Time has passed. New portals continue to be built, and our network expands, now including the colony E2 in the solar system that has been named for its star, Sol Two, a sun not even visible in telescopes from Earth due to the dust and gas clouds looking in toward the galactic center. The sister world of E2, which we have named E3, in the next orbit inward from E2, will soon be getting a settlement, and like good businesses, SSS will have a hand in it, in terms of the settlement as well as the portals.
We now have five colonies on E2, including both mountain and ocean shore areas, and Triple-S has a nice financial share in the economic development. The United Nations body that has been appointed to oversee colonization of E2 has now granted licenses to a number of corporations to develop separate colonies on E2 world-wide. Some of those are to reduce population growth on Earth. Anyone wishing to become a settler must only show a needed skill and a desire to emigrate to achieve a place in line, though I understand the application volume has been staggering. In addition to portal installations, SSS also has a significant investment and/or partnership in many of the new businesses springing up in the new colonies.
Two colonies have areas reserved for purchase, at astounding prices, the proceeds from sales used to defray costs in the general population move. You can buy a nice, twenty-acre homesite for a mere forty million dollars. Since that is chump change for the Hays family, we have bought two, one a beachfront property, one in the mountains. Both of these areas now have fully functional dual-portal (regular plus jumbo) facilities, so travel back and forth is quite easy. We have decided to build on the shore to start, since I still have the mountain cabin in Colorado. We will reserve the mountain site until later, perhaps if we decide to retire there.
Of course, that will require that we apply to become citizens of E2. It is a lengthy process, although E2 will recognize a dual citizenship with the emigrants’ country of origin on Earth. Everyone on Earth will have to go through that process; everyone but one, that is. As a native of E2, with parents who are both citizens of the United States of America, Olivia Elizabeth Hays will the the first person in either world to have automatic dual citizenship with both entities. And she is officially the first native-born human citizen of E2.
Kaley continues to lead the SSS field service effort, though she has cut back enough to spend most nights at home with Olivia. Ditto for me. Although I will answer the call of IC for emergencies, I am a retired Admiral now, and I too wish to spend most of my evenings at home with my three-year-old daughter and my one-year-old son. His name is Charles Walter, the middle name being my dad’s, so he is not a junior. He was, indeed, carried to term by a surrogate mother for a hefty but reasonable fee. After all, being a host mother is a full-time job for the better part of a year.
Our new castle is completed, in the small town of Sunnyvale in eastern Dallas County, where we could cobble together a twenty-acre tract on which to build. At twenty-two thousand square feet, it is big enough to accommodate a support staff, a daytime nanny to assist us with our children when we are both at work, a fully vetted security staff (including polygraph tests on a regular basis), plus a cook, two housekeepers, and a grounds crew. We are now surrounded by a mob who work for us, and it is absolutely daunting at times.
Overall, I have to admit that it is better to be rich than to be poor, but in general, being rich can often be a colossal pain in the ass. I’m getting used to it, but the responsibilities of wealth are many and varied, and they press on you nearly as much as the multiple cares of the poor, many of whom have no idea where the next meal will come from. I now take a VTOL plane to work, and return home likewise. Kaley still drives a lot, but the distance to the office is enough that she uses the chartered transport service frequently as well, and her new SUV, like mine is fully armored.
Only three days ago, we stood on the beach in the near-center of our E2 property, observing the progress on our new vacation home, which sat, fully framed and roofed, with most of the interior unfinished so far. Made of native rock and wood, roofed with Italian tiles, it resembled the castle at home to an extent, though it would be a mere ten thousand square feet. A small auxiliary residence nearby will house the support and security staffs, as well as a grounds crew and site manager, who will supervise operations, particularly when we aren’t in residence. Unfortunately, neither the vacation home nor our foundation has managed to dent our joint assets, which have now mushroomed to something like seventy-five billion. Sigh.
“Looks pretty good,” Kaley remarked, as we stood, surveying the property and our new mini-castle.
“Yeah. Problem is with the slowness of parts and materials procurement, we’re looking at another six or eight months before we can start making weekend visits.”
She chuckled. “Hey, until we retire, if ever, how much time will we spend here anyway? To me, it seems that every time we visit, a ton has been accomplished.”
Right she was. It was not as though our lives had gotten any less busy. We delegated a lot more, true, and Bobby often made field calls for Kaley, but as head of engineering and field service, respectively, we were still a mite busy. Technically, Kaley reported to Virgil, but in actuality, SSS Field Service operated as an independent entity, and Kaley ran the entire operation. She still wanted Virgil to add an administrative VP, but she would continue to run the whole show until we could find a good candidate. Neither Virgil nor I even bothered to review her bailiwick anymore. SSS had gotten so big, and both engineering and field service operations had so much going on, that there was no way for me or Virgil to keep up with the SSS service operation. I barely had time to keep up with my own.
Kaley surveyed the ocean, gently lapping at the beach, the waves easy and docile. So far, we had seen little bad weather on E2. There were heavy rains at times, and some lighting and thunder, with occasional mini-hail-storms, but no dangerous hurricanes or tornadoes. Given the shape of the continent—a mini-continent, not even as big as Australia, though large enough that you couldn’t very well consider it an island—and also the placement in the “northern” hemisphere, with the very mild tilt of the world to its revolutionary plane, the weather cycle was much milder than most places on Earth.
