Chapter 20: Surprises

~~ July - Weeks 26 & 27 ~~

To Lee’s amusement, three weddings suddenly became six.

The situation had gotten worse that evening when the couples told everyone about the triple wedding. Three other couples approached them and asked if they too could get married since the whole ship was going to be there.

Lee, Debora and Co., had no problems, the more, the merrier as far as they were concerned. The Captain could marry the lot of them in a group wedding. The main parties and just about everyone else spent the next ten days in wedding mode.

Kyle and Lee actually spent little time on the arrangements as everyone else took over. Sean was the Major Domo with Tony and Debora as his 2IC’s. The cousins were too busy with setting up the Scanner and the Recycler/replicator. It kept them out of the madness for the most part.

It took the crews working on the project three more days to get the guts of it finished. Kyle had found out that June Smith, the old afternoon shift janitor, had a Bachelor in Industrial Automation Engineering Technology, and she had become invaluable to the project. Especially with all the help, she had provided him and Ian on the ship.

The ship crews had built and installed a lot of the storage tanks, hoppers, connecting electrical systems, power supplies and main reaction chambers in the weeks before. They were still busy finishing off the final touches ensuring all the valves and piping was installed correctly and worked.

It then took two long, frustrating days of testing and fine-tuning until they were content. Lee found a couple of minor errors in Kyle and June’s program. She also inserted a couple more safety protocols she said had to be in there, i.e. No replication of flesh, human or animal and no known explosive compounds.

Kyle translated the code into Wizard lingo, which he could now read and write fluently. He then added his double encryption algorithm. The Wizard lingo was a backup in case someone else was smart enough to break his encryption. It would take another wizard and just now, he only knew two people who could actually read and change the code.

They had even set up the new bigger Molecular Scanner. It was on a special overhead gantry in a cleanroom to keep contamination of the principle items to a minimum. They could scan in large and small items. The new replicator could produce items up to 6m long x 4m wide x 3m high in size. This was why they needed bigger storage tanks.

The scanner also had palm, eye, voice and ID scanning software so all and sundry couldn’t use it. Ian, June, Kyle, Lee and Qu who had a Manufacturing Engineer degree and had been just as involved in the project, were currently the only ones who could use the Molecular scanner and add new items to the system.

Setting up the large material/element storage tanks for the Recycler had taken the longest time over the preceding weeks. However, it meant they could have a lot of materials in reserve. They would add more tanks later if they need to.

They had to borrow a couple of extra energy cells from the ship for the power requirements. They had four wind generators on the hill behind. They would need to add more if they needed to produce large dense items.

For the moment, the main items they wanted to reproduce included the wall panels, windows and doors for the prefab buildings. Some elements, like hydrogen and oxygen, are mixed for storage (e.g. as water) to reduce explosive situations.

Plus, they were often dragged into the replicator as combined. Other base elements that could be stored in blocks like metals were processed out when the vessels were full and added back as required. This also reduced power requirements for keeping a lot of material in the ready to use states.

Any radioactive elements picked up in rock or soil samples were also stored separately. They are only added back in if required for the item being produced, as long as it wasn’t on the banned list. The lead Iain got them came in useful for lining a bunker beside and under the recycler shed, to store their radioactive material in.

The banned list included any form of nuclear weapon and a lot of other war-related items Lee had added. Certain elements used for fire alarms and medical equipment were kept, but only in very small quantities.

On the scale they had built the system to, it had been a fiddly process to construct the recycler and the replicator. But once complete it looked after itself as a fully automated self-checking process. It required little maintenance or checking by humans. It mostly just needed refilling.

Amusingly enough one of the first items they scanned and replicated in the new set-up was a wine glass that Debora had found somewhere. It was amazing the items the crew had bought with them as personal. Debora had informed them that for some reason, there wasn’t one like it, in the normal replicator and they need them for the wedding feast.

So, Kyle and Lee dutifully cleaned the item and scanned it in. Kyle checked the code for contaminates and removed a few stray dust motes and imperfections. Then he saved the code into the system as ‘Debora’s wine glass’ and replicated it.

Debora was more than happy with the result and promptly ordered a hundred and twenty more, as spares would be good. The team was from that point, kept busy with special orders for the weddings to Kyle’s frustration.

Someone had even found a tiny wine glass for the faeries. Lee laughed at Kyle, telling him, he really didn’t think they would let them get away with not contributing to the effort, did he?

When Kyle asked if he could replicate his boxers, Lee told him no. She informed him she had added the special enzyme the spiders made in the silk to the band item list.

Kyle was disappointed, but he agreed it was a good thing. He didn’t want to put the faeries out of business either, and he liked that each pair was unique. Lee was amazed just how many of the guys had been to see the faeries for more. Kyle and Tony both had four pairs each on order.

The construction crew under Gary’s direction had been busy. They had the land beside the domes cleared. The original concept of two apartment blocks had gone out the window. The dome entrances now had a broad street running down to the connecting street that ran the length of the valley floor on the westside of the river.

Ian had come up with a mix they made from the oil and other materials to make bitumen for the roads. They ran connecting streets out from the dome entrances and a third that ran parallel to the first to create a large square.

On the three sides of the square, they planned to construct three buildings, four stories high. They would be just short of the height of the domes. There was room for more construction on the side streets as well. Jim, Gary, Jo and Biscuit Scully who had a degree in Architecture, designed the buildings.

On the lowest floor were seven, two-bedroom apartments off a ‘+’ shaped central hall. It includes the environmental room, a small replicator system accessible on each floor and a foyer. The second floor had the full eight apartments.

On the third floor, there would be six, three-bedroom apartments on a straight hall system. The fourth floor would have four, four-bedroom apartments with a central foyer. Each building would have twenty-five apartments totalling sixty-four bedrooms in each building.

Scully had also been very generous with the sizes of the bedrooms and the bathrooms. Lee thought they were going a bit overboard at first but later changed her mind.

The construction crews were concentrating on the foundations for the first building. The plumbers had also been busy. The domes had a closed system set-up for the plumbing was built into the base panels. The units would also pump the sewage back into the recycler.

Large water storage tanks were fitted into the foundation and plumbed back to the recycler. Excess rainwater that wasn’t required to top up the tanks was sent back to the lake. It could also be pumped back if required.

Iain had turned up in the middle of the week with his wife. He had the faerie cousins as well as another couple of faerie passengers increasing their numbers. It was a good thing they had built spare homes for them.

Iain asked if he could stick around. Weddings were always the best news for gossiping up and down the coastal communities. The fact a Faerie Queen and two wizards are to be married was even better.

Barb even found a good use for him and Frank much to their delight.