Chapter 192: Chapter 191: Epilogue

The next few months revolve around taking care of our children, who are growing like little weeds, and both of them seem to want to feed every 2 hours or so. Breastfeeding is a great way to bond with your baby, and both Chinatsu and I are doing it, but it doesn’t allow for a lot of sleep. Let’s just say that Chinatsu and I stay tired because of it, and more than once, I’ve fallen asleep while feeding Akane. Both of them are happy and healthy as can be. After many tests, the doctor told us they are as genetically perfect as we are. Meaning, no tendencies for genetic diseases or abnormalities. Nanites are wonderful little things, program them with the right knowledge, and they fix any problems that might arise.

I still have my duties, and I do my best not to shirk them, but the children take priority over everything else. It irks some members of congress when I push their appointment or decline to join committee meetings, but it isn’t as if they can really say much, and they know I can simply dismiss them if they cause me too many headaches. Something that I would be rather hesitant to use, but I do have the option. Sometimes, it’s good to be the queen.

After much research at DTI in conjunction with TGR, huge areas of deserts in several places around the world have been taken over by the commonwealth military to build what they are calling nanite baths, if you can call something the size of a small sea a bath. Basically, you program some controller nanites, release them into the bath, dump in the needed materials, and they direct the builder nanites to build whatever it is you programmed them for.

At the moment, it’s only our smaller ships that are being built using them. Even so, not everything to make the ships can be built in the nanite baths as ships are rather complex machines. The basic builder nanites can create the ship’s basic structures. But when it comes to things like their inertial dampeners, gravity systems, shield systems, AI cores, system drives, and jump engines, those are rather complex machines, so it takes specially programmed nanites to build them.

I’m rather reluctant to allow it, but Mirai, Erica, and Katsuo all say the engineers are adamant that we can do the same thing for larger ships in orbit. I can just imagine what would happen if some idiot flew their ship into a blob of ship-building nanites. Otherwise, I do believe the idea has merit, though. Maybe I’ll allow them to do it in a stationary orbit in the shadow of Mercury. Other than the belt, Mercury is a valuable source of the heavy elements needed for building ships. That makes more sense to me, since only unmanned ships and nanites are used there, and civilian ships and personnel aren’t allowed within 100k kilometers of it.

On to other things of interest.

The Dark Energy project is on the front burner again. All due to some crazy, and I mean that literally, research in India. A researcher there got the wild idea of creating pocket universes. He originally wanted to create his own private paradise, of which he would be a God. Hence, the crazy part, or maybe he should be said to be crazy like a fox. Either way works in my opinion.

Regardless, in doing so, he was able to create pocket dimensions. In and of itself, that isn’t all that amazing, since it’s basically like creating a warp bubble. BUT, one of the people working with him had the wild, some say outlandish and dangerous idea, of compressing said dimension. What he was hoping to accomplish by doing so, he had no idea. He simply said he wanted to see what would happen. So, with that in mind, he did it and managed to capture far more dark matter in a few microseconds than we’ve ever been able to in all the years the project has been running at DTI. Of course, the dark matter is unusable in that form, but it’s a massive amount of potential energy nonetheless, which slowly ‘evaporates’ from the pocket dimension since they begin to deteriorate after a few days and are completely gone after a couple of weeks.

He had no idea what to do with it, so he simply published his work and moved on. His published work caught Athena’s attention, who brought it to Erica’s attention, and so on. The researcher was then invited to DTI to replicate said experiment, only this time with the help of the dark energy project researchers. After much experimentation, they found a way to transfer the compressed dark matter from the pocket dimension into a containment field to stabilize it and keep it from evaporating.

That was the turning point for the project. According to the researchers, the relatively small pocket dimension they created at DTI held enough dark matter to power Earth for the next thousand years or so. Now, they have to work on producing an interface to allow them to make use of the energy produced, and that’s the sticky part. We’ve devoted a rather large sum of money and some of the best minds the Sol System has to offer to the project in the hopes that they can figure it out. It also has the potential to revolutionize dimensional jumps since the energy to enter higher bands will likely become available.

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[July 2070]

Akane is getting quite big. Of course, so is her best friend and brother, Ichiro. The two of them are social butterflies. The public loves them, and they receive lots of presents from the citizens. We do not shield our kids from the public. Akane is the crown princess and has to be comfortable dealing with them, and since Akane and Ichiro are almost inseparable, so does he. Akane also spends a lot of time with me, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. Needless to say, she has congress wrapped around her tiny little fingers.

