Chapter 49

Three sectons of sports, sex and workouts later they were finally back in orbit around Earth.

The news of Sebastian’s cowardly demise made it into the news, but was merely a minor story, it seems like everyone in the Federation were just glad he was of no further concern.

Mark and the girls were getting impatient as they came out of FTL and it seemed to take forever before the shuttles started leaving for the surface. Everyone eager to get back home, since they’d been away so long.

They were already waiting in the shuttle, when the announcement was made that shuttles could begin departing and they were immediately off into space and headed to the surface. A few centons later they saw Atlantis on the horizon and everyone started getting giddy about returning.

Soon they were touching down at the palace and giving Astra and Luna a quick tour of the residence and gave them each the opportunity to choose their rooms. Since everyone had already switched to living on Atlantis time, they realized it was nearly lunch time, so they decided to go grab a bite to eat and then go work off their lunch over a round of golf or maybe going to the survival park.

As they reached the front desk of the palace, Ally informed Mark that there was a message for him.

Mark thanked her for the message as he read it. It was from Jacob Marsbe, the recycling guy, it just said he’d appreciate a time to sit down and go over plans for rolling out his recycling system.

Mark tapped his wrist device and within microns, Jacob was answering the call.

“My King! It is good to hear from you. Thank you for calling!”

“Nice to hear from you Jacob, I’m guessing you’re on Atlantis and I’m back as well, where and when would you like to meet?”

“If now is a good time, I can be there in 30 microns.”

“That works for me, I was just going for lunch, so we can talk and eat.”

Sure enough, 30 microns later Jacob came floating down in the hover elevator. Since the message was left at the concierge desk, he suspected Jacob was staying at the palace.

Since Ally had overheard his plans, she suggested one of the bars in the entertainment district, which had an excellent lunch menu.

They all thanked her for the suggestion as they walked out of the palace.

It was a 10 centon walk out to the entertainment district and all of the bars seemed to be busy and noisy, so they were starting to reconsider going to a bar for lunch. The one Ally suggested was busy also, but they offered Mark the use of one of their semi-private rooms, which was much quieter and more conducive to having a productive meeting.

Since Jacob had been on Earth for two sectons, he had done some looking into how garbage and recycling was done in numerous cities around the planet, and he had made quite a few tweaks to his design.

The recycling system was now modular, with separate collection and conversion units. Similar to the stun guns, each bin had a unique identifier so the owner could see the location of each bin and see statistics for how many tonnes of trash it had collected. Each customer could also choose the colour of the bin and put their own logo on it. The top outer edge of the bin was full of holes so cameras, lids, fences or other things could be mounted.

He made two versions of the collection bins, but both could be easily shipped as they were simply one-time use construx.

The hopper versions could be placed in any metal bin as long as it had 4 distinct metal sides and a metal bottom, such as on a garbage truck and it would form itself to the size of the hopper, so therefore it could fit front load, side load or rear load garbage trucks, or even basic normal dumpsters if they wanted. The other was also a construx, but it made a basic rectangular bin about 1.5 metres in height, 1.5 metres in width and 2 metres in length. These could be used universally as community or building dumpsters or even mounted into a pickup truck bed, since the bottoms were only 1 metre wide, the end frames is what kept them stable.

Jacob also built in some safeties as they would notify the owner if a certain amount of human tissue or any sort of explosive was put into the dumpster, even if it was inside something else. They could then contact the local authorities to investigate. It also would not allow people or animals to breach the upper force field that protected the conversion layer. The owner could then temporarily deactivate the unit, thus preventing the evidence from being removed from the bin, except by authorities.

The beauty of the entire process was the material teleports. Garbage was dumped into a bin where it appeared to rapidly decompose, but was actually being converted into a super dense black material, which was then teleported to the designated conversion facility, where it was stored until it could be converted into something else.

The conversion modules were designed to be overhead bins that trucks could drive under and the preset amount of matter was converted and dumped back into the trucks. By making them modular and locking them to a specific matter conversion type, prevented governments from taking garbage and turning it into gold or diamonds. Jacob wanted true usable materials that were in high demand, but nothing that was rare or super valuable.

From his research he figured plastic pellets, glass pellets, dirt, sand, gravel, wood chips and for metals he figured iron and aluminum ingots, he also had a few specialized conversion units for turning matter into various sizes and types of wood, including paper, and one that could create various types of grains. He had also made one for creating oil and gas and one that converted garbage into electricity, but decided against them as he didn’t want to contribute to the planet’s pollution by creating more oil and gas and he didn’t want to compete with the power cell business Mark already had going.

