Nisha woke up before first light to a low throbbing sound. Rachel woke up and they peered outside the tent.
“What was that?” Nisha said. “I don’t hear any—”
A racer flew by, kicking up a dust devil.
“Whoa, what a close call,” Rachel said. “We need to stop this now.”
They walked over to Bok’s tent and called for him. He wasn’t there, so Nisha blinked to activate Bok’s communication app in her eyepiece.
“Good morning, Bok, how are you?” Nisha said.
“I’m excited. I got word we can begin to build our colony. I got the coordinates and I’m going to examine the land now. Do you wish to come? There’s plenty of room for humans.”
“Of course, but I want to—”
“I’ll arrive shortly,” Bok said before she could finish her thought.
They got dressed. Soon Bok’s racer hovered outside their tent. They climbed in and off they went.
Nisha held on for dear life.
“Bok, can you slow down? Please?”
“Yes. I must remember you humans are fragile and aren’t used to these speeds.”
“Also, can you tell your friends to slow down around humans,” Nisha said. “When your racers speed by, it’s frightening and they wake us up from our sleep. We need eight hours of sleep once every day/night cycle.”
“Yes, I’ll tell them.”
Bok fell silent for a moment.
“Okay, it’s done. They will slow down when they’re near humans.”
“Thank you,” Nisha said.
“I’ve noticed the humans are no longer using the area over to the left for their flying machines. What happened?”
“That area used to be Edwards Air Base,” Rachel said. “The space shuttle used to land there many years ago. They closed the base because the Omanji colony will be expanding through the area within a few weeks.”
They held on tightly. A few minutes later, the racer slowed down.
“Are we there yet?” Nisha said.
Rachel laughed.
“You sound like a kid.”
“I am a kid. This is a big moment. It’s the start of a new culture.”
“I agree,” Bok said. “Okay, we’ve arrived at the coordinates for my colony.”
They stepped out and walked around.
“This is barren flat desert,” Nisha said.
“Yes, it’s perfect for my colony. It’s far away from humans and there’s plenty of open space. Let me tell the others to begin the process.”
Bok fell into a silent state for a minute while they looked around.
“Okay, they should begin arriving within 10 minutes.”
“You’re right, they don’t mess around.” Rachel said.
“Bok, how are you going to start this colony?” Nisha said. “What are your plans?”
“We’ve already designed the entire colony to function efficiently now and expand to as large as is needed. Right now, 5,000 of us must be accommodated.”
“5,000?” Nisha said. “You said 1,000 yesterday.”
“That’s correct. My colony is more popular than I first anticipated. We’ll build the first tower right here, and we’ll install the nuclear generators and anti-matter storage units.”
Rachel raised an eyebrow.
“Bok, you’re going to store anti-matter here?”
“Sure, it’s no big deal.”
Nisha and Rachel glanced at each other with raised eyebrows.
“No big deal?” Nisha said. “Bok, a teaspoon of antimatter could destroy a large human city.”
“It’s okay, we can handle it. Humans will eventually figure out that producing and storing antimatter is safe and can be handled without danger if precautions are taken.”
Soon, Bok’s friends arrived in racers and many other types of vehicles and unpacked equipment. Several builder drones were already assembled. They crawled out into the desert like giant crabs and dug holes.”
Bok noticed Nisha and Rachel staring at the scene in silence.
“Yes, it’s doesn’t seem like much, but an important part of constructing something large is what we call ‘scaling to size’. We double everything as we go along. We start with one drone, two, four, and eight, until soon after 20 and more doublings, we have millions. Even the main colony now housing six billion Omanji started exactly like this. These first drones are mining the material which will be used to build most solid structures and more drones. Once we’re producing our own power, we’ll sell the excess energy to the human power grid. This will allow us to purchase the metals we need using human currency and pay back our human investors. We won’t take resources from you like ‘they’ did.”
“The Omanji? That’s good to know Bok,” Nisha said.
“This is fascinating. Can we watch for a while?” Rachel said.
“Yes, you can stay as long as you wish,” Bok said.
“Nisha, is this being broadcast?”
“Yes. One billion people can watch this in real time.”
They watched for a few hours as the mine shaft got deeper and a pile of ground up rock grew outside of the hole. More drones were being created from an increasing number of machines which could make drones. Nisha and Rachel walked around the work site, making sure to stay out of the way of the drones. They were aware and changed their course to avoid contact with life forms. Several small fusion generators were hooked up to a power line to feed electricity into the US power grid.
“Bok, how much money are you going to make selling power to the grid?” Rachel said.
