Regolith

by Brent Reilly

  “Because it lacks an atmosphere, the Moon is much better for infrared, near-infrared, cosmic-ray, x-ray, gamma-ray, radio-wave, and ultraviolet astronomy. We could put scopes in permanently shadowed craters, each studying a narrow range of the infrared spectrum. The constant cold gives infrared scopes better resolution. Interferonomy scopes would work best in the submillimeter spectrum, which doesn’t work well on Earth because of the water vapor in our atmosphere. And very low frequency radio waves are blocked by our ionosphere, so we need the Moon for that as well. We’re essentially blind at that range of the spectrum. And the only place in the galaxy permanently shielded from our radio waves is the lunar far side, so that is where we must put our radio telescopes.

  “We should maximize interferonomy scopes, where one device combines the light from several telescopes, all focused on one single distant object. The power of a single telescope in resolving detail is proportional to its diameter, while the resolving power of an array of telescopes is proportional to the diameter of the array. In other words, instead of one huge telescope, it is cheaper, easier, and better to have several smaller telescopes working together. So we want thousands of scopes, organized into hundreds of interferonomy arrays. All remote controlled, computer enhanced, and computer-filtered. Only amateurs still eyeball space anymore. With this we could systematically map every Earth-size planet within 100 light years. We could learn a lot about Earth by studying other planets, which may serve as young and old Earths.

  “The best interferonomy arrays operate in the range of X-rays because its short wavelengths allow for shorter interferometric baselines, which are more practical than visible light systems. X-ray is the best band for high resolution imaging, and a good lunar X-ray interferometry scope could detect something the size of a car at the center of our galaxy. If a lunar array could see a car 30,000 light years away, a Jupiter array could read its license plate.”

  Cooper yawned, which he discovered is a very effective way to cut meetings short. “Can we bring this back to Earth?”

  “Remember the $10 quadrillion in metallic asteroids floating nearby? It would be faster, easier, safer, and cheaper to mine them if we soft-landed them first on the Moon.”

  Jackson almost laughed as Cooper sat up straight. Jackson clicked through images, graphs, and blueprints as he continued.

  “Then there’s $5 quadrillion in helium3. When mixed with deuterium to become D-HE3, it becomes the perfect fuel for nuclear fusion, which is several times more powerful than nuclear fission, without radioactivity, pollution, or greenhouse gases. By weight, helium3 would be worth about fifteen thousand times more than gold. And the Moon has enough to power humanity for the next thousand years. With it, cheap fusion would make every dirty energy power plant in the world obsolete.”

  This woke Cooper the fuck up. “How much?”

  Jackson wondered how much detail Cooper wanted.

  “Solar wind carries this rare element until it crashes into the lunar surface over billions of years. Earth’s magnetic shield prevents helium3 from reaching Earth, except for minute quantities near the poles. The greatest concentrations of helium3 are outside asteroid craters in the highlands near the equator where the Moon is most exposed to sunlight and where the regolith is oldest. The higher or lower the latitude, the less incidental sunlight, and thus the less solar wind and helium3.

  “Replacing America’s several thousand dirty power plants with fusion nets $100 billion a year in lunar helium3. Worldwide you’re grossing a trillion a year for the next thousand years.”

  Cooper was not yawning anymore.

  “But why is helium3 worth so much?”

  “Helium3 mixed with deuterium, found in heavy water, releases the highest energy content of any substance except antimatter. A fusion ship or power plant is several times more powerful than a nuclear fission one, yet because it releases virtually no radiation, it does not need heavy shielding. That makes it cheaper to build and maintain.”

  “So, Henry, how much do you expect to make total?”

  And that, for Cooper, was really the bottom line.

  “But, Dan, we’re not done yet. Don’t you want to know why we want one hundred nuclear spaceships?”

  25

  “What do you mean, you haven’t fucked her?”

  Cari Pisini looked pissed. Sweaty from sheet shredding all night, her hair a total mess, her anger only made her look hotter. A woman is never better looking than right after a great orgasm.