Mark asked, “You’ve put a lot of work into this, even more since the last time I talked to you. Do you have a business plan for how you want to roll these out?”

“I’m an engineer and inventor, I don’t want to try and run a business. I just want to live comfortably.” Jacob said with a sigh.

Mark said, “I think I can get you some help to run the business, but have you given any thought on how you want to get these units into service?”

“I was actually thinking rather than selling the units, we could give them away for free, or for a nominal fee, and then just take a percentage of their collection and conversion fees. I’ve already got the units setup to provide real-time collection and conversion reports, I figure each sectar the unit could auto-send an invoice to whoever is running the recycling station and then they would just pay.”

“I like it. We’ll get it up and running in no time.” Mark said with a laugh.

Jacob smiled. “So who do we need to talk to for help?”

Mark said, “Henry and the breakfast club! If they have room, maybe they’ll even give you office space in their building. Let’s eat first and then we’ll go talk to them.”

The rest of the lunch conversation was pretty light and casual, it was mainly the girls discussing some of the things they could take Luna and Astra to for the afternoon. Survival Park, Poseidon’s Garden, Lunar Adventures, the zoo and even the ranch was mentioned. Astra and Luna thought the Survival Park would be a blast, but Annabelle said she was just going to go to the ranch and relax, as it had been sectares since she saw her parents.

After lunch they left the bar and split into their own groups. Annabelle caught a lift to the ranch and Rayven accompanied her. Gyges, Athena and Gaderius all wanted to go to the Survival Park also, so they went with the rest of the girls. Except Liyana, who was going to go back to her desk to work.

That left Mark and Jacob to walk through the entertainment district and around to the office.

During the walk, Jacob had indicated he was moving to Atlantis and had actually bought an island lot in the Ampheres region and he had already had a house designed and it was just waiting on the community contest period. So far there hadn’t been any contest, so if all went well he should be able to move in on Friday and spend the weekend on the lake. All his current stuff was in a storage pod at the port.

That was the way interplanetary moves happened. You rented a storage pod and packed your belongings into it, then once it was closed up, the contents went into a sort of stasis where nothing could move and thus get damaged. The trick was you couldn’t ship anything organic in a storage pod, but plants and pets weren’t allowed to be transported off planets anyway. Then the storage pods were collected and then loaded onto transports, if they had room, or freighters and shipped to the destination. They were offloaded to the Spaceport just like luggage, but then stored on the spaceport or more often down at the port, until they could be delivered to their final destination.

It didn’t take very long to walk around the ring, they could see the communications array by the time they got to the stadium and several centons later they were entering the office, which was now teaming with employees.

They had totally overhauled the office, the bottom level sounded like it was pretty much a call centre and the upper level was open to the lower level and had offices all around the exterior.

After briefly talking to Amelia, Henry came down to meet them and then escorted them upstairs. The girls still shared an office, but Zack was nowhere to be seen.

Mark asked, “Where’s Zack?”

Henry just shook his head, “Zack’s on leave right now.”

“He got arrested!” Beth added.

“Arrested? Zack? What did he do?” Mark asked incredulously.

Cass said, “He broke up with that guy he was seeing and, in rebound, he got in with a group of people that were here from the US and Canada. Some of the people in the group were those activist wackos and they tried to start up a pride parade.”

Mark now realized what had happened and said, “I would have thought Zack was smarter than that. He should have known the Federation doesn’t allow public bellyaching and crap like that, that’s just people with soapboxes.”

Those kinds of parades were illegal in the Federation. Just like how news agencies couldn’t mention skin colour, race, sexuality or religion in a headline, you can’t openly have a parade or inconvenience people to promote any of those things either.

Most people judge you on your attitude, actions and personality, and don’t care if your skin colour is blue, black, white, red, green or purple, or if you’re heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transexual, pansexual or asexual ... but forcing your views on others and inconveniencing people ... that grows angst and hatred. Protests and parades do more damage than good for the cause ... people don’t like to be inconvenienced!

Henry then tried to get the meeting back on track by asking, “I take it you’re wanting to start another business? Do I need to bring in one of the other programmers for the meeting?”

“No, this should be a fairly straight forward business and I think Jacob here has already built in all the databasing and stuff he needs. What he’s needing is an online presence and some business guidance.”

Henry said, “We can help him with his accounting and the girls can setup a website for him. What kind of business is it?”

Mark simply said, “Recycling!”

Henry smiled, “You mentioned that back when we were in Calgary. You’re finally going ahead with it, eh?”

