Chapter 54

Friday, May 4th, when our cycle club stops at the school in the morning, I continue my ride. I figure I have earned a day off school. It has been more than three weeks, and I haven’t missed a day. Besides, it is a special day. Today is the day that Lisa is set free from her traction and is given crutches.

I get to Lisa’s place and notice there is no van to move her, and Dr. Willson hasn’t shown up yet. I’m not concerned. They aren’t due to leave for the university for another half hour.

I enter the house without knocking. I am the one that owns it, and we are trying to maintain the illusion that nobody lives here, and that I use it as a place to hide out with my girlfriends.

Heading straight for Lisa’s room, I see she is propped up to as close to sitting as she can with her leg in traction. Jane and Lisa are in conversation, talking about the things they want to do today.

Lisa comments, “I can’t wait to get out and see Victoria. I have never been this far south before.”

Coming through the door, I have no choice but to squash their plans, “Sorry, but Grace is dead, and so she can’t wander around Victoria. People will get confused when Lisa arrives from England.”

Getting all cranky Lisa snarls, “And what is that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t go out today. We can’t have people see you walking around town when your new persona hasn’t arrived yet.”

“Well, I’m not going to be sitting around here until you can find the time in your schedule to take me to England and back.”

Jane looks at me half pleading and half in sympathy. She tries to be the voice of reason, “He is right. If people start asking questions about you being here before you are supposed to arrive, word can travel, and the Mennonites could find out.”

“How about a compromise,” I say, “When we get back from UVic we can hang out in the yard. It’s a nice day. You’ll love it. Then tonight, we will be off to England.”

“Do you mean it? We leave tonight?” Lisa exclaims in excitement.

“Yes, as long as Dr. Willson gives the ok. Now, enough arguing. It’s time for you to hug me hello.”

I lean in to hug her, and she pushes me away, saying, “Not when you stink like that. Go have a shower.”

My girlfriends and I have all started keeping clothes here, considering how often we stay over. I grab a change of clothes and head for the bathroom. By the time I am done cleaning up, Dr. Willson has arrived, and they have gotten Lisa into a wheelchair.

I wheel her into the garage where Gun has a rental cargo van. He helps me get her into the back and secured before we head to the university. Thankfully there is a loading dock at the back of the building where we have our labs, so nobody sees us unload Lisa.

Jane helps Dr. Willson take x-rays while Gun and I stand guard, making sure the students that were told to take the day off don’t wander in and see Lisa. An hour and a half later, Jane pushes Lisa out for Gun and me to secure her in the van. She is sans casts on her arms. Only the leg cast remains, and Lisa is beaming like I hadn’t seen her since before she went missing. Just to be sure, Lisa lets us know, Dr. Willson gave me the ok. We can leave tonight.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Before you tie me into that god-awful thing, give me a hug. I want to wrap my arms around you now that I have them back.”

I don’t want Lisa to be seen, so I finish getting her into the van before I lean down for my hug. The hug lasts for quite a while. When Lisa lets me go, she is in tears and says, “I don’t think I have thanked you for rescuing me. I don’t even know what to say.”

“You just said it. I’m just sorry I couldn’t rescue you sooner.”

I don’t want to make her depressed. There are many things that she and I need to talk about that will bring her down. I table them for now. I still can’t help but think about how I will explain to her that we aren’t a couple anymore and that she needs to start seeing a psychologist. I just want her to be healthy and happy, but that means she needs to face some things and get past them. For now, I just smile and kiss her on the cheek.

When we get her back to the house she has been using, Jane and Lisa start planning all the things she wants to do in London. Since Lisa has spent the last few weeks in her room, they opt to sit in the living room, even though the furniture leaves a lot to be desired. In turn, I take up my place at the dining room table to work while staying in sight, listening to what they plan.

Eventually, Lisa asks, “What do you want to do?”

I answer, “There are only two things that are important to me. The first we will do as soon as we land. Somebody from MI5 or MI6 will be meeting us when we land. They will give you the ID for your new identity. Then you and Sam will see the sights while I am in meetings with the British government. We want to purchase two more dockyards that are about to go under, and I need to convince them to let me. They have concerns about us getting too much of a monopoly.”