“We will earn approximately $100,000 per hour to start. The human power lines can’t handle any more for the time being. We’ll use the money to buy things we don’t own already and to pay back the Silicon Valley companies for this land. What are those humans doing over there?”
Nisha and Rachel turned around. Several dozen cars had stopped along the side of the lonely stretch of highway 247 about 20 miles south of Barstow.
“They’re curious,” Nisha said. “I hadn’t thought about security. What should we do Rachel?”
“I don’t know, but we better do something fast. More cars are stopping every minute. Bok, are you using defensive shielding technology like the Omanji elders? I’m afraid someone might take a shot at you or us.”
“We’re setting up the colony and individual shielding right now. Now, we’re vulnerable. The shielding won’t stop humans from wandering into dangerous areas. They might get injured. This is a serious construction zone.”
“I think we need to hire human security guards for protection,” Nisha said. “We don’t want any of your friends to get into direct contact with humans while defending yourselves. We don’t want any negative events to happen. What do you think, Bok?”
“That’s a clever idea. By tomorrow, money will be in our bank account, and we can hire human guards.”
“For now, let’s go talk with them and keep them away,” Nisha said.
They began to walk across the desert to the far side of the flat lands where the road is visible.
“Take my racer, it’ll be much faster,” Bok said.
“No way.” Rachel said. “We don’t know how to drive this racer.”
“Sure, you can,” Bok said. “Step in there. Okay, now sit here and that’s the control. It’s simple.”
Nisha grabbed hold of a spherical knob.
“That controls everything. Even your simple five-fingered hands can control it. It’s in training mode. So, you can learn to move the racer around without going far or damaging it.”
Nisha rotated the sphere and soon she maneuvered the racer up and down, and side to side. After about five minutes, Bok disengaged training mode and climbed in.
“I’ll go with you for a few minutes until you learn. Afterwards, I must get back to the construction.”
“Okay, here we go.” Nisha said as she took off. “Whoa, it’s easy to maneuver. There’s something about the controls that makes it impossible to do anything wrong.”
“It has adaptive controls,” Bok said. “They adjust to your commands after calculating the local environment. If you make an error, such as flying towards a mountain or a moving spacecraft, the software will make corrections. It’s almost impossible to make this speeder crash. Even out of training mode.”
After several minutes, she grew accustomed to the controls. She took Bok back to the construction site and dropped him off.
“We’ll be back soon,” she said. “How far can this thing go before I need to refuel? I don’t want to get stuck in the desert.”
“At full racing speed, it could travel around the earth about 500 times. It takes about two hours to circle the earth at low altitude and 90 minutes in orbit. It could orbit indefinitely.”
“No way.” Rachel said.
“It’s true,” Bok said.
Nisha opened her eyes wide at Rachel. Bok turned to walk into the construction zone.
“Contact me if there’s a problem,” he said.
Rachel smiled.
“I’ve always wanted to go to Tahiti. What do you think?”
“Good idea,” Nisha said. “On the way I guess we’ll talk to those guys getting out of their cars on the highway up ahead.”
Nisha flew across the barren land to the highway, where she spotted over 100 cars pulled off the side of the road. When she slowed down the craft, everyone ran into their cars. Some drove away. A few did nothing and seemed frozen.
“I love it,” Rachel said. “They’re like deer in headlights.”
They pulled up to the edge of the highway and stepped out of the racer. The people couldn’t believe it.
“You’re human.” one guy said, looking relieved.
“Are you Nisha?” Another guy said. “I’ve been following you for a long time.”
A woman said, “I knew it was you. I’m watching your broadcast live. I came out here to check out this colony in person.”
Slowly, the other people emerged from their cars.
Nisha stood with a wide stance on top of the racer’s wing. Her hands were on her hips. Several people shared that iconic image instantaneously with the world. The first human pilot of an alien spacecraft.
“Okay everyone, it’s okay to stay here and watch. However, it’s dangerous at the construction site, so please stay close to the road.”
“Yeah, it’s dangerous,” Rachel said. “They use nuclear fusion reactors and antimatter. If there’s an accident, this valley will be melted into glass. So please stay back.”
They talked about things for a while and climbed back into the racer to head back.
Nisha muted the audio temporarily.
“You scared ’em with all that talk about nuclear reactors and antimatter.”
“That’s the idea. I want them to decide to stay back without us being there. There’s no way to stop them. We need some fences.”
“Good idea,” Nisha said as she pulled away.
She smiled.
“Hmm, I want to visit my house.”
“What are you talking about?” Rachel said.
“My own house, I want to go check it out. Bok?”
