Chapter 174: Chapter 173: There Are More Things…

After the talk with Jenny last night, Chinatsu, Ryu and I left the reception and went home. We locked down our floor and informed Eir that we were not to be disturbed. We take our time this evening, Ryu slowly undresses us, fondling and kissing us as he does. We then return the favor as we undress him.

Chinatsu pushes him over to make him sit on the foot of bed and then looks at me, “Sora, it’s time to tell him.”

Chinatsu and I have been discussing this for a while now, although we never came to a decision of when to do it. I suppose she’s right, that it’s time.

“Alright.” I climb into his lap facing him, give him a long, deep kiss and then hold him close as I tell him, “Honey, listen to me. We love how gentle you are with us when we make love, we really do, but you already know that there are different sides to us, and we’d hoped you would pick this up on your own.” I lean back a little so I can look into his eyes. “We want you to dominate us from time to time, and we mean completely. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Do you mean that you two are submissives?”

Chinatsu cuts in. “Yes and no. We aren’t that easily defined. Look, could you really see either of us as total submissives?” He shakes his head. “Right. You know better than that since you have already seen how aggressive we can be when it comes to sex. We like both being dominant and being dominated. What we want is for you to take total control of us once in a while. Make us do exactly what you want us to do. So, can you do this for us?”

He doesn’t look too sure about it. “I can try.”

I give him a kiss and then smile at him. “Then, try tonight.”

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

Before we play catchup with events, I should probably tell you that Metis and Anubis, the NSA’s level 1 AI, have been busily editing the videos of the attack on Honoka and me that are scattered across the internet. They are also looking for any copies that may have been saved to connected computers. They aren’t really editing the part where the bullets hit me and Honoka, but more the part where I cough up blood a couple of times. They also reduced the amount of blood that drenched our dresses since it was supposed to be paint bullets. As I’ve been told, sometimes less is more.

On to something a little less morbid.

After we requested my followers to come up with names and ran a huge online poll, HighPoint Station won the vote by a large margin. Hey, don’t look at me, I didn’t even vote. I merely had the honor of hosting the live stream to announce the results.

We’ve begun launching construction crews up to HighPoint Station. Nanites will still be doing the bulk of the construction, but there are things that humans are simply better at when it comes to building things.

The outer walls of the station are mostly composed of a stainless steel composite 2 meters thick, but the outermost layer has 150 centimeters of titanium ceramic composite armor bonded to the stainless steel composite. According to Metis, that is strong enough to withstand a kinetic strike from one of the US’s Hammer of God satellites or a 15 gigawatt pulse laser. That’s not saying that there wouldn’t be damage, just that neither of them would penetrate the armor.

You know, there are times when I feel more like the face of the Alliance than the director of research and development. Although, I suppose I do fill both roles. Not long in the past, Yui mentioned that there are well over a thousand hours of my interviews, talks, and live streams available online. Between all of them, they’ve racked up a staggering 450 million plus views. Here’s a little secret for you: no matter how poised and calm I might seem to be in them, I’m actually wound up like a clock spring, but I am getting better at being more relaxed during all of them.

Anyway, sometime in mid-July, Metis is reporting that the first of the tethers should meet up and the others will shortly follow. She estimates that all of the tethers will be complete by the end of July at the latest.

Then comes attaching the carriages. They’ve been built in manageable sections, and final assembly will take place on site. The other sections are still being built and will be transported to the site as they are completed. So far, they’ve built one cargo carriage and two passenger carriages.

The carriages are actually small spaceships. Not just because they go into space, but because in case of some sort of catastrophic failure, they have system drives so that they can detach from the tether and either finish the ascent or land themselves safely. There are more safety and defense systems on the carriages than I could easily relate, so the only way I could see actually someone harming people or cargo in one would be to set off a bomb inside. I doubt that is likely either since all passengers and cargo will be heavily screened before boarding.

Listen, this may seem like overkill on safety, but the elevator system represents an investment of several trillion dollars by the alliance, and a not inconsiderable sum from myself. I was already quite wealthy, but when we begin to see a return on our investment, my great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will never have to spend a single day working unless they want to, although I do hope that they choose to contribute, rather than to sit on their rears.

[Friday, July 1]

Thankfully, today is the last day of school and summer vacation begins. I seriously need the break. Speaking of school, in a couple of days, Sofi, Chinatsu, Honoka and I will be taking the advanced placement test to skip to our 3rd year. We would’ve done it to totally test out of high school, but Dad vetoed that idea.

