Chapter 9

The three of them all woke up about the same time. Rayven hadn’t changed anymore, which was a good thing.

They got dressed and opened the curtains for the faux window in their room. Although they weren’t actually windows, the light was still real. It looked like it was going to be another beautiful day weather-wise, but they also saw there were already people and cars outside.

They immediately went up to the lobby, where they could see Joe and Kat on the porch trying to control the throng of people that were already at the ranch, and there was a line of cars all the way down the lane.

As soon as they saw Rayven, everyone started taking pictures, and the mob started moving closer.

Fortunately, the crowd stopped to stare and record the two shuttles coming in for a landing near the trailhead. Liyana, Gyges and more than a dozen security personnel exited, and the security immediately went to work as crowd control, as Gyges escorted Liyana into the lodge.

Joe had a bullhorn and was trying to tell people that the ranch was not open to the public until 8AM and to please leave.

Gyges asked for the bullhorn and announced in his big booming voice, “This is a working ranch. If you do not have direct business with the ranch, please leave now! Anyone causing any ranch personnel problems will be removed ... forcibly if necessary!”

People backed off a bit until the rest of the girls appeared on the porch. Then everyone went crazy again, and it was like paparazzi with cameras and flashes going off everywhere, but they kept a respectful distance.

Well, most of them did. One idiot decided he wanted to grab T’Soona, so he ran at her and jumped like he was tackling her. She fluttered out of the way and he just hit the porch, but as he got up, he made the mistake of pushing Solara out of the way and calling her a Martian bitch.

Solara grabbed the man with all four arms and lifted him into the air and said, “I am as much Martian as you are a bird,” and she threw the guy about 4 metres, where he just hit the ground in pain, and added, “as I suspected, you are not a bird!”

People around laughed, but had learned their lesson and were staying back.

One girl asked politely if she could have a picture taken with them to which they agreed and they all posed for a picture.

A guy next asked if he could have a picture taken with them, so they agreed as well. The picture went fine, but after they took the picture, he turned and grabbed Rayven by the waist and kissed her. She responded by head butting him with her forehead, which was very solid because of her horns. He went down bleeding and saying he was going to have the devil arrested for assault.

Mark said, “There are a lot of cameras here, including TV crews right over there! I’m actually leaning toward having YOU charged with assault or attempted rape! Did you know that in the Atlantean Federation, rape or any forced sex violates a primary law, which can be punishable by death?”

At that point, the man wet his pants, turned white as a ghost and fainted. Mark just smiled as two security picked him up and packed him off.

Liyana smiled and said, “Good! You read through our laws.”

“Not all of them, but from what I’ve read so far, they’re fairly common sense. Don’t kill, don’t steal, sex must be consensual and all must be of age. There’s also a lot of general guidelines such as respecting others, treating everyone as equals, taking part in your community, judging people by their actions and not the actions of others, and so on. I glanced through the section about religions and I like the way you still respect people’s right to religion, but I like that you don’t give religion any exemptions for laws or taxes and they don’t get any special holidays. I already know religions are all make believe, so I didn’t delve too deep and started reading into the business laws about currency use, marketing, reporting, work conditions, donations, etc. The only primary law I found in there was, no selling or donating technology to non-citizens.”

Liyana smiled and said, “They’re common sense to you, because it’s part of your royal bloodline, my King. They aren’t common sense to everybody.”

With security controlling the crowd, they finally went back into the lodge. Obviously the morning workout would not happen today.

Joe said, “The ranch can’t work with this many people around like this! We need to do something!”

Mark then suggested, “Isn’t that open field south of the group pasture owned by the ranch?”

Joe said, “Yeah, we actually own all the way to the tree line on the far side of that area. The plan was to fence it in and make more group pastures someday.”

Mark said, “That’s what I thought! Do you have any issues with repurposing it temporarily as a tourist attraction and information centre?”

“Not if it gets everyone out of here so we can work!”

Mark said, “Let’s see what we can come up with. Solara, Liyana, shall we go build a visitor information centre?”

To avoid the crowds, they went down to the basement and then back to the ship via the tunnel.

Back at her workspace, Solara pulled up the map she used for creating the security perimeter and all the upgrades. Mark pointed out the strip of land between the fence line and the trees and then all the way back to the clearing that they could use.

Solara asked, “Should I extend the security perimeter to cover that area?”

