We were thinking way into the future when one day we might have a complete society living there. Nobody questioned our budget line so we spent as much money as we could on anything we could think of.
Then we warped all of it to the Moon. I flew the town while Jim and Al came in over the top and covered it up with lunar soil. I then oscillated the Town's outer warp field and hardened the dome around it. It took several more weeks to install all of the windows. We had to run flame pots and heaters and oscillate the warp field some to maintain temperature until the windows were in place. The next week or two involved moving the manufacturing facility and lab that had been constructed at other secret locations. They took a week or two to completely install at Moon Base 1 also. Then we installed the landing strip and docking facility. With all construction complete we did a lights-off lights-on maneuver to encompass the complete Moon Base in one warp bubble. Then we turned the periphery bubbles off.
Everything was finally complete and people began moving in. Jim and I had the idea of building a mountain bike trail around the Town, Lab, and Plant. We cut trails inside the domes on the outer circumference and then used a small warp bubble to cut switch back trails alongside and up and over (or down and under in some cases) the tunnels that connected the various domes. We added a couple of whoops and a few doos. We even stuck in a "hellacious up hill" and a "screaming elevator shaft down to hell." We put up historical markers explaining that this was "the first mountain bike trail in space don't ride when raining." The trail was wide enough to ride two-up and was roughly two and three-quarter miles long. We put fluorescent lighting all through the trails that were in tunnels and we planted grass, weeds, and flowers. Since the trails were within the Moon Base warp field they were at one gee everywhere. We worked on the trail during our spare time and it only took us about a month to complete it.
We spent a month or two moving in and slowly developed a routine. Occasionally we would slip back to Earth to pick up more supplies and beer. But for the most part, we lived and worked at Moon Base 1 and seemed to always have to send someone back to Earth for beer and pretzels.
Our first technical priorities were to improve detection capabilities, invent new warp technologies that would enable new methods of warfare, develop new intelligence gathering abilities, and to develop transportation capabilities. It was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time brainstorming and testing these new ideas. One of the ideas that I had was a bulletproof force field. If we could design an ECC and Van Den Broeck bubble generator that was light enough, foot soldiers could wear them as armor. Tabitha suggested that they could replace spacesuits also. We just needed to figure out how to replenish oxygen.
After brainstorming the personal warp field concept a while, I began to see many possibilities for it. A personal warp field could be used to enhance strength if the control system for the bubble was designed to react to movements inside the field. The personal warp system would also enable the individual to warp himself around or fly. This could be the first possible design for a Supersuit. We put this concept on the to-do list, even if it was five or more years off.
We had already developed warp cranes and float tables to enable us to move heavy stuff around. These would have been useful for the disaster relief if the public could have been told about them.
I was also thinking about a technique of using the warp field to create a giant gravitational lens that could be used as the primary objective for a telescope. If we could warp spacetime hard enough to create a short focal length lens that was kilometers in aperture diameter, we could see freckles on an ant's ass from the moon. Or we could image planets around other stars. This gave me an idea about the Solar Focus, but we can talk about it later.
And of course, there was always the original reason for my designing the warp drive. Interstellar space travel! I indeed planned to do this soon. In fact, Tabitha and I were planning a trip to Mars real soon to test out the speed of our little warpships. We had yet to prove that we could go superluminal. But there was no doubt in my mind it would soon be done.
By the way, I never really talked about the effect our Secret War had on Earth. With the wedding, our one-week honeymoon that we spent on my couch in Huntsville, and building and moving into Moon Base 1, I tried not to dwell on it. The last estimate of dead was somewhere around sixty-five million Americans, one hundred million Chinese, forty-seven million Russians, and two hundred thousand North Koreans. There were countless acres of forests and wildlife destroyed. Last count was three hundred or more species of animals and insects were now extinct. It was estimated that the damage was in the trillions of U.S. dollars. The three hypercanes caused by the Warp Weapon impacts pumped a tremendous amount of dust and moisture into the upper atmosphere. And there was talk of the subsequent moderate greenhouse effect causing higher coastal waters and much larger tropical regions for the next hundred or more years. Like Huntsville wasn't hot and humid enough already. Now it would be like beach weather without the beach. Oh, there was some talk about "nuclear winter" kinds of nonsense and ice ages and other things, but none of that really panned out scientifically. Just our weather was a little more erratic is all.
But don't worry. Humans are quite resourceful. We will survive this and in fact thrive again in no time. I feel bad about all the damage and especially about the lost lives. However, and I'm not just trying to justify myself here, the Earth is becoming a better place now. China finally had to really open its borders to Western business or it was going to starve to death. The destruction of most of the Russian government destroyed a lot of their organized crime problem since most of the crime bosses were government officials. The Russian people asked us for help. So we moved in and helped them prop themselves up and clean up their act a little. Europe joined in to help since they were least affected. Although there was no longer a Germany, the rest of Europe was trying to help. Interestingly enough, no governments tried to take advantage of the situation. Also, the stock exchange was unfrozen a few weeks ago. World trade is back to normal or much better. Again there was some initial concern about global climate changes causing mass crop failures and global starvation. And once again this was mostly junk scientists making noise to get themselves on television. All of that original Carl Sagan nuclear winter nonsense continued to rear its ugly head—idiots. I wanted to strangle some of the fools I saw on TV bitching about the coming ice age and the end of the world. Tabitha eventually convinced me that I just had to let it go.
One thing that really bites me in the butt is that not long after the Secret War a damned group of Islamic Jihad fools car-bombed the American Embassy in Kuwait. Then they claimed that the meteors were due to us being the infidel and some other nonsense. About fifteen Americans were killed and a few from other countries. And we didn't do a damned thing! For now the world still depended on oil so we had to let those fools act as they had for thousands of years. Like fools.
I vowed that day that I was going to design a less efficient and less explosive energy collection dumbbell that we could leak into mainstream technology. If these weaker dumbbells generated only a millionth of the energy that the flubells do, the Middle East would be out of business in no time. Then we wouldn't have to put up with the bastards. I put Sara to work on the new dumbbell design. Jim was more than happy to volunteer to help her. Tabitha and I went to work on a plan to leak the technology.