  Rance Gardener turned over in his bed to face her. Naked, hungry, and exhausted, he made the mistake of actually talking to her before she drove to the airport for her flight. It had been a year since they last fucked, and who knew when he would get some from her again. In gaming terminology, this was called a free kill. If Lisa knew he was fucking his ex, especially just two weeks after he proposed, she would kill him.

  Literally. Lisa was enormously proud of her recently earned blackbelt, far more so than her pilots license, her meager modeling jobs, or acing calculus.

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. For the last year, I have been surviving on one-night stands. Good thing cheap hookers are less buck for the bang,” he joked. “Too bad we don’t have more time before the Fidel Fragment strikes.”

  He had arranged for her to fly to Fairbanks. Who knew voting against Bush would save so many lives?

  “But you’re fucking engaged to be married! You gave her a million dollar ring! Even if your and her parents paid for it.”

  Cari really could not understand it, and she was very bright for a hot chick. The fact that Lisa just turned 16 didn’t seem relevant. Cari, like most attractive American girls, had played around plenty by age 16. Rance saw things differently. He caught the wave of a lifetime and intended on riding it to shore.

  Rance and Cari had been the “hot couple” all through high school, but she put her career before all else, which was the only way to get ahead in today’s competitive world. America has 18 out of the world’s top 20 universities, and she made sure she found a way into one of them, even though it meant working all out just to keep up with the smarter students, much less the Asians. She just didn’t have time for a serious relationship. She still had a boyfriend, but that was to not spend her own fucking money.

  Their four-year relationship effectively ended when she won her scholarship. She was straight up with him about it, too. He had to stay local to help his father’s helicopter-over-the-Grand Canyon tour business. If he studied at Georgetown with her, then she would have been happy to stay with him. Until she found someone with better prospects. Not that she wanted to be a compulsive relation-shipper like some of her friends, hooking up with robo-sapiens just to feel alive.

  “Don’t blame me! God knows I’ve tried. But she wanted to wait until she had a ring on her finger, and then wouldn’t accept one until she turned 16. And ever since then, we’ve never had any privacy. She and her father have flown to Alaska, Canada, Patagonia, Scandinavia, Greenland, Australia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Japan, and even China in just the last few weeks.”

  “Why won’t she fuck you? You’re the best I’ve ever had.”

  Which made Rance speculate on just how many that was.

  Cari couldn’t complain too much about her ex-boyfriend’s fiancée not fucking her ex-boyfriend. The irony was that Rance was a much better fuck than her current boyfriend who, although tender and romantic, didn’t have what it took to make her scream. Cari occasionally needed it bite-the-pillow rough. Or spin the dildo with her special girlfriends.

  Rance was aware of his good looks, and he worked hard to stay in shape, but good looks are less of an advantage for a man than a woman. Society judges women on their attractiveness and men on their social status. A man who doesn’t work is a loser while a woman who doesn’t work has found a man who does. A man who cannot support his family is a loser while a woman who cannot support her family is simply in need of a man who isn’t a loser. So men felt pressured to get ahead, while women felt pres
sured to look their best. While the biggest insult to a woman was being seen as unattractive (a big, fat, old, ugly bitch), the biggest insult to a man was being seen as a loser (a broke, lazy, jobless failure). Society is okay with an ugly guy if he’s rich or a poor woman if she’s beautiful.

  People try to get the best deal they can, including who they marry, so a man who marries an unattractive woman is less respected, as is a woman who marries a loser. Who you marry reflects on you, because people assume that was the best you could do. Which is why men marry pretty girls and women marry successful men.

  As far as Cari was concerned, only a stupid woman marries a man who cannot support a family. Love is not just a choice, but a decision, and one bad decision can lead to a lifetime of misery. Unlike boys and girls, men and women decide who they fall in love with, which is why successful men don’t fall in love with fat ugly bitches and why poor beautiful women don’t fall in love with handsome penniless failures. Women prefer a rich alcoholic over a poor workaholic. Women want a sugar daddy while men want a hot mama. A man wants to be a woman’s first while a woman wants to be a man’s last. Smart women may fuck down, but they marry up. And Cari was smart. And Rance respected that.