As to the talk that Jenny had with me on my wedding day. I’ve still yet to find the time to have the meeting they want. There always seems to be something major that crops up and stops me from being able to go.

Today is another day just like that. We launched 3 of the scoop ships designated as the Stardiver class, Proteus, Maelstrom, and Mystic. They have been busily collecting He-3 from Jupiter. We had no real idea about how long it would take for them to fill their holds, but it’s taken just over 6 weeks and they are landing today. So, guess where I will be this afternoon.

I should probably tell you a little about the Stardiver class ships. They are true spacecraft in every sense of the word, but at the same time, they would be better described as space planes since they lift off and land like airplanes. Considering that, we paid to have the landing strips at Tanegashima Space Center reconstructed to be able to handle the heavy loads that the returning Stardivers represent, which is in excess of 1000 metric tons.

That said, after the closing ceremony at school and saying goodbye to all of our friends and classmates, we head home. At home, we head upstairs to change, and I find that Mama has already laid out my outfit for work. A linen bone-colored pleated mini skirt, silk blush-colored sleeveless summer blouse, sheer nude stockings and pink ankle strap open-toe sandals. She also laid out a couple of gold bangles, a woven gold choker, my gold watch with diamond encrusted bezel and gold stud earrings with diamond teardrops. Classy, chic and comfortable, even if the choker is a bit heavy.

I believe my followers will love it when I perform the live stream for the landing. It’s been pointed out to me that a goodly portion of my fans initially followed me because I’m pretty and dress well.

Frankly, if being pretty helped me get my foot in the door so that they would actually listen to whatever I was talking about, it doesn’t bother me in the least. All I care about is igniting their imagination and getting them behind our efforts. One of the reasons I do so many live streams is to keep them involved.

Erica thinks that is the mistake NASA made during the Apollo missions. She surmised that NASA thought that just because it was space that everyone would always remain interested regardless of how repetitive and boring the broadcasts were. NASA should have talked to a PR firm at the very least. It probably would have gone a long way to help keep people’s interest, and the program would’ve likely continued. If it had, I wonder just where humanity would be right now. Would we have a moon base, or colony on Mars? Who knows what could’ve been done if they’d have thought it through a little more.

Of course, we can’t tell them the actual why of what we're doing, but if telling them that we put together an Alliance to pick up where humanity left off in the 1960’s gets them fired up, you bet I’ll do it. In a heartbeat, without any remorse, or a single thought needed.

Anyway, on to the main event of today. Honoka, Yui and I arrive at Tanegashima well ahead of time, so we can get everything set up for my live stream. The makeup team changes the color of my eyeshadow and lipstick, and I’m ready.

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When they tell Yui they’re done, she looks me over and she tells me, “Gorgeous, as always. Great job ladies.” She offers me her hand. “Shall we?”

I take her hand and stand up. “Mhmm. Let’s do this.”

As we walk to the control room, Yui tells me, “The live stream is already running to give people time to join before the ships begin reentry and to spread the word to those who might not know that we are streaming today. All it’s showing right now is the telescope view of them in orbit along with tracking information, with Metis making comments here and there. Apparently, the AIs want to make a show of it as well since they are in a perfect ‘V’ formation. Let’s get you into position because the flight director said that they should begin reentry soon.”

I look at the connection information displayed on my contact to see that we already have 53 million and it’s steadily climbing. I take my place in front of the huge screen that will show the ships as they reenter the atmosphere in just about… 15 minutes.

The clock slowly counts down, and at the ten minute mark, the camera on me goes live.

I smile and wave energetically. “Hello, everyone! I’m so happy that you could join us on this special occasion! Thank you so much!”

Several people ask me to twirl to show them my outfit.

I slowly turn around and then ask, “Do you like it? For those of you who are curious, my skirt is made by Betis, my blouse by Andros and these cute sandals are by Rendo. I have quite a few things made by them.”

Yui throws a comment up on my contact. Many are saying those are really expensive brands.

“Yes, they are expensive brands, but there are far cheaper alternatives that look just as good. A quick search will find them for you. This outfit represents several tens of thousands of yen, but you can put together the same look for several thousand yen if you shop right. Oh, right, for you folks that don’t get the yen to dollar conversion, I’m saying that you can put this look together for less than two hundred dollars.”

I don’t really like playing up this part of my media persona, but one gives the audience what it wants, within reason.

“Anyway, you have no idea how excited I am to be here with you all to witness this historic event. For the first time ever, we’ve sent spacecraft to another planet, and they are returning to land on Earth. You should remember the ships since I am sure most of you joined my live stream of the launch of the Proteus, the Maelstrom, and the Mystic. Mark my words, we’ll be seeing those names in history books.

