The Good Ship Bison

"Done."

Jan pressed the talk-button and was firm in her voice. She'd already spoken with Modesto airport conversationally, but this was different.

"Bison-1-Experimental, to all aircraft VFR and IFR, Modesto city limits plus 3 miles..." She repeated that, then paused slightly.

She continued, speaking with some deliberation, "Be aware, NOTAM-dash-N, W1484-slash-22, X-X. All non-essential VFR traffic to clear Modesto airspace effective immediately, National Security. This includes fixed and rotary wing. Overflights are NOT granted. Clear off, people. Notice is hereby issued. Again, Modesto city limits plus 3 miles, clear out. NOTAM-N, national security. You have 3 minutes to vacate or you will be met at your landing site for debrief. Recommend simultaneous departures north to avoid mid-airs. Bison-1."

Every single helicopter immediately left, heading north. There were at least 6 of them, I counted.

She let go of the key, grinned, and said, "We'll have no troubles."

I had definitions in my head from Pat, so I asked, "I didn't know you could issue a NOTAM."

She raised an eyebrow, but then nodded, "Got permission last night. The FAA chairman called me on the plane, wild stuff. He gave me lots of special permissions. He wants me to spy on you, too. Kind of funny. Like I report to him." She chortled. "Unit Corps God Country does not include the fuckin' FAA. Plus, I'm retired."

We both laughed.

Getting closer, we could see in a zoomed-in window on the left wall, Alice's house, her whole block, really, was surrounded by military trucks - hummvee's and deuce-and-a-halfs. Lots of traffic cones had been set up, though, pointing in arrow-shapes visible from above.

They pointed down the block from her house to a nearby reasonably-large city-block-sized city park (I'd been there, it was familiar). There was a baseball diamond with the cones around it, and a group of people standing off to the side.

After clearing with Pat that there weren't too many weapons pointed at us, we headed where they wanted.

It wasn't a secret where the landing spot was supposed to be. They'd used baseball chalk to make concentric circles and arrows. I had to laugh. The next people to play baseball there would have to clean up the place first.

I took my sweet time bringing the ship down, putting the center of the ship well in from the baseball diamond, but filling most of the field.

Thinking about it before, I had mentally compared the ship's size to a four-story office building, but it was far from cubical. Technically, I knew it was over 25 meters tall, but it was quite a bit wider than that. There were four 'floors', four stairway exit points, and they weren't standard height floors.

Our ship did fill that field and go over the 90 feet (30 meter) infield.

At the airfield, it hadn't been a big deal, and on the football field when I first got there, I didn't quite get the scale.

Granted, I hadn't really been outside of it much to look in.

Lowering the ship down and putting the center just out from second base, there was enough clearance. The crowd was gathered by the street on the right field side, and a huge pile of stuff ready next to a group of military folk, and I presumed that was stuff I'd requested.

More was on the backs of about 8 pickups, poised to back up to the ship.

Not having an 'engine' to shut off, we just let ourselves sink in the grass.

I wondered aloud if they'd set up some kind of sensor to figure out the mass of the ship, and Jan laughed but didn't disagree.

Thinking quickly, I put a sign up on the wall of the ship with a big arrow to the now-opening cargo bay that read, "Please Place Cargo In Here."

We all walked down, and as we got there, I noticed there were a large number of troops on the park's corners, most of whom were facing outwards from us. There were civilians, behind police barricades, staring. It wasn't a secret we were coming, apparently.

Mads and I walked out of the cargo door, just barely, and I waved at the people waiting to board to come over.

My mom was there, and my sister, too, though she was supposed to be at college. Well, I guess when your bro gets his own spaceship, you come home to see him.

Quite a few people jogged up quickly. Mom came up at a fast jog and gave me a big hug that seemed to last forever. She was crying and telling me she loved me so much, but then my sister wanted to give me a hug, too, so she got out of the way.

My sister wasn't normally that affectionate, so it was nice to get a sense of that. We'd had some fights over the years but mostly were on good terms.

"Bro. You didn't tell anyone. What's up with that?"

"Kinda... couldn't. Not until. So, yeah. Surprise!" I laughed.

Mom was happy and worried at the same time. "You... are... okay in there?"

"Relax, Mom. Normal room, pilot's chair, got some armchairs now and a table, sorta like... empty rooms at home, on something kind of like linoleum? More metal than that. Nice enough."

"Echoes, then? You need a carpet?"