“This is Bok, how are you doing?”
“I’m doing well. The crowd is growing but they’re staying back. Can I fly the racer to my house in Pasadena and say hello to my family?”
“Sure, go right ahead. Be careful though. If you crash it violently, you can cause a breach of the anti-matter containment field and you’ll explode like a nuclear weapon. Don’t worry though. You would need to crash into solid rock at 2,000 miles per hour before that could happen. There’s an anti-collision algorithm that should prevent you from doing that. Safe mode is always on.”
Nisha smiled at Rachel.
“Um, thanks Bok. I feel so much better now.”
“I’m glad I can help.”
“I was being facetious Bok.”
Bok paused.
“Humor. Okay I understand. Ha-ha.”
“We’ll work on your humor later,” Nisha said as she accelerated away.
After a few minutes of practicing on small hills, she gained elevation and crossed over the much taller San Gabriel Mountains, avoiding the new Omanji tower on top.
Priya, Sophie, and Amy had been studying upstairs all day.
Amy walked to the window to check out the progress being made on the second Omanji tower being built near San Gabriel Peak.
“Um, guys. Ya better get over here.”
“Amy, I don’t wanna know. Quit bugging me,” Priya said.
“No seriously, get over here. Now.
Priya walked to the window.
“Fine, I’m gonna do this to— Omigod, what’s that?” she whispered.
Sophie raced to the window.
“It’s the Omanji. They’re here. What’ll we do? They want us back. We need to hide.”
“We can’t hide from them Sophie, their implants are in our brains, remember?”
“The thing is opening up,” Amy said.
They froze, waiting to see what was inside.
“It’s Mom!” Priya said.
She raced down the stairs and into the back yard with Sophie and Amy close behind.
Nisha jumped out and hugged Priya. Quinn and Sanjay came out for a group hug.
“Neesh, whatcha doing here?” Quinn said. “And what’s this old clunker you’re driving. Do you have a license for that?”
Nisha glanced at the racer and smiled.
“Oh, this? It gets me where I need to go. It’s an old classic from the 28th century.”
They all laughed as they admired its sleek appearance.
“I can only stay a few minutes because so many things are happening, but I wanted to say hi,” Nisha said.
“How long did you take to get here? It normally takes over 90 minutes with good traffic to get to Mojave.”
Nisha glanced at Rachel and smiled.
“Umm. Five minutes? I’m not sure. We got here as fast as we could without blacking out from the G-forces draining the blood from our brains. I don’t think I used more than 5% thrust at any time. This racer has force field seating. You can accelerate much faster without blacking out. Remember the fighter jet ride we had years ago?”
“Sure, that was incredible,” Quinn said.
“Well, a jet fighter is a toy compared to this thing. The Omanji call them racers. I know I’m pushing my luck being here. I’m not sure if I’m legally allowed to fly this thing so I better get back. I wanted to say hi.”
They hugged each other and talked for a while longer. Soon, they were back in the air and within minutes, they landed next to Bok’s colony. Bok stood on a hill, supervising the initial work.
“You’ve made a lot of progress,” Nisha said.
“Thanks. I think by tomorrow, we’ll begin construction of our first tower. My tower won’t be as big as the towers in the big colony, but 10,000 of us in my colony can live here.”
“10,000? You said 5,000 a short while ago.”
“Yes, I did. I’m surprised at how many of us don’t wish to merge. I’m building a 2,000-foot-tall tower to potentially house 100,000 of us. My tower won’t hold a million like the big towers in the colony, but it’s a start.”
“Only 100,000? Yeah, we all must start small I guess,” Nisha said.
“Yes, this is small but once we get up to a larger scale, we’ll—”
Nisha smiled.
“I was kidding Bok.”
“Oh, ha-ha,” Bok said.
Nisha glanced at Rachel.
“We gotta to do a lot of work on this guy.”
Bok looked down with both eyes.
“I’m having trouble understanding human humor. I’ll learn.”
They laughed again.
They watched the construction for a few hours from atop a rocky hill. Eventually, the sun dropped below the horizon. Bok walked up to visit them.
“Construction is proceeding well. We can go back to the compound now.”
They climbed into the racer and soon they were back.
“This is the night cycle where I don’t sleep,” Bok said. “I will go to my tent so you can sleep.”
They watched as Bok walked back to his tent.
“I can’t believe any of this is happening,” Nisha. “I can’t identify the source of my anxiety. Things are out of balance.”
“I know what you mean,” Rachel said. “Nothing is stable now.”
Soon they said good night and fell asleep.