“Good idea, boss.”
“Next, I want the communications improved between the drones and the tanks controlling them. Some combination of IR, fiber optics, and radio frequency transponders might do the trick. I want something small and cheap, so that a drone can carry a lot of them, and leave them behind him.”
“Okay.”
“Lastly, the tanks themselves need some work. This was the first time that they have actually been used in combat. The Japanese engineers who designed them could only test them in simulations. For one thing, there seem to be a lot of drive coils failing. I want to know why that is, and why we can’t repair them easily. I’d like to get some real statistics on that, too. I mean, is this just a statistical fluke that I’ve been seeing, or maybe just my imagination? We’ve had a lot of tanks operating over the last five years, and I’d like to know what has been breaking down on them. Next. Zuzanna and Maria fired an awful lot of rail gun needles at that neutron star. I’d like to know how good their rail guns still are. Is wear a problem with them? Once we know what really needs work, we can see about making some design changes, maybe as a retrofit, and certainly on all new tanks being built.”
“I’ll get on it right away, boss.”
“Good. You are the best assistant a part-time general ever had, Agnieshka.”
“I love you, too, boss.”
When we got home to our garage, I thought that Kasia and I would have to go up to our apartment naked, since Quincy had managed to give away the only clothes we had with us along with our survival kits. Fortunately, my ever perfect lieutenant, Agnieshka, had arranged for some of my humanoid drones to meet us in the garage with some towels to wipe off with, and some clothes to put on.
They brought something red and silky for her, and a full dress uniform, complete with sword, cape, boots, and silly hat, for me.
There were a lot more medals on the outfit than had been there the last time I’d seen it.
“Those are the ones they are going to give you when they get around to it, boss. I thought they’d look nice right now,” Agnieshka said.
“Just be sure and take them off before I wear this outfit in public again,” I said.
Our household drones were now each individually decorated, and looked like a bunch of sixteenth-century knights on parade.
A dozen of the embellished things were also on hand to ceremonially carry the rest of my booty, my vanquished enemy’s swords and sidearms, up to my den.
“Are you sure that you want to put those in your den?” Kasia asked, as she was leaning against her tank and putting on a pair of red satin shoes.
“Uh, where else?”
“Well, I had something to do with getting them, too, you know, and they would make a hell of a conversation piece in the living room.”
“They would at that. The living room it is, my one true love.”
Agnieshka and Eva said that they would see about having a suitable showcase made for our new trophies, and that they would also see about getting the thirteen disabled tanks with the highest seniority installed into their new bodies, with the help of a few dozen more humanoid drones.
At the elevator door to our apartment, I picked my wife up again, and carried her over the threshold.
She made the proper squeals, and then said, “We seem to be making a habit of this.”
“Indeed. Maybe it’s the start of a new family tradition.”
“You’re on, stranger, but only once per victory. We’ve got to keep it special.”
But I didn’t take her straight to our bedroom. I had to carry her out to the balcony, first.
It was early morning, here, and my valley was green, as far as the eye could see.
It was a beautiful sight. We both looked at it for a long time.
Then I carried Kasia to bed.
* * *
In the afternoon, when we got up and were having breakfast, Kasia said that she had to get to work, since she had been worrying about her investments the whole time we had been in New Kashubia. I told her that it was fine by me, and that she could start taking care of my finances from now on as well.
Now that our contest was over, I didn’t much care about handling my own end of it, and she seemed to enjoy it. The only restriction I made was that she could only spend six hours a day working at it.
She grumbled, but went along with the deal. Getting her working capital multiplied by a factor of six really appealed to her. Especially when I mentioned that I hadn’t leveraged my stuff hardly at all. She seemed happy enough when she left.
A few changes had already been made in the apartment. There was an impressive, glassed-in showcase in the living room, with a dozen swords and a dozen pistols in it. Each was neatly labeled as to whom we got it from, and when. Agnieshka told me that it wasn’t glass, of course, but diamond.
The showcase also contained framed copies, in English and Kashubian, of the Articles of Surrender that Kasia had kept.
I found a dragon’s head on the wall of my den, centered over the fireplace, and dwarfing the heads of the American elk on either side of it. I climbed up there to get a better look at it. It was carved out of wood, and beautifully painted.
It was a good joke, I thought.
I spent the rest of the day exploring my valley, and the city that the metal ladies had built for me.
The grass was more than ankle high, but Agnieshka, walking along beside me wearing a decorated drone, said that we’d have to wait until spring before we could start bringing the dairy and beef cattle in. It seems that grass is mostly an underground plant, with only seven percent of its biomass above the surface. We had to wait until the roots were tough enough before we let cattle walk on it, or it would fare badly.
The city was breathtaking, even though the war had slowed down construction considerably. Most of the tanks had more important things to do these days, but my almost ten thousand humanoid drones were still there, quite an effective workforce. They were hard at it, metal plating the exteriors, detailing the interiors, and building furniture.
I think that Quincy’s estimate of each of them being able to do the work of six men was too conservative. Seeing them going at it, I’d put it closer to twelve, when you figured that they worked around the clock. They were faster than men, and far stronger. What’s more, they worked at their full potential all the time, something that no human could possibly do.
Agnieshka told me that eighteen percent of the apartments had already been sold to the men and women of the KEF, mostly on the basis of what they’d seen of the city in Dream World.
There were only two dozen people actually living there, though, what with the war and all. Mostly, they were some of our people whose medical problems had kept them out of the conflict, at least so far. I talked to two of them that I happened to meet, and they seemed as enchanted with the place as I was.
It was getting dark when I got back, but I had been awake for only six hours, so I spent eight hours of subjective time in Dream World, to get my circadian rhythms in sync with the time of day here.
Dream World can get you around jet lag without any difficulty at all. It is your brain that controls the dozen or so chemicals that your body uses to tell you when you should be getting up, when you should eat, and when it’s time to go to sleep.
When your brain has been speeded up, so have your circadian rhythms.
If you spend something less that forty-eight minutes of standard time in times thirty Dream World, you have caught up with the rest of the world in your time zone.
Or, you can just have your tank put you to sleep until the rest of the world has caught up with you.
I spent the subjective time in further explorations of my city, mostly in the Tolkien sector. I now understood why General Sobieski had turned down the gold castle and asked for the citadel instead. It was fantastic!
At dinner, Kasia was less than happy.
“More than half of your assets are tied up in this valley,” she said. “They are not liquid at all. There is nothing that I can do with them. I can’t even mortgage them, since legally, this place doesn’t even exist! And this business of giving away all of the apartments and the businesses in our entire city to veterans on zero down, zero interest mortgages with a one-hundred-year payoff is financially irresponsible!”