Mark said, “No, keep it at the fence line. What I’m thinking is turning that area into a big parking lot and then building the information centre at the top of the clearing. If we build it there, the current security perimeter will protect it, plus if people wanted to, they could stay overnight in the parking lot, so maybe make the washroom accessible from the outside.”

Solara then asked, “So what should we do for a building?”

They both looked at Liyana, who was busy doing something on her wrist device, as she suggested, “It should be a white building with a flat blue roof. If we’re going to use it as a shuttle station for the embassy, the upper level should be more of a transit concourse—shuttles usually land on the roof. As for the amenities to offer the public, that’s what I’m working on right now, so today will be a learning process and we’ll make adjustments as needed.”

Mark looked at the elevation and said, “The clearing is on top of a hill. I remember the kids used to toboggan down it when they were little. We should build the visitor centre into the side of the hill there, that would put the lower level on the same level as the parking lot. Then if we cover the entire width of the clearing, which is only about 20 metres across, people can’t get up to the clearing, without going through the centre. Then the upper level would be even with the rest of the clearing.”

With a plan in place and the basics for a building, Solara added a few finishing touches to it and then started the program. Wanting to watch the construction, they went out the tree tunnel, as they called it, and walked the 150 metres down to the end of the clearing.

The outer shell of the building was already forming. It looked like black paint spilling out of the new building and creating a perfect parking lot, complete with parking lines and light posts. They could see the crowd of people out at the highway, likely videoing the creation of the visitor centre.

Cricket said, “Just so you know, I’ve taken Solara’s design and made a few aesthetic modifications based on some of your memories. The parking lot will have light posts with letters on them and since there is currently six rows of parking, I’m building a wide sidewalk down the middle of the two rows most in line with the building and handicap parking near the entrance, the outer two rows near the south tree line will function as oversize or RV parking. I’m also going to align the small trees throughout the field down the sidewalks. I’ve also added some signage and some flags and done some tweaking to the interior of the facility.”

Mark thought, “Good! You have access to make changes. Something tells me we’re going to be making a lot of changes over the next couple of days.”

Just before it connected the entrance to the road, two more shuttles were landing on the roof of the new visitor centre. Once everything was ready, the program built an off-ramp from the highway into the visitor centre. It was wide enough to accommodate vehicles in both directions and was bordered by two tall flagpoles with Atlantean Federation flags.

Immediately, cars started streaming off the road and into the parking lot as Gyges and Joe started directing people back down the lane. If they wanted to see alien stuff, they could go next door. Security was then stationed at the end of the lane to keep the riffraff off the ranch.

Federation staff manned the visitor centre, which was nice as it took all the attention off the girls and the ranch.

Solara had captured most of the video footage via the drones that were invisibly protecting the ranch. The ‘first contact’ exhibit showed the shuttle coming in for a landing and then Joe welcoming Liyana and Gyges to Earth, and then they also had the social media broadcast. Scattered about were displays showing tourism videos for every planet in the Federation.

The big attraction though were the information kiosks, where people could access the Federation library, which contained the laws, information about various aspects of Federation life and access many news sources.

Also on the lower level was the gift shop which had the various sized t-shirts that people could see, but with each purchase, the clothing synth automatically replaced it.

The upper level was more or less a large cafeteria with many tables, each with their own information kiosk.

Now that Cricket had linked into the Federation network, Solara now had access to many Federation technologies such as the food synths, library kiosks, and medibays. The plan was to keep the upper level closed to the public until the embassy was operational.

Once the visitor centre was open, most of the people left the ranch and went next door, where Federation personnel could talk to people and explain things.

The rest of the day went fairly smooth, there was a few people milling around, and they were respectful. They asked for pictures and actually had normal conversations. All the TV crews got interviews with Liyana and a few of the girls, and then spent the rest of the day over at the visitor centre interviewing the staff working over there, many of whom were also alien, and also interviewing some patrons.

The various camera crews had recorded a lot of the interactions, so they had lots of material to edit before the evening broadcast, so most of them retired to their vans to do their editing.

As the visitor centre was being constructed, Maren had configured a Federation device that bridged the Federation network and the ranch’s Internet service. This would allow the entire planet access to the Federation library, just with limited speed because of the rural Internet service. They also linked the visitor centre into the Federation network, but not the Internet. It was a good thing the debit/credit card machines used cellular service.

Maren touched her wrist again and then did some programming to the networking device. Once that was complete, Mark asked, “I saw Liyana doing stuff with her wrist device. How do those things work?”

