Chapter 182: Chapter 181: Check In

[Aug 27, Saturday]

Today, we spend the morning telling the staff what to pack so that we can fly out to England. After that, we eat breakfast with Ryu and then spend the day with him, until we have to leave.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Ryu is now a Duke, Chinatsu a Duchess. Also, now that the Crown government is up and running, George and Anne have given up their titles of king and queen, and assumed their other titles of Duke and Duchess.

Anyway, our bags are loaded on the Peregrine shortly before 6 this evening. Ryu, of course is going with us as he will be attending St Paul’s School for Boys close to us, which, in my opinion, is so much better than him attending one much further away. Otherwise, it would be rather hard to see him that much because I’ll probably spend much of my weekends dealing with affairs of state.

The flight only takes us half an hour, and we land at around 10:30 in the morning at Heathrow airport. We’re met by our driver, Jackson Murphy, and a butler from Kensington Palace, Michael Adam. If you can’t guess, we will be staying at Kensington Palace rather than in the dorms at St. Paul’s due to security issues.

Speaking of security. Not only will the Queens’ Guard be protecting us while we attend classes, but the Crown military will be outside the school, restricting access to the area within 1 kilometer, and no one who doesn’t live in the area will be allowed through the roadblocks. Then there is the restriction of overflight. No planes will be allowed within 16 kilometers. The restrictions remain in place while we are attending classes, and even then, the military is checking ID for those who enter St. Pauls.

I consider it overkill, but then again, there have been death threats against me. Needless to say, I’d much rather not be shot again or have someone try to blow up the school. Being shot might be unlikely to kill me, but it’s excruciatingly painful while my nanites heal me, so I’d much rather not go through that a second time, and I darn sure don’t want someone to attempt to blow up the school.

We drop by the palace, and the staff takes our bags in, then the driver takes us to our schools. First, we drop off Ryu, and then we head to our school. Once there, we make our way to the office and check in, get our schedules, all AP classes, or A-level as they are called here, of course, and class assignments. It should be patently obvious, but we are all in the same classes.

At the school, the head mistress meets us at the curb, curtsies and introduces herself, “Your Majesty, I’m Grace Smyth, the headmistress here. Welcome to St. Paul’s. It’s an honor to have you here with us.”

I smile pleasantly as I reply, “Thank you. Please, don’t stand on formality while I attend here, I’d much prefer you call me Sora, or if nothing else, Mrs. Ueno. This…” I gesture to each of them as I introduce them, “is my wife Chinatsu, our older sister, Honoka and our little sister, Sofia, although she prefers Sofi.”

She nods and says, “Pleased to meet you all. After you check in with the office and get your schedules, would you like a tour to get the layout of the campus?”

I look at my sisters, who nod, so I tell her, “That sounds lovely. Thank you.”

She takes us to the office, then on a tour of the campus as she tells us about the school’s history, prominent alumni and the like, then smiles at me and says, “Of course, you’ll also be listed amongst the prominent alumni, too.”

We end up back at the main entrance for the high school, where she bids us goodbye and tells us that she’ll see us Monday, then we head back to Kensington Palace.

[Aug 28, Sunday]

We’re spending the day exploring the city to see what it has to offer in the way of shopping, restaurants and cafés. While we were doing so, I saw the cutest little burgundy A-line mini dress and bought it.

[Aug 29, Monday]

Of course, today, school begins, and like so many other mornings, we start off our day making love. After that is the usual: bathing; getting dressed, which for me entails the burgundy dress I bought yesterday along with nude, glossy stockings and my white suede knee boots; and then making our way downstairs to the dining room to eat.

The headmistress meets us at the SUV and tells me that she’d like to introduce me during the opening ceremony. Sighing internally, I agree, and she tells my sisters to head into the auditorium and leads me, with Jason following several steps behind, to a side door. Inside, we head backstage.

She turns to me and says, “Please wait here until I call for you, Mrs. Ueno.”

I nod and smile because she called me Mrs. Ueno rather than Your Majesty, which is exactly what I wanted.

She walks up to the podium and taps on the mic. “Good morning, ladies. Settle down, please.” It takes a moment, but they settle down, and she continues. “Welcome back to the new term.

“At last, this beautiful day has arrived. I am sure you all have been not so eagerly waiting for this day.” The students chuckle for a few moments.

You are reading story Upside Down at novel35.com

“The fact that not all of us love coming to school is not surprising. Catching up with your friends and/or meeting your favorite teacher are just a couple of reasons to enjoy it, but we can’t avoid coming to school if we want to succeed in life. Life… Is… Learning. It’s an unavoidable fact. Without knowledge, understanding is impossible, and that leaves you subject to the chaotic ebb and flow of life.

“It’s a great pleasure seeing your bright, shining faces all gathered here for our first assembly after summer break. Without taking up too much of your time, I want to mention my personal mantra for those of you who are new students here. It inspires me as much today as it did when I first came up with it back in high school. It kept me going, striving to achieve more, even if I failed a hundred times.

“Your potential is only limited by your imagination and diligence.

“On another note: I’m delighted to finally be able to dispel the rumors that have been floating around, and I wish a very hearty welcome to the presence of a young lady, who hardly needs any introduction, Her Majesty, Queen Sora Ueno.”

She gestures to me as the room erupts in gasps and very loud chatter. I smile and wave as I walk over to the podium to take the headmistress’ place, and then wait, giving them a chance to settle down.