“Proteus sent her mission video logs of their dive into Jupiter’s atmosphere, so how about we watch some excerpts from it while we wait for them to get in range?”

I glance at some of the replies displayed on my contact and nod. “Great. Shall we, then?”

The scene transitions to the camera view from Proteus as she enters Jupiter’s atmosphere. It jumps around and shakes from the turbulence. She narrates her attempts to adjust trim and ramping up power in the inertial dampener to compensate for the turbulence as she dives deeper into the atmosphere.

A few seconds later, the picture stabilizes with only an occasional mild shake. The view as she dives through the cloud layers is breathtaking to say the least. What is even more fantastical is the occasional lightning bolt that dwarfs anything you could ever see on Earth. Moments later, she opens the upper and lower collection scoops and announces that she is having to increase engine power to compensate for the extra drag. From there, most of what she narrates is scientific jargon explaining particle densities, atmospheric makeup, and the like, although I’m sure the audience is more concerned with the view that dominates everything.

Yui waves at me and taps her watch. I nod and the camera switches back to me.

“Wow! Beautiful, wasn’t it? And, to think that it won’t be too long before people will be able to see that view with their own eyes. Sadly, that’s all we have time for. Yui will make sure that the unclassified portions of Proteus’ video logs are posted soon, so you can watch them whenever you wish. We have a couple of minutes before the ships reach reentry range, so does anyone have a quick question?”

I glance at my contact and Yui posts one. ‘Will we really be able to see Jupiter with our own eyes?’

I smile at the question. “Okay folks, the question was, ‘Will we really be able to see Jupiter with our own eyes?’ You most certainly will, along with Saturn, Neptune, Uranus and so many other places in our solar system. Several of our partner corporations are already working on tour ships that will be able to take you out there to see things for yourselves.

“Folks, I’ve said it many times before, our future is here. All we need do is reach out and grab it. How would you like to help terraform Mars? Or work on Titan collecting hydrocarbons? Or would you like to be the captain of your own asteroid harvester? Or maybe an ice miner? How about a cargo ship captain? They’ll need crews as well. It’s true that we’re using AIs now, but in the long run, that isn’t cost effective.”

I smile brilliantly. “There are so many possibilities. It’ll take us, all of us, working together to remake our solar system into a place for humanity.” Yui taps her watch again. “Okay, it seems that they’re about to begin reentry, so let’s switch over and watch.”

The telescopes pick up the flight of three spacecraft and show it on the main screen behind me. All three craft flip over in sync to face backwards for the deorbit burn. Seconds later, the screen whites out as they light off their engines, which burn for 30 seconds and then shut down. The craft flip back over, their noses pitch up and a few moments later, the craft flare up again as they reach the atmosphere.

I’ll leave out a lot of this as it takes quite a bit of time. The camera picks them up when they get near TSC. The flight is smooth and problem-free, and they touch down in formation at the same time, then taxi to a parking skirt where they allow the craft to cool.

The camera switches back to me. “Sorry, everyone. I realize that this isn’t as exciting as it would be if you were onboard, but to me, it’s exciting to see the historic landing of these three spacecraft.” I wink at the camera. “But, then again, I’m a bit of a geek.”

Yui stifles laughter, and I look at her, then she throws up a few comments along the lines of ‘You’re too cute to be a geek.’

I put on a fake astonished expression, then ask, “Who says geeks can’t be cute?” and giggle. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Lookup Shakespear’s Hamlet, if you don’t know where that came from, my friends… I hope you enjoyed this event. By the way, I’m hoping that you’ll accompany me on the very first ride up to HighPoint when they have the tethers finished, which will be fairly soon. I’ll see you next time.” I blow a kiss at the camera. “Bye!”

The light goes off on the camera. I sigh and look at Yui to say, “This had to be the worst live stream that we’ve ever done.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t say that. The viewership was good, and it never dropped off from the peak of 69 million. Take offs and landings, yes, they are somewhat boring, but when they see those same things done by new types of spacecraft that they’ve never seen before? I’d say that it’s at least somewhat interesting. Commentary from viewers was good throughout the broadcast as well. A lot of it was people wishing that they could’ve been on board them when they were in Jupiter’s atmosphere and for the landing. People are interested, Sora. They want to go to space themselves. The numbers show that.” She shrugs. “Besides, weren’t you the one who told me that much of space travel is being bored to tears, followed by brief moments of terror? In my opinion, you’re doing extremely well with the material you have, and remember, no one can ever please everyone, but then again, you already know that.”

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