Welcome to Atlantis

Now that the capital had been explored, everyone just seemed to congregate in the shade of the trees between Cleito’s Temple and the Palace, wondering what to do next.

Mark decided maybe he should make an announcement, so standing on the top of the 3 step entrance into the palace, Mark spoke loud enough for the hundred or so people around to hear, “So you are probably all wondering ... we’ve explored the capital, what now?

As the first people to visit Atlantis, everyone here has the unique opportunity to be the first to explore the rest of the island. For those of you wishing to permanently relocate to Atlantis ... by all means go off exploring. We have a lift system here already, so you can pretty much go anywhere on the island. The lift system is free if you use the public transit terminals, but you can only go to other public transit stops. If you need to go elsewhere, you’ll need to use your wrist consoles and then the lift is private and you pay for it, although without anything else on the island, you really can’t go anywhere except the public transit stops, so why pay?

Also effective immediately, I’d like all shuttle traffic to go through the port, since it is operational, just currently unmanned. For efficiency, the shuttles can drop you off directly on the roof rather than making you walk through the terminal.

For everyone from the embassy ... today and tomorrow will be moving day, so make sure anything in your rooms or work areas that you want to keep is packed up and on a shuttle. I don’t mind if those shuttles don’t use the port, since they’re moving stuff to the surface, just no long term parking.

For those of you that are not looking to relocate, I’d appreciate if we could get some volunteer kitchen staff to make meals at the pavilion for breakfast, lunch and supper. Once transports start arriving, there will also be meals at the pavilions in the respective sections.

Starting tomorrow, I’d like to have at least minimal personnel in medical and kitchens as well as administrators running services, like the Planning Office, and getting things organized and ready at the port terminal.

From what I’ve been told, the first few transports full of citizens will be here in two or three days, so it could get busy around here and I imagine some of the prime real estate spots will go fast. So even if you don’t build at this time, it might be worth it to claim your lot! Likewise if you are looking to start a business in Acropolis, you can choose a location for your business and visit the Planning Office.

I’m not sure of the shuttle plans or schedules, but if you find yourself stuck here after they all leave, we have plenty of rooms here in the palace. All embassy staff are welcome to stay here at the palace to be closer to your work areas, until you find a place to call your own.

If you don’t want to explore right now, the ocean is 12 kilometres to the east, Poseidon’s Garden is at the base of Mount Pnyx to the west or you could relax in one of the many parks, or maybe grab some sports equipment and some friends and go have a game in the area or stadiums, it’s your time to do with as you please.”

As everyone started to disperse, the breakfast club stuck around, which made Mark ask, “Cricket, we do have Internet access on the island right?“

Cricket said, “Of course, the routing devices that the staff in Calgary have at their homes, plus the ranch is still linked to an Internet provider and they’re all being relayed via the embassy in orbit.”

Mark said, “Relayed via something in orbit? We were going to deconstruct the embassy, maybe we should repurpose it somehow?“

Cricket suggested, “Why not turn it into a security station? All other Federated planets have at least one, Earth could have one too!“

As Mark finished his conversation with Cricket, Zack informed him that there were hundreds of messages and voicemails that had been received through the website and the phone number on it, including several from governments and organizations.

Since it looked like Mark was going to be busy for a while, he suggested that the girls go tour the island without him. He was going to go up to the office with the breakfast club and go over an action plan to handle the website inquiries and return a bunch of messages and calls.

After the girls had left to explore, Mark and the breakfast club went up to his office, since that was the only place he had to make phone calls.

The kids were in awe at the residence as they sat down at some tables on the northwest balcony outside his office, looking out at the mountains. Each of the kids was carrying a new iPad, which was what they all bought with their first paycheques after they didn’t have to pay for rent or food, and they were sifting through all the feedback form submissions.

When it came to the phone messages, they gathered in Mark’s office with the kids sitting on couches around a square coffee table and Mark at his desk.

Most of the messages were from activists condemning the construction of the island and that they were destroying the balance of the Earth and ruining the ocean ecosystem, etc. Oddly enough, there were also some activists that liked what the Federation was doing and they wanted the Federation to help the rest of the world clean up.

They decided to take the phone number off the website right away and just leave it as email only, since the web form had spam protection and flood limiting. Then they were going to manage the valid inquiries and just relay stuff that had to be dealt with by other people.

As for the voicemails and messages that weren’t from the perpetual pit of gullible hypocrites (aka activists), most were from military or political officials and leaders, welcoming Atlantis to the planet and then vowing to meet soon to discuss trade and other world matters, and several were from reporters and news stations wanting to come visit.

