Chapter 6

It had been a long day when I returned to Earth through the portal, right into the arms of Amy and Valerie.

“You’ve been busy,” Amy said. Evidently, they’d watched the feed from our helmet cameras, so I was surprised that was all they said about my day.

“I think we’ve all been busy,” I replied, seeing three five-gallon buckets of gold nuggets on the floor of their new gold mining space, although I had to wonder when they’d found them since the portal had been busy all day.

After a quick dinner, we got busy again, this time in bed.

I hitched a ride through the portal in the morning and checked on how things were progressing. They must have been sending cargo containers filled with pallets of concertina wire and chain-link fencing almost nonstop yesterday and last night. I hadn’t even been aware that we had so much. The triple concertina fence now stretched to where the first part of the initial wall would be built about a hundred feet from the bluff overlooking the river. Our community would begin there in the southwest corner of the plateau. The next part of the wall would stay back about a hundred feet from the southern cliff that overlooked the ocean.

Until the chain-link fence was installed, the triple wire fence would be extended right up to within a few feet of both edges and run for five miles in each direction. Our secure area was now complete with guard towers every half-mile inside the perimeter.

“It’s too bad we can’t clone you. We’d be able to accomplish even more, and at a faster rate,” I complained to Sheila as I scanned the plateau, amazed at how much had been accomplished so quickly.

“Your technology is still far too primitive for something like that, but you could make additional portals,” she replied. “They would have most of the same functions, and could operate between the two planets, but only two planets. They also wouldn’t be able to go back in time. The downside would be that you’d need to purchase what you call supercomputers. LKAB has four that were ordered by the Department of Defense. Those four, along with a few smaller high-powered computers, could be reworked and reprogrammed to make four more portals.”

“Really?” I gasped, already reaching for my cell phone.

For the next hour, I was passed from person to person and then had to haggle with the last person. I even had my laptop on their website so we could exchange emails.

While discussing the final price, an IM popped up on my screen. “Tell them that you can increase the speed of their top supercomputers by twenty percent.”

I recognized the suggestion as being from Sheila and passed it along. I finagled a great price starting by paying half now in cash. Part of the reason for the good price was that the government had already made a sizeable, non-refundable deposit, something they had to do much more frequently. LKAB would send an advance installation team to review the location where the computers would be set up and to make sure we had the necessary electrical connections and cooling. They’d also verify that I had the other half of the payment available in gold like I’d promised.

Once the four units arrived, I’d give them a laptop with all the information they’d need to increase the speed of their future models by twenty percent. In return, they’d send me the $400,000 worth of parts and equipment I specified and sell me an equivalent amount at their cost. Sheila provided the list so we could upgrade our four new systems we just bought.

With each passing day, my TTD list was getting longer. My next call was to Pete, a man I hadn’t yet met. He was a Florida resident who specialized in planning the infrastructure of new developments. Since new developments were among the last thing on anybody’s mind right now, he jumped at my offer of an interview for a potential job. Early the next morning, one of the security guys brought him to me.

“You’re really security conscious,” was his first comment.

“That we are,” I replied. “What do you foresee happening in the country in the next few years?” I asked him as I started walking.

His first reply was a shiver. “Nothing good, that’s for sure,” he sighed. “Our house is locked up like a fortress. The doors are barred, and the windows barricaded. My wife and I each carry a pistol and have learned how to use them. She had to shoot someone a couple of weeks ago when he broke a window and was trying to climb into the house. She won’t even leave the house until I get home. My two married kids have reported similar events.”

“Do you feel qualified to lay out the infrastructure for a brand-new city? You’d have to include everything from streets and underground utilities to water and waste treatment plants. We’ll even have to generate our own electricity. Right now, there’s nothing but open ground where I intend to build, and no local utilities to tap into.”

“Sure, but nobody has the kind of money required to do that, not even the government,” he warned.

I started walking and began explaining my plan, “I’m preparing to start just such a city. The initial development will be built inside a rock wall like you see here. The wall will be circular, about four miles in diameter, although I foresee the city growing beyond that, probably before we finish the initial wall. I think the country here is going to become even more violent if it doesn’t completely self-destruct. Already, our security people stop at least one person a night who’s trying to sneak in here.

“It’s obvious that the police don’t have the resources to deal with so many criminals because we’ve caught several of them at least twice. I have acquired a huge parcel of land that is fairly level. It’s a plateau roughly a hundred miles long and fifty miles wide. The weather is ideal, and we’ll be able to grow crops year-round. The property is not inside the U.S., so we won’t be affected by what happens here. Right now, I’m in the process of hiring the experts we’ll need to build our city. Interested?”

“Hell yeah, especially if my family can move in here,” he replied excitedly. Then he gasped and stared when I opened one of our vaults so he could see the gold and silver stacked on pallets.

“Call your wife. We’ll send one of our security teams home with you and have a truck and some helpers there early tomorrow morning to help pack up the house. If your kids and their families want to join us, they’re invited, too.”

“Really?” he exclaimed.

“Yup,” I replied. He was immediately on the phone with his wife. She’d evidently driven past us recently and had commented to her husband that she wished they lived here where we had the wall and armed security guards.

