Murmansk Stone

We showered, ate, packed, and headed out, being Super-Super careful to totally clean out the trucks to prevent any hint that we'd been transporting gold anywhere.

The gold cubes were big enough we didn't need to worry about misplacing one under a seat.

The plane was there when we arrived, the pilots were in the lounge. Spooling up, we were ready and headed back out.

We were headed to... Where? The pilots knew: Atlanta, with a stopover in Hawaii to refuel.

The thing was, once the new pilots got on at Hawaii (a refueling and replace-pilots stopover), they said our destination was Duluth Minnesota.

I had to laugh. We never knew where we were going. Plus, no one along the path would know who we were or where we were going, either.

Born in the USA

With both travel legs - Australia to Hawaii to Duluth - we were nearly 23 hours in the air. We slept and talked and learned each others' languages.

The pilots left us alone, mostly, and kept to themselves up front. I did see one of them come back to use the front restroom while I was getting a blowjob, though!

He didn't say anything. I wondered how often he saw passengers getting that kind of service.

Landing in Duluth let us feel happy we were on the ground again.

I was happy to be "home", though I knew I could never go collect my storage unit (in Boston) belongings. I'd put away all the family heirlooms and pictures and prepaid for 5 years since who knows and you don't want that stuff auctioned off like they sometimes do.

No, this time I was on my own.

My phone bing'd with an incoming text as we taxied in. We had a 15-passenger rental van waiting, and the company was going to pick us up at the executive lot.

It was better than that. The van was in the hangar when we pulled up.

At no point were we searched. Customs apparently didn't know we existed, since I think we landed in the domestic arrivals section, flying from Hawaii. I don't really know.

We'd figured it would be hard to get our luggage moved, but with the van right there? Easy-peasy.

Still, there was a lot to carry, heavy backpacks and duffles.

To be clear, that consisted of a backpack and suitcases the girls had from Irkutsk, the Mongolian clothes they'd bought, the Australian hiking stuff, and, oh yeah, two cubes each of pure gold, 40 kilos (80 pounds! Heavy backpacks!) worth about $2 million each.

Sure! No problem!

My texted directions showed our address was just north of town over by the U Minnesota-Duluth, which would work well for their ages - college? High school? I had stories from some of them but frankly it was confusing since they had a different system of normal academic schools, trade schools, pure-science curriculum academies, plus everyone worked multiple odd jobs at once to make enough money to eat.

The address was what looked like a retirement village set next to a golf course, but on a big lot and backing up to some hills.

A pair of vehicles were in the parking lot when we pulled in. Both doors opened.

Two ladies got out of the car, dressed in a nearly-formal dark business suits and carrying a briefcases. A younger gal wearing overalls emerged from the shitbox rusted-out pickup.

We pulled into a marked space, for no real reason, and got out, stretching.

"Mr. Kuparneetha?"

"Kupar."

"Right, I didn't know which one you went by. I was expecting someone..."

She didn't say, "Indian" but I could tell she was thinking it.

"Yeah. I got that. Thus the change."

"Of course." She introduced herself as my attorney and other gal as the real estate agent. The overall-wearing gal hung back but she was the caretaker with the keys.

After some pleasantries we were led in and sat in a lounge area inside the building. The air smelled like it was being freshly air conditioned after having not been, for a while, kind of musty.

We signed papers and she told me she was available for any number of legal matters, we shook hands, and they left.

The caretaker gal said she'd be willing to live onsite if we wanted, but she'd want to limit her working hours since she was in college and had other responsibilities, including a 2 year old boy who was at daycare. It was mid-afternoon, so that made sense.

"How many bedrooms here?"

"The facility was a retirement home, with 60 apartments, about a third of them are 2 bedroom. The owners went bankrupt in the Beppo pandemic - lots of folks moved out and it was too hard to keep staff, then they got fined by the state for not complying with minimum pandemic standards, and it snowballed. Now, though? It's a great place for your group, I presume you're all students."

"Soon to be."

"Right. Fall semester starts in a month, that's probably enough time to get settled."