Mark invited all of them to fly out to Atlantis, just make sure they messaged first with the ID of the plane they were on, but if they came out today they would get an escort into the airport.

Once all the calls and messages were returned, everybody topped up their drinks and went out to the balcony to relax and look around.

While the breakfast club was doing that, Mark touched base with the girls, who were now on the southern end of the island, travelling around the island clockwise scouting out possible locations for the new ranch. Annabelle told him to go check out the port, if he had a chance, it was very eye-catching and something that was very unique to the entire planet.

Mark fixed himself a cup of coffee and headed out to the balcony, where he found the breakfast club sitting at a table along the edge, where they had a spectacular view of the mountains.

As he sat down on a lounge chair, he asked, “So what’s on your minds?”

Cass, always the spokesperson, asked, “Where do you want the new office?”

Mark answered, “I’m not the one going to be working in it, as far as I’m concerned it’s your business now! I will tell you that we’re going to start rolling out a few items that I think may have a significant impact on the planet.”

Zack was curious now, “Are we going to be manufacturing and do we need to consider inventory management in our office space?”

Mark laughed, “No, Cricket and I debated about having the manufacturing facility in space or on the moon, since we need somewhere not on Earth to work with the new anti-piracy self-destruct feature that Cricket and I have devised. After much debate, we decided we’re going to build a massive manufacturing facility on the moon. Earth isn’t using it and we would have pretty much unlimited space, it’s easy to defend and we can have a very controlled atmosphere.”

Zack asked, “What kind of anti-piracy self-destruct security are we talking about?”

“Since we can’t actually give our technology to non-federated planets, we will sell it to them with a tamper-proof case with a vacuum inside it. If the case is compromised, the unit will deconstruct itself.”

Cass coughed, “Well that’s a pretty foolproof security feature, but it’s only good for sealed products. What exactly are we going to be selling?”

Mark smiled, “Batteries!”

The breakfast club looked at him with strange looks, so after a slight pause, he explained, “Well, not batteries exactly, power cells would be more accurate. We’re going to manufacture all the common battery sizes and outputs, so any current devices that use batteries can switch and never need batteries again. We’re also going to build power bars so people can plug in anything they would normally plug into a wall outlet. We can even make some larger single outlet ones that people could use for higher voltage equipment like stoves, dryers and hot tubs.”

Beth’s eyes then went huge, “Whoa! That would revolutionize the entire planet! There would be abundant zero-emission energy available everywhere!”

Mark smiled, “Yup, imagine a world where everything has its own power ... smartphones, tablets or laptops that never need charging, electric vehicles with unlimited range and won’t be subject to poor performance caused by cold weather ... no more cords, dead batteries or electricity bills.”

The expression on Cass’ face indicated she was deep in thought about something, so Mark asked, “What’s up Cass? You look like you have concerns!”

Cass snapped out of her reverie, “Sorry, something that revolutionary is going to be a VERY high theft item!”

Mark smiled, “I’ve been thinking about that already, Zack you’ll probably need to design the websites and I’ll see if I can’t get Cricket to do some of the backend work!

Every power cell will have a unique serial number, so we’ll need to setup some registration websites, so people and manufacturers can register their power cells and also track their location, which is also part of the anti-theft system. Manufacturers that use our power cells will need to register them and link them to their serial numbers, then they could all have apps that allow their customers to register and track their equipment and possibly do other things like unlocking your car.

I see the consumer website as register your power cell’s model and serial number and then describe what it’s being used for, so you could say DC9V15wH-ID is Smoke Detector or AC120V15A-ID is Home Theatre Power Bar. The manufacturer’s that build our power cells into their products would have a different website and would tell us that DC18V12aH-ID is a Milwaukee M18 Sawzall or EVB100kWh-ID is a Ford F-150. If we can make it work, I’d like to make it so that power cells won’t actually activate until they have been registered.”

Beth then spoke up, “We may need a bigger office than we were thinking!”

Mark said, “While I don’t know what you three had been thinking about for an office, I can’t see the power cells needing much, if any support. How often do you call a battery manufacturer about your batteries? So if you continue to utilize sales staff scattered around the world where our technology is, that would help cover support availability and language issues. You can build whatever office you want, wherever you want it, I expect most of what you would be doing is managing websites, phone systems and providing support to the sales people. Go explore, maybe you’ll want to build it in a different region OR maybe build yourselves houses and just work from home like the others?”

Beth said, “If Mark is living here, then I vote that the office be in Acropolis. I think we’ll still need to consult with you from time to time.”

