Chapter 167: Chapter 166: Tour

[Wednesday, October 22]

Of course, today is Honoka’s 16th birthday, but I’m not going to go into any detail about it. Mama and Dad hold her party at the house where all of our family and friends attend. This year, Mama gave her toast to her. Her party was a lot of fun for everyone, and Honoka’s expression when Jim gave her a promissory ring as her present was priceless.

[Wednesday, December 15]

Of course, today is the twins' 1st birthday. Again, I’m not going to say much about it. After all, they’re only a year old, so they didn’t really understand what’s going on, although they enjoyed all the attention they got.

[Friday, December 19]

Today is a very important day. One that has been a long time coming. So much has gone into planning all of it, and if I’m perfectly honest, I’m quite proud to be giving the talk I am today. That’s a little cryptic, I know, but you’ll find out soon enough.

One thing I might want to bring up. Who knew what went into being a popular and successful media personality? Believe me, I never did, nor did I care. That is, until Yui started taking me into Torchlight for lessons on how to play to the camera. Being subtly flirtatious and drawing in your audience to capture not only their attention, but their imagination as well. So much to know and work on, over and over again until they had me where I did it without a single thought.

One thing they reiterated to me time and time again: never, ever even attempt to be something you aren’t, i.e. for me that would be like trying to present myself as some kind of uber smart, femme fatale when I’m not. It would come off as totally fake and the audience is generally quick to pick up things like this. Am I smart? Yes, definitely. Good looking? Again, definitely. Sexy? I’m well built, so I‘m sure that many would say yes, but other than Ryu, I’m not by any stretch of the imagination a man eating vamp. That’s enough said about the subject.

First, a little background on what went into today.

Yui, along with Mama, picked out several outfits and posted them on my media feeds a week ago. My followers were asked how they would like to see me dressed for a rather important talk. Mama and Yui chose all the outfits they posted online based on being cute, professional and showing off just how well built I am. As Yui and others have said, use all of your assets to your advantage. As you can guess, the vote was overwhelmingly for what I am wearing.

A white, form fitting, v-neck sheath dress with long sleeves and ruffled cuffs. A navy blue waist-length blazer, ultra sheer nude stockings with roses printed at my ankles and my navy pumps. My hair is in a French twist, blue diamond stud earrings and a white choker with a blue diamond pendant. Then, of course, my makeup has been professionally done to compliment what I am wearing. You simply wouldn’t believe the amount of work that went into making sure I look absolutely perfect this evening.

Yui and DTI put out the notice about this talk over a week ago and there’s been lots of speculation and interest about it. Even more so since when I usually give talks there is only a couple of days’ notice at most. Not this one, it was decided that we wanted as many people to watch, and participate virtually, as possible.

Yui stands behind the camera and counts down, “5...4...3...2...,” and then points to me.

Smiling, I begin, “Good evening, everyone, and welcome. Most of you probably already know me, but for those who might not, I’m Sora Kobayashi. I’m the owner and director of Dream Technologies, Incorporated.”

I look at the number of connections to the stream that shows up in the contact in my left eye. “Good Lord! 64 million people are watching!” Smiling happily, I continue, “I’d hoped that there would be a lot of interest, so thank you all for joining me!

“This evening is going to be a little different from my usual talks, but I have several things to discuss, and I’m sure we’ll be able to keep you interested. So, how about I take you on a short tour? You can see a little bit of DTI as I introduce you to some of the technology we’ve been working on.” I slightly tilt my head, lean a little closer to the camera, and smile brilliantly. “So, what do you say? Do you want to take a walk with me, and we can talk along the way?” I nod as if I actually received an answer and smile a little bigger. “Wonderful! Then, come along with me, and together we’ll take a small peek into all of our future.”

I gesture ‘come with me’ to the camera. It follows me as I stand up, smooth my skirt, step around my desk and then down the hallway as I begin talking again. “I can’t show you everything that we are doing here, but the first thing I’m going to show you is what made so much of what I’m going to talk about this evening possible. You’d probably laugh if I told you what happened with the developer of this technology. Suffice it to say, I couldn’t decide whether I was happy enough to kiss him or angry enough to slap him. Personally, I think he’d have much preferred the kiss.” I wink at the camera and smile. “What do you think?”

Yui sends several of their comments to my contact. The most common theme being along the lines of, “You can kiss me anytime!”

