Winning Peace 2:
At some point, you get wealthy enough that when you want something, it's easier to have it paid to be brought to you rather than go out and get it. I rebelled against the very idea of this until I had a close encounter with a group of fans two years ago who discovered my location from a social media site dedicated to following various important individuals. The result had been a stampede of internet weirdos who all wanted a piece of my time or funding for some weird project. To make a very long and taxing incident mercifully short, the management of the restaurant had called the police, I'd hired a personal security detail through various governmental connections, and I no longer went out to eat, save for very special occasions.
All of this is to say that there was a reason my extremely well-paid five-star chef had made me a pretty standard roast beef sandwich with fries on the side for lunch when my guest walked in.
"Hey Rhodes." I waved at him from my reclining position in my advanced memory-foam armchair as it hung from the ceiling on a magnetized gyroscope.
"It's Rodney, Ezekiel. Colonel Rodney Holmes, for the umpteenth time." He stated as he crossed his arms and stared at my slightly-elevated position as I ate my lunch.
"I could call you Sherlock instead." I offered with a smirk.
The unamused look deepened on his face. "And I could put in for a transfer."
We held the staring match for a few moments longer before I snorted and leaned back with my sandwich in one hand and the other toggling my chair's controls to bring me down to a more polite conversational level with the military man. He straightened his posture a bit as I did so, popping the last bit of food into my mouth as I stepped out of the ridiculously comfortable custom seat and brushed my shirt free of crumbs before wiping my hands on a warm towel hanging off one of the chair's arms.
"So what can I do for the United North American States Armed Forces today?" I asked, stretching my arms over my head as I turned back to the man who was just a bit over twice my age, not that it meant much.
"The Army Corps of Engineers, DARPA, and the Pentagon are jointly filing a formal request to see The Library." Rodney stated bluntly and I caught the flash of satisfaction on his face as I went still for a moment before slowly smirking at the older black man.
"Oh-ho? Someone's been telling tales indeed." I stated, rubbing my hands together gleefully as I considered how best to deal with the situation. "Well, for the sake of our long and endearing year and a half of close friendship, Rhodey, make your case."
Rodney scowled at me, his face even more strict than it usually was. "There's no case to make, Ezekiel. Your country is asking politely for a repository of advanced materials we know you have to use in the defense of itself, which includes both you and your companies."
I snorted. "While I am well and truly on the 'fuck the Chinese fascists' train, believe me, unless you're going to nationalize my business it's up to me what I do with my private property."
The Colonel folded his arms and shook his head. "Ezekiel, you know there are far more intermediary steps between a full nationalization and letting you have your way. This is the UNAS government being polite, you don't want to deal with the legal problems involved in saying 'no' to this."
I sighed and dropped back into my chair fully, hands behind my neck. "So, I remember someone sitting me down and giving me this big important 'grown up' talk about how I was a very smart boy and needed to understand that licensing out specific patents, selling certain goods and services, and letting people know different scientific advances were possible... all of it would have a huge impact on the world around me. It would 'destabilize the balance of power' was the phrasing I think he used." I paused and looked back at Rodney. "You remember that guy? 'Cause I do. I thought he was being really... what's the word... patronizing, but he seemed to believe what he was selling so I took his words to heart and didn't sell a production license for my solar bricks to the Iranian Republic until after they signed that nifty little Salt 7 treaty you had in the works."
Rodney sighed and reached up to run a hand over his face. "I don't appreciate having my own words thrown back at me, Ezekiel."
I shrugged. "I don't appreciate someone coming in my house and politely demanding access to my personal catalog of material sciences research. Not even my company's, but actual private stuff I work on here at home."
Rodney took a deep breath, eyes tilted skyward for a moment. "Look, the New Sino Empire has been rearming at a breakneck pace ever since the UNAS started firming up various pacific island installations and reinvesting in Taiwan, now that tensions have cooled. This isn't anything on you, it's the same old problems the region's had for the last century. Your government-our government-just wants to know what its options are for materials to resist both normal wear and tear and potential Chinese sabotage."
I relaxed a bit; Rhodey was speaking to me like a human being instead of a cog in the military-industrial complex. That I could deal with. "Ultracrete isn't enough?" There was a skeptical edge to my voice. My biggest earner was concrete on spake cocaine with steroids for dessert, especially since I'd bundled it with a method to process smooth-grain sand into building materials. Just that alone was something like six billion dollars annually.
Oh, and you could make a bunker out of it that, under the correct conditions, would survive even rods from god.
Rodney grimaced and turned left and right in that instinctual way humans haven't trained themselves out of even today to look over anyone overhearing us. "We're secure?"
I rolled my eyes. "Isis, take us into lockdown."
"At once, sir." A young woman's computer-generated voice rang out, the locks on the doors audibly snapping into place, the lights dimmed slightly for proper secret meeting ambiance, and my network disconnected from the public internet. "Security sweep completed, lockdown in place, all systems on backup grid power. You are secure, sir."
"Thank you, Isis." I waved her off, then turned back to Rodney. "Super Secret Mode Engaged."
Rodney shook his head, but besides sweeping a hand over his short-cropped hair in exasperation, didn't respond to my goading. "Our main concern isn't currently orbital weapons or conventional explosives. We've received reports that some Sinoese weapons tests are involving the NBC trifecta. If their modus operandi is anything to go by, we can expect deniable terrorist and pirate groups to make a go at one or more of our reconstruction efforts on our pacific bases."
I sucked in a breath through my teeth and nodded slowly. "Ultracrete is tough, but it won't do anything but put a barrier between you and the radioactive fallout from a dirty bomb. That's fine for a bunker or other hardened structure, but there's not a lot of that floating around in the open ocean. You want something to make ships and suits out of that would be able to pull full containment against an attack like that."
