Chapter 170: Chapter 169: Plans within Plans

Winter vacation came and went without me being able to do anything special with our family. It’s not the least bit surprising due to how busy I am. Of course, it was also Dad being busy at work and Mama not wanting to drag twin one-year-olds around.

Christmas was a small, family and boyfriends only affair. Mama and Dad decided not to have a New Years Eve party though.

So, when I made a call to ask Jenny if we could visit for New Year’s and she said yes, Mama took Honoka and I gown shopping. I ended up in a gorgeous strapless, lavender, floor-length one with a split up to the top of my right thigh. The one Mama picked out for Honoka is a spaghetti strap, scoop neck, sky blue, floor-length one with a split up her left leg to mid-thigh.

One thing, Jenny took the fertility treatment, and it didn’t work the first time. The second one took, though, and she’s now fertile and very happy about it.

Honoka and I fly to Washington DC to visit with Jenny and Mark. We get to spend a week with them. Trust me, you have no idea how much negotiating it took for us to be able to do that.

We arrive on the evening of the 28th and are taken up to see Jenny and Mark in the residence. Nothing more than the usual today, saying hello, hugs, coffee and catching up on things we didn’t talk about on the phone. Anyway, on to one of the primary reasons for my visit.

“What I’m going to talk about here can’t be repeated to anyone.”

They both reply with some form of, “Alright.”

“Jenny, I want you to take my nanites.”

“Princess, I already did that remember?”

I slowly shake my head. “No. No, you didn’t.”

She looks a little confused. “Then?”

“All the women in my family have my nanites. You have to be fertile for them to take, though, so that’s why I asked you to take the fertility treatment. My nanites… I really need to come up with a name for them other than simply calling them ‘my nanites.’ Basically, they provide a lot of benefits. A longer life, you’ll never get sick and they heal you if you ever get hurt as long as whatever it was wasn’t instantly fatal. They are also passed on to your children with the same benefits.”

“And, they are safe?”

I nod. “Quite safe, but they will likely make some changes to you.”

This goes on for a while, but she finally says that she wants them, but only after I explained to her that we were researching nanites that do the same for men.

You likely have a good idea about how packed the venue is the White House booked for New Years Eve when we walk in. Of course, Honoka and I are by far the youngest ones there, but it doesn’t seem to deter the number of men who ask us to dance. Though both of us still wish that we could’ve brought Ryu and Jim with us, fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, my status as a celebrity precedes me, and that means that I spent a huge amount of time on the dance floor.

Can someone please explain to me what it is about fathers trying to set their 20-something year old sons up with a 15 year old young lady who’s already engaged? Especially when it’s common knowledge how happy I am with Ryu. Yes, I understand that I’m very pretty, wealthy, and I have perfect genes. I say that because my nanites would have long ago corrected any defects in my DNA. Plus, I’m famous, but I still don’t get it. Men can be so strange. Regardless of that, the evening was still somewhat enjoyable.

One thing I am grateful for is that I didn’t have to play whack-a-mole once.

[Thursday, January 1, 2060]

The one thing Mama made us promise to do was to go to a Buddhist temple and pray today. So, here the two of us are, just before sunrise and we’re putting on our kimonos. I’d told Jenny about us needing to do it, and at first, let’s just say that the secret service was disinclined to let us go.

That changed though when Honoka shrugged and told them, “We don’t need your permission to go where we wish. We’ll be more than happy to meet our security at the main gate and then go.”

They looked at me, and I told them, “You heard my sister. The decision has been made.” I shrug and smile wryly because all of us know that there’s no way that they would let us go without them. If something happened to us, well, I’ll leave that to your imagination, but it wouldn’t be good. “We’re going, with or without you and on second thought, I believe we’d much prefer without.”

Anyway, back to the present. You simply can not walk fast in a kimono. Small steps are required, otherwise you’ll trip, and our escorts grumbled about that fact. At one point, we were slowly making our way inside the temple when I heard one of them harrumph loudly and whirled on him. “You put one of these on and see how fast you can move, mister! These are made to look good, not move fast!” I look at Honoka. “We’ve never had this attitude from Jason’s team that these people give.”

After we got back from the temple, Jenny took me down to the White House infirmary, where they took some blood and confirmed that I have type O-neg blood. O-neg is a universal donor if you don’t know. 10 milliliters of blood being taken from me later, Jenny was given it, and thankfully, they took on the first attempt. I kind of thought it was cute and funny that she would stop and look at herself in darn near every mirror we came across for the next few days.

They didn’t make much in the way of changes to her measurements, but she looks quite a bit younger now, as in her late 20’s or very early 30’s, and her hair grew out 15 centimeters. She showed me pictures of herself back in college, and I have to say, she looks much better now than she did then. Not that she wasn’t good looking then either.

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She and Mark are quite pleased with what they did for her. Although I earned the animosity of several secret service agents, two of which Jenny ended up dismissing from her detail over the way they treated me. Before we left, I was still pulled aside by several of them and told that while they didn’t know exactly what I did, that they were glad I did it because of how happy and energetic Jenny is now.

Hmm… maybe not all of them have the personality of a rock.

[Monday, January 5]

We flew home today, and for the whole flight home, I’ve been antsy and irritable. I know exactly what’s causing it, too. So, no sooner do we land and say hello to everyone, than I literally drag Ryu and Chinatsu up to our bedroom and lock down our floor so that we won’t be disturbed. No sex for a week? Damn right, I’m horny as hell and irritable. Trust me, it’s a long night for the three of us, and if it weren’t for my nanites, I’d be extremely sore. Though, we did sleep quite well afterward.