She showed us around, the first floor common rooms and some of the apartments. Not all of them were empty. Some people had left things. I asked, and she said that sometimes people passed away and during the pandemic, people didn't want to come pick up the stuff so they just left it. We were so short-handed there wasn't time to go through and box it up.

That, I understood.

"Empty since then? Long time gone."

"Far as I know. My older sister worked here and I visited sometimes."

We decided on where we'd sleep (the beds seemed okay) and the water was on again, though we wouldn't have hot water for another day until the HVAC guy could come out, she said.

Complications

I asked how she was paid, and she said she had been employed by the real estate company that the foreclosure-bank had hired, and her salary ran though the end of the month, technically 3 weeks away.

I didn't know if she was the 'best deal' we could get, but at least she knew the place, and I could probably risk that she'd be honest enough (given my seeming effect on people) that we wouldn't have to worry about being cheated.

Given that supposition, I told her I'd commit to pay for her services going forward, but would give her at least a month's notice if there'd be any changes. That seemed prudent to ensure she wouldn't create problems to solve them, at least.

She was happy she had a job, and I was happy to have someone around who knew about the building.

We got our stuff moved inside and chose bedrooms to unpack into.

Thank goodness for canned food! There were cans and cans and more cans, filling the central kitchen shelving, but dust everywhere, so the girls got to cleaning, then dinner.

While we were eating, a text message pinged through on my phone.

It said, "Please specify which women should be flown here. All will be handled. Village folk=V, Clergy and/or folks=C, French students=F, women from hostel=H, dinner women from hotel after hostel=D."

I quickly replied, thinking on it, "All except village folk. Let them be. So: C,F,H,D. Ask each to invite along 3 of smartest people they know, phrased as 4-year full scholarship room-board-tuition, to major US university, courtesy of rich man you befriended. Requirement will be part-time job 15 hours/week upkeep on shared rooming house plus 15 hours/week childcare, help kids of moms living in-house. Otherwise, full time students."

I hit send and waited.

The reply came back, "Will advise. ETA 4 days."

Turning back to my group, I said, "More people arriving starting in about 4 days. We'll have our hands busy, but they can help, too."

Some of the beds were okay, and some were Seriously Bad - stained and dented or just plain smelly. About a third of the rooms just Smelled Really Bad - to all of us, so it wasn't just my disease detection nose.

Kelly, our overall-clad handy-person, suggested we should just get someone to help with the HVAC right away, so I called several places and said to both, get here now, and I'm sure there's lots to do.

Maybe 20 minutes later we had four different trucks drive up.

Each part of the building had its own zone, so they each took a section and marked on a board which ones were whose responsibility, then headed out with a crew.

By 7 pm all the A/C units were on and fully functional. Some circuit breakers had blown and they didn't need much, but the guys checked pressures and cleaned coils and did the rest of it. The ductwork needed a blow-out, but I knew how to get leaf blowers going on that and just thanked them and happily paid.

The furnace filters all needed changing, too, but the simple solution was to send Kelly out to the home center and pay them over the phone for the materials.

All the girls found it fascinating to learn from Kelly how the systems worked and I had a feeling there were some budding mechanical engineers in the group.

Still, we were jetlagged from the flight and we wanted to get to sleep.

I knew I needed sex soon (as much as sleep) so I asked for a volunteer and headed off to bed.

There were new sheets still in the wrappers, and that made a welcome change from our former hotel rooms full of Australian mid-century kitsch, or our airplane-seat try-to-relax-but-fail.

Hastima had blonde hair but it turned out to be dyed blonde. I checked.

As a side note, hair color doesn't correlate with how loud the orgasms are.

Classes Start

Classes started four weeks later, and we had 55 women enrolled with fees paid.

All of them had US passports they had recently acquired, but very few of them spoke very good English. Still, they were super-excited to be there, were taking interesting classes, and trying to adjust to life in America and life with a 25-year-old (looking) ultra-rich guy who Had Secrets.

Not everything went smoothly. I had to give an order about showering daily, since this wasn't normal for many of them.

I was thinking about taking some classes myself, but... I suddenly had different orders.

