Haze Gray 108
Taylor tilted her head and watched for a moment "Huh. I thought that was at night and you just caught them sleeping and pushed them over then ran like hell. The internet so lies."
Amy snorted "No, this is hoof trimming. They don't have a hard life walking all day every day, so their finger and toenails get to long." Taylor had bent over at the waist and was walking around on two of the fingers on each hand and her toes. Amy looked up from her crazed girlfriend right into the stoic face of a native farm hand. She snorted and the farm hand got dragged off by a female hand. "Stop goofing off and pay attention Taylor. This is important."
Taylor frowned "Can't you just…." She wriggled her fingers at Amy.
Amy frowned thoughtfully. Then shrugged "I'll think about it. I think its going to be pretty complicated though."
Karl nodded "The idiots will call them GMO cows. Better start that small, one or two. If it works, we can breed for it. One good milker and one poor milker."
"Like that isn't GMO." Taylor tossed in.
Karl nodded "I did say idiots. They don't even realize we select for sex when inseminating and the poor milkers only ever have bull calves. Much less no food they eat hasn't been genetically modified. Most of it by guys without the 'appropriate education' just sixty years of experience in what works."
Taylor blinked "Uh, how?"
Karl shrugged "You plant a crop with seed you saved. The plants that do well you save the seed from. The rest you run through an animal. A few years and you have seed tailored to your ground if you keep your inputs and practices the same. Farmers have done it that way for thousands of years. Seed corn cost forty-five dollars an acre if you buy those fancy hybrids. So, for me, three hundred thirty thousand dollars a year. Wheat and soybeans about the same about a million dollars on seed. So I put up hopper bottom bins for the seed and save what I need for next year.
"I don't need resistance to herbicides, they cost twice as much as seed so we use them as little as possible and are very careful with them, but I did get a BT strain of corn wheat and soybeans to take pretty good.
"Good management practices and husbandry and you make more than you spend most years. Not as much as some of these fellows who use the new hybrids but more even over time I think.
"The folks in the lab coats just do it faster, maybe better, they know quite a lot about plants.
"The other huge input is fuel. You brought the price of that down. Then equipment, a combine or tractor of the size we use generally cost six hundred thousand dollars. Folks talk about flip points, where maintenance starts to cost more than the machine is worth. If you use it gently, clean it well, keep it in a vermin proof shed, you can push that out twenty years or more." He grinned "Or just buy a twenty-year-old K mod your yards resurrected and improved for half the money that works better than a new one. I'm looking at a new axial flow myself. One of ours is getting pretty long in the tooth. Heard talk the yards are going to start a 'reconditioning' program."
Lisa laughed "Well now people do." She nodded at all the cameras and field reporters.
Taylor pointed at the small forge the black gang had set up "Reconditioning. Apparently, its excellent training for Machinist mates and boiler techs. Aviation machinist too. Plus their Marine and Army counterparts. They learn to build the tools to build the tools to build the parts to make the machines. The more complicated the better. Right now they are tooling up to build a condensing steam version that burns chaff or stalks and scatters cold ashes."
Karl grinned "Now we're talking!"
Taylor gave him a mild sort of pouty glare "Don't encourage them. The gunners mates will arm the thing."
"Shotgun for the seagulls might be nice. We're eight hundred odd miles from the nearest saltwater and we got more seagulls than Dick Bach."
Taylor nodded thoughtfully and a chief gunner's mate appeared on her shoulder 'Hey, hey hey hey hey.' "It makes its own cartridges using grain dust as the propellent?" 'Hey' "Oh, semi fixed ammunition and an air blast then an igniter. And it recycles the propellent cartridges. Nice. If we make that an oxygen blast, we could probably get pretty serios velocity. And rocks the combine picks up as projectiles in a shot cup that protects the barrel. Nice. It needs a serious flash suppressor, and this turret needs explosion proofing. No lighting my farm machinery or crops on fire. This radar directed fire control will work? Oh, it's the same as our fantail guns.
'Hey' "A prototype, hey Karl, we are cutting wheat, right?" Amy face palmed as the Case 8950 tractor left the shed towing a 1682 pull type combine. With a turret on the rebuilt covered grain tank, a sort of truncated cone with an odd bump, with a aegis radar pyramid on it.
Karl gaped "Those were in the old shed. We stopped doing small grain five years ago and put them up for sale." The tractor and combine gleamed like brand new.
'Hey' "Lots of spare parts with them, plus used parts that needed reconditioned. Well, come on, lets test it." Taylor and Karl walked to the tractor. Amy got in the pickup which filled, got a hayride wagon hooked to it which filled and then got another hooked to that. The press scrambled for the side by side four wheelers they had rented.
