Chương 112: Book 4 - Chapter 6 A

That evening I was in my room sitting on the bed. There was a knock on the door and Matt opened it to stick his head in. His eyes went wide seeing me naked, holding my left testicle in one hand and a syringe in the other. He pulled his head back and quickly shut the door. I pressed the plunger down, as I shouted through the door.

"We talked about this Matt!" As I capped the empty syringe the door opened again. He stepped inside and slammed the door with a finality that shook the frame, his back hitting the wood before the latch had even clicked. He didn't just stand there, he braced himself, his boots digging into the carpet and his shoulders squared as if he could keep the very concept of the outside world from leaking in and seeing what I'd done to myself.

His breathing was heavy, the sound of a man who had just run into a burning building to find the occupant holding the torch.

"What the hell are you doing, John?" Matt whispered with a frightened intensity.

"I'm starting puberty," I told him, standing to walk across the room to put my pants back on.

"I would have chronic migraines my entire life if I didn't do this right now."

"You shot yourself up with something to cure migraines?" he asked moving to pick up the syringe from the bed. I turned around, wearing pants now, to face him.

"I'm not doing drugs. It is a one time injection. It hurt, but it was necessary."

"Would this work for anyone with migraines?" he asked, as he examined the drop of pale blue liquid left in the syringe.

"No. It only works for me because I know exactly when puberty starts. I'd appreciate next time you wait for the call to come in."

"Right," he said.

"Puberty. I don't want to walk into that. This was bad enough." At the end of April, I got a message from my crew at Ocean Island. I was laughing so hard Matt asked what was wrong.

"Those knuckleheads at Ocean Island were running out of stuff to burn on the beach in the evenings as they sat around drinking so they threw some seaweed on the fire," I tried to explain through my chuckles.

"Was it toxic?" he asked worriedly.

"No. It started to smell like bacon so they tasted it. They swear it tastes just like bacon and have shipped a sample of it. It should be here in a few days. They said it must be safe, because nobody got sick after eating it."

"I'm not sure why it's funny," he said.

"It's funny because they are trying to find out where it grows now so they can harvest more instead of waiting for it to wash up on the beach." I got the dried sample in the mail and sent it out for testing. The results came back after a few days. Not only was it safe, it had high levels of B vitamins, including B12, lots of healthy oils and was cholesterol-free. The testing lab also confirmed that when heated it smelled and tasted like bacon.

I called Jennifer, "I need you to send an acquisitions team to South Korea."

"What are you buying now, John?" she said with a sigh.

"I'm just barely finalizing your purchase of SFPP."

"They grow seaweed in South Korea. Find a small company that grows and processes seaweed, buy them and send them to Ocean Island."

"Why will I do that?" she asked confused.

"The guys there just discovered a seaweed that is high in vitamins, cholesterol-free and tastes just like bacon."

"Really!"

"Yeah, I'll probably make all my money back buying the island in just a couple years from Bacon Weed."

"You need a better name for it. You really are terrible at naming things, John." I let out a soft laugh. It was true, I was terrible at naming things, but that was the point. I knew exactly what marketing name would get chosen, and how successful it would be. This was a product that would alter the economics of the entire Pacific. Playing the game of bad names was worth the loss of productivity. The anticipation of watching them struggle with my naming was half the fun.

"Okay, try to come up with a better name," I told her, "and call me back when you bought the company so I can make sure there's enough food for everybody there when the South Koreans arrive."

"Got it, John. By the way, you were great on Oprah."

"Thanks. Also let me know when you have SFPP, I need them to lay more pipe. Lots of big news coming soon so keep everybody ready to handle reporters."

"Thanks for the warning." I turned to Matt, "Make a note about increasing the food shipments to Ocean Island for the South Koreans."

"Maybe you should rename the island again. Call it Bacon Island," he teased.

"When we grow it, it'll be the biggest health-food item ever. It'll also be big in the Middle East where they aren't supposed to eat pork. God, bacon is a gateway-meat. It's going to be huge!"

"What's a gate-way meat?" Matt asked confused. Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

"It's the meat that entices vegans back to animal products," I said with another laugh. In June, the mining company's construction crew working on Ocean Island completed the new runway. I gathered up a balloon-tower team, loaded them and the equipment for two broadcast balloons on to my plane and flew out to Ocean Island. As before we went to Fiji first. From there we loaded into a chartered 737 to go to Tarawa.

"Why are we in this tiny plane again?" Matt grumped as he hit his head on the overhead bins for the third time since boarding.

"Tarawa asked us not to land there anymore. The 767 really is too big for their runway."

"Will this take us direct to Ocean Island?" he asked.

"No. Even this is too big for that new runway. We're switching to a Bombardier Dash 8 at Tarawa. Tim planned all of this, and created a very nice chart for it as well. Did you not get it?" I asked him.

"I didn't read past the first page. I've been here before, I know how long the flight is," he said.

"Well it's another 7 hours to Ocean Island, so try to nap if you can," I said and watched him pull a romance novel out instead. The first thing we did when we arrived at Ocean Island was to get served Bacon Weed.

