“Um, Shan…”
As the silence drew out, Shan pulled his head back to look down at her. “Hey, what aren’t you telling me? Is your grandmother actually rich?”
“Well, kinda.”
“Really?” Shan’s brow furrowed. “All the news I saw about you guys back in your Olympic days implied that your family was poor. Where’d the money come from?”
In a small voice Ell said, “From me.”
“Huh?! Where’d you get the money? Wait a minute,” his eyes narrowed, “how much are they paying you out there at D5R?”
“Shan,” she almost whispered, “I own D5R.”
“Get out!” he snorted, “Why is there a board of directors then?”
Ell shrugged, “There isn’t. I just pretend that there’s a board so no one’ll realize I’m the one making all the decisions.”
“Raquel…” he tilted his head, “Where’s all this money coming from? I don’t see you doing any endorsements?”
“I patented the PGR chips.”
“Really? How come no one knows that?”
“My name’s on the patent so it isn’t hidden. But, at my request, PGR plays it down so people just don’t seem to realize it. When they figure that out, they don’t seem to realize how much it’s worth.”
Shan frowned, “They don’t charge all that much for those chips.”
“But they sell a lot of them. They aren’t just connecting your AI to your HUD you know. They connect almost everything that moves data over any distance.” She shrugged, “Our planet’s had a tremendous reduction in radio emissions over the past three years.”
Shan’s gaze drifted up to the ceiling, “Wait, so, I’ve got a new chip from my HUD to my AI, and one from my AI to the net…”
“And you probably have a PGR hub connecting all your screens to your AI and to the net.”
“And, if I get a new car, it’ll probably have a PGR connection.”
Ell snorted softly, “New cars have 20-100 PGRs. Why stretch data cables when chips are so reliable? Even counting the billions of very poor on the planet who don’t have any chips, PGR Comm has been selling an average of two PGRs for every person on this planet the past couple years.”
“Wait, if there’s 6-7 billion people on the planet… you’re saying they’re selling about 13 billion chips a year?”
She shrugged, “Close enough.”
“And they sell them for…?”
“6-7$ each, on average.”
“And you get?”
“12%”
Shan’s eyes went distant, then widened, “Ten billion dollars a year?”
She gave a tiny shrug, “Close enough for right now. That’ll drop off in a while when everyone starts to have as many PGRs as they need. They don’t break very often.” After a pause she said, “Or it might go up if a lot more uses are found for them.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
Ell gave a tiny headshake.
“Wait… and you own D5R? I guess you founded it with money from the chips?”
Ell nodded.
“No other stockholders?’
“Oh, sure. The employees own shares, 2% of D5R and almost 20% of some of D5R’s subsidiaries.”
“And ET Resources has got to be making money from that asteroid they’re mining.”
Ell nodded, “Since we’ve got waldoes out there running the ore gathering and crushing operation it’s become a lot more functional. It’s actually just begun to make money. But it’s a lot more money than I had expected.”
“And from those solar heating and cooling sources they have parked near the sun and out in deep space?”
Ell nodded again. “Not just heating and cooling. More and more electrical power generation is coming from hot solar tubes. A lot of the power plants near the coasts make steam from salt water, then ‘cool tube’ condense the steam into fresh water. They sell the water too.”
“And you’re getting revenue from those too?”
She shrugged, “Not a big percentage, but it adds up.”
“Oh, and the ports themselves. Does D5R have the patent on those too?”
“Well…”
Shan tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.
“I guess,” she said with a sigh, “it’s my patent.”
“Oh my God. Are you… the wealthiest person in the world?”
“Oh, no!”
“Not yet?”
Ell shrugged, granting that it was only a matter of time.
Shan stared at her for a while then whispered, “So why are you hanging out with a schlep like me?”
Ell sniggered and moved closer to put her head on his shoulder and an arm around him. “‘Cause, I like my schleps smart.”
Shan leaned his head back to look down into her eyes, “No, really. Why aren’t you off cruising the world with the glitterati?”
She stuck out her lower lip, “Don’ wanna.” Then she gave him a serious look “Really… why would I do that? What I love best is figuring things out. Working out the math for the 5th dimension. Getting ports to work. Inventing new stuff. Using them to save the space station and stop a comet. I think it’s something like the way other people enjoy solving a crossword puzzle, though word puzzles aren’t my thing. But I don’t have any desire to do the kinds of things that most rich people seem to like to do. I would kind of like to travel around and see some of the world sometime though.” She glanced away, “What do you want to do with your life?”
Shan didn’t say anything for a moment, then snorted gently. “An hour ago, I would have said, ‘take care of you.’ But now I figure you could hire that done. Being your ‘kept’ man kinda sticks in my craw though.”
Quietly, Ell said, “I don’t want you to be my ‘kept man” either. I’m so proud of what you’ve done already. I truly hope you’re going to continue doing those kinds of things.”
His eyes widened, “What I’ve done?”
“Figuring out how 5D math applied to galactic distances and the dark matter-energy problem. Designing the software for John’s new hand.”
Shan laughed, “With the first, I didn’t even understand what I had… ‘til you explained it to me. The second—really any math and software jockey could have done.”