I smiled and raised an eyebrow, it was a good idea. "Maybe later."

She pointed at the trucks, backing up and parking by the cargo hold near us. "In there, I packed a bag, some clothes, some books. Some pictures, too, in case you miss us."

I laughed. "I'm not going away forever, mom. I'm just a delivery boy, now. Might see if I can make some money and help some people get stuff from here to there, sorta."

Looking over, I could see that Mads was getting hugged by her mom and dad, but that there were some other sets of people, lined up, and some Army types off to the side, too, waiting to get my attention.

"Look, Mom, busy day. Can you wait over there? I'll give you another hug before we leave, okay?"

She nodded, kissed my cheek, and then WOW my sister kissed my cheek, too. I didn't expect that.

Colonel Jess, by his insignia and name-badge, came up, with two lieutenants in tow. "Sir. Mr. Cooper. I have all the materials and equipment you requested, sir. Do you want it in there?"

"Yes, absolutely."

"Looks like you got yourself some desert Army ACU's there. You'll have a variety."

"Yes, I hope so. Thank you so much."

"I've been told to give you this communication." One of the lieutenants handed me a sealed packet.

He elaborated, "The President has some requests, and various GAO-approved appropriations amounts for each task. As a courtesy to other governments, we have included some of their requests and the payment for each also. For some tasks, we would like to have payload specialists aboard, as a matter of law, since moving these payloads requires supervision of a licensed authority. If you'd like to negotiate that, we can do so."

I nodded. "Thank you. I would suggest... maybe? You could build a... pre-fab Moon base? I was thinking about this... a 2-story tall sealed steel structure capable of supporting some medium-weight mass, really regolith, on top, for shielding? Some kind of nice living quarters inside, with windows, maybe, showers and air cleaners, some house plants, airlocks, whatever. Pre-built, ready to go. No aerodynamics required, and mass is irrelevant, don't worry about making it lightweight. If it's modular, assembly has to be super-simple and easy, just stick it together sorta stuff. I'll haul it up, no more than 1.5 g's acceleration, or so. Put it on the lunar south pole or something. Might be cool? Lot better than just me going back and forth and visiting for an hour or two."

The colonel nodded, like he was deferring to me or something. I was kind of weirded out by that nod. He was this old guy, this full colonel, very in-charge, but it was like he was taking orders from me. His manner was curt. "Sir. Yes, sir."

"So, yeah. We should get the crew aboard."

He pointed to Alice, at the head of the line, and they came over. I shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Peterson then got a giant hug from Alice, who was kind of freaked out and excited. At the same time, I could feel she had her laid-back vibe going. It was a put-on. I knew when she was stressed because she pretended to not be.

I motioned for her to stand in the cargo bay, and the next girl came over.

Tina Lowden had dark hair, was almost my height at 5'9", a Lacrosse player, very trim, but had a significant bustline. I knew of her bust line despite her hiding it most of the time, because, well, I noticed these things, and she had it mostly-hidden in the uniform top she was wearing.

Tina was smart, too, for sure - Model UN and debate squad both.

Christine Unger, technically another Tina, but she went by Chris. Shorter, 5'4, red hair, some freckles, very thin but medium-bust so it looked bigger than maybe it was. She sang in chorus with me and did math club competitions. I liked her though we hadn't talked much.

Lara Tomlinson, black hair, striking blue-green eyes, chess and was in math club, too. Small chest, swimmer, trim but with muscular shoulders.

Carla Chu, black hair, Asian features, medium build, ran track with me. Very pretty, graceful. Was also an Eagle scout, one of the first girls in our area to get that. She was wearing scout pants and a light jacket with the 'Scouts' logo.

I wasn't expecting Carla. I'd listed her, but Alice had said she'd never say yes. I wasn't objecting, for sure.

Dana Crawford had been the previous year's valedictorian. She was Italian-looking, and I knew from Pat's stats that she spoke Italian and Hebrew at home, but also had some Arabic. She'd done gymnastics at our high school, but was attending UC Davis in chemical engineering. Her hair was a dark shoulder-length tight-jewish-curly and she had brown eyes, a medium-small bustline, was about 5'9" (taller than normal, maybe), and very fit. I found out later she was also into anime so we got each other's references.

Her parents came up, too, and I shook hands with them.

Really, I shook hands with each of them and their parents, and then assured everyone that yes, I'd take care of them, but also that they'd be well paid for the work they were doing. I had to leave that vague since I didn't know myself.