Rodney nodded, his expression making it obvious how much he appreciated that I was taking this seriously. "There are other things, yes, but after what they've been pulling in Vietnam and what the Communists did in the waning days of their regime we don't want to take any chances."
I drummed my fingers along the side of my very fancy chair and considered the matter. "What happens if I open up my little Pandora's Box and the Chinese decide to retaliate before you can properly deploy these materials?"
The Colonel shrugged as much as his military posture would allow. "I can't control what a foreign nation will ultimately do, Ezekiel. All I can do is make sure our people, our soldiers and engineers and pilots and technicians, are protected as much as possible. People with a higher pay grade than mine are looking at the possibility of escalation, it's my job to give them the tools they need to have as many options as possible to avoid the kinds of deaths and damage that would necessitate a retaliatory strike."
I grimaced.
It didn't take a genius, and at this point I was one regardless of how it had come to be, to know that anything I gave the UNAS government would be used however they saw fit. Even in ancient times, the ability to build a sturdier fort or castle was the definition of an aggressive political power play. It was stamping your name on the region and daring the enemy to come remove you.
On the other hand...
China had not had a good half-century. Even with the rebound they'd managed after the mess of the twenty-twenties, the attempted invasion of Mongolia and eastern Russia following the latter's disintegration after the Ukrainian War had been... well, a mess. Still, China had managed to kill a bunch of young people to curtail social unrest, seize some land, and keep geopolitics sufficiently mired in moral relativism that no one had wanted to suffer the economic hardship to really put the hurt on them.
So where Russia had suffered for its aggression, China had reaped at least some benefits, at least until a few years into the war, when someone in Moscow had seized control and launched a tactical nuke to take out a Chinese army. After China replied in kind, the international community had come together to force a ceasefire and hand a few cuts of meat over to the Chinese.
If Yellowstone hadn't gone up in the fifties and the Second Civil War in the seventies... that might have even been the end of it...
To make a very long, painful, and horrific story short, the people who were in power in China right now weren't the kind of individuals I wanted to do any favors for. Holding back technology that could ensure more people didn't die when they handed over some NBC briefcase bombs to some lunatics and letting them kill more people...
Well, there came a point when protesting conflict only helped the groups that used your stance as a justification to keep what they'd already taken.
Evil thrives when good men do nothing and all that...
"Okay." I sighed, spreading my hands in a gesture of surrender.
"Thank you, Ezek-" Rodney began the slightest smile tugging at his face, but I held up a hand to stop him.
"Qualifiers and quid-pro-quo here." I stated firmly, making the man slip back into a mask of grim duty. "First off, I'm not going to give you the entire Library. Most of it's junk." I grinned at the look on his face. "This is the stuff I make in my off-hours as a hobby. A bunch of it is theoretical and would require a few stars' worth of energy to make, if it even turned out to be possible at all. It'd be a complete waste of everyone's time to even let you look half-baked ideas held together with hope and fairy dust."
Rodney nodded. "That's fine. We don't particularly care about anything that doesn't have some kind of immediate practical application anyway."
"Now that I know the problem, I can select a series of materials which you can apply to the problems you're facing." I stated, rubbing my forehead tiredly. "I'll also give you a warning. Some of these materials have serious downsides. One of them that I can think of is perfect for making sturdy NBC containment suits out of, but excessive exposure to ultraviolet radiation causes components of its structure to degrade into toxic compounds. I'll be including a second material that should be used to insulate the first. If your bureaucrats skimp on my recommendations your soldiers will die if they ever need this stuff."
His lips thinned, but he nodded again. "I'll make sure to intimate how serious neglecting your recommendation can be. Does that mean we can have access?"
"Finally, I want compensation." His expression soured remarkably, and I raised my hands to forestall his response. "Not money. Hell, you get me this favor and I'll hand you everything you need to manufacture what you need. Say it came out of a DARPA think-tank or something, I don't care."
Which would also suit my needs. I was already in bed with the government more than I was really comfortable with, making it publicly known I was essentially taking commissions for them would bring me entirely the wrong kind of attention. I was perfectly happy being an eccentric rich kid genius, nothing else.
Rodney sighed. "I swear to god, Ezekiel, if you say moonbase..."
I scowled. "I've had the first set of canisters ready to launch and a nice spot on Faustini Crater all picked out. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from putting them on the moon except for the government pressuring the major private carriers not to allow private settlement yet. So I can't get my automated excavators or foundation layers where I need them to go without your okay."
"There are political complexities-" Rodney started.
"-which I am yielding to, here and now. I am making a deal to give you tens of billions of dollars of intellectual property to defend the North American States from a hostile rogue state. The least you can do is go to bat to let me put some colonization modules down on the moon."
The Colonel swept a hand over his face tiredly again. "That's the deal, then?"
"Lift capacity for your miracle materials." I replied bluntly. "I'll arrange it myself, just give the green light to the rocket jocks."
Rodney hummed quietly in thought, sighed again and opened his eyes as he dragged his hand from his face. "I can't make that guarantee. I'll have to speak with my superiors, but... it's likely they'll agree."
I restrained myself from childishly leaping and cheering until he'd left the room.
Skill List:
Mathematics: 1-10
Computer Programming: 1-10
Physics: 1-10
Material Sciences: 1-10
Orbital Mechanics: 1-5
Quantum Mechanics: 1-5
Artificial Intelligence: 1-3
Blackboxing: 1-3
Public Speaking: 1
Speed-Reading: 1
Teaching: 1
Critical Thinking: 1
Logistics: 1
Public Relations: 1
Corporate Espionage: 1
Business Management: 1-3
Economics: 1-3
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