Chapter 14

Betsy had jogged past the building a hundred times in the past, but had never gone inside. This particular morning, she noticed Lucy walking towards the entrance. She changed the direction of her run, and headed towards the door.

“Lucy!”

Lucy stopped while opening the door. Betsy had slowed to a walk. Lucy looked over at her sister-in-law wondering what she wanted. In a way, it was hard getting used to watching Betsy walking rather than running. She held the door open, and waited patiently for her sister-in-law to reach her.

“Can I look around?” Betsy asked.

“Sure,” Lucy said.

“So, I finally get to see inside the mystery building,” Betsy said.

“It’s just a server farm,” Lucy said.

Raising an eyebrow in surprise, Betsy asked, “A server farm? This whole building is nothing but a server farm?”

“That’s basically right,” Lucy said.

“I don’t believe it,” Betsy said. “You’ve got some sort of mad scientist lab in here.”

Lucy laughed at the characterization, although the description as a mad scientist lab was more accurate than Betsy could guess. She waved a hand towards the open door and said, “See for yourself.”

Lucy gave Betsy instructions on how to get to the server room on the lowest floor of the facility. She had a quick errand to perform since she had some work to do on one of the upper levels and didn’t want to deal with Betsy while doing it. She promised to meet up with Betsy after a few minutes.

It was a substantial building with four floors below ground level. It wasn’t fancy, but one could tell that a lot of money went into its construction.

Betsy followed Lucy’s directions, although she did take the opportunity to wander through the facility. After she stepped off the elevator, she paused to look around at the utilitarian decor. This was clearly a building constructed to meet a single purpose. On her way to the server room, she peered into the various rooms along the way. There were a couple of office spaces, but it was obvious by the contents that most of the rooms were for storage of replacement parts and boxes of computers.

She strode into the large room and then came to a complete stop when she reached the center of the room. She turned around slowly to take in the amazing sight. She was completely surrounded by racks of computers. There were green lights and red lights flashing all over the place. After her discussion with Paul about equipment generating heat, she was amazed at how cold the room was. She figured they must have a monster air conditioner stashed away somewhere.

She cupped her hands around her mouth like a megaphone and shouted, “Hello.”

Disappointed, she said, “No echo.”

Lucy walked into the room, grinning, and said, “I thought I heard someone yelling in here.”

“I was just trying to make an echo.”

“There’s too much stuff in here for an echo.”

“It sure is a big room, with lots of computers,” Betsy said.

Despite the fact that this facility had been built close to five years earlier, this was the first time Betsy had ever been inside it. She was very impressed. Mentally, Betsy was trying to calculate how much the equipment in that room cost. The number was impressive, even to her.

“This is one of four floors,” Lucy said.

“That’s a lot of computers,” Betsy said not wanting to even estimate how many computers there were in the room.

“Yes, it is. There’s more computing power in this facility than exists everywhere else in the country combined,” Lucy said.

Her eyes ran over the racks of machine, caressing them with her glance. She had created this building as a present for William only to discover that it was actually a temple dedicated to her. It was the culmination of a lifetime of work pursued for the sole purpose of allowing her access to his world. Just the idea of how hard he had worked to make it happen still choked her up at times.

“What are you doing? Keeping track of the national debt?”

“Not really,” Lucy said with a slight grin.

The machines hosted William’s programs based on the model he had developed to predict the future. Several hours ago, several possible futures had suddenly disappeared from the simulation results. William said that it was correlated to an arrest that was made in Hawaii the previous evening, but Lucy wanted to make sure that none of the machines had failed.

“It’s impressive,” Betsy said knowing that there weren’t really words to describe just how mind-blowing this facility was.

Wanting to boast a little about what they were doing, Lucy said, “Every time Dan’s company comes out with a more powerful computer, we start upgrading this room and the three rooms above us. We spend a fortune on computers. In fact, we are the largest single consumer of computers in the world.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Betsy said suitably impressed. “We installed a couple computers on the Bloated Shark and it cost us a fortune.”