“I was talking to Bobby today,” Kaley remarked. “Do you realize that he are Virgil are celebrating their second anniversary soon?”
Thinking about the comment made me recall their wedding, so I nodded. “I can believe it, but I’m still shocked that two years have passed. Heck, I still can barely understand that Charlie is a year old.”
She put her arm around me as we surveyed the far blue horizon.
“This would be a nice place to retire,” I said.
“Yeah, assuming the infrastructure can be fully setup, that’s true. There’s so much to do still.”
“Speaking of that, did you know that we have two new additions to Cape Harvey?” That was the name of our fair city, named for the developer who had sunk several billions in investment for this retirement Valhalla for the very, very rich. It didn’t really fit the definition of Cape—“a headland or promontory”—but it was a good enough name, such as it was. Harvey Enterprises was, as you might imagine, a business partner of SSS.
Kaley turned to look into my eyes. “What new additions?”
“First of all, we have a bank, the First Bank of Cape Harvey, chartered only a few months ago and opened up just last week on the main street of our fair burg.” Which lay behind our property and about a mile inland. Using portal com, the bank could transfer in funds, so that we could exercise some purchasing power in all the shops that were springing up. That bank was a joint effort of Goldman Sachs and SSS.
“Wow, I didn’t know. And number two?”
“Just opened according to the local news,” which I subscribed to via com, “a new beauty and barber shop. Now you can get your hair done and I can get a trim just about any time.” One of the rare new businesses in which SSS did not participate.
“Good to know. Couldn’t retire here without a salon.”
“True. I wouldn’t want my wife to have no place for a new ‘do’ when she wanted one.”
She turned to look me up and down. “You’re getting a bit shaggy—you might want to run up there for a cut yourself.”
“Hey, I though I was beginning to look a bit like a late-twentieth-century rock star.”
She snorted. “In your dreams.”
“I thought you married me for my rock-star looks.”
She leaned up to kiss my cheek. “Sure I did, baby. Sure I did.”
We watched the gentle waves roll in silently for a while. Above, the sky was partly cloudy, though mainly fair. Maybe a couple kilometers off the coast, a few small afternoon showers had formed, raining very lightly on the water. Sometimes those showers would meander to shore, providing a gentle rain to the land for a brief time. As far as I could tell, the rain rarely got too hard or too frequent.
The builder of our house had already expressed to me that he was providing a sprinkler system, as the area did not get an enormous rainfall on an annual basis. “Particularly if you want some flower beds or blooming perennials,” he told me, “you’ll need to provide some extra water. And if you want to plant any trees, you’ll definitely want a water system. We’ve dug some trial wells, and you can hit good potable water at about two hundred feet.”
I agreed with him, as I did want to plant trees, much of the beach area being devoid of even so much as a few bushes. Naturally, our water source had to be a well, as the city wouldn’t have water distribution or plumbing for a while, at least not one that reached to the beach houses. As for electricity, we had our own wind and solar generators, plus a whole bank of the new super storage batteries, all well protected from the ravages of the plastic/epoxy-eating bacteria that we now knew plagued E2. It turned out that once you knew what the problem was, it was pretty easy to build electronic and electrical equipment with amoeba-proof insulation and circuit boards.
“We’re going to have to get back home,” Kaley commented. “Nanny will have Olivia and Charlie fed in a hour or so, and I want to spend our evening with them.”
“And pretty soon, I want to bring them here to see our new vacation home.”
“Yeah. I think that beach is just waiting for them to start exploring.”
“Remind me to bring sand buckets and mini-shovels,” I said. “Every kid needs to have some time to excavate the beach.”
“Agreed. And time to run barefoot through the water with Mommy and Daddy. I want to make sure that they really get to experience this world to the fullest. After all, Olivia is the first citizen of E-Two.”
“I wish they’d settle on the procedure for establishing citizenship. The UN says it won’t be long, but they’ve been saying that for a while.”
“No hurry. We won’t be retiring any time soon—if we ever do. And knowing us, by the time we do retire, our children will be out of college and on their own.”
“Yeah, but they’ll still want a vacation home to visit once in a while.” Kaley turned to me again, face up turned so that she could kiss me. Which she did. She frowned slightly. “One of these days, hubby dear, we are going to have to discuss our own estates, and what to do with all the money we are accumulating. So far, we’ve put about six billion into the foundation, and according to Guy, we’re up a lot, to . . . What?”
Since she didn’t really care about riches, Kaley never bothered to remember, and I really couldn’t blame her. But I did.
I told her the new numbers. “Maybe time to pop some more into the charity. God knows, with all we got going on, we sure don’t have time to spend much of it. You know, Bobby is shoveling a lot of his wealth into the foundation too, and Virgil wants to participate.”
“Yeah. Our halfway houses for the indigent and some of the new medical research efforts have been a wonderful expansion of our initial aims. I agree; we can dump a few billion more in if you want. The way portals are being requested, even with our new subsidiaries, we may have to open up some new business opportunities for companies that want to become portal builders.”
Kaley, arm still around me, steered me in a U-turn and toward the small rental electric car that would carry us back into town to the nearest portal.
As we climbed in and hit auto, the tiny vehicle pivoting and starting back up the newly paved road, Kaley asked, “You think we’ve really seen the last of the Bugs?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t mention the phantom dial-in that Ganymede had experienced last week. It had probably been an accident, not necessarily tied to our former enemies at all, and I really wasn’t worried.
Yet.