As he rushed home with one of our security teams, a second team went with me to Tampa to visit a boat builder that had been around for nearly two decades. Even in that short time, they had made a name for themselves. One of their designs, the Sea Scoot, had quickly become the frontrunner for the next littoral patrol boats for the DHS and DEA. Unfortunately for the builder, the government could no longer afford any of the ships now that the company had invested so much money in designing and building them.

I didn’t even have to haggle with the owner. Having tied up tons of money trying to meet the government’s constantly changing demands, he was pissed at them. I paid a bit more than I would have if I’d offered gold or silver but got all three of the prototype boats. He was pissed enough at the government that he even sold me the military hardware he’d had to buy to make sure it worked properly aboard the boats.

I had no use for the surface-to-surface missiles each boat came equipped with but figured that Larry would want them, even if he had no use for them.

Each boat was fast, capable of doing fifty knots in calm seas. Each had three pintle-mounted 7.62 mm chain guns and a forward-mounted 40 mm autocannon. Personally, I felt that even the cannon was a bit of overkill for our new world, but we could always remove it and add another machine gun.

He promised to have all three boats delivered by dinnertime. Instead, I asked to have the engines reworked so the boats could use alcohol for fuel. He agreed after warning that it would add to the price.

I told Larry about the three boats when I got back. He was looking forward to the first time we used them against raiders or pirates. He also started looking for retired or furloughed Navy and Coast Guard personnel to operate the boats.

While the portal wasn’t in use for a few minutes, I asked Sheila if she knew whether the planet’s local food was safe for us to eat.

“The research teams that visited the planet had no problems with the local food, but their physiology was different than yours is. I could program a few laptops that you could use for testing the food. You’ll need to buy instruments to analyze the food. The laptops can then verify if the food is safe to eat,” she suggested.

I decided to just buy a hundred top-of-the-line laptops since she was always using one to download information for someone. The dealer I called wouldn’t take my order until I agreed to pay half up front. Even then, it could take a week to ten days to get all of them.

As I made my way home, I called and ordered six of the very expensive analyzers Sheila had recommended. When I checked my bank balance, I was surprised that it was so high. Still, I decided that it was time to sell some more gold, so I started filling sealable sandwich bags with salvaged gold nuggets and lumps of New World gold crudely smelted by the Spanish.

I’d noticed that the prices for both gold and silver were continuing to climb and the financial experts on the news expected it to continue as the economy worsened. I decided to sell some silver, too, since we recovered far more silver from the wrecked ships than we did gold. From what we were recovering, my estimate was between 20:1 and 25:1.

I called Dan to see if he wanted gold or silver, and if so, how much he could handle.

Rather than getting Dan when I called, I got someone else. “Is Dan there?” I asked.

“He’s busy right now. I can help you,” the guy replied curtly.

“This is Kevin, the contractor. I called to see if he needed any more work done,” I told him.

“He don’t need no work done,” the guy said angrily, and then hung up on me.

I couldn’t understand Dan hiring an assistant, especially since most of what he sold was from us. He was probably getting busier as people tried to hedge their money against inflation and protect it from the possibility of the economy going bust.

What was odd was the rude way the guy spoke to me, as well as the way he spoke. Even the guards who worked for Dan were all well-spoken. The guy I spoke with needed English lessons.

I found the portal not being used at the moment and had Sheila move to the address of Dan’s building. I scrolled up from the ground floor until I found Dan’s office and snuck a peek.

Oh, fuck! I immediately called Larry and asked him to get four men ready for a hostage rescue and told him where I was. Ten minutes later, Larry and the four men rushed into the open vault, armed to the teeth.

“Holy shit!” one of the men gasped.

“This is what funds everything here,” Larry told him, and then looked to me questioningly.

“I called Dan, the guy who buys our gold and silver. The guy I talked to sounded odd, so I checked on them and found four armed thugs in the office. They have Dan, his wife, and two kids, tied up in a back room. As much as I hate exposing the portal to Dan and his family, I can’t leave them like that,” I explained.

“How do you want to do this?” he asked.

“I’d start with the guy guarding the family. If you keep the end of the barrel of the shotgun on this side of the portal opening, the report won’t be heard on that side when you fire a beanbag, followed by someone with a stun gun,” I explained.

“The guy in the blue T-shirt seems to be the leader. I’d like him alive to answer questions if possible. The other guys can be dumped in the ocean far off the coast. I’m sure the head honcho will be joining them soon enough.”

Larry assigned each man one of the thugs. We were able to position the portal so we could see inside both the backroom and the front part of the office simultaneously.

“Three ... two ... one...” Larry counted down. I counted down in my head and covered my ears. Still, the noise echoing inside the vault was deafening.

A second later, all six of us dropped into the front office. Three of them checked on the three guys in the front and Larry and I rushed into the back room to check the guy there and to release Dan.

Dan’s eyes were huge when he saw me with Larry. “If there were only four of them, we got them all,” I told Dan as I removed the gag and began cutting the plastic zip-ties that bound his hands.

