The clue about the ship’s builders couldn’t be placed somewhere more convenient, like… Cleveland for example? It had to be in Marianas Trench, the single most inhospitable place on the face of the Earth. Really, it is far easier to reach space and build a manned space station up there than go to those depths. The problem being all that pressure. The vacuum is simple in comparison to deal with than the crushing weight of the entire ocean above your head. You don’t want to even imagine what would have happened to an unprotected human body at the bottom. All I can say—it is not pretty.

As my grandmother always said, “If life gives you lemons you make lemonade, and be thankful for it.”

The idea was to have a semi-permanent base in that region, it was only logical and it coincided with one long-term plan which I discussed with Dr. Ross. (Or call me Ben, as he insists for everyone to address him.). In any case, we needed a more secluded location now that Michael's face was known, and a lot more space for the next step of the plan. The silo was fine, but it was more of a safe house, not a permanent solution. The ideal thing was to buy an island in the area and to start my biggest project to date… except the nearby islands weren’t for sale.

How do you buy an island if it is not for sale? That one is quite simple—you do not. Not that I didn’t try, but this was the case where no means no, and there is no way around it. Well, if I couldn’t buy one, I decided to at least rent one for a finite period of time. When you get right down to it, no one is allergic to money; it is the grease that makes society run.

I read everything I could about the region and decided on the specific island I would like to rent. It was the Pagan Island, a part of the Mariana Islands archipelago. Overall, it was perfect for my plans. For one, it was uninhabited and it had everything I needed as required for the project. Easy access, the closeness to the Mariana Trench, and a nice flat piece of land that was essential for my plan. It had one small problem—it was a volcanic island… with an active volcano. The inhabitants were relocated because it has the tendency to erupt from time to time, but I could work with that.

The ownership of the island has changed many times in history. From Spain in the 17th century, who sold it to the German Empire in the 19th century, then to the Empire of Japan which captured it in 1914, during World War I. It was occupied by the US after the surrender of Japan in World War II. Now, it is something of an insular area and a Commonwealth of the United States. Which was fine by me, that was the place where I had attained the most influence. (No, I will not call it bribes, dirt, and leverage… that would sound so crude.)

The intelligence network I created with the help of Elizabeth and Alice was a great help in making the deal for Pagan Island. So yes, I may have nudged certain politicians and governmental employees and may have spent a million here and a million there, as a discrete contribution for their retirement funds. No matter the way I made the deal—I got what I wanted.

The deal went under the umbrella of Genesis Corporation, which was beginning to make itself known in the business world, mainly by a few inventions I patented and sold to different companies. Nothing too exciting, we still maintained a low profile; more of an improvement to existing technologies. The deal for Pagan was for two years, and during that time, the Genesis Corp. wanted to conduct experiments on growing crops in an unpolluted, GM-free environment (for the betterment of mankind, or something). Anna was the one who wrote the proposal for it. (That kid could sell sand in the middle of the desert, that’s how good she is.)

After politicians were taken care of, I had to officially give a sizable sum of money—the rent was astronomical. At least by the standards under which we were operating before, while we were trying to sell that gold to the Russian; now—it was acceptable. And it cost us almost the same amount of money to pay those relocated inhabitants so they wouldn’t stir a fuss for our presence on their ancestral land; those people had a windfall of their lives. They drove a hard bargain but since they could have delayed the entire project with just one complaint, I was more than generous. Our promise was that in two years when our lease expires, we would clear all evidence of our presence on the island. And would even take care of every other piece of garbage, buried military ordnance, and miscellaneous scrap that the previous occupants of the land abandoned after they left. (Yeah, like we would pass on any free scrap that we could get our hands on.)

One would think all this took a long time, bureaucracy being what it is, but procrastination of others is not something this AI finds acceptable. All things considered, this was the deal that broke every record to date in expedience; it helped that I worked on several fronts simultaneously. If the regular process was a weekend runner through the park, this was a world-class athlete with an angry lion on his tail; he is going to make the best time of his life, and that is a sure bet, nothing like a little incentive.

As soon as I was sure the deal would go through, I took the liberty of sending a few transporters worth of construction nanites and set them to start building the underground part of my project. It was logical, and nobody could see it from the air, or even notice anything by walking above it. I had a feeling that sooner I started, the better it would be in the long run. Michael was pushing his luck with trying to be a goody-two-shoes, and that was bound to bring trouble on our ass. Not that I have anything against kicking some well-deserved ass and bringing holy wrath on the miscreants he was targeting, but you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

It was a nice island, and I would even go so far to call it a tropical paradise. Nice beaches, great forests with plenty of coconut trees, two beautiful lakes, and a few waterfalls. The only thing ruining the perfect image was that itsy-bitsy volcano that was smoking constantly, but nothing in life is perfect. I realized from the start that I would have to downplay the potential danger of that volcano to the group if I was going to sell them on the site. Despite stunning vistas, who in their right mind wants to live close to an active volcano? (We all know what happened to Pompeii.)

However, volcanoes are like pimples on the skin; if you have the right tools, you can make them go away. OK, maybe not go away entirely but make them less noticeable by dealing with the core problem as it were. I had some cool plans on what to do about it.

There was another little snag with the location, the lack of metals and materials I needed for the project. It was not one lousy megaton here and there, it was a bit more, but I had a plan that would include building a lot of new kinds of transporters that would have the primary mission of hauling cargo. Dave will be ecstatic, I’m sure… just after he stops swearing at me.

Be that as it may, now I have an out of the way place where I can build the ship that is going to give us a foothold into space. A secure location where we can start gathering all those that Dad and Jack recruited in the past months.

I hope we would be given enough time to do all that we planned, undisturbed… but looking at our track record—I won’t bet on it.