Once they have, I begin, “Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here. I’ve been told great things about St. Pauls. Duchess Anne attended this school, and she gushes about her time here. Hopefully, my time here will be as memorable.

“I hope to get to know many of you. You’ll find, even though I am your Queen, that I’m nothing more than an average girl. More than likely, I enjoy the same things you do. Shopping, hanging out with friends and boyfriend, or in my case my husband and wife. I didn’t ask for this life, yet here I am, Queen to some 500 million citizens. Regardless, Queen I may be, but before anything else, I’m a perfectly normal girl, good friend,” I look at Chinatsu and smile, “and wife. I sincerely hope that you take the time, and opportunity, to get to know me.

“I’ve already asked this of the headmistress, but I pray that all of you respect my wish to be treated like any other student here. That means, I should be called Sora, not Your Majesty. I get enough of that already. I have no need for more of it, making me feel as if I’m on the outside looking in. Let’s have a wonderful year. I’ll see you around campus.”

I again smile and wave as they clap while I make my way off stage. The headmistress then dismisses everyone to head to class.

We all take our seats in class with Jason standing at the back of the classroom. Our instructor arrives shortly, and introduces herself, “Good morning. I’m Gloria Hudson. I’ll be your history instructor.”

Class is short today, since all it consists of is receiving our laptops and digital school books.

　◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇ ◆ ◇

I’m going to jump ahead to June 2062 since not much really happens. My life revolves around school, and when required, outings with my family and the friends we’ve made, and dealing with signing bills into law. I did irk congress early on though, since they sent me a bill that had innumerable riders included. I immediately vetoed it and sent it back to them along with a note saying that it may have been the way things used to be done, but I wouldn’t sign any bill that had riders. Only one bill at a time, or I’d keep vetoing them. Sorry, I’m not having things buried deep within legislation to hide it from the public. I meant what I said about citizens getting a government they can trust.

Speaking of trust. Several members of local government and more than a few prosecutors have been arrested during this time, even though they were warned. I suppose they thought that I was joking. They found out that I wasn’t by any means, and those government officials are now serving the remainder of their lives in prison. The prosecutors are serving various sentences due to not doing as they were told about clearing the cases where they knew that the accused was innocent. Hopefully, the others will take it as a lesson learned, and that will be the end of it. We’ll have to see.

HighPoint station has been completed and is undergoing final outfitting. Much of it has been finished, and there are already 100k+ permanent residents. I should mention that once Lone Star station and the orbital ring are complete, we are going to begin building an elevator on Mars. Nanites have already been dropped there and are busily tunneling to the core to reactivate it. Capturing comets and the like is already under way. Both to make the lakes in the orbital anchors and to drop them on Mars. Orbital mirrors are also being built to warm up Mars by directing more sunlight onto the planet.

Helios’ sister ships have been built, and have quickly been put into service after integration testing. Helios set the asteroid for Lone Star station in place several months ago and, along with Electra and Merope, is busily collecting more nickel-iron asteroids and placing them at L4 and L5. Maea, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaino, Sterope, Alectrona, Antheia, and Aphae are collecting carbonaceous asteroids to build the tethers.

For the military, several scout ships, innumerable fighters, fighter/bombers, heavy bombers and drop ships are complete. That’s in addition to the destroyers, frigates, medical/rescue ships, cruisers, assault carriers, and carriers. They’ve held off on building battle cruisers, dreadnaughts, and super carriers for the moment. Resources are being stretched to the limit at the moment, so it makes perfect sense to wait to build those. Once we have enough carbon asteroids to make the tethers, the other ships will be assigned to collect nickel-iron asteroids to begin constructing the other ships and the orbital ring.

One rather bright note: Enrico figured out a way to run the QC device with only 5 kilowatts of power, and it’s now only 12 x 21 x 28 centimeters. Rather small in my opinion.

Tests on the new sensor suite were phenomenal. I’m sure you all know how small Voyager 2 is. The new sensor array easily picked it up in Interstellar space, roughly 40 billion kilometers from Earth, and it also had no problem detecting one of the scout ships in side step coming back from its test flight to Proxima Centauri, 4.25 light years away. I’m so proud of the engineers who designed it.

The metallurgy division has been working with a new type of metal that was found in the asteroid that Helios brought back to use for Lone Star station. According to them, it has more tensile strength than tungsten, although it’s not as brittle. They’ve already requested more of the material. Oh, they named it Durinium. They are confident that we will run across more metals in the asteroid belt.

Onto what I consider to be the most exciting thing to happen. Jim and Kei asked Honoka and Sofi to marry them at dinner one evening. They both happily said yes, and their weddings will be held sometime this summer once Mama has it all planned out. It will be taking place at our summer house on Miyagi island since we’ll be going there anyway for a 2 week vacation. Jenny, Anne, George and many others will be going with us as well.

Oh, Jenny is pregnant with her first and it’s a girl! Saying they are overjoyed is putting it far too mildly. I’m looking forward to the baby shower. Take a wild guess at who the Godmothers and Godfather are. She keeps asking me about when I’m going to have a child, even though I keep telling her that I have no plans to get pregnant until after I graduate from college. Can you imagine me pregnant and attempting to go to classes in addition to everything else I need to do? Yeah, not happening.

You can find story with these keywords: Upside Down, Read Upside Down, Upside Down novel, Upside Down book, Upside Down story, Upside Down full, Upside Down Latest Chapter