Part 5

Five days after the last bomb went off I was sitting in a meeting with other world leaders discussing rescue options. We had just finished examining the new topography of the Middle East when one leader asked why there were such huge craters, but a few locations had none.

The group expert explained that the Middle East weapons had all been 10 gigaton or better weapons. There had also been two varieties, ground penetrating and airburst. Most had been ground penetrators, resulting in the huge craters. Beirut had been an airburst, resulting in so much destruction in Cyprus. Sana’a had been airburst as well, leading the the destruction of most of Eritrea and Djibouti.

The only reason there was still a Greece he explained was because Izmir had been ground penetrating. Ankara had been airburst, and had probably been in the 50 Gt range. Baku looked to be the smallest in the Gt penetrator range, but was difficult to tell as the Caspian Sea had been 9 meters below Sea level, it was now at Sea level because it joined the sea.

Ashgabat had been airburst, sterilizing most of North Eastern Iran, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. I asked Helse​ who was acting as my assistant in the meeting what the estimated loss of life was. She calmly stated that “The world population on October 2nd was an estimated 7.7 billion. Today the estimate is 6.6 billion.”

The group quieted a bit as that sunk in. I spoke up, “We are likely never to understand the reasoning, or insanity involved. The Russians who know what happened were the first casualties in the civil war there. There was no intelligence that Russia had ever constructed such massive weapons, or why. My scientist are still trying to puzzle out the ground penetrators, and how that was accomplished with such massive weapons.

“What matters now is limiting loss of life. Helse has been managing a search and rescue response across the Middle East. I’m asking every country to turn over their remote sensing platforms to her for the duration of the emergency. By using them all she can search faster and more thoroughly than anyone else. The USAf is currently unmonitored, as I have ordered every border scanner, and security monitor to the region.

“Following behind are Runabouts with gates to deliver relief supplies, emergency and medical workers, and to transport the survivors out of of the region. I’ve designated an area in the Mali desert as the temporary refugee camp. Emergency shelters are being gated in from all over the world. A project this big needs resources. Helse has established a website, and I’m handing you access cards. This website will list what is needed, and your individual countries can list what you can provide. Helse will manage the collection, distribution and transportation, so please follow her instructions.”

“Failure to provide support over the next 2 weeks means that many of the likely 5 million survivors will perish.” Helse told them.

“How do you propose to triage the survivors?” She was asked.

“Try to save everyone. It is the only option. We won’t be completely successful, but we are setting up access to hospitals all over the world to take the severely injured. When a region’s hospitals become three quarters full, we will move the gate on to the next location.”

“How are you finding survivors?”

“Mostly video cameras. I currently have deployed 80,000 aerial cameras, they are scanning at multiple altitudes. I started in Somalia, and am working my way up the coast. They should reach Israel by tonight. In addition to cameras I have ground penetrating radar, audio detection, as well as thermal, infrared​, and deployable seismic​ sensors.

“All injured are being routed to hospitals, and uninjured are being given ID cards and shipped to the refugee camp. I’m also deploying an antiradiation serum and basic vaccinations to all survivors. The ID cards list their name, where they were located, and basic information. At the camps the ID cards provide access to water, food, and basic amenities. Camps are also being segregated by nationality.

“Once the region they are from is declared habitable again they will be given the option to return, or be resettled elsewhere, either their original country, or possibly a new country.”

I announced that I had accepted applications to join the union of african states from Somalia, the single government official from Eritrea who had survived, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, and Chad. I also announced that I had claimed the depopulated Djibouti until such time as the 1207 survivors from there could hold a referendum.

The various​ countries pledged their support, and the leaders handed off the address cards to subordinates who gave the information to their militaries. Within hours Asian security monitor probes now under Helse control were moving into India, Pakistan, and Tajikistan, and then moving west.

European systems were fewer in number, but they too were soon moving through Ukraine, Georgia, Crimea, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. American and Canadian units soon joined them, and moved into Cyprus.

Helse was amazing. She coordinated the supplies, set up the camps, and found just under 6 million survivors. With countries all over the world answering her call for supplies she moved all the people from affected area in just six weeks. At the end of the project she had 50,000 volunteers working for her, providing security at the camps, doing rescue work, and helping to transport supplies. It was the largest and most successful emergency response program ever attempted. Because she was in direct contact with every volunteer no effort was ever duplicated, or wasted.