Zack and Cass agreed and then they discussed where to build. Since they didn’t rely on foot traffic, it didn’t make sense to build it near a bridge, as the fees and taxes would be higher there.

Beth suggested, “I think we should build on the inner west ring. We would have a good view of the palace plus, we might have a decent view of the mountains until someone builds behind us, then if we need a larger office we can just add another level between the top floor and the one below it.”

Agreeing on her suggestion, they all got up and were standing at the railing looking out at the business ring. Both girls were wearing sundresses and Zack was wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Every once in a while, the island breeze would swirl around in the balcony and lift the girls dresses. From his reclined view, he was sure neither girl was wearing any underwear.

Beth pointed out a spot that had clear line of sight to the spot they were viewing from. Everyone agreed that was a good location, so now they just had to decide on an office design. They asked Zack to pull up the designs they had worked on, but they were on his laptop and not his iPad, so he excused himself to go back to the shuttle and grab his laptop.

Eventually, Zack messaged that he was just about back to the palace, and that he had stopped and claimed the spot they had chosen for the office. Mark said they could stay here if they wanted, but he was going to go do some exploring, so the girls replied and indicated they were coming down.

Just before hopping on the elevator, both girls gave Mark a smouldering kiss.

Zack met them as they got off the elevator and asked where they should go to discuss the office.

Mark suggested, “You could setup in the palace courtyard, or go get your rooms sorted out, since you’ll be staying here tonight.”

They agreed to go get their rooms picked out and then maybe work out on a table on the balcony for the day. Cricket was holographically manning all the unmanned stations, so at least there was someone at the palace lobby, planning office, museum and port terminal.

Before leaving, Mark asked Zack to look into getting Atlantis connected to a couple of Tier 1 Internet backbones, preferably one from North America and one from Europe, as they were now going to need to provide Internet access not only for the entire island, but Atlantis would be the Internet gateway for the entire Federation.

Mark then thought to Cricket, “Maybe we should have put the communications array on the island, rather than floating on the terminal island offshore?“

Cricket laughed, “We didn’t think that through very well did we? Don’t worry, I have an idea.“

Mark laughed at her candour, then thought about what Annabelle had said earlier. So he decided to go check out the port ... plus he wanted to try out the lift system.

As a citizen, Mark could’ve just pressed the LIFT icon on his wrist device, but those were for private lifts and he wanted to try the public transit lifts. They were the same lifts, they just performed differently based on their mode. The public lifts were free and functioned more like busses, so anyone going to that destination could get on, making better use of the lifts, especially when exiting large events and team sports.

Public transit stops were located near major intersections and important places like schools and city halls. There was always more stops in the local region, but once you selected a region that wasn’t local you only got to pick the town or city transportation hubs, you could then transfer lifts and take a local one. That way each city would end up having its own local transit system and then the lifts would hopefully be better utilized for capacity for trips to other cities or regions.

He walked out toward the transit stop near Cleito’s Temple. They were a lot like a bus stop, they were covered and had benches and there was a poster sized touch screen terminal at each end of the stop where you could select your destination. Once a destination was chosen, the display that ran under the edge of the roof displayed the next arriving shuttle and it made an audible announcement as the shuttle was landing.

Within a few seconds there was an announcement saying, ‘Port of Atlantis now arriving’ as a lift descended down in front of him. Mark got in and after a few seconds, the lift started to rise and move toward the port.

They had originally thought about making the airport a simple open air type terminal similar to Kona, Hawaii, but instead opted for more of a true terminal, because Mark was expecting it was going to get busy. After all, Atlantis had been a thing of legend and speculation for thousands of years, now that it was real and unlike any other place on Earth, they had no doubts it would be a popular tourist destination.

In a little less than half an hour, Mark was approaching the port. The floating terminal island was large and sat deep in the water, engineered so that there wasn’t any wave motion. The terminal island itself was perfectly flat, with the exception of the massive terminal on the west side, and the surface was primarily covered in green artificial turf, with black taxiways and runway and there was even palm trees scattered about.

The triple port terminal was a convex hexagon or 3-pointed isotoxal star design with each span of the star being 500 metres in length. Two spans bordered the sea and would function as the seaport on the west side, the other span pointed east towards Africa, separating the airport on the south side, from the spaceport on the north side, giving every port two spans, or one kilometre, of terminal access.

The terminal had the white colonnade, similar to the other ancient looking Atlantean buildings, but otherwise looked very modernized and sleek with the outer walls that looked like tinted glass. The central point of the star had the primary communications array for the island, which was larger than what Mark had seen before, supported by three sweeping supports coming down on top of a large circular blue building that actually hung over the intersections of each span of the star. That building was the control tower itself, offering a 360 degree view of the entire port, with the communications array on top of it.

