Chapter 8

I hung up my phone and sighed, “Po’s arranged a meeting, but it’s grown. We’ll need seating for fifteen countries, but at 9 am tomorrow,” I told Tiffany.

“I’ll arrange the events building,” she replied.

I just nodded in agreement and considered how to prepare. I started making notes, then picked up the phone again, “Is Simonne available? It’s Adam Barkley of Zukunft Zuerst.” I only waited a few moments.

“Hi Simonne, I was wondering if I could come for a visit this afternoon? 2 pm will work just fine. Thank you.”

I turned to Tiffany, “I better tell Adele the change in plans, is she free?”

“For the moment, shall I tell her you’re on your way?”

“Sure,” I said standing, and taking a brief look at the heliport beyond my window. “See if you can book a helicopter for the trip to Bern, it’s too short of a distance for a plane.”

“Got it, boss,” she said with a wink.

I took the elevator down one floor, and knocked on the outside of the open door to Adele’s office. “Got a minute, things are growing beyond our initial plans.”

“Have a seat,” she invited.

“Po arranged for contacts with Japan and India as requested, then went ahead and contacted everybody else he thought would be interested. We have at least 15 more showing up tomorrow for a presentation.”

“What time?”

“9 am, and since this is going to make international news I’m going to visit the energy minister first.”

“Who else is coming?”

“Australia, Indonesia, United States, Germany, Poland, UK, South Africa, Russia, Columbia, Canada, Brazil, Turkey, Czechia, Morocco, Romania. All countries with damaged coal plants.”

“Do you expect more than that?” she asked thoughtfully.

“Perhaps, I asked Tiffany to get the old steel building set up to host the meeting. I thought we could display a sample of the device there.”

“You are sure it’s safe?” she asked.

“I might not understand how it unbends space, and makes that turn into electricity, but every space going planet uses them. The 5 gigawatt version is considered on the small side for most installations.”

“Just how much electricity do they produce?” she asked, amazed.

“So much that they look at our 5 megawatt consumption on the Poolnar communicator the equivalent of asking to borrow someone’s phone charger.”

“We were afraid that it was too much power to ask for!”

“We’ve sold enough of them that it won’t be a problem. Tyr and I are designing fighter craft powered by the energy produced. Multi role fighters, completely remote piloted, and capable of atmospheric, near space, deep space, and interstellar jumps.”

“That was the skinny little things with the retractable needle spars?”

“Right, I’ll be able to conjure them in lots of a hundred at a time, each group forming a fighter wing controlled by AI but commanded by a human.”

“Did you solve the mass to energy conversion problem?”

“Where I have to separately create each conversion pearl because otherwise firing one, fires them all? Sort of. I copied the energy weapons on Poolnar. He has huge fusion generators to power them, but I’ve got a pearl that converts all matter entering it into electrons. I can replicate the pearls for that as needed, because those electrons stay inside the pearl until the weapon fires.”

“You are feeding it mass remotely then?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Why aren’t we doing that for the powering of the ships?”

“So we only have to power the weapons when in use, the ships need power all the time to run the engines.”

“Ok, I’ll leave that stuff to you guys. Do you need me to go with you to visit Simonne?” she asked.

“I think you might bring the credibility that we need.” I said, then paused. “She has an opening at 2pm.”

“I guess we are eating lunch in the car,” she sighed.

“Tiffany is getting us a helicopter, we don’t need to leave till 1pm.”

“Now that is thinking, unless you want to just teleport us there.”

“Now that is thinking, unfortunately traffic is heavily monitored by video around Bern.”

“We could teleport directly into her office, that would lead to an increase in credibility.”

“Or teleport her here,” I suggested.

Tiffany stuck her head into the room, “Take the helicopter, you’ll give her a heart attack otherwise,” she recommended.

After a nice lunch, Adele, Tiffany, and I flew in the helicopter to Bern, where a car whisked us away to her office. We arrived just before two, where she met us in the lobby, and escorted us up. Her soft french accent still sent a warm frision up my spine each time she greeted me.

We were shown to a functional conference room, with nicely padded chairs, obviously a place built for long hours of work. I let Adele begin after the obligatory social greetings and niceties were exchanged.

“We seem to be holding an impromtude energy conference with several countries tomorrow, and would like to let you know, as it will likely have an impact on Swiss energy policies.”

“Really? With who?”

“Eighteen countries that have been seriously harmed by the Event causing damage to their coal power production plants.” I explained.

“And what is the purpose of the conference?”

“Guardian had selected Zukunft Zuerst as its representative in providing a carbon free power source to replace the damaged production.”

“Guardian, as in the creature that met with the Secretary General of the UN, and turned over the squid responsible?” she said, her voice growing higher pitched as she spoke.

“That is correct,” Adele calmly answered.

“But, how! When!”

“The offer came yesterday. We started to keep it quiet, just to China, Japan, and India at first, but it just grew. It’s grown so much that we thought we needed to tell you.”

“What does Guardian want to do to us now?” she asked.

I spoke up, “My understanding is that Guardian saved 5 billion people from starving and freezing to death, as well as 2 million people falling out of the sky in airplane crashes across the globe.

“He saved us! Now we need to do our part to keep from killing ourselves with catastrophic climate change, and repair the damage caused by The Event. The damage happened when fire stopped working, not when it came back.”

“I’m sorry, it just seems so unbelievable. 2021 is supposed to be the year everything gets better,” she said.