  Except their roles were reversed.

  Rance had to stay home to help his ill father and their ailing business while Cari had to go off to school to become not poor. So hooking up with a hot meal ticket like Lisa Jackson was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Even if she wouldn’t fuck him yet.

  The irony struck hard: Cari would fuck but not marry him, while Lisa would marry but not fuck him. Life just isn’t fair. Which is why a court of law is not called a court of justice. But, as his father frequently reminded him, “life was not meant to be fair.”

  “Lisa wants to fuck me. You should hear our phone sex or see our online chats. But she insisted on no intercourse until she turned 16, and since then we haven’t been able to get alone. I think her family is deliberately keeping her busy.”

  “Rance Gardener, don’t tell me you’re not getting any.”

  “Oh, well, she blows me several times a month. Good, too,” he added sincerely, as he casually stoked Cari’s breasts. He could not help but notice that they were nowhere near as nice as Lisa’s, which defied gravity, and hoped that Cari could not read his mind like Lisa sometimes could. “In fact, she loves to visit me just to suck me off. At first she just sucked the head and thought that was enough, but I’ve taught her to relax her gag reflex to properly deep throat. Now she’s hooked. And Lisa being a swallower instead of a spitter just closed the deal for me.”

  He didn’t mean to implicitly criticize Cari, but she never let him cum in her mouth. The one time she was drunk enough to not avoid it, she spit it out like sour milk which – like it or not -- felt like rejection. Lisa, in contrast, not only liked to suck his cock, but loved to suck him dry. He had never known a chick that did that, out of dozens who had sucked his cock. If swallowing a man’s juice didn’t reflect a special relationship, then what did?

  Limiting yourself to just one woman for the rest of your life just did not appeal to most men. Like limiting yourself to just one pickup truck -- after several years you tire of seeing all those dents and scratches. Yet devoting oneself to one worthy, appreciative man brought most women a sense of stability and security.

  After his mother remarried up, his own father warned him that 80% of a wife’s cock-sucking occurs in the first 20% of the relationship. So if they don’t suck now, don’t expect them to suck later. Most married men go years without their wife drinking their juice. That, quite frankly, scared the hell out of Rance. A girl could be the best damn wife in the world, but he knew he wouldn’t be happy if she didn’t suck him off. He would be happy to return the favor, but oral was a deal-breaker for him.

  Which is why he didn’t mind Cari breaking up with him. He would never marry her because she wouldn’t suck him off. And that’s why he didn’t go to Georgetown with her. If you were going to hypothetically limit yourself to just one woman for the rest of your life, he felt blessed to have one who got soaking wet swallowing his seed. That she was hot, fun, smart, a virgin, and the daughter of a billionaire only cemented the deal. If Lisa sucked him off a few times a month, he honestly thought he could stay faithful to her for the rest of his life. And he never knew a girl who met that criteria. Rance knew how rare Lisa was, getting wet from swallowing him, which motivated him to take her off the market.

  So, yeah, he would wait. As long as she blew his dick if not his mind, he would respect her wishes. If she had given him any the last few weeks, he would not now be sticking it to Cari. Cari didn’t know it, but this was their last fuck.

  Rance remembered a story about a farmer who gave President Coolidge and his wife separate tours of his farm. As they passed a rooster having sex with a chicken, Mrs. Coolidge asked if that happened just once a day.

  “No,” said the farmer. “Several times a day.”

  “Please tell Mr. Coolidge,” she told him.

  When later giving the same tour to her husband, the farmer did tell him. “Always the same chicken?” asked the president.

  “No, sir,” replied the farmer. “Always a different chicken.”

  “Please tell Mrs. Coolidge,” Silent Cal commanded.

  Cari shook her head. She certainly didn’t want to debate the definition of “virginity” with her ex to convince his fiancée to fuck him. Time to change the subject.

  “How the hell did Jackson make billions raising fish?”

  “His family had long been farmers and ranchers. When Jackson’s father came back from Vietnam, he told Jackson’s grandfather about the shrimp farming he saw along the Vietnam coast. So they went big into shrimp farming.”