My phone bing'd with a text: Get on a plane. Go back to Ulan Bator.

First class on Korean Air cost $25k round trip, but was a hell of a lot nicer than taking a train for any part of the trip.

My first shipping container had arrived and been delivered, and apparently I'd sent a text saying 'please wait to open it until I'm there.'

Once they had let me in past their security gate, we greeted each other nicely and I had to try the keys to all the padlocks we'd used. I got it on the 12th try.

Their eyes got big and they shut the container again.

"What are you doing to us?"

"What?"

"That is too much. We cannot pour that much in a month. Six months. We're a small operation."

I'd had instructions by text about the plan. "Make it work. Once each batch of 20 kg is done, ship it via an international carrier or hire a courier to ship it for you. Hire some help. Do what you need to do. I'll give you the list of banks to send them to."

"Ten percent?"

"Yes."

"You're going to make us the richest people in Mongolia."

"I hope not. I want to be the richest person in Mongolia."

"But you are American!"

"Exactly. You are richest, until I visit."

They laughed.

"Utter secrecy. If you want employees, tell me, I will send people. How many people could you use?"

They thought, talked, then said, "Four."

"I'll send them. Respect them. They work for me. They are paid by me. They work for you, 10 hours a day maximum, 6 days a week. Let them live in your house. Feed them, you're getting their labor free. I will guarantee they comply with your secrecy needs - just like you guarantee my secrecy."

They nodded.

We went inside and had some tea, bringing one of the cubes along.

The mass spectrometer found it was isotopically pure, gold 197, no impurities.

They were concerned. This might raise suspicions. They hadn't seen gold this pure, and were confused as well how it was possible.

I suggested "Maybe, you can add something to make it seem normal." Not that much - just 0.001 percent of something, anything. They agreed, of course, it was a prudent precaution.

I left the next day, my flight was to... Bern? First class was nice. I could sleep.

Setting up bank accounts means lots of signatures, biometrics, passwords, and hassles.

I was in Europe for a week.

When I got back, there were 34 shipping containers in the back parking lot of the complex.

OMFG.

We had a lot of work to do!

Sunrise Community Redone

The place looked soooo much nicer than it had!

I was greeted at the door by two of the French girls I'd met, who had decided to agree to my offer of free college in Minnesota, and both by this time had already missed their periods. There would be two children in the building sometime in the coming 7 or 8 months.

These two girls were the ones that happened to be nearby when I pulled up. There were LOTS of new faces, some VERY out of place from where I'd seen them before.

I got many, many hugs on my return, and introductions to the new residents of Casa Del Kupar, or as the sign at the driveway said, "Sunrise Community". It'd been ironic to call a place 'sunrise' when it held super old people, but in our case, there would be lots of new faces in about a year.

One of my favorite people, Anna, my Russian Orthodox "helper", greeted me after I came in farther and we talked about what she was up to.

She was elected not to take classes because she was older, she said, and I didn't ask how old to start with. It turned out she was 33, and that was young enough to get medical care for a condition which prevented fertility.

On a side note, yes, we fixed that status soon afterwards, much to her delight.

She had thought there was no way for me to make her life better, that any change I gave her would be for the worse.

The story about how she got to Duluth was kind of interesting.

Her phone had rung, a woman chatted with her and dropped the info of that she knew a man that Anna had met recently.

Keeping it generic, she asked if she could visit, and when she did, she shocked Anna with an amazing offer. She carried a US passport for Anna, a train ticket to Astana, Kazakhstan, and a printout of a paid plane e-ticket from there to Grand Forks, North Dakota, of all places. From there, she had a prepaid ticket for a long bus ride to Duluth.

She told me, she thought about not taking it, fearing it was some kind of trick to sell her into slavery or human trafficking. But, I'd promised I'd try to help if I could, and that was enough.

She was happy, and so was I.

Once she got to our 'dorm', she found two of the five women I'd met had come, but not just them, 3 of their friends who Anna knew to be super-smart and go-getters. They didn't know English, but they would learn fast.

I had many new faces to learn. I also had a nice bedroom suite, and a schedule to keep with women old and new, re-acquaintances and new beginnings to create.