Ell shrugged her free shoulder, “The first, no one else but you even noticed, despite it being out there for years. As for the second, I agree a lot of programmers could have done it, given a lot of time. Not many could design such an elegant and effective interface or underlying program. Practically none of them could have done it so quickly. Really Shan, it was a work of art.”
Shan’s head sank back against the pillow, “Well, if the WWW wants to marry me, I’m certainly not turning it down.”
“WWW?”
“World’s wealthiest woman.”
Ell snorted, then turned serious, “Remember you’re marrying ‘not rich Raquel.’ Who’s planning on leading an ordinary life, and raising some ordinary kids, in an ordinary family, in that ordinary little house we’re buying.”
Shan stared at her for a bit then said in a husky voice, “Yeah, and I’m OK with that too… That’s what I signed on for and I’m happier than anyone in the world with that decision…” After a moment he shrugged, “I’ll talk to my Mom and Dad about how many people they want to invite to the wedding.”
***
Ell, Emma and Shan met at Ell’s house. Ell and Emma drove there from work. Shan had dropped by their new house to move in a few things and then snuck over through the tunnel. Querlak was asleep. Ell put a graph up on the screen, “Spectroscopic analysis of the little fragment Sigwald chipped off the rimwall shows almost pure carbon. I showed the results to an expert who said that the other elements are almost certainly just surface contaminants.”
Emma frowned, “But is it graphene?”
Ell shrugged, “Graphene or nanotubes or some other form of pure carbon that we haven’t discovered yet.”
Shan frowned, “Our people can’t tell its s
tructure?”
“Not from spectroscopic analysis.”
“Why don’t you ask them to use something else?”
“To do that we’d have to bring a sample back here to earth.”
Shan frowned, “You haven’t done that yet?”
“Nothing from other life bearing worlds comes back to earth. We don’t want to import pathogens. We sterilize everything we send the other way to protect the sigmas.”
He shrugged, “Just sterilize things you bring back from there.”
“What if they have a pathogen that can survive our sterilization techniques?”
Shan’s eyes widened slightly but he said nothing.
“Have you asked Querlak what it’s made of?” Emma asked. They were communicating fairly well with the alien by now. The three of them were taking turns running Sigwald. Rotating who interfaced, let them keep up with the alien’s six hour sleeping, eleven hour waking cycle fairly well.
To their surprise they still hadn’t met any other sigmas. They were beginning to get the feeling that Querlak may be avoiding bringing Sigwald into contact with other members of her race. Querlak willingly answered questions when they could be communicated but sometimes they couldn’t understand the answers very well.
In response to Emma’s question Ell said, “Querlak says it’s made of the 6th element—carbon—just like the spectroscopy says.” Ell shrugged, “She says the carbon came from the first and fourth planets.”
“What’re those other planets like?”
“Well, remember we don’t have great ability to analyze them. Our rocket is following a ballistic orbit and there’s a limit to what we can tell by simple imaging over planetary distances. The first planet is a rocky world, bigger than Mars but smaller than Venus. It’s just a little closer to their sun than Venus but only has a wispy carbon dioxide atmosphere. The second planet is the sigmas’ home world. It’s quite a bit smaller than Earth. In fact, it’s only a little larger than Mars. It has a pretty dense oxy-nitro atmosphere, very similar to the ringworld’s though the ringworld has more oxygen and less CO2, I think because it has such an overabundance of plant life. The third planet is another small rocky world much like Mars, cold with very little atmosphere. The fourth planet is a gas giant. It’s more massive than Jupiter, though when gas giants get to be that heavy they start to shrink as their own gravity compresses them so it isn’t actually larger. Spectroscopy of its atmosphere shows it’s almost all hydrogen and helium so it’s not very clear where the carbon came from. Maybe it’s coming from one of the moons of the fourth planet?”
“Wait a minute,” Shan said, “what if that first planet used to have a substantial carbon dioxide atmosphere? Maybe they used that carbon to build the ringworld?”
Ell’s and Emma’s eyes widened. Emma said thoughtfully, “They’d love Venus then wouldn’t they?”
Ell said, “Yeah! I was surprised that the first world had so little atmosphere! I think we’ve been right to put Querlak off about how Sigwald got to their system!”
“She’s really been after me about how Sigwald got to Sigma Draconis when I’ve been talking to her.” Shan said, “How about during your shifts?”
Ell and Emma both nodded.
Emma said, “I’ve been noticing an odd phenomenon. Sometimes Querlak is stumped by a question, then shortly thereafter, she not only understands it but can answer it. It’s as if Querlak asks someone smarter, but I never see her communicating! Or, and this is even weirder… sometimes I get the feeling that Querlak’s intelligence fluctuates? Sometimes she seems, I don’t know… kinda dumb. Other times, brilliant. But how and why would that happen?
Shan mused, “You know… I think you’ve pegged it. I’ve had a weird feeling too, like sometimes I’m talking to someone different. But you’re right, it isn’t so much someone ‘different’ as someone smarter… or dimmer.”
Emma said, “Have either of you seen any useful tech that we can use here on earth?”