At the end of the six weeks she was a hero to most of the world. With so much support behind her, she asked for and received total authority over the region. She immediately set to work with robotic construction equipment building new cities around the small protected valleys that had survived the destruction. She carefully selected the locations, and collaborated with a team of architects around the world to craft energy efficient housing for the 6 million refugees, keeping each community limited to about 4000 people, but with room to expand to 10,000.

Where possible she even started planning for the spring planting, and transplanting food plants that survived. Where certain varieties of local plants had been wiped out she searched botanical gardens around the world to return them to the region. She was the undisputed ruler of the Middle East.

Some didn’t want to return to the region at all, so she built new cities in North Asia to house them. As a groups of refugees from Russia were escaping to the East, she picked them up, and moved​ them into new towns across North Asia. It took her a year to build housing for what ended up being nine million displaced Russian people.

There were a number of people that had left the region over the decades that now wanted to return. With governments of the region mostly all dead, it was up to the individual towns to police themselves, selecting a Mayor which they did as Helse monitored. She invited the 1500 Mayor’s to a conclave to discuss with them their future.

The Baghdad Conclave was held in a huge tent on an island in the middle of the new Baghdad Sea. Helse had constructed it from the dirt she removed building a 50 mile canal from there to the Basra Crater, which was now the north end of the Persian Gulf. She had built a special body for the conference. It accentuated her young form, but was built to look powerful, with a sparkle of gold and onyx. It also had fully articulated face, and did not use the digital display to create movement or emotion.

She welcomed the Mayor’s, and invited them to debate the question of nationalism. Did they want to live based on national boundaries that for the most part had been drawn by the British, or were they willing to unite under one common flag. They asked her if she was going to rule them.

She told them that she was the caretaker that had been elected by the governments of the world, but their future was theirs to write. This event was simply the first page of a new book.

The conference went on for a week, then she sent them all home. They decided a few things. The nation’s of Oman, Yemen, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan would not seek to return to the old national sovereignty.

Cyprus, Georgia, and Armenia, decided to retain their pre war national borders and individual sovereignty. Israel had simply voted to immigrate the United States, the under 3000 survivors were done with the Middle East, and it was being abandoned to the handful of Palestinian survivors. Europe was refusing to give up the territory west of the Bosporus, and Turkey had no army to contest the decision, but figured they would rebuild on their own.

Crimea declared its Independence, and requested to join the EU. Ukraine was patrolling its borders, after the Russian troops pulled out to join in the 4 way civil war that was still raging in Western Russia.

Helse had returned the surveillance drones to their respective countries. I had been building replacements, so we simply swapped, and she got the new ones for her empire. Helse called a new conclave, they again met at the same place. This time they had a concrete building built like a giant tent to meet in.

She again greeted the Mayor’s, and asked them to debate a shared system of trade, and money. The small towns were basically acting as communes, everyone working in the fields, orchards, and vineyards to grow food. Items were traded via barter.

It didn’t take them long to decide on a Dinar as the name of the currency, and 100 Rials to a Dinar. She asked them if she could operate a shared banking system in their towns that could provide the currency. They voted to give her authority to establish a regional bank. She hosted them for a week, as they discussed transport between their towns. They eventually asked her to provide gates when she displayed a map of the region, and they saw how isolated their individual towns really were.

She thanked them for coming, told them she would do her best and handed out gold and onyx tablets to the Mayor’s to serve as symbols of their office. It took her a month but she built an automated bank in each town that was connected by gates to a central branch. The automated bank allowed her to serve up to three customers at a time 24/7. She left each Mayor in charge of setting the bank hours, and opening and locking the doors.

The new tablets allowed the Mayor’s to reach her anytime day or night to ask questions, or request assistance. To solve the transportation problem she set up Runabouts with gates. Each Runabout served 10 or so towns, with service to her island twice a day, morning, and evening. The gate hub was placed near the center of the island. When she next called a conclave the attendees came by gate. They found an area marked out for a market, and a new teaching hospital.

She asked the Mayor’s to discuss education with their citizens. Every person had a tablet now, and could take courses to learn just about anything. She asked if there thought the children should learn on their own, or have schools. They decided schools. Then she asked them what should be taught. They asked about the curriculums in countries with the highest performing students. She explained the methods of China, Northern Europe, and Japan, as well as gave the history of the ancient and great schools of the Middle East before laws started restricting what could be taught and they lost their lead in science, astronomy, and medicine.

They discussed it, and decided they liked the European model, as it reminded them of the ancient model. She asked them if there was to be religious education at the school.

