ask for.”
“You’re not the only one who’s allowed to do side projects,” Marc said. “This one is an algae that produces diesel.”
“Hasn’t that already been done?” Blake asked.
“It has, but it was never economical,” Marc said. “I brought in a group of scientists to fix the problems. They’ve genetically altered the algae so that it produces diesel with a gene from clover. It captures nitrogen from the atmosphere and transfers it to the water. They put a strain of bacteria in some matting at the edge of the tank that converts the nitrogen so the algae can absorb it.”
“So, you don’t have to fertilize them as much,” Catie said. “What else did they change?”
“With the fertilizer problem solved, they were able to make changes to increase their productivity,” Marc said. “Now, twenty square meters of algae panels will produce fifteen liters of diesel per day.”
“And that will allow the small farms to make enough diesel to run their tractors,” Kal said. “And a small village will even be able to supply enough fuel for a bus and a few cars.”
“That’s the plan,” Marc said. “We’re ready to start introducing the algae panels.”
“How are you going to commercialize it?” Samantha asked.
“I’m not,” Marc said. “Once it’s out there, the algae can be reproduced, and there isn’t much to the rest of it. I want to create a small group to start setting them up in Africa and Southeast Asia to start.”
“Very magnanimous of you,” Admiral Michaels said. “The oil companies are going to love you.”
“I’m not sure it will make that big of a dent,” Marc said, “but it will give small villages and communities a way to transition to solar power without having to make such a big capital outlay. Sam, do you think Margaret would have the contacts to get this started?”
“I’m sure she does, you know we could do this through the UN,” Samantha said. “And speaking of the UN, I was considering recommending Margaret as our ambassador.”
“I guess we need one,” Marc said. “And if that would put Margaret in a position where she could foster this and some of the other programs we have planned, I’m all for it.”
“Does she have the necessary skills to be an ambassador?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Have you met her?” Blake asked. “She has the skills to run that whole place.”
“Her father was Ambassador to Malaysia when she was growing up,” Samantha said. “She coordinated the refugee situation in Syria for several years after she finished college.”
“I was just asking,” Admiral Michaels said. “I trust your opinion; I just wanted to make sure you’d thought of all the issues. The UN can be a bit of a lion’s den.”
“Do you think she would accept the position?” Marc asked.
“I’ve been feeling her out,” Samantha said. “I think she would. We’d need to find a place in New York for her to live.”
“Grab the top floor of one of the apartment buildings there,” Marc said. “We can use it as her residence and for any of us who need to visit New York.”
“I’m sure that will help,” Samantha said. “A penthouse suite can help heal the wounds from a day in the lion’s den. But she respects our agenda, so I’m sure she’ll be excited to be able to assist in driving it.”
“Back to the Chinese agreement,” Marc said.
“They have also agreed to purchase as many solar arrays as we can supply them,” Samantha said. “They just want the arrays; they’ll assemble them in China, and have agreed that they are only for internal use, not for export.”
“What’s their angle?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“I think they would like to get ahead of the rest of the world vis-à-vis energy independence,” Marc said. “If they were to buy all of the arrays we make, that would delay or prevent their introduction to other countries. Eventually, they would build up a significant economic advantage.”
“Are you going to do anything about it?” Admiral Michaels asked. “Are you going to give them the algae?”
“Yes and yes,” Marc said. “We’re happy to give them the algae; there are a lot of small villages in China. We’ll only sell them our excess arr
ays. We’ll max our capacity for assembling them in Delphi City and then start another plant. I want to grow our capacity as quickly as we can, as fast as labor becomes available.”
“Okay, next. What am I hearing about airport changes?” Marc asked.
“Catie and I figured out how to improve our cargo balance for the space station freight,” Blake said. “We’re building another runway on the airport that will have a ramp down below the waterline. We plan to land the Oryxes on the water, then glide them up the ramp. That allows us to land them at three hundred percent of their takeoff weight. So, they go down full of polyglass or solar arrays and go up full of general freight.”
“That sounds like a big improvement,” Marc said. “How long until the runway is ready?”
