King of All I Survey
Chapter 108: Let’s Build a Factory

Chapter 108: Let’s Build a Factory

The next morning, Mom, Dad, and I were back in the Status Room trying to figure out what to do about Colombia and the other countries affected by our removal of most of the drug industry there. Northwest Mexico was another very urgent hotspot.

"I don’t see any way around using violence against some of these groups," Dad said, for the second time.

"I don’t want to kill people, even bad people," I insisted.

"Tim, I don’t think you understand the situation. These groups in Northwest Mexico will kill people for crossing the wrong street from one group’s territory to the next. Not just kill, either. They will cut off their limbs and their heads and leave the pieces arranged as a public warning. When the police come to take the body away, they have to surround the area with armed officers to protect those at the crime scene. Sometimes they’ll just hang people from bridges over heavily travelled roads. These are not rare events, Tim. People are already being killed. It’s just that the targets are being chosen by the bad guys."

"I know, but there has to be another way."

Mom jumped into the discussion, "What if we put a Health First Clinic right in the middle of the hot zone."

"It would be full of bullet holes in ten minutes," Dad protested.

"Hear me out, dear. The outside is conventional building materials, so any bullets hitting it look like an ordinary building. Inside we build a second building that looks more secure, maybe like thick concrete or steel plates, this layer is shielded so anyone inside is perfectly safe. We use our shielded paramilitaries to staff the place. They take apartments or whatever all around the area, so they have to walk through all the bad places on their way to and from work every day. They wear uniforms so they are easily identified. If somebody shoots at them, they shoot back. With Joe’s assistance on targeting and shields to protect them, they’ll win every fight. If a group tries to kidnap them, they’ll go willingly and then we’ll track them through the shield rings. If they bring them to a base or stronghold or whatever, the rest of our team will converge and take it down. If they’re just out to kill him somewhere else, same thing. Yes, we’re killing people, but only people who try to kill us first."

"It might work for a day or two," Dad objected, "Once they recognize our guys and see that they are harder targets, they’ll switch up tactics. Maybe execute ten or twenty civilians every day, until we leave. It’ll be a blood bath."

Mom’s face registered her disappointment. I’m sure mine did, too. It had sounded like a decent plan.

"I think the only way to do it is to send in our guys, with full drone support and just take the area back, block by block, then expand out in a radius into the countryside. We can leave clinics and community aid centers, with a couple of security guards to maintain order, after we clear each town."

"If a group of armed men just start going through town and shooting dozens or hundreds of people, don’t you think the police or army would step in and get involved in the fight?" Mom asked.

"Probably," Dad admitted. "Maybe we could cut a deal with them? How about we offer to act as security contractors for the worst regions, replacing the police presence."

"How many inroads do they have in local and national governments through bribes, threats, or whatever? Enough to prevent something like that?" I asked, "or at least enough to give warnings so they can hide out before we get there and then come back when we leave."

Let me think about it for a while," I closed my eyes and clasped my hands behind my head, "Joe, how is the direct implant therapy going? You should have some fully rehabilitated by now, right?"

"Yes, with direct intervention and full 24-hour access, it doesn’t take that long for most people. Truly hardened criminals and psychologically disturbed people may take longer or even be incurable, depending upon their specific circumstances. We have about 839 in total that could be released now, with less than 1% chance of recidivism."

"OK, set up some community development and infrastructure projects in Chiapas, like what we’re doing in Guatemala. You can work with the Zapatistas so long as they stay committed to non-violence. Mom, you should probably spear-head that... as Maribel. Expand the Food First and Health First organizations to make them as visible as possible. Those being released after rehab get the same deal as Rafael’s former people in Guatemala. They agree to work rebuilding communities with decent pay, and to check in with us through that work, for let’s say two years minimum, or they go to jail. In this case, back to rehab in our simulation tanks. Use the sim rooms to make them think they are being returned by bus or helicopter or whatever. Conventional transport. Dad, I want our security guards at every facility. I want them to develop relations with local law enforcement wherever we have a presence. Share info with the police, work with them to whatever extent is possible. If there is no law enforcement in some of the villages or towns, our guys will be it. I want every town with one of our facilities to be safe for the people who live there as soon as possible after our arrival."

