Chapter 4

It took Adele three weeks to finalize the purchase and sale of Piaggio. I handled my part, checking into a hotel room then passing through a connected door to the neighboring room a 1kg package of shelf stable powdered vaccine. It was enough to dose 55,000 people.

Tyr did the swap using a copy of my body just in case it was a trap of some kind. We had even gamed a scenario where he got arrested as me, then pulled off a latex mask mission impossible style to reveal a different anonymous identity. Nothing happened, he did the delivery, and the escrow closed on the company. The escrow revealed the hidden surprises as a small portion of the money we paid went to the previous airport owners, as well as the creditors of Piaggio, and a tiny portion to Mubadala Development Company.

The Pilatus investment went just as easy, as we received 15% ownership of the Pilatus in return for 49.9% of Piaggio Aerospace. The Italian government has insisted that we retain the majority ownership. Then the Pilatus engineers were let loose in the Piaggio High Technology center, bringing with them the data sheets on BP2, BP3, BP8A & BP8B, the supercapacitor, which we had finally come to acquire with a combination of purchase and royalty, and a new dirigible model.

Using the BSB I started production of a supercapacitor factory and a graphene factory. The supercapacitor factory would be an actual factory, while I could use my power to duplicate inventory if required, this one would use actual graphene to produce actual items for sale. Each capacitor had a 4kwh storage capacity, used 2 sq meters of graphene, wound tight with a non conductive layer between, and a special dopant. They were 18mm wide and 54mm long, and we were already getting orders from BMW, Audi, Volvo, and Nissan. They all wanted a vehicle that could outrange a Tesla. The capacitor factory was getting shipped to join the solar factory at the Thurn site, as Rümlang was running out of space.

I turned out the structures for Thurn in two days, then started on two double sized graphene factories, two solar panel factories, and two airframe factories. Half for Stans Switzerland, and half for Villanova d’Albenga, Italy. I started reviewing the Pilatus PC-12 airframe and the Piaggio P-180. I wasn’t bothering with the Hammerhead UAV, I’d instructed them to not take additional orders for it, but to redesign it as a semi lighter than air electric powered vehicle. It would be a significantly larger vehicle, but with the ability to pump out the air from the internal tanks it could reduce its weight to lighter than air, for nearly unlimited high altitude loiter and integrated solar recharging.

David arranged the pieces onto a truck for transport. Once the structure was complete I would bring in the equipment to finish the job, but under twinned identities, who would stay on to operate the factories. Val was finding housing for the three new automation operation managers, as we were calling the position. They wouldn’t manage the plant, just production on the automated side of the buildings.

Since the automation was just me using my power, I was on hand to run the equipment that was being purchased and brought in to stage the construction. The two airframe plants, which I called the Flight Structure Buildings, or FSB, would have enough room to build modest sized airframes that fit in the 50 x 50 x 50 meter build bay, in the 100 x 50 meter building. I had originally thought to put an apartment on each building for my twins, but then people would expect to visit so they could watch one being built.

IP2 arrived at a disappointing Proxima Centauri B during all of this. It was disappointing because the planet, while near Earth gravity was tidally locked. The star’s output was too radiation heavy on the sun side, and temperatures were too cold behind the horizon on the night side. What atmosphere there was, was frozen on the dark side of the planet, where it was in eternal darkness.

I had hoped that some sort of orbiting mirror would provide light and heat on the dark side, as the radiation of the star, and how close it was to the tiny red dwarf, eliminated even modestly deep sunside underground options. The planetary magnetic field was insufficient, even though it was actually stronger than Earth’s, simply due to proximity.

I did install a Mars style 8 lobed station at the Proxima B L2 point. In permanent shadow it was safe from the occasional flares of power that Proxima was known for. I dedicated a power transfer pearl and infrared tuned solar panels to the sunside surface of Proxima B to power the station. Unlike the Mars station, this one didn’t have any plants growing, because I didn’t expect it to be inhabited for any particular reason any time soon.

With the personal survey of Proxima B, C, & D a bust for life or habitability, the bright neighbor in the sky was the next target. Toliman, also known as Alpha Centauri B, was the closer of the two stars that Proxima orbited. I conjured a massive optical telescope and attached it to the station, I pointed it at the Toliman as IP2 headed off at 500 million kph with a 100x time multiplier. I locked it into position, and set it to take pictures at the same spot every 11.2 days of the Proxima B’s orbit around the star. I was hoping it could pick up differences between images that could identify any planets that a closer inspection might miss. A day and a half to reach Toliman, then to conjure another telescope to look for planetary bodies orbiting either Toliman or Rigel Kentaurus aka Alpha Centauri A.

With two IP’s moving at 100x, I felt comfortable enough trying to add a third at 1000x. IP3, pointed at Bernard’s star, leapt to speed. I was getting better at speeding up time, the energy used was less than I had expected, but I was absorbing all the incoming radiation from several spots around the Sol system and now the Proxima system also, so I was still net positive. In addition to absorbing where I was, I tasked duplicates of myself to absorb power in interstellar space operating thru the probes. It was just under 4 days to reach Bernard’s star.

IP1 was still scooting around Sol, dropping pearls as exit points at the outer edge of the solar system 1.58 lightyears out. I conjured IP4 and launched from Proxima towards Luhman 16AB. Further research had shown it was much closer from there. There wasn’t much chance of finding human habitable planets there, but a double brown dwarf was an interesting astronomical target, but not likely to have life or be livable. I could feel a significant strain trying to move 2 different probes at 1000x normal time, so dropped IP4 back to a comfortable 100x. It was a 27 day trip at that speed. No rush to see that out of the way system.

Eight hours into the 36 hour trip to Toliman IP2 hit something and exploded. I dropped the time warps on everything. I had made a mistake, as all the probes were using the same pearl network for my control and time warping. It made duplication easier, but the energy release of an impact at not quite 1% speed of light is significant. 22 gigatons of tnt significant.