“Two more weeks,” Blake said. “We also figured out how to improve the plate production process; we should be able to double their production.”
“Great. How’s the build-out in the station going?” Marc asked Liz.
“We should be able to start moving into ring three in two weeks,” Liz said. “If we’re able to increase plate production, we might speed that up by a few days, but most of the time is installing plumbing and other utilities. It’s labor-intensive, so it takes quite a bit of time.”
“I’m looking forward to moving back into a one G environment,” Samantha said.
“You are?” Nikola Zelbar said. “Leo and I plan to stay in ring one. He really likes only having to deal with one-half G.”
“Interesting,” Marc said. “We weren’t sure anyone would want to live in such a low G environment.”
“I think you’ll find that the older residents will prefer it,” Nikola said.
“Yes, it will be a good place to have our clinic, since the low G environment will be conducive to recovery for some of the procedures we want to do,” Dr. Metra said, “especially with older residents. It’s not so awkward to move around in as the one-fifth-G of the hub.”
“We talked about the clinic earlier,” Liz said. “I have it in the space allocation.”
“Good, anything else?” Marc asked.
“The first comms from Vancouver Integrated should be coming off the line in one week,” Liz said.
“Excellent,” Marc said. “Were there any problems?”
“Not really, Catie stepped in to solve the one that surprised us,” Liz said.
“What was that?” Marc asked. Liz turned to Catie and motioned for her to take over.
“We need to talk about it in a private session,” Catie said. Nikola, Fred, and Admiral Michaels frowned at that since they were not part of the inner circle.
“After the meeting,” Marc said. “What else?”
“I’m going to move the cargo master role to Annie Halloway,” Catie said.
“Bryce Halloway’s daughter?” Fred asked.
“Yes,” Catie said. “Is that a problem?”
“No, just wanted to be sure I knew who she was,” Fred said.
“She’s also Jason’s girlfriend,” Catie said. “I told her she couldn’t show any favoritism.”
“I’m sure it will be alright,” Blake said. “We’ve got a close-knit community; we’re going to have relatives working together—just look at this cabinet.”
“Also, we have a request from our miners for something like a hotel out by the asteroids,” Catie said. “They want to be able to stay there for several days at a time, so they’re not using up so much of their downtime with transit. It would allow them to set up a four-days-on/four-days-off schedule, which gives them more family time.”
“How do we do that?” Marc asked.
“I suggest we just convert an Oryx to a hotel for now,” Catie said. “They’re plenty big; later, we might want to go ahead and build a small space station like they’ve asked for. I’m sure we’ll have a mining operation going for years.”
“Okay, Liz, why don’t you go ahead and work up a concept for a small space station since this is the second time that’s come up. It’s low priority, but we might as well start thinking about it. Catie, do you want to manage the Oryx conversion?” Marc asked.
“I’ll oversee it,” Catie said, “but I thought I’d give it to Artie. It’s in line with the things he’s studying now.”
“You’re in charge,” Marc said.
“You guys sure do bring them along young,” Admiral Michaels said.
“We just give them the opportunity,” Marc said. “We need to get more of our pilots to step up and take other responsibilities.”
“They’re doing more than you think,” Fred said. His tone was a bit testy. “There are an amazing number of little jobs that have to be taken care of. I think all the pilots are doing at least fifteen hours a week of work outside their flight time.”
“Sorry,” Marc said. “I guess we’re getting so big that I no longer have a full picture.”
“That’s why you have us,” Fred said.
“While we’re on our pilots, how are we doing with training?” Marc asked.
“We have our second class of fighter pilots in training now,” Fred said. “Half the class is made up of pilots we’ve brought in, the other half, Oryx pilots doing cross-training. I’m glad to hear that Blake and Catie have solved the imbalance in the cargo. I was afraid we’d have to get more pilots to fly the Oryxes as well as build more Oryxes.”
“Is their training challenging enough?” Marc asked.
“Definitely,” Fred said. “We’ve just added some more elements to challenge them.” He smiled at Catie. “Some of them were thinking they had the flying thing down pat, we’ve disabused them of that notion.”
