Chapter 176: Chapter 175: A Constitutional What? (Part 2)

During the video call, there was a lot of talk about the situation. None of which alleviated my anxiety. Especially since Mama and Dad seemed to ignore my concerns. For the most part, they seem to be all for it.

Ryu, bless his heart, said that regardless of what I thought, I’d make a wonderful queen, while Chinatsu had much to say. I’m not going to go into all of it, other than her heated reaction would convert winter snow into summer water. After her reaction, the one person I’d thought would be totally against this, turned out to only ask one thing with a smug grin plastered across her face, “We’ll be royalty too, right?”

You can say many things about my family, but if they think it’s the right course of action, you can bet that I’ll end up getting pushed into a corner and left with little choice except to do it.

If I’m honest with myself, I’ll do it. Not because I believe that I’m the only one who can or anything remotely like that since there are much more qualified people out there than me. It’s merely the fact that regardless of any other arguments, I know that bringing humanity together is the right thing to do. We need to be united, our survival depends on it, and if that means me being their queen to bring us all together, then that’s what I’ll do. That means me taking responsibility, yet again, no matter how much I may hate it.

I lean back in my seat and close my eyes, wondering how they can all agree to this so easily. God may know what this is going to do to my life now, but I sure don’t. This could very well mean me promoting Erica to COO of DTI. However, I still want to be heavily involved in what they are doing. What can I say, it’s fascinating to see the developments as they’re made, and I really do enjoy helping with the projects.

Whatever. Procrastinating isn’t going to help anything. Sighing, I stand up and head back into Jenny’s office.

The moment I open the door, the conversations in the room stop. Stepping inside, I gently close the door behind me. Looking around the room at everyone, I clear my throat. “I have a couple of stipulations.”

Everyone nods and Anne says, “And, those are?”

“You aren’t going to lock me away in some palace. I still get to be involved with research and development. I have a lot of things that I still want and need to do.”

Anne smiles. “Sweety, we never planned to lock you away, and we already assumed that you wouldn’t want to give up your directorship.”

I look around the room again and state, “For the record, I’m still against this. There has to be someone better qualified than me.”

“Princess, we already explained that it has little to do with that. It’s all about who would be approved. Regardless, being a queen, a president, or whatever, isn’t much different than being the director of a company.”

Anne chimes in with, “Jenny’s right. So, your other stipulation?”

“I get to keep Jason’s and Igor’s teams as my security. You can make them into the Queen’s Guard or whatever, but I’m comfortable with them, and they know me.”

Anne replies, “Alright. Agreed. Anything else?”

I shake my head. “Not at the moment, but I’m sure that other things will occur to me later.”

Jenny stands up and announces, “Excellent. Now that this is settled, why don’t we eat lunch. I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m starving.”

We eat lunch, and afterward, Honoka and I go to see the stylist to have several centimeters trimmed from my hair, then she washes it, dries it, and then styles it in a braided updo.

With my promise to Mama fulfilled, we head to Jenny’s office where I tell her, “We’d like to tour a few of the sites here in Washington DC.”

“Such as?”

“I’d like to see the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, and most definitely the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.”

“You realize the secret service is going to have a fit, right?”

I shrug. “Like we told them on New Year’s, we can go with or without them, it makes little difference to us since we have our own security here, even if they have been banned from the White House. Frankly, Jenny, they may have the right to control your movements, but they don’t with ours.”

She smiles and rests her chin in her hand. ”Well, now, Princess. Look at you, and you say that you don’t have what it takes to be a queen.”

“I don’t want this, but I’ll do it for one reason and do it to the best of my ability.”

“What reason is that?”

I shrug. “You already know. Earth needs to be united. Not as a loose alliance of 105 separate nations with different rulers and differing laws, but as one people. There are 195 nations on Earth, it’s no wonder nothing ever got done.”

“105 of them are in the alliance. Except for China, the remainder are rather small countries.”