Maren said, “Can I see your left arm?”, as Mark extended his arm for her to see. She turned his wrist and looked, then pulled up some application from her wrist device.

“Hmm, that’s odd!” Then she did something on her wrist device and then put her wrist to his and he felt a tingle.

She then said, “There you go! I’m not even sure how you got a wrist comm implanted as those are only available to citizens, but I’m guessing that it didn’t get activated because the medibay couldn’t connect to the network then. It’s working now!”

Mark looked at his wrist and, sure enough, there was a clock displayed in his skin. He couldn’t even feel it.

Maren instructed him to tap his wrist and then press the keyboard looking icon.

Mark did as she instructed, touching his wrist highlighted an area about the size of one of those larger sized smartphones with a blue border, there were a few icons on that display so he pressed the one that looked like a keyboard and suddenly he could see a holographic console in front of him. It was a lot like a normal keyboard, but looking straight ahead was like you were looking at a screen that wasn’t there, but if you looked down, you looked at the keyboard, just as if you were sitting at a desk that also wasn’t there.

For the next half hour, Maren gave Mark some basic training on using the holographic console and how it worked. Once you answer a call or anything holographic, only your eyes can see it unless you click the SHARE icon, otherwise people around you can only see the stuff that is visible on your wrist.

Then she showed him how to set his language preferences, call someone and how to add someone to his contacts. She went to contacts and then add contact. She then placed her left wrist on his left wrist for a second and then her contact info popped up in his contacts, complete with her picture.

She told him to press the contacts icon and think of her ... her picture displayed with icons to message or call, so he pressed the call icon. Maren’s wrist then displayed ‘Incoming Call’ as she pressed the ACCEPT icon.

Once the call was active, she showed him some basic hand commands to manipulate the video stream.

Pointing two fingers toward his eyes and then pointing them away changed from viewing him, to viewing what he was looking at. Doing the reverse of that move returned the focus to him.

She then showed him how to send and receive messages and emails and how to browse and search the Federation network, which was just their version of the Internet.

When he asked her how he could add Annabelle to his contacts, she said, “You can’t! She isn’t a citizen and didn’t have a wrist comm yet. You have the option to get a wrist comm implanted when you go into a medibay, if you’re a citizen.”

She instructed him to tap the ‘health’ icon. Again, with a display only he could see, up popped his health data. It showed his naked body, including the lattice tattoos on his arms, shins and cock. It showed his height, weight, age, heart rate and a bunch of other stats about his body. She then told him that whenever he was on a call and pulled up another application, there was a SHARE button and that by pressing it, the other person could also see the application.

Without thinking, Mark clicked the SHARE icon and Maren could see his health statistics, complete with his naked body. “Mmm,” she said, until she looked at the top right of his display which read ‘Mark Atlas Phoenix’ and showed his title as ‘King’, at which time she ended the call immediately, looked away and started crying.

The abrupt disconnect surprised Mark, as he asked, “What’s wrong?”

Maren spoke with tears in her eyes, “I just disrespected you my King, I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit.”

“Stop it with the king stuff! What’s with you, Liyana and Gyges?”, Mark asked as he comforted the sobbing bunny girl.

Maren whispered, “You are the King! I will accept your punishment.”

“Maren, first, I’m not sure how I can be a king of some place I’ve never been and second, on this ranch, I’m just Mark. But if you want a punishment, I would be happy to give you a good spanking. The girls have been teasing me since they first saw you.”

Maren was confused. “So, you’re not upset?”

“No, why? Should I be?”

“After the King died, they searched for heirs, but couldn’t find any with the royal bloodline, so eventually they appointed his stepson, Prince Sebastian, to the throne. He is lazy and really does nothing. He only acts when his advisors can’t handle something, or if he hears that someone has spoken out against him. Then he steps in, makes whatever decision he feels like at the moment, with no regard for the facts, and then punishes any offenders to make an example out of them.”

Just then Maria announced over the radios that supper would be ready in 10 minutes.

Mark asked, “So, my sexy little bunny, may I take you to dinner?”

Maren was all smiles as they walked to the lodge arm in arm, as she whispered, “Yes, my King!”

Mark pulled the chair out for her and she sat down and again whispered, “Thank you, my King.”

Mark sat down beside her and pinched her fluffy tail, making her jump.

Annabelle was sitting on the other side of Maren, and said, “Aren’t we a bit jumpy,” then she looked across Maren, at Mark, “are you getting yourself some cute pink bunny pussy tonight?”

Maren blushed bright pink at hearing her say that.