The soldiers finished loading up the stuff, and we stood inside.

Motioning over, I gave Mom another quick hug and had everyone back off, and had everyone wave goodbye.

Pat took my cue and closed the door, prompting everyone to turn to me expectantly.

I addressed them equally, though I could have given Alice more deference and didn't. "Mads, Alice, team, let's all get upstairs. We'll give you the tour first, but we need to be wheels-up... to take off, in about 10 minutes, so it will be fast. Just bring your carry-on bags upstairs."

I was still holding the packet of papers, I knew that was pretty valuable to keep close to hand.

Along the way, I introduced Jan and they all said hello but couldn't really shake hands on the stairs.

Jan led us up the mundane-looking office building-type stairway to the hallway near the bridge. I pointed things out briefly, but wanted them into the bridge quickly so I could show them diagrams on the walls, and get us moving.

As we entered, though, I realized neither Mads nor I had made the bed, and that implied Mads and I had been up to. I was pretty sure the girls noticed it, they were glancing over, though they didn't say anything.

The room was pretty large so they all just leaned against the walls.

I addressed the room. "Welcome to the Bison. You are now all crewmembers, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails. Your rights? You can get off, leave, anytime and anywhere you want. I ask that you not talk too much about what you're going to learn about here, because some bad people could use that to try to steal or commandeer the ship, maybe, and do very bad things. I'm dedicated to peaceful use, exploration and transport, that kind of thing, but, we have to protect it, it's probably mankind's greatest resource at the moment. So... that's my story."

They accepted that, so I went on.

"There's Madison Charles, you all know her, I think. She goes by Mads. Next to her, here, is, Captain - the military rank - Janice Watkins, goes by 'Jan'. She's United States Marine Corps, retired. She's a skilled aircraft pilot and communications officer."

They all nodded and shook hands with smiles around us.

"Lastly, we have the AI, the super-smart ship's computer. Her? His? Name is Pat. I'm increasingly regarding Pat as female, but it's not, it's a computer. Anyone ever seen Star Trek? It's like the ship's computer, it can talk. But, we're in charge. We can ask it to do things, or find stuff out."

They looked at me like I was crazy.

"I call the computer Pat since it's both a boy's and girl's name. Pat, where is our next destination?"

Pat replied through the speakers, putting some amazement on the girl's faces. She said, "You committed to picking up several other crewmembers near Stanford University in Palo Alto California, today, at 9 am. It is now 8:47 am, so this schedule may now be inaccurate."

Lara asked, obviously worried, "This is, like, an _alien_ computer? And it talks?"

Mads interrupted, "Look, It's _fine_. It knows things, it's really handy. It opens and closes doors, moves stuff around..."

Lara said, "We saw that on the news! Someone had a video of you getting picked up, from your backyard."

Mads was upbeat, dismissive of worries, "Oh, yeah. That - super fun, after I got past the initial O-M-G factor."

They were silent.

I picked up again, "So, it's time to go, now, I think. You'll see how it works. We're headed over to Palo Alto, you'll be able to see on these walls where we're going. Pat, put the outside image on the walls. Is all the material we wanted onboard and doors shut?"

The images appeared, as if we were high in the air, which we were. The view was really lifelike, almost like the walls weren't there. At the appearance of images on the walls, the girls "Oooo'd" and "Ahh'd".

They had a point. We had a sweet view over the trees in the neighborhood, and down below to the police and army people arrayed around us.

Pat said, "Doors are shut."

"Good." I went and sat in the captain's chair / couch, and motioned to Jan to be ready on the radio. After the chair's cushions grabbed me a little, I lifted us off and gave us a little lurch, which made the girls stumble a little.

Jan turned to her radio interface. In front of her in a set of computer-type 'windows' on the wall, Pat put up a 3-d flight path, radio, aircraft instruments, etc. Jan had learned how to ask for that, and I immediately saw the value.

I touched my chair and added more projected flight path views - overhead, side, etc. - and made it obvious what our path would be.

We lifted further, and I angled us to follow the indicated path to the west. I could have added the sky overhead, but decided that wasn't needed.

Jan pressed the wall and spoke, "Modesto Tower, this is Bison-1-experimental, VFR / IFR climbing angels 6, bearing 2-6-0 westbound to Fremont. Bison-1."

"Bison-1, all traffic cleared, please declare NOTAM-N status. Modesto."