[Saturday, January 10, 2060]

Murphy’s Law about made me wet myself this afternoon when we were watching Helios change orbital tracks and a piece of debris hit one of the cables, snapping it in half like it was made of thread. Several tense minutes pass as we hold our collective breaths, praying for nothing else to happen.

Imagine the amount of energy required to snap a grade 5 titanium alloy cable that is 30 centimeters in diameter. Thankfully, Metis and Helios determine that the loss of the cable isn’t going to need any changes to be made to, or endanger, the mission. Once he’s changed his track and shut down his engine, he deploys nanites to repair the cable.

I glance at Erica and Katsuo. “We need better detection equipment as well as installing defense systems that can keep that from happening. While we’re at it, we might as well have them build satellites to clean up all the debris from Earth’s orbit.”

It’s been made more than apparent to me for quite some time that the more we accomplish, the more we find out that we have to do. It’s a never ending, vicious cycle. Seems like a good time to expand again anyway since we just had a fresh influx of money from the coalition. While I’m thinking about it, at the next conference we need to come up with a better name than, ‘The Coalition’ since we have been getting more applications lately. I dunno, United Earth something or other.

Muse is due to return tomorrow with the first load of He-3. It’s less than hoped, but still far more than what’s available on Earth. Regardless, the 97 metric tons they’ve collected will go a long way to alleviating the worries about the amount He-3 we have on hand and allow us to finish the reactors that so many nations have been waiting for us to complete. They’re already built, simply waiting for the fuel to power them. We also need to build a few more ships like Muse to speed up collection or expand how and where we collect it.

No matter how you think about it, we need a far larger scale of supply of He-3. If we had enough He-3, we could massively expand our reactor production facilities. That would mean lots of high paying jobs and a rather large income for DTI and the coalition.

Thankfully, the moon isn’t the only place that we can get He-3 either, although the other sources present some interesting issues. It’s located in very large amounts in the atmospheres of the Jovian planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Jupiter is the closest to us, and according to all the readings taken over the years, has a very large amount of He-3, but it has problems that make it difficult for us to collect it. Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system and has a very deep gravity well. As such, that makes continuous retrieval of He-3 somewhat of a hassle. Jupiter also has a very strong electromagnetic field which generates some rather extreme radiation, too. Only the farthest out of its moons are not affected by it. So of course, some sort of shielding will be required to operate in the area.

Saturn, Uranus and Neptune have also been shown to have an abundance of He-3. Although, we’d face many of the same obstacles there as we would at Jupiter.

Another thing, as much as humanity has moved away from using hydrocarbons, they are still needed for many everyday things. We’re not facing the same pressure we once were since the population has been reduced by so much, but we still have limited supplies. However, according to all the data, Titan has hundreds of times more than all of the hydrocarbons ever found on Earth. Just imagine a moon where hydrocarbons fall like rain from the sky, collating in vast deposits that are easily collected. Of course, there are obstacles that we’d have to overcome there, too.

I believe it would be best to set up a small group of engineers to work on the actual mechanics of doing this and then design the ships we’d need. Definitely something to discuss with Erica and Katsuo. As usual, nothing is as easy or as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. Frankly, I’m astounded that things have gone as smoothly, and as quickly, as they have so far. There’s a good reason that we have plans within plans, and plans within those plans.

[Saturday, January 24]

Today is Sofi’s 15th birthday. She was happier than a kitten with a box to play in when Mama and Dad agreed to allow Kei to host her birthday party. We still held a small short party for her this morning at the house, and she opened her presents from all of us.

[Tuesday, January 27]

At 1148 UCT today, Helios made the final adjustments to 19355’s orbit. Then he waited while Metis made even more precise calculations on its final position. When Metis finished, she was happy to report that Helios had its final position well within tolerances. We held a small celebration to Helios’ successful mission. The news also reported many more such celebrations around the world.

So, the next order of business is for Helios to deploy the nanites to break down the cabling and anchors. He’ll return to Earth after that to pick up several hundred metric tons of nanites that will begin harvesting and hollowing out 19355.

When he delivers them, he’ll be heading out again to pick up a carbonaceous asteroid and bring it back. It’s a short trip this time since they are much lighter and easier to maneuver than nickel-iron ones are. If you’re wondering why we’re bringing it back, that’s because it’s needed to make the carbon nanotube interwoven with synthetic diamond threads that the tethers will be constructed of. Carbon nanotubes and synthetic diamond threads are light, yet extremely strong. So, they are a perfect combination for the tethers.

Once all the resources are ready, even more nanites will be deployed to create the guide cables. After that, more nanites to construct the main elevator tethers. To begin with, there will be 20 of them, and when complete, each pair of tethers will have its own carriage. There are plans to expand the total up to 80 tethers. The cargo carriages, when fully laden, will reach geosynchronous orbit in about 6 hours. Passenger carriages will take around 4 hours to reach geosynchronous orbit. Right now, we’re limited by how much g-force the people or cargo can withstand. When we improve the inertial dampeners, the travel time will be decreasing.

If the designs for the passenger carriages hold true, the view during ascent is going to be a sight to behold, and if I have anything to say about it, I’ll be amongst the first to make that ascent.

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