“Yeah, Jacob here is the guy that actually invented the recycling machine, so more or less it’s going to be his business, or in partnership with you guys.”

Henry then said, “So we’re going to need what? Land acquisitions, recruitment, sales and marketing people?”

Since Jacob wasn’t speaking up, Mark took the reins, “I’m almost thinking of doing it like the world peace system, put it out there and municipalities can request a site to be setup in their city. By letting the municipal governments take the lead on it, they will deal with all the land and taxes, in fact most of them will likely just put it where the current garbage dumps are and we can literally build the new recycler using their old garbage and store what’s leftover for future use.”

Henry asked, “So how would we make money then?”

“We charge a flat fee for the tonnage in and out. As far as I know there’s no such thing as free garbage disposal. The city pays wages to the people that collect, transport and then manage the collected garbage. So there’s already fees involved, plus if they are able to sell raw materials, it’s free money for them so it’s a win for the city and income for us. Waste disposal then becomes a profit centre, rather than a cost centre.”

Henry then thought about it, “So it’s pretty much just an accounting position, read the reports given by each unit and send bills?”

Jacob finally spoke. “Actually the system can automatically send an invoice on whatever schedule we want and send a copy to our accounting department as well. I think the biggest jobs will be coordinating and overseeing the installation of each location and possibly the collections of the invoices. If we give them a running total of the tonnage processed to date, any fiscally responsible business owner should be able to budget to pay us.”

Henry laughed, “Fiscally responsible?! Not very many governments on this planet would even meet the definition of responsible, let alone fiscally responsible!”

Then after thinking about it for a micron, he added, “Or, we setup our own accounts and we manage the conversion side of the business and send them their share of the profits. It’d be a bit more accounting and administration work, but it increases our involvement with using Federation technology!”

Mark was intrigued, “I like that idea! They can keep 100% of the collection fees, then the conversion business is one of our companies.”

Jacob then added, “Actually, if we controlled the conversion and sales side, I could simplify the process so we could literally build one big conversion building. Orders could be placed online and the order numbers could be sent to the truckers. Then when they arrive at the facility, they would provide their order numbers and be directed to an empty bay where their order will be filled. By having a centralized system controlled by us, we can provide a wider range of conversion products as we don’t have to worry about governments abusing them.”

Then the website will more or less advertise what the capabilities of the recycling system are, and it would be nice to have charts showing the tonnage collected. Then it also needs to have a form to request an installation and in that form it should ask if they already have a site, ideally an existing garbage dump, as we could then recycle and reclaim their current garbage and turn it from eyesore into something better, plus it would give us a lot of material to convert.

The site was also now going to need to have a customer database and ordering system. It was going to need to operate in every currency around the world.

The girls looked at each other and said they would get a start on it. Jacob just had to get them the list of products that could be sold from the converted garbage and everyone was going to think up names for the recycling business.

With that process started, Mark excused himself from the meeting and told them to message if they had any questions.

Mark wandered back to the palace without any further plans for the afternoon.

When he got to the palace, he went straight to his office and sat behind his desk, his mind still thinking about the recycling business, even though he wasn’t going to have much, if anything, to do with it.

Liyana peeked her head into his office, “So how did the meeting go?”

Mark laughed and said, “Jacob is going to need a lot of help! He doesn’t know much about running a business, nor does he want to. I think he’ll more or less setup the first few locations and then he’ll gladly let someone else take the reins so he can sit back and collect a royalty of sorts and continue to tweak his design. But more or less the recycling business I think will take off quick! See? We’re making another step towards cleaning up the mess they’ve created!”

As she walked into his office and sat down on one of the couches in front of his desk, she smiled big, “I like helping the planet, got any other ideas in your mind about to how to help this out?”

“Of course! We could create ocean skimmers to clean up all the plastics and junk floating in the oceans, we could go into Africa, Haiti or any third world country and give them fresh water and food. In fact we don’t even need to stick with third world countries, I know the government of Canada has done little to nothing to keep a promise they made to help all the indigenous tribes with clean drinking water, so we could help them out and probably everyone isolated in the far north of the country.”

“It sounds like the ocean one would be the easiest as we could just do it. Is there anything I can do to help any of that get started?”

“I don’t know, how do you think you can help?”

“Well, I have a warm, wet pussy you haven’t fucked in quite a while! I’m sure it can make you feel better and it may help your focus?”

Mark laughed, “I would definitely feel better, but I’m not so sure if it’ll help me focus. If anything, I think my mind would keep thinking about your juicy pussy.”