"You're right it does taste exactly like bacon," I said as I handed out pieces to everyone that came with me.

"Oh, it's delicious," said one of the ladies on the balloon team.

"Eat all you want, they'll grow more," I said. Later that evening with everyone settled in, security came and asked about all the cellphones I had brought and handed out.

"It's a new cooperation with Motorola. Their new phone is the MicroTAC 9800X. I brought the balloon team because they are going to install a satellite dish and a balloon tower."

"Right, I know that but if we have a satellite dish to make calls with, why do we need a balloon tower?"

"The tower is going on the northwest corner of the island. It'll offer a local phone exchange for the cellphones. You'll be able to call each other from anywhere on the island. If you call long-distance, it will route the call through the satellite dish."

"That's great and all, but why?"

"So we can communicate better. It shouldn't take days to radio a message that gets passed along through several other people until it gets to me. The operation here is only going to grow and I want to keep some things secret."

"That I can understand. I've got another question, if you don't mind."

"Go ahead."

"Why did you bring TVs but no VHS player and tapes?"

"They're coming on the supply boat but that balloon tower will also broadcast TV."

"Really?"

"Really," I confirmed.

"That's great! Thanks Boss. I've got to tell the others!" It only took a couple days to deploy the balloon tower, the concrete base had already been installed. When we connected up the tower to the local satellite dish, suddenly the whole island had cellphone service. We also now had line-of-sight radio with the capital, Tarawa, Kiribati. Since we had no authority telling us we couldn't, the balloon went up twenty miles, and gave us around a 400-mile-radius horizon broadcast range.

We also rebroadcast the two New Zealand TV stations available via the satellite dish.

"Hey, Boss, good news!"

"What's up?" I asked coming out of the hut I was staying at.

"We managed to connect up to the Australian TV-satellite broadcast."

"Nice. Was that expensive decoder worth it?" I asked the balloon tech.

"Yup. With the NZTV broadcast and the Aussie Sat we are up to five channels. Once we get the subscription to Sky going, we will get the sports channel too."

"Great. Any problem rebroadcasting it to US TVs?"

"It looks a little funky, but the conversion works."

"Good, cause I could only buy NTSC broadcast equipment to put in the balloon. That's why I brought so many American TVs."

"The generator is still running practically on idle. I'm not sure why you bought such a big one."

"We are about two hundred people here, and it'll only grow."

"If you say so, boss. You might have fixed the water problem, but it's still less than two and a half square miles."

"You'll see," I said with a smile on my face. We flew back to Tarawa on the Bombardier. I had a meeting with a local Minister of Works and Communications.

"I want to buy Telecom Kiribati," I told him seeing shock and surprise on his face.

"What? Why would we sell it?" he asked suspiciously.

"I've got boxes of equipment in storage at the airport. A satellite uplink, a balloon tower and a hundred cellphones. I just installed a system on Banaba. If I own Telecom Kiribati, I'll cover all the islands, connecting them together and to the outside world."

"What's a balloon tower?" I opened the manila folder I was holding and handed him an eight by ten glossy photo of a balloon transmitter.

"It's a transmission balloon. It goes on a twenty kilometer cable. It can hold multiple balloons along the cable length. The lower one is for local cellphone service." I set a new Motorola Microtac on his desk.

"With these, they can call anyone else on the island from anywhere else. With the satellite uplink, they can call anywhere in the world. The second balloon is a TV broadcast system. It broadcasts TV channels from a satellite dish on the ground. The third balloon at the top is a long range communication balloon. It's got a range of about four hundred miles. It acts as a repeater. Maritime radio, telephone calls et cetera.

With those, most calls between islands won't need a satellite link to communicate with each other. It'll go through the balloon relay."

"This is unexpected. I'll have to discuss it with the Beretitenti."

"Sure, ask the President about it. While we are waiting, can I install the system on this island?"

"What about the cable for the balloons, isn't that a danger to aircraft?"

"It's got warning lights but we can put it at the other end of the island from the airport."

"Bright blinking lights at night. People aren't going to like that," he said.

"The lights point up so you don't see them from the ground. The cable is so thin that it has to be an extremely clear day to see it. The first balloon is a mile up so barely visible." I pulled out a map of the island.

"I'd like to put it here," I said pointing to the north end of the island farthest from the airport and out of the way of existing flight paths.

"It's over twenty-one miles from the airport so even if it leaked and collapsed, it wouldn't interfere with flight operations."

"I'm guessing the balloons are easy to put up and take down?"

"In the US we are using them to broadcast TV to a large part of the country. We usually take about a week to put it up once we have the site prepared."

"If you can buy the property, I'll give you temporary permission to put up the balloons to test the system. You won't be allowed to charge for its use until you get full governmental permission. Additionally, I'll want cellphones for the entire government here in Tarawa so we can test the system."

"No problem," I agreed. My cost for the new phone with my existing relationship with Motorola was more than fifty percent less that the retail price.