Jane snorts as she holds back a laugh. “How do you have a monopoly,” she asks, “You haven’t even opened the first dockyard.”

“How are three dockyards a monopoly when the country is peppered with them,” I point out. “In all reality, they have a right to be concerned. Their dockyards are closing en masse, and mine will steal their remaining customers. Unless something is done, in five or ten years, we will own all the dockyards on the island.”

Lisa’s eyes bug out as she says, “I thought shipbuilding was England’s thing. They ruled the seas for how long?”

“They have been losing out to Japan and Korea for a while, and it is only going to worsen. At least the way I set things up, the old companies will retain partial ownership. In the UK, having the dockyards maintain their name is a big thing, and we offer them a chance to keep their names.”

“I didn’t realize you were growing that fast,” Jane confesses.

“In the next few months, there is going to be a lot more growth than that. There is no need to be discussing this now. You only have a day and an evening to plan for. Your list is much longer than that. You need to prioritize.”

She gives me a fake pout then looks at her list. I add to her disappointment by saying, “You also have to take Sam into consideration. Ask him what he wants to do while I am in my meeting. Starting tomorrow, he is going to be your father figure.”

Instead of pouting more, she enthusiastically says, “I always wanted a father.”

“What about a sister? Zlata and Sam are dating. Dahlia is practically your step sister. I think it is funny that she likes it when I call her my sister when we are in bed.”

Jane pipes up, “You are a lucky girl. I don’t know many families as loving and caring as your new family. You may not have had a good time until now, but the past is the past. Love what you have now.”

“I do,” Lisa says with much exuberance.

Since I have a lot of work to do, I extricate myself from the conversation and get back to work. Between combining my new patents into a spaceplane and a rocket and finishing the plans of uniting Japan, South Korea and the ESA, I have a lot on my plate. As is typical of me, I add on more.

My overall plan is to prevent humanity from self-destructing. Failing that, I plan to send a ship to follow the path that led me to the quantum singularity. These are both long shots. I need a backup plan that has a higher chance of succeeding.

Humanity has proven that it can live peacefully in a small community. When Russia, beginning with the US, allowed other nations to predominately dock modules to Mir-2, the International Space Station (ISS) was born. On this station, the US and Russia proved that in a tight-knit community, even they could coexist. But the ISS never grows big enough for my purpose, and it doesn’t launch for another eight years.

I redesign my latest rocket. Instead of having a rocket deliver a payload into space and then allow it to burn up on reentry, I repurpose it. The rockets will become part of the first permanent space habitat. That is something that Earth didn’t have when I left. The problem with building one is it needs to be enormous.

The station’s enormity is only in part because it needs a minimum of 4169 people onboard to repopulate the Earth once everybody is dead. It needs gravity. If you were to start a family on Mars, they could only ever live on Mars. The bone density of the children wouldn’t be dense enough for them to visit Earth. What’s worse is if you tried to make babies in space. If the mother carried the child to term in space, the baby’s bones would be mush, and the only way to have the baby would be vie a c-section. If by some miracle, it isn’t a stillbirth, the slightest bump would kill the baby. For people to live in a space station for generations, it needs to have near-Earth gravity.

The only known way to have artificial gravity is through centripetal acceleration or layman’s terms spinning a part of the station really fast. Then there are problems with docking. A ship could dock with the part of the station that isn’t spinning. But then, how do you transfer people or supplies from the stationary part of the station to the part that is spinning? The problem is that propulsion requires fuel. Even something like an Ion drive has exhaust, which means there is no way to recycle the fuel. The answer is simple, and I almost kick myself when I figure it out. Electro Magnetic Propulsion (EMP), it is the same thing used in a railgun. Instead of one ring, the station has two that spin in opposite directions. They need to be close to each other and on the same plain. That way, you can set magnets up so the two wheels can pull each other to accelerate or decelerate.

