Kickstarting the Economy

Mark woke up early as usual, went to his desk, grabbed his coffee and went through his morning reports.

Afterwards he decided to browse through some news sites, reading news article upon news article about Chinese submarines floating through the air and that they were being beached upon China’s shoreline. Everyone also agreed it had to be because they had tried to attack Atlantis.

Of course, several articles started the fear mongering that Atlantis was going to eventually going to take over and force everyone to live like they do, but there was also many saying that they were glad there was someone that was using power respectfully, someone that has the power and ability to pluck submarines out of the depths of the ocean, but the fact that it was all being done with no harm to people was reassuring, maybe they could be the ones to create world peace. There was also numerous articles that were a mixture of views in between. All in all, it was interesting reading.

Mark just thought, “Maybe the world will realize we are not to be trifled with?“

Cricket said, “I think most of the major players have figured it out. Ever since we revealed Atlantis, there has always been a few submarines or other naval vessels hanging around, just outside our EEZ. Right now, there’s no military vessels anywhere even close to our EEZ!”

Mark laughed as he got up from the desk and started wandering around the balcony, watching the city wake up as the early rising entrepreneurs were starting to set up their carts and vending booths along the eastern path. He also noticed that there was quite a few more fish in the water around the city centre.

Cricket explained, “I have developed some miniature versions of the Kraken, as per your idea to attach one to every submarine, but I’m currently using some of them to relocate coral and other fish into the aquatic rings.“

Mark really liked the idea of using the rings as a live aquarium, the fish could come and go as they please and although it was a natural environment and not controlled, it was certainly safer than snorkelling or diving in the ocean, at least currently.

Like Laruun had said, the circle of life needs to be complete, so eventually predators would find their way into the aquatic rings, but hopefully, due to the shallower water, they’d know if anything dangerous was in there.

As he walked around to the western balcony, he could also see Beth waking up since her bedroom faced his office. Her privacy was off on the windows and she had thrown the covers off of her naked body, fully exposed to his gaze.

Needless to say, Mark’s manhood was hard as a rock when Rayven came up behind him, carrying her morning hot chocolate, and gave him a kiss. She just smiled at the bulge in his pants, as she sat down with her hot chocolate, letting her robe open slightly, giving him glimpses of her body as she moved her arm when taking a drink.

Soon everyone else joined them on the balcony, although Rayven continued to tease him until she was done her hot chocolate, then she left to go get dressed.

After everyone finished their morning drinks, they went downstairs and decided to walk out to the public breakfast in section 3 to meet up with General Mayan and visit some of the new arrivals. With the big influx of citizens yesterday they still hadn’t outgrown sections 3 and 4 on each side of the eastern path.

During the walk, everyone commented about the increased aquatic life, so Mark explained what Cricket had been doing with the mini krakens. About halfway across the channel between the residential and business rings, they ran into Dominic and his wife, Darla, who were actually walking toward the city centre to have breakfast there.

After some quick introductions, everyone decided section 3 was closer, so they continued on and got themselves some breakfast, of course Mark was routinely interrupted as people asked to shake his hand or to have a picture taken, but once he started eating they were nice enough to leave him alone. During breakfast, the Mayans asked all sorts of questions about the areas that the girls had already explored, since they were looking to relocate there and they had always wanted to live on the coast. Unfortunately everything the girls had explored didn’t match their criteria.

After breakfast, most of the girls, except Rayven, went off to do other things as Mark and Dominic figured they could have their meeting as they travelled around the island checking out the various coastal locations. This would allow Mark to see more of the island, as he’d really only seen a handful of the proposed townsites so far and the girls hadn’t visited any of the coastal areas either.

Over the course of the entire day, they got to check out nearly 20 coastal areas. The sites that the Mayans liked the most, were all in the Eumelus region, south of Acropolis, near the delta of the Evenor River. During the day, they didn’t talk a whole lot of shop, except that he was going to construct a bank in Acropolis and that would also have his office, but they both got to spend some quality time getting to know each other and Mark got a good sense of the kind of man he was. He also invited Dominic and Darla to relocate into the palace until they decided on a place. That would put Dominic closer to the bank he was going construct and his office.

Tuesday also saw another six transports arrive, with anywhere from 500 to 5,000 people on each of them. They finally had to expand into another section for the housing.

In other news, Cricket had finished her design for the manufacturing facility on the moon, they were going to build it in the region of Mare Vaporum (aka Sea of Vapors), pretty much straight south of the Apollo 15 site, but the site itself was fairly central to most of the moon landings.

The production facility was going to be a huge A-shaped structure with 10,000 mass fabricators and its own fleet of asteroid harvesters. Each arm of the A was roughly half a kilometre in length and the central area of the production facility would have an organic park to help with the atmosphere inside the facility, it would also have some staff quarters for security.

The facility itself would also have a few drones for security and a shield, but there would always be at least a couple of security personnel at the facility all the time, just to supervise the loading of the cargo ships for transfer to Earth.

At the top of the A was a small landing bay, intended to be used for 1 or 2 shuttles only. Just an open area with a force field to keep the atmosphere and heat in. The ends of the A were corridors connecting to the massive warehouse, which was roughly two square kilometres in size and had four landing bays down each side of the building, except the side going to the production facility.