We only hired Kelly as caretaker. The other women did what she asked, and for the complicated parts, she hired in professionals who taught the women what they needed to know. I wanted the work done by our crew, not outsiders.

Of course, we had to replace a lot of the carpets and beds, furnishings that were tattered or just soiled beyond hope. In their place, everyone got new mattresses, King sized where possible, or in the smaller apartments, a single so there'd be space for a crib.

Those cribs turned into kid-beds, and then to single beds, and then to bunk beds.

My primate-born socially-imbued and biological imperative primary function, The Chair had said, was being leader of a tribe.

Six women from U Arizona, freshmen in chemical engineering, one by one, visited me in an office complex in Phoenix to apply for an internship. I told them of the offer - free tuition, room, board, books, and a stipend for undergrad and masters, in exchange for six months as an apprentice in a far-off land doing work in a goldsmith shop.

Four agreed (I stopped interviewing after I had the four I needed). Each spent a night with me, assuring me they'd keep our secrets, and then they were off, leaving their classes and disenrolling 'for personal reasons' and flying straight to Ulan Bator.

== ==

The first semester for the rest of the girls was tough given they were just learning English and adjusting to life in the USA. They got invited to parties and went as a group to watch each other's backs. They'd been in areas of the world that had much more rude behavior than the USA.

I suggested we hire in a TaeKwonDo instructor, so we could all take classes, and I even signed up since why not.

Some of the girls started showing. I knew we'd need a childcare center that wasn't quite what we had in our building, and with almost unlimited funds at my disposal we quickly added on an extensive, multi-level classroom and daycare center.

After someone reported us for having more people living in a building that was strictly allowed by county ordinance, I got some lawyers on it and reclassified the building as an apartment building. They did have a point.

Adding to the building required adding to the parking lot, and I needed a solid set of investments to put my money in, so I bought some surrounding land and built apartment buildings for students that included daycare, office spaces so everyone had an away-from-home lockable study room with good internet, nursing rooms, etc.

Technically an educational trust owned the buildings, and dedicated 75% to nontraditional students of the mothers-with-kids variety. As far as the Trust went, we had tons of applicants and I could choose which were the most promising - as mothers of my future children.

The women got a good deal, the University got good students, and since almost all of them were U.S. citizens (cough, cough) who were politically active, in local elections the candidates that voted to expand social programs to assist low income mothers benefitted quite well.

As women graduated (we had some senior and grad students), they tended to stay in the area and work for tech start-ups I secretly funded.

Of course, it was kind of ideal for the students. Already unmarried moms could live in a place that had inexpensive childcare and fast bus service to and from campus (via a set of EV school buses), surrounded by other supportive moms, with tons of kids in the neighborhood to play with, great sports programs, etc.

One of the conditions of being there was free TaeKwonDo lessons. Once I saw what it did to help kids with self-confidence and fitness, I was hooked.

The retirement home I'd bought initially had been surrounded by vacant or light-commercial land. That changed. Working with the architecture students, we laid out a subdivision with a "splat" design - central hubs of common-use buildings and sports parks, athletic centers, etc., surrounded by roomy apartment buildings with 4 or 5 bedrooms (letting residents have big families). Playgrounds were everywhere, and of course fast bus service to schools and the University. The main thing missing was men.

That is, there were men. There were quite a few - as husbands, or as Ob/Gyn or clinic doctors (we had a small clinic because it was... convenient).

I had dinner with almost all the new residents that moved in over the next few years, and we had almost no crime, no worries whatsoever.

Some of the women who moved in had stalkers. I had a private detective agency find these men and invite them to job interviews where my Chair-Provided persuasive powers convinced them to lead more normal lives.

Women moved in and out, like I said. I had a personal rule that once a woman had 6 kids, they should probably move to another part of Duluth and let other women who wanted the same opportunity move into their spot.

Needless to say, I had LOTS of sex.

My social calendar included getting together with a variety of people.

Oh - one more factor - our subdivision's vocational training area included several buildings, one of which was mostly just a nice nondescript brick-fascia reinforced-concrete light industrial shop area.