Ell shrugged, “I’m pretty sure they’re using double ended ports. Those harvesters we’ve watched go by don’t have room to store the grain they reap. They must port it somewhere. Maybe directly to their homeworld. Unless they’ve hidden them, they sure don’t have enough people on the ringworld to eat it all or even process it. Also it’s hard to imagine building the ring without ports to transport the material to the ringworld’s orbital location. If so it would fit with Shan’s thought about the atmosphere of the first planet. It’s a lot easier to move a gas through ports than a solid.”
Emma said, “I meant, tech we don’t have here.”
Ell looked a little embarrassed, “Yeah, I realized partway through that pontification that you wouldn’t care if they had ports. I guess what I was going for was that I don’t think they’ve figured out one ended ports or they’d be travelling to stars already. Obviously they really want that capability.”
Emma said, “Back to my question. I think they’re really, really good at making graphene and building stuff out of it. I drew a repeating hexagonal structure with ‘sixes’ at the corners to represent carbon. I showed it to Querlak, then pointed to the road. One of those things happened where she stared at it like she didn’t have a clue for a while, then suddenly looked excited like she understood and said, ‘yes, yes.’”
Shan said, “I haven’t seen any tech we don’t have except for the huge engineering project to build the ring. Admittedly, that’s an engineering project many orders of magnitude greater than anything we humans have ever accomplished. But I have a feeling that the human race is on the verge of being able to physically build a ring, even though I doubt we could muster the political and economic willpower to build it. The expense would be crushing!”
“So, either they’re a lot more cooperative than we are… or it had to be absolutely critical that they build it.” Ell said thoughtfully.
Emma and Shan nodded.
Getting up, Ell said, “Let’s be very careful not to even imply that one ended ports might exist, OK?”
Chapter Three
Allan said, “You have a call from Emma.”
Ell rolled over from where she’d been lying, pondering wedding plans next to the sleeping Shan. “I’ll take it,” she whispered, softly getting out of bed. “Emma, what’s up?” Ell padded into the next room.
“Goldy’s had another baby!”
“Oh! Allan, get me the feed!” She looked up at her HUD to see Goldy and Silver, her two winged friends from Tau Ceti—at least she thought of them as her friends—huddled around a floppy little teecee. They alternated nudging the baby with their lips and wrapping their necks around each other. Their previous two children bounced around excitedly in the background, occasionally taking off in the short bursts of flight that were all they’d managed so far. “Aw, man… that’s sweet. Do you think the baby’s OK? I mean, heck even after seeing the first two kids I’m not sure I’d know if it was healthy or deformed!”
“I think it’s fine,” Emma said, “I’ve seen them upset and they don’t look upset at all.”
“So,” Ell said with a chortle, “you know what the big question will be at our next Teecee group meeting don’t you?”
“Uhhh, no, what?”
“Is it a boy, or a girl?”
Emma snorted.
***
Querlak’s TS was running 32 individuals at present for a human IQ of about 135. Her clade, stressed by having so many sigmas in TS for long periods of time was beginning to complain that nothing good had come from the investment so far. The clade, being small, couldn’t afford to dedicate so many individuals to TS for this much time like some of the big clades that ran the world. On the other hand, if her clade made a breakthrough on some tech, especially how to get to the stars, they’d be able to expand and perhaps become a ruling clade.
Watching Sigwald slide down the road she wondered how many sigwalds were in his TS at present. At different times he responded very differently—almost like a completely different person�
��suggesting more or fewer or perhaps different individuals in his TS. But, he didn’t seem to understand Querlak’s drawings of ancestor-descendant trees forming a clade or of part of the clade forming a TS. Or perhaps he was just pretending to be obtuse?
He readily seemed to confirm that he came from another star, but couldn’t or wouldn’t point out which one. Interrogatives about how Sigwald got from his star to Querlak’s were met with the word they’d agreed indicated a lack of understanding. Sigwald had indicated interest in how graphene was formed and from looking at him—all boxed up in magnesium—he did seem to lack that technology, unless there was some other reason to cover oneself in metal.
Querlak had decided to take Sigwald to one of the carbon allotrope fabrication and repair shops there on the ring. It made harvesters and planters and repaired broken items. She hoped that seeing the fabrication techniques and having them explained would provide the good will for Sigwald to teach her how to travel between the stars.
However, Querlak greatly feared that once other sigmas saw Sigwald, word would get out and eventually Querlak’s clade would be pushed aside by one of the huge clades that could provide hundreds of members and a truly genius level IQ. Querlak hoped that the fabrication center would be working on an off schedule to Querlak’s clade so that they could enter the center during its down time. Several members of Querlak’s clade worked in fabrication so she should be able to explain the processes to some extent. If only they could show Sigwald the facility without any other sigmas seeing Sigwald…
She dropped her TS, saving her clade’s resources until she and Sigwald got to the facility.
***
Ell’s “Raquel” AI said, “You have a call from AJ Richards.”
Ell frowned, “Is that the AJ from skiing in Colorado?”
“Yes.”
Ell had liked AJ’s quiet nature, especially in contrast to his obnoxious ski buddy Jordan. “Put him on.” She switched to her Raquel accent, “Hey AJ, what’s going on?”
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