“Yes, only four of them. How the hell did you get the drop on them?” he asked.

“These men are all retired military and were all in the elite forces. We also have some special equipment that gave us a big advantage,” I replied, not wanting to explain about the portal, especially in front of his wife and kids.

“Is there anything we need to ask the head guy?” I asked.

“No, they followed me home the other night and caught us last night. They threatened my wife and kids if I didn’t cooperate,” he explained.

“Okay, put the head honcho with his three henchmen,” I told Larry.

“Have you called the cops yet?” Dan asked.

“Nope, and it’s probably a waste of time to call them. The jails are full. The people we catch trying to break into our compound are back on the street the next day. We plan to dispose of the bodies for you so nobody else is involved. That should limit how many people find out what happened and start thinking about trying the same thing,” I explained.

“Thank you,” Dan’s wife sobbed as she grabbed me once I cut her loose. Larry cut the two kids loose. They both hurried over to hug their mom.

“Since all the floors here are ceramic tile, if we wipe the blood up right away, there shouldn’t be any stain,” Larry explained as he used paper towels to wipe up the small blood spot on the floor where the guard’s head hit when he fell.

Two of the guys came in and carried the body out to the front part of the office. “Where are your security guys?” I asked Dan.

“These guys made me call them and give them the day off,” he replied.

“You folks doing better?” I asked, mostly looking at his wife and kids.

“Yeah, now that you guys took out the trash,” the older-looking of the two boys replied.

“All clear,” one of my troops said as he stuck his head in the door.

When I looked out into the front part of the office, all four bodies were gone, as were Larry and the troops. Even the floor was clean.

“They’re gone,” I told Dan. He looked into the front part of the office and gasped.

“There’s not a trace of them. How are they going to explain carrying the bodies out of the building?”

“Trust me, nobody in the building will notice, I promise,” I tried to reassure him.

“This was just like a mission on TV. Take out the bad guys, clean everything so there’s no trace of what happened, and disappear,” his wife commented when she looked into the front part of the office.

The wife finally calmed down enough that she could drive the kids home. When I was finally alone with Dan, I explained.

“You have to promise to never say a word about this to anyone,” I prefaced my explanation to Dan.

“Do you use that to get the gold?” he asked when I finished.

“Yeah, we can also go back in time. Vickie likes to pan rivers and streams around the world where there were big gold finds, but mostly in California. She just gets there a couple hundred years before the gold was discovered. Most of it, however, has come from the Spanish treasure fleets taking treasure back to Spain from the New World. We researched which ships sank and were never found. We start emptying them even as the ships are being loaded.

“I found out what was happening here because I called to see if you wanted any more gold or silver. We recover far more silver than gold, although we’ve begun minting our own coins from gold and silver, mainly silver.”

“How much gold and silver do you have left?” he asked.

“I have no idea of the exact amount, but it can be measured in tons,” I replied, making Dan’s jaw drop.

“It’s a good thing that we’re only selling small amounts of it at a time, so we don’t flood the market and tank prices,” he commented.

“Actually, I’m only selling enough to buy everything we need to build our little community and make it safe from the crazies out there,” I told him. “I intend to keep most of it to use after the shit hits the fan and cash becomes worthless. In addition to gold and silver coins, we’re making copper, brass, tin, and lead coins, and probably coins of a few other metals. We want to be prepared.”

“Any chance I can join your group?” Dan asked.

“Sure, but you’ll probably need to stay here for the time being. Otherwise, you’d have to move your business to Florida.”

Dan decided to stay in business where he was for the time being. He’d move to join us when it got too violent to stay here any longer, although I gave him four emergency buttons for them to wear and use if anything happened again. He was also excited about me offering to bring more gold, and a large load of silver.

14 months later

Holy shit! Our off-world refuge has already vastly exceeded what I’d initially envisioned. Much of that is due to the increasing violence in the U.S. For four weeks straight, we had at least one incident where one of our people was within a hundred feet of an attack where a gun or knife was used.

To speed up moving people off-planet, we began buying all of the manufactured homes and older double-wide and triple-wide mobile homes that we could find. We also bought old single-wide mobile homes to use as temporary apartments for single individuals.

And we faced a problem with shopping since most of the violent attacks our people witnessed were while they were shopping. At first, I tried to arrange bulk purchases from local grocery stores. I ended up with an agreement with a wholesaler who sold to IGA stores. We emailed them our list one morning and picked the order up thirty-six hours later, just backing our truck up to their loading dock where they loaded the pallets. We bought everything by the case: canned goods, dry goods, meat, produce, milk, frozen food, and health and beauty aids.

We quickly had to reduce the list of things we’d buy because I had no intention of trying to run a full-scale grocery store. Fortunately, the produce purchases slowed down once our offworld crops began ripening.

We also discovered that the “longhorns” ranging free on the plateau were both edible and delicious, and their hides made an excellent leather. That discovery required the construction of a slaughterhouse and a butcher shop and the hiring of butchers.

Clothing and other non-food items were purchased during weekly shopping trips where our security accompanied the shoppers and made sure they were clearly visible.