Ruth got in the driver's seat of the pickup, looked at Amy and cackled madly as she let out on the clutch and followed the tractor and combine. Amy sighed "It looks like a Dalek, painted red. With a giant vacuum head on the front. And a penis." Ruth nodded and cackled more.
Suddenly the combine part of the contraption shuddered, turned into a row, a light on top flashed and a horn blared "Stand clear for anti-aircraft action!" was shouted over a loudspeaker at a volume they probably heard in North Platte and the daleks head spun around searching. Soon enough the seagulls obliged starting their normal stern approach and the gun opened a blistering fire.
Amy sighed "Oh the Humanities!"
Ruth cackled then got thoughtful "I need some of those for my orchard and garden. Those flying rats are probably good fertilizer run through a tiller too."
Haze Gray
Agnes Court gaped watching the live coverage of the latest madness the Kanmusu, led by their front woman Brockton Bay, were getting up to. She was stunned when even the environmental organizations decided, on air, removing the seagulls was a good thing as they were technically invasive species that far inland.
She swiveled in her chair and watched one of the Kanmusu machines greedily scrubbing down one of the storm drains. Wait, it was turning it into a canal? What the hell were they up to now? She typed on her tablet for a few moments and sat stunned. Micro plastic from tires and it stopped salmon breeding. They were clearing every creek, river, and drain and installing filters. They were going to catch six point five billion tons of micro plastic a year, and that was after god alone knew how many tons they were cleaning up. Plus, platinum group metals and all other sorts of trash.
She was selling more feed stock than Marathon and she wasn't paying for it, she was picking it up as trash! It was nearly pure profit! Even the true trash she was making that pyrolysis oil, and a bunch of other products as a result of that process. Some of those facilities were in the far south and used solar collectors to supply the energy to melt sat that they then used to heat the reaction vessels. Free feed stock and free energy and she just shipped it and sold it! Two of those were connected to pipelines! Pipelines that used to transport oil, then gas, then were abandoned. She was pumping half a billion barrels of oil or refined products a day from Texas to New Jersey! Including nearly the entire Mississippi river valley, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The government had given them the damn thing.
The little witches were literally mining gold in plain sight and getting praise and tax breaks for it! Huge tax breaks! Her effective tax rate was zero as an enterprise! The government was paying her to exist! This is exactly what the NEPEA acts were supposed to prevent! How was she doing it?
Wait a minute, the government intended her to recover that pipeline. Well, well, finally a mistake Miss Perfect. Agnes turned back to her desk and started a video call.
Haze Gray
"Are you drunk Ange?" Jerry asked quite seriously. "Those pipelines were coated in melted asphalt, wrapped in asbestos, that was coated in more asphalt, and buried in areas that now have cities, not villages, cities sitting on top of them. She's come along, encased the things in that damn concrete of hers and now they are contact nuclear detonation proof from what the women in my life tell me. She is a goddess to the environmentalist.
"Linda tells me she has done more for the environment sleeping than I have done awake. If I was in your shoes, I would leave her completely alone.
"Better yet copy her methods. Its not only the sincerest form of flattery it's the only way you are going to make money. She is driving nails in oil companies coffins by the barrel full every day. Something like three million wats of power a day coming online. Of course, that's affecting the coal fired plants the most but it is going to shut down the nukes too. Gas plants can run on the waste product of her plastic refineries. The Gas companies' customers are going to be all residential once she builds the first of those. Or rather gets them online.
"Train generators with gas turbines on them. Spinning idle they call it. In a forty-foot prefab structure, one for every hundred homes or so with others ready to come on line in minutes. They bury them in the ground and not even fires can knock them out. Of course, they may have to shut them off if the neighborhood they run burns out but maybe it could still supply the network. It gets pretty technical. The girls wax poetic about it. Something about sequestering millions of tons of carbon.
"She gets the generators for scrap prices. The engines apparently too. Air engines can't be operated as flying engines anymore, so they scrap them. The generators are from train engines they scrap to meet emission standards. He boys rebuild both, make the engines burn that junk gas and still meet tier four and CARC, put in automated controls and hook them up where our power guys want them. Leased not owned. Best of both worlds really.
"Not sure I believe all that crap. When I was a kid, we were worried about being in the middle of an ice age. Did you know earth is an ice planet? Now we are all going to die in a fire in fifteen years. Plus, the stuff I read says water vapor is the biggest contributor to global warming.
"Guess you could try that on, she is watering the damn desert. Got to put tons of water in the air, right? I mean she is planting the desert too so all those plants using all that CO2, maybe it balances out.
"Suddenly not a lot of people worried about water anymore. Remember that quadrennial defense review said we would be killing each other over water in ten years. Not so much now. The boats just drop oceans of fresh water wherever they want it.