“We’re taking our first steps into a much larger universe. We’ll have colonies on the moon, Mars, habitats that orbit other planets. Imagine the chaos if they set up their own governments as well. We’re going to have to find some way of bringing those countries into the alliance. I’m betting the smaller countries thought that they had nothing to offer so they never applied. China...” I sigh. “They are an entirely different matter.”

“That’s why I’ll need you, Anne, Koya and all the rest to help put this together. I’m positive that it’ll be a heck of a fight, but we have no choice… Jenny, you’ve heard of the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, right?”

“I have and understand the basics of it. Why?”

“There are some 300 billion suns in the Milkyway galaxy. If only 20% of those stars are G2V stars like our sun, that is 60 billion G2V class stars. If only 10% of those have Earth-like planets, that’s 6 billion planets that carbon-based life could develop on. Then assume that intelligent life only developed on 6 million planets. Assuming again, that life developed at the same time ours did and at the same pace, what do you think our odds would be of running into them now that we have the technical ability to reach other solar systems?”

“I have no idea, but I’d think it would be pretty low.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Well, you did say it’d be 6 million out of 60 billion.”

I nod. “One in a thousand chance. Think about it, Jenny. We will be visiting those systems looking for habitable planets, so those are pretty high odds. Look at us, we’re an extremely hostile race to anything that’s different. What if we run across a civilization that is even more xenophobic and warlike than we are? We wouldn’t stand a chance without standing together.”

“Princess, those are all good points, but that’s sometime in the future.”

I shake my head. “The Side Step drive works, now. We can cross our solar system from edge to edge in less than 30 seconds, and that’s using the Beta band to do it. That works out to 1.162761x10e-7 lightyears per second. 61 Virginis is a G type star that is 27.9 lightyears away. So, assume we built a 200 m long by 70 m wide flattened oval scout ship, which is what we’re designing right now, it would only take about a day to reach it just using the Beta band.” Her astonished expression makes me smile. “What? Did you think we were playing around over at DTI?”

“No, I didn’t. I simply never thought you had developed anything so advanced.”

“We have, and we’re building the ship to intercept 19274 right now. It’ll be manned, but with a level 2 AI to back them up. 225 meters long, 7 decks of crew compartments, cargo capacity for 700 metric tons of nanites to build the engines on it, along with the power plant for it and a heavily armored AI to pilot the asteroid into Mars orbit.”

“What about the design of the ships that General Hastings asked for?”

“Don’t you think most of those can wait until after we’ve captured and safely parked 19274 around Mars? We already built the Archer and Peregrine class. He also wants a fighter/bomber and heavy bombers.”

“What else did he ask for?”

“Ha! He wants the whole fleet. The man doesn’t think small either.”

“Meaning?”

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“Scout, rescue/medical, frigates, destroyers, cruisers, battle cruisers, assault carriers, battleships, dreadnoughts, carriers and supercarriers. That’s what I mean.”

“Well, in his defense, he is military, and you know how they think. More firepower is better.”

“Jenny, in the proposed design that he had his people submit, he’s asking for 53 centimeter plasma cannons on the dreadnoughts. That doesn’t count the secondary, tertiary, and defensive armaments. He could take out HighPoint station with those.”

“Well, Princess, let me play devil’s advocate, don’t you think we’d need those ships if, like you said, we met an extremely aggressive alien species?”

“I understand that and yes, we would, but we aren’t planning on sending out scout ships until we’re more established in space. Why do you think I wanted to build a ring around Earth? As an orbital defense platform for one since even very small asteroids can do a lot of damage.”

“How much?”

I shrug and think for a minute. “A 1 meter nickel-iron asteroid that hits Earth at 20 km/s would release about the same energy as a 600 kiloton nuclear weapon.”

Her eyes widen and she says, “That’s… almost unbelievable.”

“If you think that’s unbelievable, then you ought to see the designs for the ships General Hastings wants.”

“I’d be interested to see that sometime soon.”

I nod. “Sure, anytime… Now, about our sightseeing.”

She turns to the agent in the room. “Ask Sherman to come to my office, please.”