With the design complete, Mark called Maren and asked for a ride to the moon, which took them just over half an hour to reach.

The first order of business was to get the construction started, so they followed Cricket’s flight path to the northern part of Mare Vaporum and Maren opened the ramp, with the force field keeping the atmosphere in and the cold vacuum of space out. Mark tossed the construx device out onto the surface, where the northern tip of the A would be. Maren closed the ramp, elevated and turned the ship around, until they could see the base of the facility begin to construct.

To pass some time while the facility was being constructed, they went on a bit of a sight seeing trip as they flew around and tried to locate all the sites of the various missions to the moon. Sure enough, just as NASA had said, the flag at the Apollo 11 site had fallen over.

By the time they had toured all the sites, they returned to the facility. The outer building envelope was finished and it looked like a huge blue A with a white peaked roof down the central part of each side of the A, there were a couple of glowing orange spots that looked like fires in the open area between the two sides, to the South was a huge grey building with no lights or windows.

However just as Mark had thought that, the lights came on along the perimeter of both buildings and, under the domed section in the middle, he could see grass and trees growing in the soil and a pond forming in the centre. The plants and water would make for a more livable atmosphere than just air alone, not to mention better to look at and something for the security personnel to maintain and attend to.

As Maren landed in the landing bay, which was like the launch bays on the Poseidon because you could see straight through it, the outer force field was clear, but had a red border around the opening, there was a thin blue border around the inner side of the landing bay as they walked out onto the path that went through the park. It was still a bit cool as they could still see their breath, but overall it was a lot warmer than it was outside. Within a few minutes though the temperature had increased quite a bit as Cricket continued to build the facility.

After jumping around in the park for a bit, just having some fun in the reduced gravity, they went to check out the control station, which had a hover elevator in the corner of the landing bay that went upstairs.

There was a little hallway about 2 metres long as you entered the office. As you walked through the hallway you could feel the gravitational change as the office had artificial gravity.

The office was the same size as the landing bay below it, so the building was close to 30 metres long and 10 metres wide, just slightly smaller as there was a walk around deck that went around the building.

Along the wall facing the factory was a variety of display screens and computer terminals between the windows, separating the four work terminals, it looked like it was pretty much the control centre for the whole facility. There were no individual cubicles, it was just an open office concept. Along the inside of the transition tunnel was a small room with a medibed, in case anyone got injured at the facility.

The rest of the office was like a ranger station. There was four staff quarters, a gym and sparring area with a washroom and shower, a kitchen with table and chairs and a living room with 4 easy chairs facing a wall with a fireplace that had a large display above it, for watching sports or movies.

The four bedrooms were on the side opposite the control desk, facing the lunar surface, and each bedroom had its own fireplace and desk with computer terminal. As Mark was inspecting one of the fireplaces, he found it was actually one of those reactor type faux fires that Solara had used in the courtyard at the lodge, it looked like a real fire, but had an adjustable heat setting via a thermostat and no smoke.

Since it was nearly lunchtime, Mark went to the kitchen to make them some sandwiches.

After their lunch, they went off to tour the rest of the facility. There was a hover elevator just off to the side of the transition tunnel, but in the reduced gravity, outside of the office, they both just jumped off the deck and down the 10 metres to the ground.

Just inside the landing bay were four hover carts, but having seen the size of the facility from above, they decided to hop in a hover cart and take a drive, since there was a wide path that went around the perimeter of the park with doors that opened between each of the mass fabricators.

On the dash of the hover cart was a screen that showed a map of the facility, the locations of the other hover carts and the location of any personnel in the facility.

Between each door was four black numbers, indicating the four fabrication units inside the facility there.

Cricket said, “The numbers will light up blue if the unit was working and would light up red if there is an issue.“

They stopped and walked into one of the doors to see what it was like. The ground level was not the floor of the production facility, but it was the floor for the mass fabricators.

The corridor had mass fabricators that were 3 cubic metres going down both sides, with 2 metres of space between each unit and a 10 meter wide corridor down the middle, likely to facilitate the moving and assembling of what was being manufactured out to the warehouse. The fabricators were all mounted about 2 metres above the floor of the facility. The facility itself was designed so that humans couldn’t interfere with the production facility, although there was a walkway down the outer edge and the walkways between each of the units had a set of stairs at the end so you could walk across to service the outer units if you had to.

In the middle of the corridor, there was an angled ceiling 5 metres above the tops of the mass fabricators, the white part of the A they saw from the outside. Cricket said, “The elevated roof was to facilitate moving product to the warehouse, but also would display the Atlantean symbol, which could be seen by telescopes on Earth.“

They got back in the hover cart and continued the drive out towards the warehouse.

As they reached the end of the path it appeared to turn and follow the outside of the warehouse, but there was also an opening to drive into the warehouse. The warehouse was nothing, but rows, upon rows, upon rows of shelving from the roof to the ceiling 20 metres above them. The building was so big they couldn’t see the end of it!

But the entire place seemed to be warm and functional now, as they turned around and drove back to the living quarters.