"Hey, maybe they can do something about the Salton Sea?
"Anyway, did you see that report about the little boats. Up the damn Rio Grande nearly to Denver, then in a canal the rest of the way there. Wonder if those are girls?"
Agnes sighed. But it was Jerry. No telling what he was really thinking. "No Jerry, they aren't girls. As for the water vapor versus carbon dioxide, that still remains to be proven. Though if she is planting everywhere then she will sequester carbon monoxide. It would be better if it was in trees for lumber, but food helps at least a little."
Jerry laughed "Trees, Ange honey, she plants a million trees a day on any ground she can't bulldoze flat enough for combines. They got these crazy hillside ones too. Dam things can combine a twenty-seven-degree slope. Most people won't walk up that."
Agnes opened her mouth to correct him on the slope percentage versus grade but thought better "Well, sorry to have wasted your time Jerry."
"Hey now, none of that. I need you girls to get along. More money you make the more gold the Golden State has right?" Jerry laughed heartily.
Agnes managed some platitudes and managed to get off the call without ordering a hit on Jerry for his misogyny. It was mild for California in general and nothing compared to what was considered acceptable and expected in LA.
The bastard did bring up a good point, Brockton generally fell face first into piles of shit and came out sparkling and covered in palladium, literally with this stream mining thing, and blue diamonds. All while looking like a fucking Amazon princess straight off their fucking island.
Plus, Panacea stuck to her. A bio tinker, the bio tinker. Fighting Brockton was going to get her personally turned into a frog, literally, and her organization slaughtered or jailed if they were lucky and flat broke on top of that if they weren't.
Meanwhile if they built her one of those hive things, she could fill it with a city. That had potential. With the way the world was going a place where people of great talent could go. Especially those who weren't in agreement with Brockton's view of morality.
Haze Gray
The warden looked at the guard captain "How did they even get close to each other?"
The guard captain shook his head "We are investigating. We should get the PRT in here."
"Asian on Black violence, out of a mostly white population. What the actual fuck?" The warden shook his head.
The guard captain nodded "Looks bad. Apparently, a personal beef though. And after we spent all that money getting Mustain through withdrawal from every drug known to man.
"Hard to believe a normal got him though. He kept that shield field up all the time until last week.
Haze Gray
Babe, did you ever do the PRT troopers?
Panacea blinked "What? Oh yeah. I thought you knew, the close squads rotate, and we do them while they are in rotation. They are all being all they can be. Plus, we don't tell the PRT who has a potentia. They don't want to know. Though they did ask us to report any with a gemma. Plus, the patients have to sign a consent for us to report an active gemma.
"The protectorate has gained about fifty members, who still work in the PRT. Really minor powers. One guy who has a striker rating but only if he is holding a framing hammer of a certain type and weight. Crazy stuff like that.
"Chambers department is going nuts trying to work them onto teams. Meanwhile the PRT has suddenly gotten pretty relaxed. They gave that guy a black California framing hammer and a hammer loop on his PRT uniform.
Still can't get congress to ease up on parahumans in the military though. There is some talk of parahuman only military units, but congress howls about it.
Taylor frowned, "Well, they are at least talking about it."
Amy nodded "Plus, what would ship girls do? They are still going to come to us and you know it. It's the first thing they do, even the home-grown squadrons like Qatar's. They are much happier here with us."
Taylor nodded "Not sure that isn't an experience and numbers thing. I bet when they get to a full battle group, they will be happy to be home.
"We just need to make sure they have adequate port and training facilities."
Amy arched a brow "So you're thinking Hawaii will form a battle group and work out of Mare."
Taylor nodded "You know she will. Someone will have to take over the brown water battle group. Memphis is a good port for that. We will eventually need a seaport in the Gulf but that might come from Central America or be the port on Hispaniola. Then there is Brockton Bay."
Amy nodded "Well, more girls are shipping. Which is good as we will need more than those three if the history of sea power is anything to go by."
Taylor sighed "You don't think I am going to be in charge of all of that do you?"
Amy smirked "Pretty mom boat." Taylor blushed.
Haze Gray
Maria looked at Lisa "So?"
Lisa rolled her eyes "Cart in front of all the horses. We are what, forty girl hulls right now? Sixty including auxiliaries. And a million dogs and cats? Let's get all that settled before we start living the dream."
Maria nodded "The plan accounts for the current rate of girls shipping. It does not account for the dogs and cats."
Lisa nodded "Yeah. Not even Dinah saw that coming. I seriously thought animal control was better in the US. The estimates of feral dogs and cats was seriously low. Cleaned the feral hog problem right up though. Plus, now we have something to do with all that organ meat we had frozen. Aside from using it as thermal mass anyway.