I giggle for a moment and then smiling, I hold up my left hand to show my engagement ring as I tell them, “Sorry, everyone. I do appreciate the offers, but you know very well that my kisses are already taken. If anything changes, I promise that you’ll be amongst the first to know.”

We reach the power generation building and enter. Inside, I walk to the back and gesture to the reactor. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is a 100 terawatt cold fusion reactor. The man who developed this is Mitsuo Ohta.”

Yui sends a note to my contact. ‘Several are asking if he’s handsome and whether he’s married. Others are asking if it’s real since they’ve been told cold fusion is a myth.’

Giggling for a moment, I reply, “Yes, ladies, he’s 26, good looking and single. I assure you, cold fusion is as real as you or I.”

Yui sends another. ‘A couple of them are asking for his number.’

Smiling, I tell them, “Sorry, ladies, but if you want his number, you’ll have to come to Japan and ask him for it… Let’s get back to what I was saying.”

I reach out to touch the reactor as I look at the camera with a smile. “This small, yet extremely powerful reactor is what makes much of what we’ve developed possible, and it powers all of our research here at DTI as well as Tokyo prefecture. Amazing, isn’t it? We needed a revolution in power generation, and Mitsuo gave it to us. We’re extremely proud of him and more grateful than you could possibly know since we’d most likely still be struggling to make headway instead of accomplishing much of what we have.”

I beckon the camera. “Come along.” I stroll out of the building to head to the next lab on our agenda. I continue talking as we make our way. “Next, we have something that some researchers said could never be done, so let’s pop over to the lab where it was developed, and I can show you just how wrong those people were. Around here, the words, impossible or you can’t, aren’t used much.”

We reach the building a few moments later and enter. “This is our inertial dampening lab. Everyone should already know what g-forces are and how they affect you. There are so many possible uses for this, I won’t even try to name them all, but the primary use for us is in space travel. In the past, we’ve been limited by the amount of acceleration that the human body could safely withstand. So, one of our researchers brought up a past research project into inertia dampening, and I’m pleased to say that his team succeeded.

“We’re still working to improve its dampening capabilities. Presently, we can only reduce acceleration forces from 100 g’s to 1 g.” I walk up to a 1 meter square by half meter tall metallic object and touch it. “This is the inertial dampener itself. As you can see, it’s quite small for what it does, but the amount of waste heat it produces while doing its job is the problem we’re having. We have to be able to get rid of it quickly. We’re hoping that someone will have a breakthrough soon. Imagine what they’ll be able to do when they figure out how to get around the issue. By the way, if anyone has ideas on how to help, please, contact us.”

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Yui sends a note again. ‘Many people are asking how it works.’

“I’m very sorry everyone, but I can’t tell you how it works since that’s classified information. Oh, before someone mentions it, we’ve already looked into electrical thermal transference. It’s the same issue there since you still have to get rid of the heat. At present, we’re using heat pipes to very highly thermally conductive radiators. It works, but nowhere near what we need to do. Someone help us out here. I promise that I’ll make it worth your while… Alright, follow me.”

Again, leaving the building, I make my way over to one of the biggest buildings on campus while continuing to talk to the audience. “The next item was originally the whole point behind everything we’re doing here. That plan has evolved somewhat now, but we’ll talk more about that in a little while. The research and development team here continue to amaze all of us. Trust me, you’ll see why.”

Entering, I walk over to a few engineers. “Good evening, everyone.”

They nod. “Good evening, Ms. Kobayashi.”

Gesturing to the engine mounted on a test stand, and the camera pans across it. “This is what we call a System Drive, and this one is version IV. It’s capable of variable thrust up to a staggering 200 g’s of acceleration and can do so for as long as it has power, so you can see why we need better inertial dampeners. This next part is going to be rather loud, so I recommend adjusting your volume.” I put in hearing protection and look at the engineers. “Gentleman, if you would.”

They start the engine and slowly dial up the power. Now, they won’t go anywhere near full power since if they did, the vibrations would literally shake the building apart. Hell, even at 50% it makes it hard to breathe if you’re anywhere close to it.

Once they shut down the engine, I take out my hearing protection as Yui sends me another note. ‘People are saying that was amazing, but really loud.’

I grin and tell them, “I thought you might like that, and I did warn you to turn down your volume. This version was developed to take a 250 meter long by 70 meter wide by 40 meter thick spacecraft to the asteroid belt and comfortably house a crew of 12 for 6 months. Most of the ship is storage for nanites that do the actual mining of the asteroids and cargo space. The spacecraft this engine is to be paired with is already being built. Again, I suggest you look it up if you’re curious about the amount of resources we can get from what is considered to be a small asteroid, but I will tell you that what we can get from just one far exceeds what we can mine here on Earth in a year.”