“We just got our first shipment of Thor 2000s. I can give you a hundred Raptor 9000s when we finish swapping them out.”

“I’ve got two Raptor 1000s on the tug. I thought we were pretty hot stuff,” Betsy said.

She was stunned by the computing power that Lucy was talking about throwing away. A Raptor 9000 had three orders of magnitude more computing power than a Raptor 1000. The clock speed was a thousand times faster and supported ten times the memory. She didn’t know the comparison in performance between a Thor 2000 and a Raptor 9000, but she was willing to bet it was at least an order of magnitude. She had understood that the Thor series had transitioned over to optical computing from old fashioned silicon chips.

“Well, we are computing intensive here,” Lucy said.

“I didn’t know they had released the Thor series,” Betsy said.

Lucy said, “The Thor 1000 series will be released for general sale soon. They couldn’t put them on the market until they filled our order for them. After all, we paid for their development.”

“You said you were getting Thor 2000s.”

“That’s right. We’re two generations ahead of everyone else,” Lucy said. “A quarter of our machines are Raptor 9000s, a quarter are Raptor 10000s, a quarter are Thor 1000s, and a quarter are Thor 1500s. We’ve just started replacing the Raptor 9000s with Thor 2000s.”

“What are you computing?” Betsy asked finding the need for that kind of computing power staggering.

“I can’t tell you,” Lucy said.

Noticing that Lucy was uncomfortable with the question, Betsy asked, “How much are you spending on computers every year?”

“About half a billion dollars,” Lucy answered. “We underwrote the development costs of the Thor series and built the production facility just to get a price break.”

“Maybe I should invest in Daddy Dan’s company,” Betsy said flippantly.

“You already are invested in it. I believe that William used some of your money to build the production facility,” Lucy said.

“Good,” Betsy said unconcerned that he was using her money to further his own projects.

William’s ability to see the future translated into exceptional returns on investment. He was more than capable of generating a half billion dollars of income every year. Considering that he could allocate a billion dollars for investment purposes, it only required that he pick five stocks a year with a ten percent return in investment to make that kind of money. There were always a handful of companies that provided that kind of performance.

Betsy had given him control over a major portion of her money from the day that her rebreather investment had started paying dividends. There were times when her cash flow was a little low, but those times were few and far between. Her current worth was somewhere between a hundred million and a quarter billion dollars. It did fluctuate by as much as ten percent at times, but she wasn’t worried about it.

Betsy said, “Well, I’m impressed with what you’ve done here.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said.

“I guess I should resume my little run before Bill gets here,” Betsy said.

Bill was the latest man to marry into the Carter Clan. His joining the Carter Clan returned the family to a gender balance. It had also re-invigorated the family. Ed ran a successful geological consulting company, Leroy was still doing research in CDW, and Dan was head of a large computer company. Kelly was basically retired. Ling and Claire still consulted occasionally on security problems although they focused primarily upon protecting the Carter Clan. Linda was still publishing books.

Bill was in the process of starting a company. The family joined behind him to support him in his efforts. Betsy knew that with the entire Clan supporting him, that Bill was going to succeed. She wanted to be part of that success.

Lucy asked, “Why did you want Bill to come over?”

“I want to talk to him about opening a plant in Hawaii,” Betsy said.

Bill had set up a company to recycle waste. For every ton of waste delivered to one of his plants, his process for separating waste managed to convert all but about two pounds on average into raw materials for manufacturing. Heavy metals were extracted, plastics were ground into usable pellets, regular metals were separated and purified, paper was extracted to produce new paper, organic materials were turned into jet fuel and synthetic oils for use as lubrication, glass was melted into simple glass bricks, and electronic parts were broken down into base elements. It was energy intensive, but required less energy overall than mining and purification, and there were no toxins produced or contaminated byproduct wastes.

“That’s kind of small scale for him,” Lucy said.