The airport itself had four 5 kilometre runways, so pretty much any size airplane could land on it, the runways ran in a variety of directions, so depending on wind direction, they could always have one runway for arrivals and at least one for departures. The runways were also positioned so if there was any issues, nothing was going to get hit. The airport portion of the terminal could handle many planes simultaneously with 1 kilometre of concourse length, but the planing and deplaning was via mobile stair units to the ground.

The flow of the airport terminal was backwards from most Earth-based terminals, in that all boarding and deplaning happened on the ground level, baggage claim, check-in and security was on the second level and the transit zone was on the top, where a red roof supported by a colonnade provided shade and shelter for people arriving and departing, and also protected the numerous lift terminals distributed along each span.

The seaport side was currently just a dock, so ships could just pull up alongside the terminal, but if it got busy enough there was definitely enough room to add slips for the ships. There was also a lot of vacant, unused space on the terminal island, so they could build warehouses, hotels, or whatever they needed to, plus the island could increase in size on demand!

In the substructure beneath the surface of the terminal island, had active security barracks and the detention centre.

With antigravity cyclics, much of the baggage train loading, unloading and sorting wasn’t needed. Baggage would be unloaded into a hover cart underneath a plane, then the cart would hover up to an unload port just under the overhanging roof and it was simply a straight slide down to the baggage conveyor. Checked bags were pretty much just the opposite, they would be placed on a slide that would go down to a waiting hover cart that would move out and load the plane when it was time. Literally everything was in a straight line, so less chance of things getting lost!

The cruise ships and space transports didn’t have those issues as the passengers took care of their own luggage.

It felt surreal, being utterly alone in the massive, fully functional port terminal, so Mark went up to the control tower, which was quite an interesting looking place, in and of itself.

There was three main desk sections, each facing one of the ports. The desk facing the seaport, had a display showing every boat and submarine in the oceans around the island, the desk facing the airport, had a display showing every airplane around the island and the desk facing the spaceport was the emergency hub for anything that required security, medical or fire & rescue services.

The primary feature of the control tower, was a big round table in the centre of the room that showed Atlantis and a thousand kilometres around it, with a blue dotted line showing where the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone was, and an orange dotted line at 125 nautical miles and a red dotted line at 50 nautical miles.

As Mark was sitting up in the control tower looking over everything, he received a message from the American that messaged them earlier, he said they wanted to come out this afternoon and to please call him at the number he provided.

Mark had Cricket call the number and Mark asked to speak with Admiral Caldwell. When the phone was transferred, the Admiral asked if it would be OK to come out today?

Mark replied that they were welcome to drop in. All they needed was their passports to get through security and the plane’s identification, he then informed them that since a lot of services weren’t operational yet, they would be escorted in by security once they reached Atlantis airspace.

The Admiral told Mark the plane’s identification and said they would be there within a couple of hours and then disconnected the call.

With visitors inbound, Mark called Commander Northrop of the Cleito and asked him if the extra fighters and pilots were interested in coming down? The Commander assured him that they were eager to get down there, as were many of his people.

Mark told him that everyone was welcome to come down and look around, just land the shuttles on the terminal roof and they could grab a lift to get to the city or anywhere on the island.

In less than 20 minutes, Mark saw the fighters incoming on the control tower display and a minute after that there was 25 fighters flying by the port at high speed. Then they looped around the island and then landed on the terminal roof beside the control tower, so Mark went outside to greet the pilots.

The leader introduced himself as Major Thom and shook hands with Mark, who then greeted everyone else, “Welcome to Atlantis! I hear you are all interested in relocating here? Is that correct?”

There was a unanimous, “Yes Sir!”, from everyone in attendance.

Mark smiled and went into an impromptu speech, “I’m glad to hear that! I’m going to be honest with you ... I don’t know what to expect from some of the more powerful nations on this planet, with an unknown nation like us just popping up in the middle of the ocean. I suspect they may try to threaten us or possibly even attack us, because they may feel threatened by our capabilities and their own insecurities.

My goal is to be defensive and try to disarm situations with zero loss of life. I’m not sure if you have heard, but should you get engaged by an aggressor, I want you to talk to them and maybe even toy with them, but DO NOT shoot at them. I have not seen anything on this planet yet that can penetrate our shields, so I’m hoping they’ll realize the futility of their technology and cooler heads will prevail.

