Chapter 156: Chapter 155: Catchup

Honestly, the past few months have been extremely busy for me. After the conference, it didn’t take long for many more nations to join. Another conference a couple of weeks later saw Jenny nominate me as the lead for the whole thing. Oh, trust me, there were lots of others that couldn’t get a majority vote for any of a dozen different reasons. A lot of them looked relieved when they weren’t confirmed.

Of course, I didn’t want it either. Yes, I know this was my idea and I pushed for all of this, so there’s no need to tell me what I already know. The basic theme of my supporters’ speeches was that I’m as close to a neutral party as they were likely to find. I don’t disagree per se since I see this more as a humanity issue rather than a national issue.

It seems like the more issues that are resolved the more that pop up. There never seems to be time enough in my day for all that has to be done.

It’s been busy enough that I made Akari my personal secretary, she also has an assistant for herself, and Mirai had to hire someone to replace her at TGR. Akari makes my life so much easier, although not any less busy, and her organizational skills simply amaze me. Needless to say, but she also got a rather large pay raise with the new position. Trust me, she’s earning every single yen of it.

More than once my family has had to make me take some down time and rest. I’m barely making it to school two days a week now. Needless to say that it hasn’t hurt my grades in the least since I still place first on tests. Unfortunately, this is also putting a rather heavy emotional burden on Ryu and Chinatsu. I don’t see them as much and that bothers me to no end, just as I am sure it bothers them. Basically, I come home in the evenings when I don’t go to school, physically and emotionally exhausted, and all I want to do is bathe and curl up to go to sleep. It’s putting quite a strain on our relationship. Look, Chinatsu and Ryu love each other, that is a given, but somehow, I’m the pivot in our relationship. I don’t see it since I think it takes all three of us to make this work. I’m doing what I can, when I can, to smooth things over for all of us, so basically I make sure we get up early enough that we have time together. Be it making love or merely talking and cuddling together. There’s no stress in my life whatsoever. Nope, none at all.

Mama takes all of us to Playland Spa every Saturday to relax because of it. It does help and it gives me time with my family, although I miss the time I got to spend with Dad. I have to do something about this because this isn’t good for me. Airi reiterates it every time she sees me. Yes, I’m still seeing her. I’d be a basket case if I wasn’t. I’m thinking of getting another Mirai to help me out with the less important things and take some of the pressure off, as well as allowing me more personal time. Right now, between school and everything else, I’m spending over 80 hours a week working in one form or another. Anyway, I’m sure that’s enough whining about how hard my life is.

I did have a meeting with a ‘Chinese Official,’ no position named or anything like that. He irked me right off the bat when, no sooner did he sit down, he demanded that China have priority access to all new technologies developed and a leadership position in the partnership. Suffice to say that if you act like a spoiled brat, I’ll be happy to treat you as such. In no uncertain terms I told him that no nation has a leadership position in our partnership and he wasn’t going to place demands on us for their participation. I further explained that he could tell his superiors the same thing and when they decided to act like reasonable people that I’d be happy to talk with them. Until then, China was on their own. I have to admit that his dumbfounded expression was priceless. I told Jenny about the meeting with him when she called me that evening and she laughed so hard that she wet herself.

Thanks to the large influx of money and material support from our partner nations, DTI has been massively expanded. What started out as a single building out near Tokyo Bay, now spans 19 buildings across half a square kilometer. We have scientists from 52 nations that perform research there as well. That doesn't even count all the engineers of all stripes that work there.

One thing of note: with as aggressive as China has become, America asked for permission to reopen their bases on the Japanese archipelago. The Diet readily agreed since we’ve had several small naval clashes with them. I believe the government is hoping that America’s renewed military presence calms them down. Jenny also had the US Navy station two carrier battle fleets in Japan. She will also be opening a base on Yakushima once we get the infrastructure built.

Jenny calls me a couple of times a week, if for no other reason than to talk. Trust me, I’m glad she does because I need someone to vent to over things. You know I love my family, but the few times I’ve come home ranting about any of various things going on at work, their blank looks were enough to tell me that they didn’t understand what I was talking about. The hugs and cuddling were nice, though in the end it was like slapping a bandaid on an extremely deep cut. It's a nice thought, even if it isn’t all that helpful.

If pressed about it, I’d have to say that Jenny and I have become quite close. Who’d have thought that a 14 year old girl would have the President of the United States as a friend? I’d have never imagined it, but I’m damn sure glad to be able to call her that.

Another conference and another long discussion later, it was decided not to build the space elevator at sea. Even with all the member nations protecting it, it would only take one lucky hit to massively damage it and there are plenty of nations that would do it merely out of spite. Instead, it was proposed by the UK Prime Minister that Suwanosejima, which has a decent sized mountain on it, be ceded to the coalition to build the elevator on. The island is about 70 kilometers south-west of Yakushima. Thankfully, Japan readily agreed and work has begun on building the infrastructure needed.