“Good,” Marc said. “We cannot get complacent. Kal, how’s security?”
“We’ve expanded the Zulu team that we formed after the Russian incident, to include the airport defense. Some hotshot pilot exposed a gap in our defense,” Kal said as he looked at Catie. “We’re running more simulations, and we’ll have each class that comes through try to defeat the defenses. Between that and the Zulu team, we should be on our toes all the time.”
“Thank you,” Marc said. “Admiral Michaels, what is your sense of the international threat situation?”
“I expect to see more problems from the Russians,” Admiral Michaels said. “We have limited assets in Russia, so we need to see if we can cultivate a few. The Chinese seem to be focusing on diplomacy and business, so that should alleviate pressure from them. As for the U.S., the elections are starting up, which will absorb a lot of the president’s focus. He has a couple of tough primary challengers, so he’s going to be careful not to create any incidents, but we need to keep a careful eye there. If he sees some way to influence the election, he’ll take it.”
“I agree,” Samantha said. “And I think we’ll see more aggressive moves from the Russians, and soon.”
“Then we need to start planning for them,” Marc said. “Admiral Michaels, can you take the lead there?”
“Yes,” the admiral said. “I’ll let you know what I need. I have some contacts I’m expecting to hear from. They may be able to give us a sense of what might be coming.”
“Everyone, thanks for your time,” Marc said. “Liz, Catie, and Blake, can you stay back?”
“I think Dr. Metra should stay as well,” Catie said.
Dr. Metra looked surprised but sat back down and waited.
“So, what was the surprise?” Marc asked once everyone else had left the room.
“We had to figure out how to attach the polyglass to the polysteel base,” Catie said.
“Wouldn’t you just glue it?” Blake asked.
“We could have, but we wanted to make it more difficult, or impossible, to open up a comm unit,” Catie said. “When I asked ADI how that was done before, I was astonished to learn that the Paraxeans printed the whole comm.”
“What do you mean by printed the whole comm?” Marc asked.
“Just that, the shell is monolithic,” Catie said.
“Then how did th
ey get the electronics inside?” Blake asked.
“I mean they printed the whole thing, from polysteel up to the electronics and then the polyglass,” Catie said.
“Isn’t that inefficient?” Marc asked.
“Yes, very,” Catie said. “Then I checked with ADI on some other things. They print everything that way, even a Fox, even the Sakira.”
“Why in the world would they do that?” Marc asked, looking to Dr. Metra for an answer.
“Since we encountered the Thoreans and acquired the printing technology, there has been a backlash against the elite,” Dr. Metra said. “By printing everything, those with superior mathematical and scientific intellect cannot dominate the power positions. I think you would say that Paraxea has become an egalitarian mediocracy.”
“That’s insane,” Marc said. “Couldn’t they just have a democracy and use the majority vote to balance things?”
“That was tried multiple times,” Dr. Metra said. “Paraxea would have a revolution to balance the wealth and power; after about one hundred years, all the wealth would once again be concentrated into the hands of less than one-thousandth of the population. After another twenty to thirty years, there would be another revolution of sorts to redistribute things; then, after another hundred years, the concentration of wealth would happen again. The printers have broken the cycle, but have also robbed the Paraxeans of the ability to innovate. Sooner or later, there will be another revolution, and we’ll see what comes out of it.”
“How do they print a starship?” Blake asked incredulously.
“With a very big printer,” Dr. Metra said. “Since Paraxea acquired the printers, they are always making a bigger one. It just requires a bigger set of arms to move the print head. They are constantly creating bigger printers.”
“But the material waste and all the time involved,” Blake said.
“I can explain,” Catie said. “They are able to print a material like the foam we used in the Chagas. They can use it to fill the voids, or they can create walls and even ceilings with it. The foam’s surface is kind of blobby, but they’re able to make the top surface perfectly flat, and that’s where they print. When they’re done, they can liquify the foam and remove it if they want, or leave it in place. The same process we use with our printers. We just don’t have to use it that much because we make subassemblies and then assemble the final product. It’s much more efficient.”