As they were boarding the shuttle to leave, they noticed that Cricket had one upped the Americans by constructing a protector statue of Mark, just like the one in Acropolis, but the corners of the platform at his feet had 10 metre flagpoles with Atlantean Federation flags. They would never fall over.

Later that day, Mark had told everyone about the new moon facility and everyone asked to go visit it, and that night he called Annabelle and told her about it and she also asked if she could go see it.

As he settled in for bed that night, Mark began thinking maybe they could make a tourist business out of it, create a large heated dome with a landing bay and allow people to come up to the moon to jump around for a while. Eventually he did fall asleep, knowing tomorrow was the big meeting with the Bank for International Settlements.

Mark didn’t mind getting up early on his own, but he disliked getting up early because he had to! It was still his normal wake up time, but he literally had time to get dressed, grab a coffee and get downstairs by the time Maren arrived to pick him up. Cricket gave him an audible version of the morning reports as he was getting prepared.

Due to the 2 hour time difference to Basel, Switzerland, and having to leave at around 6:30, they had opted to just have Maren pick them up at the palace. The quick flight to Switzerland for the BIS meeting, would still have them there before 9:00.

As the departure time approached, Mark, Dominic and Gyges, since he insisted on going along for security, met Maren at the base of the palace. Dominic was wearing a very nice looking suit and had an Atlantean pin on the lapel. Mark was dressed just like any other day, he was wearing jeans and his cowboy hat, but instead of his t-shirt, he was wearing a long sleeved western shirt.

Dominic looked at Mark and asked, “Is that what you are wearing?”

Mark smiled and replied, “They invited me ... I’m not about to play dress up for a bunch of bankers ... besides I expect you to be doing most of the talking, as this is definitely not one of my strengths.”

Mark then gave Dominic a belt and suggested that he wear it today, just in case. When asked why, Mark just said, “It has a security system in it, just in case something happens.”

They were soon on board the shuttle and Maren had them approaching Centralbahnplatz 2 in Basel, Switzerland in less than half an hour. They were cloaked as they approached the city and Maren dropped them off in the treed parks just south of the building, but she didn’t land, saying she would stay cloaked and hover high enough that people could walk under that spot.

They agreed and the 3 of them exited the shuttle and walked to the building entrance. They were stopped by security, who complained about Gyges, since he wasn’t human, but Mark just pointed out that they had better get used to non-human species, as there were several of them on Atlantis and they would soon be travelling the world. Fortunately, another guard said they were expected and let them pass.

The meeting was boring as fuck for Mark, but in the end they were going to have their currency exchanged. The trick to the exchange, was that they needed to have physical currency, which surprised Mark when Dominic said the Federation did have a physical currency, it was just only used during the transition period of new planets and phased out within 5 years. There was some other things that the Federation had to do as well, but Mark really was just trying not to fall asleep and Dominic seemed to have everything well in hand.

As they exited the BIS building, they messaged Maren and they simply walked back toward the shuttle. One guy though had a statement to make, as he just walked up, pulled a gun and pointed it at Mark. The drones Cricket had watching over them, dropping the man before he could get a shot off and local security took control of the area.

The three Atlanteans walked to the place where they got off the shuttle, and Maren lowered so they could board. Cricket then told Mark that during that walk, a long range shot had been taken that the personal shields had stopped.

Dominic went pale when Mark told him that a shot had been taken at them when they exited the building. He was shaking as he secured himself in the seat and asked how they didn’t even know about the shot?

Mark said, “I knew about it, but it wasn’t a threat, so there was no use making a scene over it, but that was why I gave you the belt,” after a short pause, he then added, “If you are moving to Atlantis and going to be doing meetings outside of Atlantis, maybe you should keep the belt!”

“The belt is what saved me?”

“Yes, that was an invention Solara made, before the Atlanteans even came back to Earth. It’s what has saved me from numerous assassination attempts.”

“I always wondered how you survived those ... everyone thinks you have superpowers.”

Mark laughed, “Well, don’t tell anyone my secret!”

“Your secret is safe with me, my King!” Then after a few seconds, “How did you know there would be an attempt?”

“I didn’t! There’s a lot of people, businesses and governments on this planet that rely on war, crime and chaos to control their citizens, stay in power and make money ... pretty much everything we stand against. I have just adopted the idea that anywhere I go, that isn’t Atlantean controlled, is a potential danger, and I try to make sure anyone with me is as protected as I can make them.”

It was already dark by the time they returned to the palace, so they more or less went straight in to bed.

The next day, saw Dominic setup the Federation Bank, just off the southern path. He chose that direction since they had visited the Planning Office and had bought a plot of land that direction and had hired an architect to design their new home on it. So when he went to work, his trip would be more direct.

Since there had been so many transports arriving every day, Mark made a point to go out and visit the terminal everyday, just to see how things were going and to meet a few of the new arrivals.

When he arrived, there were two transports on the ground unloading passengers and the inside of the terminal was crazy busy. The security personnel were downstairs helping with crowd control and he found Major Thom trying to keep two passengers from fighting, but upon seeing Mark, they both calmed down and bowed.