I walk out of the building and begin heading back to the admin building. Talking as I walk, I continue, “We also have another spacecraft, which is named Muse. Muse is going to take us back to the moon, and she’s purpose built for one thing: to bring back helium-3 from the lunar regolith. There’s no human crew, only two AIs. Ai, who is the pilot of the spacecraft and will be deploying nanites to collect the helium-3, and Daiki, who will control the drone rovers to gather the collected helium-3 and return it to Muse for transport. She can bring back 120 metric tons of helium-3 each trip. We need the helium-3 to not only power spacecraft, but for power plants here on Earth.”

Entering a conference room that has Erica and Katsuo already waiting, I gesture to the large screen in front of me. “With that in mind, you can see that Muse is patiently waiting on us so that she can launch.”

Captis took off at full power because we were worried about the Chinese at the time, Muse will not be doing so since it will provide a better show for the audience.

“Katsuo, you can tell them anytime they are ready.” He mutters into his phone and then places it in his pocket.

A moment later, the countdown continues from 60 seconds. It seems to take forever for it to reach 10 seconds, which is when they start the engine, and when the countdown reaches 0, she gracefully lifts off. As far as I can see, it’s a perfect lift off, and she quickly accelerates into the night sky. The camera turns back to me. “Ai will not be entering Earth orbit. She will be taking a direct flight to the moon, and she will arrive there to begin deploying nanites within the hour. You heard correctly, I said within the hour. I was not exaggerating about how powerful the engines we’ve developed are. To put it a different way, if Ai accelerated at maximum thrust for 2 hours, then decelerated for 2 hours when she neared Mars, the total flight time would be less than 8 hours for her to enter orbit.”

I sit down and cross my legs. “Alright. That brings us to our final items for the evening. We have one more spacecraft that we’ve built and launched. I’ll tell you about him in a moment. I hope everyone knows what space elevators are. If not, please look it up. We’ve already gotten the foundation for the first one built. The geosynchronous orbital anchor is due to arrive very soon.

“Captis, whose pilot is Helios, was launched months ago to capture asteroid 19355, a medium-sized nickel-iron asteroid that was crossing Earth’s orbit well ahead of us. Let me be clear here, it posed no threat to Earth since it was more than 220 million kilometers away from us. Captis successfully captured it, and that is what we’ll be using as the orbital anchor for the elevator. It will also serve as the habitation module and spaceport we’ll be building. Once they are operational and we've built the new construction facilities in orbit, we’ll no longer be building or launching spacecraft from Earth. We’ll use the elevator for a quiet, comfortable ride into orbit and safely transferring resources that we need down to Earth.

“I’m talking about the asteroid because I don’t want people to panic. There’s no reason for you to worry at all since it poses no threat to Earth. It’s quite large, so depending on where you live, you will be able to see the asteroid from the ground with only some binoculars.

“Listen to me, Helios is very good at his job and has the backup of a level 1 AI to confirm all of his calculations. He also has far more power than he needs to safely move 19355 into position, and if everyone here wasn’t absolutely confident that we could do this safely, we would have never attempted it.

“In my opinion, if you can see it from where you live, you should get some binoculars and watch Helios move 19355 into position. I’m sure many of the news and other media agencies will also be tracking and showing his progress. Press releases and answers to what we think will be the most commonly asked questions will be posted on DTI’s website. If there’s a question you have that isn’t listed, then feel free to ask.

“Anyway, that’s all I have for you right now. Thank you all for joining me.”

The red light on the camera goes out, and I blow out my breath.

Yui walks up behind me, then begins to massage my neck and shoulders, which feels heavenly. “Sora, that was great. Actually, better than great. You didn’t get too technical and lose them, but you still explained everything to them in a language they could all understand. By the way, according to the feedback, everyone loved your outfit.”

With my eyes closed, I murmur, “That’s nice, but what about what I was talking about?”

I feel her shrug. “According to the instant feedback notes I saw, maybe 65/35. The 35% are most likely the type that don’t care about anything other than their own narrow interests, and the other 65% were extremely excited. They were fascinated with what you showed them.”

“I’m happy 65% of them were fascinated with this, but if the other 35% weren’t really interested, then why did they watch?”

“Pfft… you already know the answer to that. They simply wanted to see you.”

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