I said, "Transponder's still on, Jan."

"Modesto, clear NOTAM-N 10 minutes after we depart Modesto city limits, to give privacy to, ah, ground personnel. Thank you for your business. Bison-1."

I said, "Pat, please move all cargo from the cargo bay to storage on this floor. What is the ETA for beds in the living spaces?"

"Kevin. Cargo now being moved. ETA for bed frames is 4 hours. Construction will take between 4 and 5 hours for the additional rooms, the hallway will be closed in that direction."

"Thank you."

Mads led them out to the hall to see the procession of bags hanging in mid-air floating up from the stairwell into the store-room. A robot came up the stairs and went into the room, and they all peeked around and watched the things being neatly stacked and arranged.

I said, "Pat, can you shade the spheres enclosing things that you move, just slightly, so we can see a shimmer? It might help us understand that the item is inside a ball, instead of just hanging there."

"Done."

After a while the girls came back in from the hall, and we watched out the windows as the mountains went by under us.

To be fair, it was seriously beautiful to sight-see, the scenery was sweet.

Jan cleared us with the air traffic control (ATC) and we located Stanford in the hills, found Kara's cell phone on the hill overlooking campus (among some close trees) where she and the other 3 girls had decided we could have a good landing spot.

They didn't realize how big the ship was compared to the clearing. We got through okay, but it wasn't comfy.

The women each had several suitcases, which Mads and Alice both helped her with, but Pat invisibly lifted the others into the cargo bay to their rapt amazement. After they came in, I shut the door and they came upstairs to be greeted.

With Kara were:

Rachel Nesbit, Stanford student, double-major mechanical engineering and political science as pre-law. Red haired, med-weight, thin, and a runner.

Dr. Ella Fenwich, Stanford med school internist (2nd year after med school and passing boards). Did undergrad ages 16-18 (3 yrs, in bio), 22 yrs old. Focused on space medicine. Short at 5'0", medium-thick body mass, muscular, into weightlifting and crossfit. She also had exceptionally large chest (which of course I noticed, but hadn't been a criteria since I didn't see them when choosing), and short blond hair tied back.

Francine Cheriott, grad student in astrophysics, undergrads in physics and astronomy. French-Canadian, fluent French, Spanish, Algerian-Arabic. Light-skinned Spanish-French background, family from Andorra. Med. height.

I found out later that she liked to be spanked.

And that was Stanford! We rose back into the sky and we moved on.

Off we went to Berkeley. Having learned a lesson on fitting into tight places, we texted the two there, Beth and Anna, to find a bigger spot, since they were in a small quad area. I wanted them to walk in and not have to dodge trees.

They headed up the hills and we met them up Centennial drive (steep switchbacks) where the ship could overhang and the cargo door was on the road surface.

This freaked out a lot of people, but I asked a couple of girls to stand in the cargo hold door and wave downwards, so they knew it wasn't really an alien abduction.

Once upstairs, the others introduced each other, and Jan asked for and got flight clearance to Boston by way of going west over the ocean, rising vertically to over 200k feet, then heading off to Boston. Jan was coordinating with military air controllers on special frequencies she read in her briefing materials, and I was happy to have that but told her I wanted a briefing on it later.

We accelerated sideways, then tilted so we could accelerate more. Everyone had to sit down or lie down, and we made it across in about 30 minutes. I felt fine in my high-backed pilot's chair, but it was kind of fun to know how fast we were going.

Since it was plenty morning-enough, I called the lawyer instead of waiting for him to call me.

After introductions, I explained we needed to make sure both our families and our crew were well paid for our work, but also that we needed all kinds of protections set up - insurance, employee wages, a booking office, a PR firm, proof I wouldn't be prosecuted for flying without a pilot's license, FAA certification, and of course an educational trust to pay for everyone's college.

The conversation was being listened to (why not), and all the girls gave a big cheer.

While I was on the phone with him, I opened the president's letter (White House letterhead!) and told him I was doing so. It said (and I read it out loud):

"Mr. Cooper:

Below is a list of tasks I would like you to accomplish.

As President and in consultation with various departments and agencies, we can commit to paying for these tasks within 30 days of verified completion. We are contracting you as an independent entity and you are responsible for all taxes, fees, and expenses you incur. Overflight permissions for United States airspace are granted at no cost, and routing of air traffic will not incur monetary penalties normal to FAA procedures, by my Presidential discretion."