MIT, Cambridge and TGR are collaborating on programming the nanites that will build the elevator and spaceport itself. You have no idea about how complicated that aspect of this whole thing is, but it’ll still be much faster to use nanites and progress is being made.

Later this year a medium sized asteroid will be crossing Earth’s orbit and plans are being hastily put into place to capture it to use as the anchor. Of course, it'll also be used as a habitation module and the foundation for the spaceport.

The dark energy project is making progress, but far less than I would like due to containment issues. On a micro scale it works perfectly, but right now they’re in a catch 22. They need more power for the containment grid within the vessel as they scale it up, but the amount they need for it far outstrips what Tokyo Electric can readily supply without blacking out the whole prefecture. It’s enough to make a girl pull her hair out in frustration.

On another front: Katsuo says they’ve made good progress on the inertial dampers. Small scale, they’ve managed to limit the g-force effects of acceleration to slightly less than 5 g’s while actually accelerating at 15 g’s.

Frankly, I’m simply astounded at our progress in this short period of time, although I do admit a lot of work went into these projects long before we restarted them, so it isn’t as if we are starting from zero, which is a huge help.

On to the one thing I’m quite sure most of you are extremely curious about, propulsion systems. What the project manager is calling a system drive is making progress by leaps and bounds. I’m amazed and so proud of their work. They have a 10th scale drive that can produce 50 g’s of acceleration. All that power out of an engine that is little bigger than 100 centimeters squared. So far, they’ve had the engine running at full power for 16 days with nary a hiccup. Absolutely phenomenal if you think about it.

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Katsuo and I had a long talk one evening about spaceships. I told him of an idea I had about AI controlled cargo-harvesters. Basically, the AI would take the ship out to a comet or asteroid and use nanites to harvest the materials from it. You wouldn’t believe the rare materials that can be gotten from what is considered to be a small asteroid. Rubidium, ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, cobalt, and titanium among other metals. All of them in amounts you can’t easily find on Earth. Comets would provide water that the new habitats and bases would require. Anyway, you can reference the Earth orbit crossing asteroid as to why I brought this up now.

[Thursday, May 8]

My phone blaring loudly wakes me and I blearily reach over to feel around for it as I brush my hair away from my face with my other hand. Glancing at the screen I see two things. One: that it’s a quarter to two in the morning and two: that it’s Katsuo.

Frowning slightly, I answer the call. “Katsuo, don’t you realize what time it is? I sure hope you have a good reason to call me this late.”

He laughs hard and finally says, “Sora, my gorgeous granddaughter, get out of bed and get down to DTI as quickly as you can! You won’t believe this! We… hang on… Yes, Saya, I do. Hang on… Sorry, get down here, Sora. Trust me, this is worth getting up for.”

Without waiting, he disconnects the call. Groaning loudly, I flop back onto the bed. Ryu looks at me and asks, “What’s going on?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. Katsuo didn’t say, but he wants me down at DTI as soon as I can get there.” Rolling over to face him, I give him a short kiss. “Honey, go back to sleep. We have school today and I’ll be back after I deal with whatever this is… Eir?”

“Yes, Sora?”

“Please wake Honoka and my father. Tell them that there’s been some kind of an incident at DTI and we need to get down there immediately.”

“Certainly.”

“Thank you, Eir.”

Forty minutes later, we are on the road to DTI as Dad plays the ‘twenty questions I bet you can’t answer’ game with me as Honoka braids my hair.

Finally tiring of the game, I state, “Dad, you know just as much as I do. I can’t give you information that I don’t have and neither Katsuo, nor Saya are answering their phones.”

Dad frowns at that statement and leans over the seat to talk to Mr. Okami. “Call Steven and have them go ahead to make sure the situation is clear and secure before we arrive. I do not want to drive into an ambush.”

Something that I hadn’t even considered. I mean, I know that the threat of me being abducted is still there and that’s one reason that all my executives have security teams. Well, I don’t consider it likely since he never used the code word to tell me that he was under duress. Nor do I believe that he would ever put me in danger. Look, we’re talking about a man that basically adopted me as his granddaughter for God’s sake.

Moments later, one of the SUV’s for security pulls out of formation and races ahead, even as I feel our SUV slow down some.

Thankfully, security reports in a few minutes before we are due to arrive that everything is secure at DTI, although Tokyo and National police are all over the place along with Tokyo Electric. The police I can see, even if it is National police as well, but why in the world is Tokyo Electric there? Well, we shall find out.

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