The room paused, finally one of the oldest Mayor’s turned to her and asked, “Where would we teach them to pray to? We are lost, abandoned, until the return of Mohammed we shall keep the dietary laws, and pray in our heart, and teach our children as Abraham taught his sons, but we shall have no religious schools, no mosques, no Ulama for us.”

She thanked them, and served refreshments to them. As the evening moved on she asked them who had bright young ones who would excel at medicine. They made a list of those that had medical training, and showed particular intelligence in their village. The next day she gave them a tour of the hospital, showing them all the new equipment.

She said that she had hired the best doctors from around the world to come, and teach their children, and tend to their sicknesses. She would send tests to the names that were given her and bring the best here to be taught.

The next day she did something new, she opened the floor to any who would ask her a question. They asked her many things. Many personal questions about who she was, where she lived, and where she came from. Finally the conclave ended, and they returned home. That set a pattern, the first 3 days of each month the Mayor’s would come to the great tent. She would spend two days asking them to debate and come decisions on various matters, then the third day she would take questions.

Every village got a school, and soon 150 bright students were training to be doctors, and another 300 to serve as nurses and assistants. I followed her progress, delighted by her careful handling of the situation. I don’t know if she was doing it just to be fascinating to me, or if she really cared about these people. After about 6 months the rest of the world seemed to forget about them, and move on with their lives.

I later learned that for her these people were an experiment. But it would be years before I learned the details.

In Africa 2022 saw the addition of several new stars. When Djibouti was rebuilt in early 2023, it’s tiny population came home, then voted to stay a part of the Union. I stopped limiting joining ceremonies to just the first of the year, but welcomed new additions immediately after their successful referendum. If the referendum failed, I told them they could try again in 2 years.

West Africa was becoming a problem. Togo to Senegal, barely functional States, refused to join the Union, and their drug and crime problems kept wandering over my border. Nigeria and Benin were shining beacons of what happens when you have the rule of law, safety, good medical care, consistent electricity and clean water. Their example though was ignored by neighbors under the control of drug cartels, gangs, and a few rich elite.

Two of the countries were completely under the power of drug cartels, that used them to transport drugs into Eastern and Western Europe. I reached out to my genetic engineering team. I asked them to create cocaine and poppy plants with no psychoactive ingredients. The gene drive was to eliminate that part of the plant. Once they had the seeds, I simply spread them in the drug fields around the world.

This was rather effective for Poppy’s as they had to be replanted every year. It was less effective for cocaine as the coca plant can be harvested for up to 40 years before being replaced. The price of heroin soon skyrocketed, as did the price of morphine. There were sufficient non addictive pain medicines available that most countries switched permanently. A synthetic sea snail venom was particularly effective, and inexpensive to produce.

I coordinated with Bob and the Caribbean Republic to target the production and distribution centers. Helse provided the intelligence, and military forces from both countries performed raids. In Africa the drug cartels struck back across the border so I moved in tanks and troops and took the West African countries by force. Liberia and Sierra Leone asked to be annexed as soon as they saw they would soon have a shared border.

After a year I offered a referendum in the 7 conquered countries. The change had been so dramatic in quality of life for the residents that they voted 80% or better to become part of the Union.

My genetics team came to me with a solution to the cocaine problem. They developed a plague that targeted cocoa pants older than 5 years. So with a little help from Helse we released it into fields along with a new batch of seeds that were swapped out with seeds stored at grower supply providers.

Violence skyrocketed in Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia as the cartels tried to hold onto the small remaining supply, and control the 10% of fields less than 5 years old. The plague killed the plants, and was in all of them, but didn’t take effect until the plant was at least 5 years old. The new fields were quickly planted, but it was another year when the first harvest came in that they discovered that there was virtually no cocaine in the plants.

In mid 2023 South Africa surprised me by asking to join the union. They had a drug problem that they​ just couldn’t solve. The attack on heroin and cocaine had just increased demand for cheaper solutions, including some designer drugs unique to the region. They held a referendum, and it passed but by only by 58%.

I welcomed them to the union, and set Helse in to solve the problem. She did a great job, she identified all the dealers and manufacturers, and in one night they were all arrested. The drugs seized, and manufacturing facilities destroyed. Then she began a huge advertising campaign letting everyone know that there was a treatment for their addiction, and there would be no arrest for getting treated and cured.

South Africa joining was the last push that Kenya needed. They joined before the end of the year. Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco were the last holdouts. If I could get them to join I’d have the whole set!