  “In the 1970s, they heard about a tiny uninhabited island called Clipperton -- well, really a coral atoll -- in the Pacific, 1300 kilometers off of the Mexican Coast. It’s just seven kilometers long and encircles a lagoon. FDR visited it twice and ordered a military base installed on it. Now, for some reason, it belongs to the French. Anyways, they heard that once a year the island is overrun by spider crabs. Since Jackson’s father is a pilot, they rented a cargo plane, then flew to Tejupan Point on Mancanilla Bay, Mexico, where they bought a ton of ice that they put in new trash cans. The three Henry Jacksons flew to the island, grabbed every one they could, then flew back before nightfall. In Tejupan Point, they re-iced the crabs, then flew to Los Angeles to make a bundle.

  “It was a deciding moment in his life. He says your job is only work when you’d rather be doing something else. If you enjoy your job, it isn’t work. He couldn’t believe you could make so much money doing something that didn’t feel like actual work. So they decided to return the following year. But Jackson, who was just a kid at the time, suggested that they set up shrimp farms around the island and hire Mexican fishermen to tend them. Well, that worked so well that they gradually diversified into salmon and tuna farming using huge floating pens, raising fish like cattle.

  “They tried the tuna you find in your salad like skipjack and albacore, plus yellowfin and bigeye tuna, but then learned in vitro fertilization to produce larvae for the warm-blooded bluefin tuna, which are four meters long, larger than Great White sharks, and weigh three quarters of a ton. They spent years cross-breeding bioengineered versions that broke the 2001 record for 1500 pounds. The Japanese go crazy for bluefin in sushi and sashimi. A single 200 kilo bluefin sold for $173,600 at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo in 2001. They turn the fat belly meat into a delicacy called maguro and Toro, the best quality maguro, goes for up to $400 per pound, which is more expensive than caviar. Compare that to a buck a pound for chicken.

  “Japanese pay so much for maguro that Jackson grows thousands of tons of it in the lab by shocking it with electricity or some shit. Scientists have done it with chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cattle, and sci fi writers have described doing it with human corpses, but it’s not cost effective for meat that sells for just a few bucks a pou
nd. The Japanese apparently cannot tell the difference. Can you imagine making a billion a year growing fish muscle?

  “Bluefin is an awesome fish. A single female can lay ten million eggs a year. These fish are fast – up to 80 kilometers per hour, and cross the Atlantic in just sixty days. They are one of the few fish that are warm blooded, and they can dive a kilometer deep. They eat anything and hunt in packs. And here is Jackson, raising millions of them like a cattle ranch. Or, in his case, fifteen ranches. The Japanese alone eat 60,000 tons of bluefin a year.

  “His wife, a geneticist, has helped him selectively breed and bioengineer fish that grow faster, bigger, healthier, reach maturity sooner, reproduce for more years, and reproduce more in each season. Cattlemen have been doing the same for years, but he’s probably the only fisherman who optimizes his own fish.

  “But bluefins aren’t his biggest catch. Working with Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research in Tokyo, Jackson started the world’s only whale ranch. In South Korea, a whale sells for as much as 100,000 dollars each, and he had thousands of them.

  “He breeds Blues, Southern Fin, Southern Sei, Antarctic Minke, and Belugas in huge pens that occupy hundreds of cubic kilometers of ocean. The fin whale grows up to 24 meters long and weighs between 45 and 64 tons. He has net factories all around the pens to grow them hundreds of meters every day. He doesn’t touch Sperm whales because they mature too slowly, breed infrequently, grow too slowly, and are too aggressive. Sperm whales have sunk ships five times their size.

  “Males and most females are harvested after their teenage growth phase, but the best females only after they stop reproducing. Each has an a GPS identity tag to track them. With selective cross-breeding and growth hormones, each generation grows larger, grows faster, breeds sooner, and has more meat. Whale meat is a delicacy in Japan. Rock carvings in South Korea indicate that humans have hunted whales since at least 6000 BC.