Thank God for the nannies, or I’d never have time for anything else. Plus, Chinatsu and I are pregnant again with Ryu’s babies, though our next babies will be Chinatsu’s and mine. I’m having a boy and Chinatsu a girl.

Humanity has been rather busy. We have or are building colonies all over the Sol System. Both on moons and in O’Neill cylinders spread throughout the system.

Scientists are also working on cooling down Venus by using the solar shades. Basically, the reverse of what they did to warm up Mars. They’re also working on reducing atmospheric pressure and speeding up the day on Venus. 243-day long days on Venus would likely freak out colonists. The current idea is to build lots of tethers around the equator, then connect them with an arc, and build high-powered engines on the arc. All around, it’s a rather expensive endeavor, and as one of the scientists stated, “Inertial mass is a bitch, so it’ll take a long time to speed up Venus’ spin.” But, time is something humanity has lots of now.

A highly ambitious project to be sure, but if they can do it, then we’ll have another planet to colonize. I’m curious to see how it progresses.

I give birth to Mark Jason Ueno on August 1st, 2070 at 03:26 UTC. 3.28 kg with brunette hair and green eyes. Just over a week later, Chinatsu gives birth on August 9th, 2070. Emiko Ueno is born at 18:03 UTC. 3.36 kg with bright blue eyes and brunette hair like her mother.

In November 2070, we have our first conflict since I accepted my crown. Tolerance is something I preach a lot about, although for some, that is not something they really believe in. It all started over, of course, religion.

[January 3, 2073]

General Chambers calls Akari and makes an appointment to meet with me. As usual, he arrives ahead of time, and since he’s my first appointment for the day, Akari ushers him into my office.

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“Good Morning,” I tell him with a smile.

“Good morning, Your Majesty.”

I walk around my desk, gesture for him to take a seat, then sit down opposite of him. After offering him something to drink, we sip our coffee for a few minutes, exchanging the usual pleasantries and catching up.

Finally, he gets around to why he wants to see me. “Sora, I think it’s time for us to begin exploring other systems. We have several Venture-class ships ready, and their crews are trained.”

“The status of our system defenses, just in case?”

“Mostly up and running. About 85% of the Arc defenses are installed. Defense satellites are completely deployed around the system, so if anyone’s coming, we’ll know about it. With all of that, and the fleet, we should be more than safe enough to begin exploring.”

“And what about Mars?”

“Severely lagging behind. Apparently, there are far fewer people interested in moving to and working on Mars than we thought. They don’t even have the people to expand beyond the two tether cities.”

“I’m more than a little confused because all the polls say that people are interested in space.”

“Space, yes. Relocating to Mars, not so much.” He shrugs. “Mars is old news, and while there is a small segment that wants to move there, they aren’t enough. Minister Hawks and I have had many conversations about this, and we’re both at a loss on how this happened.”

“In the end, how or even why doesn’t matter all that much. Getting people to move out of their comfort zones is what we need to do. I have a couple of ideas that may help, so I’ll have a talk with David, and we’ll work out a plan. In the meantime, we’ll just have to depend on the fleet to protect Mars if it comes to that.

“I will say that I’m less worried about finding habitable planets than I am about finding systems with vast amounts of exceedingly rare resources. Sol’s asteroid belt only has so much, and the reports I saw said that we’re burning through them at a rather high rate.”

He nods. “What we’re doing is resource intensive. I needn’t tell you that.”

“Believe me, I know all too well. Between the fleet, improvements here on Earth and in orbit, defenses, etc… Supply is always lagging well behind demand.

“With that in mind, you have my permission to deploy the scouts. Get together with the extrasolar scientists for help in picking out likely systems. Visit those systems first, and we’ll worry about the systems with potential habitable planets later since our population is still recovering.

“As for Mars, I’ll talk to David to bat around a few ideas to improve the situation. Until then, begin deploying the Corp of Engineers to Mars to help move things along.”

With that settled, we chat about our familes and other inconsequential things for a little while until I have to prepare for my next appointment.

My final thought as he closes my office door behind him is, ‘I hope we aren’t rushing things, and that it doesn’t come back to bite us in the butt.’

I shouldn’t have even thought it, considering what happens in a few, short years.

[Continued in Upside Down - Ad Hominem]

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