2025 was a special year. My terraforming team on Baum were having amazing success. The had engineered some carbon sequestering plankton, and had deployed it there. It was thriving like mad, churning out oxygen. It looked like the co2 in the atmosphere would be reduced to the point that animal life could be able to thrive on planet within 50 years.

The Mars terraforming team also let me know that they had figured out how to fabricate gates in three pieces, move them to space and assemble them, the result was that they were now building a gate pair 10000 miles across and it would be complete in 2 years.

The first use of it was too use it like a giant gate scanner to carefully examined the interior of Mars. They also expressed some concern that moving a planet might be really dangerous. The problem was that gravity did not pass thru a gate. They had run a test, and found that moving something large like a mountain was fine as long as both gates remained facing the same direction in local gravity.

The moment that the exit gate was in freefall the sudden release of pressure on the mountain due to the loss of planetary gravity the mountain tended to explode upward. It was an issue they had never considered, how much of the planet would survive being transported thru the gate.

The math showed that if they did it fast enough it would work. The pressure release was not instant, but it was fast. Exit speed was always the same as entrance speed, plus or minus the speed of the exit gate. It would take some careful calculations, and a lot of speed, but they were confident that Venus could be moved to Mars orbit.

The good news in this was that the process of shredding Mars to coat the surface of Venus would be the easiest part. Along with the plan came the idea to use the gates to impart a spin on the Moon. They wanted to make the Moon turn, so that the dark side, it being not really dark but invisible from Earth, really was always dark.

They thought that they could then station really great telescopes on the dark side of the Moon as it would always point away from the sun. I asked them why not just park them in Neptunian L2, to get the same effect. They explained that it would take 165 years to make 1 revolution around the sun, this would be better, plus they could build really really big on the Moon.

I asked them how big, and discovered they wanted to build a reflector telescope 500 miles wide. Plus 12 radio dishes 100 miles wide to listen in all directions. I could see the optical telescope being useful, but asked them how often it would be pointing at the Earth instead of the sun. They said it would be just as often, but the heat expansion and contraction of sun exposure meant that without the rotation it would only get about 2 weeks out of 4 of imaging time.

I told them I would think about it, but really wanted the radio dish system built immediately, and put into solar orbit between Jupiter and Saturn. They liked that, but insisted it would have to be much bigger as it would not be orbiting fast enough to cover the entire sky. I told them to get me a cost proposal on the ideal system.

They went away happy, and I was bemused. I had turned over the space hotel program to a subsidiary, so took the opportunity to explore the new offerings as a vacation. When a new possibly habitable world was discovered, it got a robot exploration team, and a few hotels in choice locations.

I spent six months exploring, a new hotel every week, a new planet every 3. Helse came with me, but we both spent the time working on other projects, and just contemplating the view. I think I like the world with rings the best. It gravity was just a touch heavy, but the night sky was brilliant with stars and a glowing rainbow colored ring.

I marked it for future terraforming as a water world. I really liked the idea of sitting on a sailboat and watching dolphins leap out of the water under that sky. I realized that I had really fallen behind on what was being discovered.

I decided to rectify that, and as I spent those six months on other worlds I realized how much fun this was. I went back to Earth, finding the air invigorating, and the gravity delightful. I met with the terraforming groups, and asked them what discovered world could be terraformed into complete earthlike habitability the fastest.

They had four candidates. They discussed the merits of each one, and finally came to the top two. I liked all four, so told them I wanted a complete program for each of them in two weeks. Two weeks later I had 4 large binders. A quick inventory check showed that we had the raw materials, so I had them get to work. We would begin by sending 1 mile wide gates to each of the four systems.

A month later they were complete and on their way. I put the 4 gates in orbit of the Moon so we would have easy access. The first arrived in system. Now smaller half mile gates would strip the thick co2 atmosphere, and deliver the water, oxygen, nitrogen, and trace gases to the planet.

The first world had a 26 hour day, and terrain that would fill it with lots of shallow seas. Because we were dumping oxygen into it from a nearby frozen dwarf planet, it would be immediately habitable. Factories on the moon started churning out 500 foot wide gates. When they arrived at the planet building factories on Earth started producing a sea coast city. As the buildings were completed in the factory, the gates on world would raise up, delivering the building in its entirety.

The terraformers were simply dropping chunks of forest through gates so that the life there naturally expand into to the archipelagos they were placed on. It looked strange, but they had a special vehicle that could scoop up a 2000 foot wide chunk of dirt with trees birds, insects and animals, and set it through a gate into the planet.

