Chapter 4

“I’m not human,” I began, “At first I just thought I was superhuman. I grew up here on Earth, the super powers, the space travel, all that’s only a few months older than ZZ is.”

I paused to give her a chance to respond, but she just gestured that I continue. “My powers allow me to manipulate matter directly with just my mind. I can replicate any object, including living beings, and I can create pocket universes that can act as communication conduits across unlimited distance.”

“You can duplicate people?” she asked.

“More than that, I can heal them, make them younger, and modify them into anyone else. In addition to duplicating, I can twin.”

“It’s like cloning?”

“Better. Much better. Imagine there are suddenly two of you.” I said, conjuring a second her into the room. “Each one of you experiences what the other experiences, knows what the other knows.”

The other her sat on the floor, as they looked at each other in wonder. I had twinned her long ago, keeping the second unconscious, using my power to keep the body alive. A continuous back up. A simple blink copy and there were two of her in the room.

“Now, with two of you, you can get twice as much done, or take a vacation, and work at the same time. But why stop at two? Maybe a third works at an office somewhere else in the world,” I said, conjuring a third.

“But everybody knows there would be two of you then, so I modify one, give her a new shape,” I said and forged her body into a nineteen year old woman, with a killer body.

“So now, does this young you go conquer the world as your secret protege, released to the wild? Does she start a new company? Go back to school to get that education on a subject you always felt you missed out on?”

“Adam,” she gasped, “This is too much.”

I erased the two other hers. “If you don’t need them, then they disappear again.”

She took a deep breath. I waited for her to say something, finally she did. “That’s why you can disappear and not miss work.”

“That’s why I didn’t ask for parental leave. There’s been a me at Nora’s side the whole pregnancy. There’s a Me in space right now orbiting another star. There’s even a Me running our New York office.”

“Robert Diaz?” she said, wonderingly.

“That’s a Me.” I answered.

“I was getting ready to replace him with somebody who was more of a go getter. There are hundreds of facilities like the first ones he found. Yet he’s only acquiring one a month.”

I shrugged, “The US is still the coronavirus capital of the world. Not much business is getting done. Plus I haven’t been motivated, just easing along.”

“Well step it up, that refurbishing company is bringing those turbines back to factory or better specs at half the cost of replacements.”

“That’s me, using my power, not some company. The funds that I pocket from personally using my power go to the off world infrastructure I’ve built.”

“Seriously? How much are you skimming off the company?”

“First of all it’s not skimming, and second I own the company so I can do as I please.”

“Sorry, but how is it not skimming?”

“If I own another company, and I pay them a fair price to do work, then that’s just vertical integration, not skimming.”

“So you own the companies that we pay to do stuff?”

“A number of them. Most of the ZZ Erwerbung suppliers are just me replicating raw materials, and finished goods.”

“Are you over charging the company for any of those services?” she asked.

“No, I survey the needed supply prices, average the cost of quality goods, and reduce it by 5%. I actually save the company money, and we never have a delay in raw goods for manufacturing.”

“What about ZZ America? They’ve been producing more power than the natural gas bills and solar power installations can account for. Are you creating power somehow? It’s part of why I wanted to bring in a new boss, I couldn’t figure out how the division was making so much money.”

“Not making it personally, but the same tech that allows instant transfer of information, also allows transfer of electricity without wires. They are all wired into a solar power generation plant I built on Mercury.”

She just shook her head, “Adam, transport of electricity is a leading expense in electrical power. You are importing power from Mercury, the planet Mercury, and letting the company sell it at a huge profit?”

“Sure, just making sure space pays for itself. I was serious about spacecraft powered by mass to energy conversion, I had the idea at the time to take a leap past SpaceX and put Switzerland in space as the neutral country that got there first.”

“There’s no room for a launch facility here, unless you flatten out part of the Alps,” she said

“That’s what I discovered. No place for rockets in the entire country, it’s either towns, farms, national parks, or cities.

“Rockets sometimes go boom, so you have to have space around them so people are safe. America has so much more open space, plus access to the ocean, so that if the thing crashes it doesn’t land on anyone.

“During my trip to the trade hub I also acquired a gravity engine. It’s not antigravity, but it does push itself away from mass, which means that it can get really high up before it has to use any fuel. And once it’s used its fuel to reach orbit, it can use a space drive to move around between planets.”

“That’s amazing. Can it go between stars?”

“No the space drive is just for between planets. The star drive is for going between stars, but I’ve got a better plan for doing that.”

“How about some drinks, and you can tell me your plan.”

“Would you rather talk on Mars? Anything you might wish to drink is available there also.”

“Yes!” she said, excitedly.