When a ship comes to dock, they do so on the stationary section while the wheels decelerate. By the time they stop, the ship has offloaded and left. The wheels are only stopped for a short time as the people and supplies embark.

The one thing all the sci-fi movies and TVs get wrong is power consumption. They all have solar panels that are way too small for the amount of power consumption. Since the panels are frail, they can’t be on the spinning section. This means, even with a nuclear backup, the stationary portion of the stations also needs to be huge to accommodate all the solar panels.

In the end, I created a design that has a dry dock on one end with docking ports. In the middle are two ginormous counterrotating wheels, and the last segment makes up almost two-thirds of the length and contains all the solar panels that can fold up into an armoured casing, in case of a meteor shower. It will have spaceplanes to bring in pieces of meteors or ore from the moon for refinement.

I’m so engrossed in my plans, I have tuned out everything around me. The next thing I know, to get my attention, Dahlia turns my head and kisses me. I return the kiss, and when she pulls away, she says, “Clear the table. It’s supper time.”

Looking at the time, I say, “Oh shit. We’re late.”

Sam laughs at me, saying, “No worries. I brought supper, and we are ready to go.”

Looking around, I notice we have a full house. My household, my girlfriends, Jen, Jane, Gun and Paul are all in attendance.

“I’m glad I don’t do that,” comments Paul, “It could be detrimental to my health. But, it always fascinates me when you get hyper-focused like that.”

I admit, “It can cause problems. I remember one time, I went into my room one Friday night and sat down to design a boat. Next thing I knew, it was Monday morning. I had the entire boat designed, including a bill of materials. I was so focussed that I forgot to eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. It’s a good thing the bathroom wasn’t occupied when I realized what I had done.”

Most everybody laughs at my story, some of them not sure if it’s true or not. It is, but it happened when I was 19, up in Fort Grand.

Paul, Jane, Lisa, Sam, and I wolf down our food while everybody else enjoys the meal. Before shoving my last fork full of food into my mouth, I ask Sam, “Did you grab my bag by the door?”

“What bag?”

I got it,” announces Paul.

“Does everybody have their passports and whatever other paperwork they need,” I ask.

Sam’s face falls as he says, “You never told me I needed a passport.”

“We are going to England for Christ sakes. What were you thinking?”

“That I’d get your goat before we left. I have it right here.”

I laugh but shake my head and say, “Asshole.”

“Wait a minute,” Lisa cries out, “I didn’t pack anything.”

“You don’t need to,” I tell her, “You can’t have clothes bought in Canada. You know your backstory had you spending the last eight years in a boarding school in the states, which explains the lack of accent. I had somebody buy new clothes. They are your equivalent fashion in the UK and the states. We had to put some of them in a dryer with some rocks to make it look like you have been wearing them. Besides, all you have is some cut up pyjamas that fit you while in traction. What do you think you were going to pack?”

“What am I going to wear when I get off the plane?”

“I have a bag of clothes in the SUV.” You can stay in your pyjamas. There is a bed on the plane.”

“What kind of plane has a bed,” Asks Sam

I smile as I say, “A top-end rental. It was the only way to get a direct flight from Victoria to London. We do have to stop at St John’s for some fuel, so we will need to get out and stretch out legs.”

With everybody there, it takes a while for us to say our goodbyes. It isn’t that bad, so we are only a few minutes late to the airport. It doesn’t matter since it isn’t a commercial flight.

The plane we are using isn’t one that frequents the Victoria Airport, so it doesn’t have a hanger. Victor drives us to the north end of the taxiway, where the hangerless private aircraft are parked. He stops in front of a strange-looking plane. When we get out of the vehicle, Sam asks, “What the hell is that?”

“That, my dear uncle, is what we are taking to London.”

“Does it even fly,” Sam asks, “The back is nothing but engine.”

“That would be why it is the world’s fastest private jet. I don’t want to spend any more time in the air than I have to. The only way we could fly faster is to rent a full-sized airliner, but most of them aren’t as fast. The ones that are would need a longer fuelling time, and so we would arrive in London at the same time. As it is, you can now brag to your friends that you flew in a Dassault Falcon 900.”