Now since you are all looking to relocate here, we have a detention centre and active security barracks setup in the substructure beneath the terminal. The entrance is via the hover elevator under the control tower, that elevator is for staff use only. The entrance for your fighters is at the end of the East point, so you can fly your fighters right down there. I think there’s even some emergency shuttles down there. Although I didn’t actually go down to take a look.

There is a lift system that can take you to Acropolis or anywhere on the island. You are welcome to stay in the barracks here, or in the temporary housing in Acropolis, while you explore the island and figure out where you want to build your permanent residence.

For right now, I need one of you to stay here with me, to escort a plane with some foreign officials that’s flying in for a visit. They should be here in an hour and a half or so.”

Major Thom volunteered himself and then instructed his squad, “Set your clocks people! We are living on Atlantis time now and it’s currently 14:45! I need one volunteer to take the first shift with me, then Thompson and Nguyen, you are second shift. I will post the duty schedule before first shift ends at 20:00.

Stay here in the barracks rather than in the capital. Once you’ve claimed your rack, you are free to go explore the island. Cadet Smith, you just got volunteered for first shift! You are dismissed.”

Mark then realized that what they really needed was an information booth, “We’ll have to get some of the administrators to operate out of here tomorrow.“

Cricket said, “Do you want me to make information kiosks that can be manned by holograms?“

“Sure! It’ll help for the immediate purpose, but we’re going to have lots of people on the island, let’s not automate all the jobs.”

Mark, Major Thom and Cadet Smith toured the terminal and ended up in the control tower watching the central display. They saw several white planes that seemed to be avoiding their airspace, but there was a green plane flying in from the west with a red plane beside it, headed directly toward Atlantis. They were still quite a distance from Atlantis airspace yet, just on the edge of the table’s range.

Mark asked aloud to no one in particular, expecting Cricket to answer, “I think I know, but what do all the different colours mean?”

Cricket then popped into existence and explained, “Blue is Federation, green is scheduled unarmed, white is unscheduled unarmed, orange is scheduled armed and red is unscheduled armed. Communications will be made at the blue line with all aircraft, anything unscheduled will be warned and locked on as soon as they hit the orange line and then shot at if they get to the red line, the first shot will always be a warning shot if it’s manned. That goes for ocean going vessels as well as aircraft.”

The aircraft were now nearing the EEZ perimeter, so Major Thom decided they should get in the air, so he and the Cadet left for their fighters. As soon as they were airborne there were two small blue planes on the display.

Mark watched with anticipation, as the visitors approached the dotted line indicating Atlantis airspace. Once they crossed the blue line, Mark could hear Cricket contact the green plane and tell them that their escort would be there momentarily. Then she contacted the red plane, ‘Unidentified aircraft, this is Atlantean airspace, please identify yourself and your intentions or proceed outside our airspace, failure to do so will initiate security defences.’

‘This is Captain Litta of the US Air Force, I am escorting Admiral Caldwell and his staff in a Gulfstream G650ER to Atlantis.’

‘Very well, proceed! Security will be with you momentarily to escort you in.’

Suddenly the red plane turned orange and seconds later the blue planes moved in around the two aircraft.

Mark could listen to the radio chatter as Major Thom introduced himself and then instructed the visitors to follow Cadet Smith to the Port of Atlantis, while Major Thom took up a flanking position behind the orange plane.

Suddenly another blue plane came on the display from out of nowhere directly toward the port moving fast and seconds later there was a shuttle landing on the roof.

When Mark saw Sarah and Taryn exit the shuttle, he walked outside to meet them, gave both girls a kiss and welcomed them to Atlantis.

Sarah said she was going into the city to meet some friends to go exploring, and called for a lift at a nearby lift terminal.

Taryn said, “I was informed that you were going to be getting the first non-citizen visitors ... so I am here to run the security booth for you.”

Mark smiled as he hadn’t thought about that and thanked her for showing up. They talked for a bit until the jets started to approach the runway, then Taryn left to go get the system online and ready.

A few minutes later, the Gulfstream G650S and an F-15 had landed on the runway and taxied to park in front of the terminal.

Mark walked out, “Welcome to Atlantis! My apologies for the escort, but it’s been a hectic day and we don’t have personnel in place at many of the facilities yet. Please come inside and we’ll get you checked in and we will take you on a tour.”

Admiral Caldwell introduced himself and then asked, “Why did you threaten my escort?”

Mark said, “You only told me the identification of your airplane, so we were expecting you, not an unscheduled plane with weapons! As I said in the invites, we need to know the identification of any planes.”

The Admiral didn’t look too impressed at being nicely told he was an idiot.