It left odd pockmarks on Earth, but it worked in seeding the world with life. A gate was dropped into the Caribbean, sending a few million​ gallons of water and life through, then it repeated in other oceans. The process was fast, and not very precise, but the idea was to see how quickly we could do it, and how stable it would stay.

I opened it up as a planet wide vacation spot after only a year of work. The beaches had required some work, but that only involved creating a few hundred million tons of sand. Employees lived on planet, and we could handle a million tourists at a time. We immediately became a hot vacation spot.

In the back of my mind I was thinking about what had happened to the Middle East and Russia. I wanted a place where humanity could go if the unthinkable happened and Earth was destroyed, or made unlivable. It was also good practice for what we would do to Venus and Mars in a few years.

The second world we terraformed was the world that I had vacationed on with the rings. The terraformers agreed that it would make a fantastic water world, there was water available in a frozen Moon, plus sufficient frozen gases to make a very nice atmosphere. The world ocean was very deep, expanding its size until the surface gravity matched Earth.

We added the atmosphere, and started bringing in life forms. There was a underwater but semi shallow mountain range what we tethered several floating platforms to. The goal was to make this a world of boats and fishing. We used large gates to send through tons of sea life, after seeding the entire surface with plankton. It took nine months before we could ship in larger creatures, but eventually a pod of dolphins got sent thru.

The third world was more earth like than the others, so as soon as it completed and was habitable we opened it up to homesteaders. We built a factory to build houses, and a factory to build gates, and a factory to build electronics, and a factory to build machinery. We placed an orbital refinery to harvest the huge asteroid fields, and provide feedstock for all industry. Helse provided a planetary manager by building a replica of a portion of her system and duplicating parts of herself on it. The new entity we named Pax was her first child, and he would manage all aspects of the planet terraforming process with the homesteaders. It was such a good idea she did the same for Baum, creating Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs. We just called him Oscar.

Every homesteader signed and thumb printed an agreement, and were given land to farm, a house and barn, and instructions on how to get their land fertile. It would take about five years before they could grow their first crop in a traditional manner, but until then they relied on hydroponic methods, adding all the plant waste to their future soil.

The planet didn’t need anything but farmers, and agricultural scientists, so unless the homesteaders were going to farm they didn’t get invited. The species introduction was going to be done much more carefully here. The intention was not to introduce any species that either did not have a benefit to soil fertility, or was edible. Our first world had been nicknamed paradise, our second world waterworld, but this one was to be in my mind the real paradise, it would be impossible to go anywhere and not find the materials to build a house, and have food to eat.

In 2026 Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria joined the union. Morocco held back because they wanted the border dispute with Western Sahara finished first, with it firmly under their control. I went to the SADR, and asked them if they would be willing to relocate to another part of the world. The answer was an emphatic no.

I asked them if they would be willing to settle for a slice of Algeria and the section of Western Sahara they held. Again the answer was no, they were barely surviving in the camps. I informed them that their being in Algeria, now that it was part of the USAf, was not going to continue for long. But if they were to move into the 15% of Western Sahara they controlled, and joined the union, I would recognize and protect their border.

Then I had a meeting with Morocco, I told them that SADR planned a non violent protest march to take back the country, and if they declared Independence while doing so, and asked for membership I’d be inclined to grant it. Morocco asked if they joined would I keep Western Sahara as theirs or give it to SADR. I told them that neither would get it, but a referendum would decide if they would be independent or separate.

The day SADR marched West, and crossed over the border, I announced that I had accepted annexation requests from both parties, and now a referendum would be held. Morocco didn’t like it, but because there were 2 referendums they had no choice but to move forward with becoming members. If Western Sahara agreed, but they didn’t they would lose. If they agreed and Western Sahara agreed then they would lose the southern province, but still have the benefits of membership. If the Western Sahara failed to get the votes to join, but Morocco did, then they had a chance of being able to use their membership to make control stick.

Both regions joined, and I had the complete set. I celebrated with the rest of the continent, then quietly checked with Helse about abdicating and turning it over to her. She was fine with it, but asked that I wait 10 more years. She had been voted Sultana by the Mayor’s Council, so was no stranger to leadership. She agreed to keep her titles separate, Sultana of West Asia, and Supreme Executive of Africa. Bob didn’t have any kids so he had made her his heir as well, when he died she would also become Hereditary President of the Caribbean Republic.