“You don’t understand. Hawaii has a real need for it,” Betsy said.

“I don’t think he’ll be interested at the moment,” Lucy said. “He’s finishing up the New York City plant and he’s started work on the Southern California plant. Those are pretty big projects.”

“Hawaii is a chain of islands. There’s no real place to put trash without impacting the entire ecology of an island. Without an effective waste solution, Hawaii is going to be in real trouble one of these days,” Betsy said.

“I can see that,” Lucy said. “I don’t think the problem is a lack on interest on his part, it’s a matter having the resources available to build it.”

Dismissing that concern, Betsy said, “I can help with that.”

“You better check with William first,” Lucy said knowing that Betsy was prone to overestimating what William was capable of doing.

“I’ll do that,” Betsy said, recognizing good advice when she heard it.

It took her an hour to locate William. He was waiting for her in the conference room on the second floor where the business functions of the house were located. She plopped down in a chair across from him.

Without introducing the topic of conversation, she asked, “Well?”

“Your monetary situation is a little tight at the moment. In just the past year, you’ve bought a house, a condo, invested in a business, and purchased a hotel,” William answered knowing why she was there to talk with him.

“And?”

“You’re only going to be able to put about five to ten million in Bill’s project,” William said.

Although she had a lot more money than that, she was going to have to keep sufficient capital on hand to maintain her current investment results. It would be a while before some of her current investments started to pay off, but when they did she’d be rolling in money. The water processing company would generate billions all by itself, but that was far in the future.

“That’s not enough,” Betsy said with a frown.

William laughed at the expression on her face. He knew that she had no idea of just how much money that was going to be in the near future. Provoked by his laugh, Betsy glared at him.

He said, “The economy is going to go bust pretty soon. You’re going to remain one of the wealthiest people in the world. That five to ten million you’re going to be investing now is going to be worth a lot more than you think possible.”

“The economy is going to be that bad?” Betsy asked.

William nodded his head. He glanced at the door and said, “Bill is going to be a very wealthy man soon.”

“I’ve read all of his business projections. He’s latched onto a gold mine,” Betsy said.

“You’re the one who is going to make him that rich.”

“That’s nice to know. What am I going to do?” Betsy said wondering what William knew that he wasn’t going to tell her.

“You’re going to be Betsy, that’s all.”

She wasn’t happy to hear that. She was tired of being Betsy. She didn’t know what she wanted to be, but she felt there was something about her nature that was keeping her from finding love.

“I’ll just be Betsy,” she said with a sigh.

“Sally is moving in with her boyfriend. I suggest that you move into her apartment and sell your condo,” William said, ignoring the sigh.

“Why should I sell the condo?” Betsy asked.

She didn’t want to sell it. She actually liked the place a lot. It was in a good location, had a great view, and was decorated exactly like she wanted. There were a lot of good memories of evening chats with Sally over ice cream.

“The housing market is going to take another hit. This one is going to be really bad,” William said. “You’ll want the cash in hand, preferably in the form of gold, when the market collapses to make the appropriate investments.”

“You can tell me that?” Betsy asked surprised that William was sharing the future with her.

“Yes, particularly since it deals with your service,” William answered. “You’re going to need to invest in some properties like the one in Vancouver.”

“You mean that I’m going to need more safe houses,” Betsy said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Economic turmoil brings a lot of changes, and most of them are unpleasant. In the near future, a lot of evil people are going to become desperate. That’s never a good thing,” William said.

He didn’t want to tell her that she was going to have to sign them over to a corporation that he was setting up for the Druids. As bad as times were going to get, the Druids were going to need places to stash people who were in trouble. He was well aware that Betsy’s service wasn’t to rescue people, but to make the conditions right for the other Druids to do their jobs.

Getting worried, Betsy asked, “Just how bad is this economic collapse going to be?”

“Take the list of the thousand richest people in the world; by the time the dust clears, only a quarter of them will remain on that list. There won’t be any billionaires left in the world,” William said.