"I’ll need Joe’s help to screen and train more paramilitaries. Lots more. Are we equipping them all with shield rings?" Dad asked.

"I think if we issue them on such a large scale, eventually one is going to be discovered or obtained by people we don’t want to have them," I answered.

"Agreed. So, we’ll give them the best training possible, arm them conventionally to the extent possible by law in whatever country, and tell them to be careful. Avoid conflict, work with the police."

"Maybe we can do better." I said, "Joe, what can we do with fancy materials for protective gear? Can we just make regular shirts and pants out of something super tough to stop bullets?"

"It doesn’t really work that way," Joe replied, "Let’s say we made pants out of cloth that could not be penetrated by a bullet, which we could easily do, by the way. Then, this cloth gets hit by a bullet, the force of the bullet still hits the leg underneath, it could shatter bones, for example. Worse, though, it would still have enough force to penetrate the skin, it would take the bullet-proof cloth right inside with it. While the pressure of pulling the untearable fabric might slow the bullet faster as it penetrated the victim, it would still go deep enough to do severe damage. Larger caliber bullets or higher velocity bullets would be much worse. For bullet-proof clothing to be effective, it has to redistribute the force of the bullet’s impact over a much larger surface area or redirect it laterally. Otherwise, it has to be very thick to absorb the force. If you don’t want field-enhanced material, then it would have to be nearly a quarter inch thick to stop a standard nine-millimeter handgun from doing more than leaving a surface bruise."

"What?" Dad yelled excitedly, "I’ve got flannel Pajamas that are almost a quarter inch thick. That’s trivial. How flexible is it though?"

"I’d say it’s about as flexible as your pajamas until a bullet hits it. The specific arrangement of the molecules has them under a slight repulsive force that spreads them out when not under a physical load, so they slide around and the material flexes easily. When force is applied, however, because of the molecular arrangement, it’s a bit like a spring being released, stiffening the material and redistributing a significant portion of the force into the fabric, generally, about 90 degrees away from the surface beneath. The angle of the impact doesn’t matter, but folds or complicated geometries do. So, a shot right into the armpit where the sleeve meets the body would be less efficiently transferred because the cloth of the sleeve and the body are lying in two different planes. I can share the equations with Tim, if you like, but I’m afraid it’s way beyond your grade level, Dan."

"Very funny," Dad rejoined.

"It was not meant to be funny." Joe said in a deadpan voice. "We can also upscale the protection with just a little extra thickness. About 1.28 inches for an M82 firing a standard .50 caliber round."

"Fifty caliber!" Dad managed before he went speechless.

"Can that be made in an Earth tech factory?" I asked.

"Not so much. You have to be able to align the molecules and control them precisely in four dimensions as you put the material together," Joe explained.

"OK, then I want a factory set up immediately, let’s put it in Honduras. Hire some of the folks whose incomes were disrupted by our actions to run it, with our security detail on site, fully shielded. Train them so they all think the machinery is making it. Include a user friendly control panel that tells the hidden fabrication mech what size and thickness to make." I ordered.

"I think you misheard me, King Tim," Joe said apologetically, "I said it can’t be made in a factory with Earth technology."

"I heard you. Make the factory look like a fancy textile manufacturer or whatever, with similar equipment and machinery, but hide one or more fabrication mechs in the works. Make a new shell company called Good King Industries. Set up the factory under that brand. Make some samples, conduct tests and publish them. Then get a sales crew showing them to police departments all over the world. Price them competitively with conventional bullet proof vests, you figure the business aspects to make the company look as legit as possible."

"Yikes, Tim," Dad cut in when I paused to take a breath, "Are you sure you want this out there?"

"Nobody else can make it, Dad," I explained, "It literally can’t be copied. We’ll call the process a trade secret. Every single item that comes out of that factory will have a serial number encoded at the molecular level and we’ll track every sale. If one falls into the wrong hands, we’ll know where it came from."

"I guess you’ve got it all figured out, then. Too bad we can’t make them breathable to keep the wearer from sweating to death under all that fabric."

Joe cut in again, "We can make it either insulative for cold weather or make it an effective unidirectional heat radiator for hot weather at the time of manufacture."

"Of course you can," Dad said surrendering.

"Now, I’ve been thinking about Northern Mexico," I began.