He quietly murmurs into his lapel mic and a few moments later says, “He’ll be here in a few moments.”

Suffice it to say that he shows up, and after some initial resistance, he tells us to give him an hour to make some calls to set things up. It was easy to tell he wasn’t happy about the whole thing, but I’m sure he knew that we’d be going either way. He was even more unhappy when Anne and George showed up and decided that they wanted to go with us.

I’m not going to say much about it, but looking at the Bill of Rights gave me some ideas, which I will talk about later. I found the National Air and Space Museum to be fascinating. You know, I’d never given much thought to space, other than enjoying looking at the stars and the moon, until Kazuto and I had our conversation, but I really do want to go to the HighPoint stations, the moon and Mars. Who knows where else, but with me being made queen, I don’t see me being allowed to go to other planets.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

[Monday, July 4]

A maid wakes us at 8 in the morning, Honoka and I shower and dress.

For me, that is a white, halter top, summer dress, nude stockings and black ankle boots. Honoka chose a seafoam green babydoll dress, nude stockings and her dark grey ankle boots.

Then we eat breakfast with Jenny, Mark, Anne and George.

As we’re eating, George irks me when he says, “Sora, you do realize that you won’t be able to dress that way for much longer. It’s… inappropriate.”

Shocked that he would say something like that since I think I dress quite well, as well as being a bit angry, I state, “Excuse me?!”

Jenny chuckles and says, “This I have to hear.”

He looks a bit flustered as he presses on to state, “You have to admit that her dresses are on the short side. Royalty doesn’t show that much skin.”

Beside him, Anne says, “George, I love you, but you can be an idiot at times. There’s no rules stating how she should dress other than for events.”

I set down my fork. “I, my family, and the over 60 million people that follow me on social media happen to think that I dress very well. I show my shoulders or part of my thighs and ‘Gasp! That’s inappropriate!’ Tell me, is the world going to come to a halt because a queen shows some skin?”

He frowns. “Well, no, but…”

I adamantly state, “No, buts. George, Anne and you will be my regent, but you will not try to change me in that respect. I’ll dress how I want to dress, and that’s final. I assure you that even after my coronation, you’ll be seeing me dressed exactly like this, if not in shorter skirts or dresses, not to mention bikinis.” I quirk an eyebrow and smirk. “If you think this shows too much skin, just wait until I wear a shoulderless crop top and hot pants, and believe me, I will be wearing them.”

Jenny bursts out laughing. “George, you should have thought that through before you opened your mouth.”

As you can guess, the subject was dropped and never brought up again.

On to this evening. It’s not a large gathering, only about 40 people, but it also includes several members of the alliance. A couple of them ask me when they can expect delivery of the power plants they ordered. I merely refer them to DTI since that isn’t something that I personally track.

The bar-b-que is as delicious as the one we had in Okinawa, and the fireworks are even more impressive.

[Tuesday, July 5]

After we dress and eat, Jenny and Anne inform me that a press conference is set for this afternoon to announce the new government and my leadership as queen.

The groan I let out should tell you exactly what I thought of the idea. Regardless, Honoka and I head back to our room to find something appropriate to wear, and after much digging and debating, I take my phone out of my pocket and call Mama.

She answers a moment later with a cheerful, “Hi, Sweetheart.”

“Hi, Mama. I have a problem. There’s a press conference to announce the new government and my ascension, and I have nothing appropriate to wear with me. Can you pick out something and send it to me? I’ll send the Peregrine to you to get it.”

“Of course. Do you mind if your father and I come as well? We’d love to be there.”

I’d hoped that they would. “Actually, why doesn’t everyone come? And afterwards, we can fly home together.”

“Okay, I’ll get everyone rounded up and ready. We’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Alright, thanks, and I love you.”

“I love you, too, baby girl.”

“Mama, I don’t think you can call me that anymore, considering. I’ll see you soon. Bye.”

I end the call, and then call the pilot and tell him what I need him to do. After ending that call, I place my phone back in my pocket, then rub my eyes and sigh as I think, ‘This is all moving so fast.’

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