Since I dealt with that pesky volcano, it was time to concentrate on the reason why I decided to rent an island. The original question was how to build a spaceship that is three miles in circumference without anybody being the wiser? It was impossible, especially in today’s world of constant surveillance, mobile phones, cameras, and social networks that for some reasons are hour-by-hour diaries of people’s lives and their interaction with others. With the mania for taking selfies and photos of every single thing that seems even remotely interesting, I would have as much chance of hiding it as would that snowball in hell to remain frozen.

For all of the above, Pagan Island was a logical choice since it provided isolation from any neighbors and its closeness to the Mariana Trench. The biodome was an idea I actually got from a Russian military doctrine called ‘maskirovka’, and it is based on deception. You have to hand it to the Russians, when they do something sneaky, they go all out, even create a manual for it. The whole point was to alter people’s perception of reality and to take advantage of the fact that most of them believe what their eyes are seeing. Let me explain in a little more detail what it encompassed.

The original nanites contingent was busy long before the dome was erected and our people arrived. They created a series of nano-factories underground, not making any changes on the surface, so you may say that the ship was built like a house, from the foundations to the roof. Nano-factories built drone miners, earthmovers, automated drills, everything one would need to dig out a humongous half-disk shaped hole under the surface, without disturbing the top layer for the time being. This was only the bottom half of the ship; without a dome I would not even dream to build above ground. The construction needed to be massive, so it could support its own weight; the Gravity-drives and plates were still a long way down the line under my program schedule. Good thing there were no lava tubes underneath the chosen location; that could have been a disaster. My cork had already started to form, and the volcano was subduing its wrath.

In the beginning, the entire structure was supported by the hard-packed earth. You may think the earth is soft, but when enough pressure is applied—it turns into stone.

I was a long way from finishing the lower half before the dome construction had begun. In a nutshell, it is one big balloon, that’s right, a freaking balloon to conceal one of the most daring construction projects in human history. The main problem I had at that time was the lack of resources. What we did at Dave’s original recycling plant (and at the missile silo), were children’s games compared with the project of building this huge spaceship.

Still, I was doing it all by remotely controlling the nanites and the machines they created. A few MIs helped with the automated processes, but mostly it was me. As time progressed the project speeded up, supported by a growing fleet of drone harvesting subs that were essential for recovering metals from thousands of sunken ships all over the world. Plus, Dave buying everything he could get his hands on helped considerably. I even drilled huge underwater tunnels to the construction site so our activities would not be seen. Combined with the tunnels for magma cooling, the substrata of the island began resembling an anthill.

Before long, I was at the ground level, and the shell of the residential level was almost complete.

***

People started arriving at the island even before I made places for them to live in. OK, maybe not that drastic, but for the first few weeks, those who came had to sleep in prefabbed shacks, and use outdoor showers and porta-potties. It was the best I could do on short notice.

Surprisingly, nobody made a fuss, I guess when you wake up on a paradise island, everything else is not so important. The dome was up, but little else was inhabitable inside.

That only made me put a higher priority on finishing the residential level of the ship. For you engineers out there, yes, this build was all out of order. I built things that were needed first, and then the rest around them. It was a weird way of construction, but I had no inspectors’ bugging me with rules and regulations… and it worked.

As soon as the residential level was finished, people started moving in. They had walls, bathrooms, and little else; the rest was still under construction. Something amazing happened, everybody wanted to help with the final touches of their new home. I really didn’t have the heart to tell them that in this phase they would be more of a hindrance than a help, so I gave the volunteers the task of helping with the construction of Central Park. It is essentially one enormous botanical garden that was in the exact center of their level, hence the name. The size was only a fraction of the park with the same name that was a pride of New York City, but to have it on a spaceship… simply awesome.

It was one of the things Ben’s think-tank deemed as a must; people needed green plants to keep sane. Strange, I know, but if that will make them less crazy, then that is what they will get. Soon, an army of workers was making the allocated space into a proper indoor garden; everybody was carrying enriched soil, planters, and baby trees. I had to redirect a few additional transporters to keep up with the demand. When some of the people requesting essential stuff are botanists with several doctorates in the field, you do as you are told.

As more of the residential level was finished, new people were transferred to the island. Those were the ones that Jack and Dad gave the OK for, and they knew to be prepared for the covert extraction. I had transporters running all the time, mainly from the US since we started from there, but the scientific community is a tightly knit group, nations and borders are less defined to them than to the rest of the people, and transporters started flying to every corner of the world.

Before you could say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (and yes, it is in the dictionary), there were so many new residents on the island that we had to build a school for their children.

Dr. Ross decided to set up a shop on the island, by relocating himself and a few hundred scientists with their families. He decided that this was a far better environment for them to work in, as opposed to the dusty old buildings and bad weather. Once he saw the pictures of this tropical paradise, he did everything to relocate here as soon as possible, and the other scientists were not complaining either. Beautiful view, unparalleled medical care, state of the art technology, access to supercomputers, and as much Internet bandwidth as they needed. With all the stealth satellites I sent into orbit, that was the easiest part.

Dr. Ross’s family came with him, Mary, her husband, Natalie, and Leigh. The two twin girls were doing so much better; the emotional scars from Somalia were slowly fading. Mary and her husband were especially helpful; they practically run the new school. From online lectures to teachers recruited from the scientists’ contingent, the children had, in all likelihood, the most overly qualified teachers in the world.

The once unpopulated island was now full of people; I had to do a rush job of constructing a full hospital since there were so many injuries. Give children a free rein on a piece of land with a 0% crime rate and they are going to do stupid things. Mainly broken bones and scrapes, but if something major were to happen, the Excalibur would not be able to receive too many patients. The doctors working in the new hospital were over the moon with the AutoDocs and diagnostic machines I made from the designs found in the Excalibur’s memory. They were living a dream and had some pretty good ideas about where to go from here with the care they could provide, but their ideas needed some additional research first.

I can say with absolute certainty that the medical care of the island's residents was the best in the world. After going through a session in the AutoDoc, everyone was 100% healthy, and with medical nanites constantly monitoring their bodies—they would remain so.

Which caused a chain of events that the people on the island wanted to bring some of their relatives so they could benefit from it too. Not to make trouble and cause bad blood, we let them, under the condition that they would not speak to anyone else besides family. I monitored those that decided to return home, but surprisingly, we had zero security breaches from them. I guess people do feel grateful when you give them one sip from the fountain of youth.

The transporters also received a small redesign. There were a few times when we simply did not have enough, since I repurposed many of them to carry cargo, so I made a few really big ones, capable of carrying up to one hundred passengers… if they did not mind being very cozy. They were not used for passengers all the time; it was a multipurpose design and could handle bigger loads of metals when Dave needed a larger capacity.

All the temporary buildings outside were torn down and recycled, as soon as quarters on the residential level were ready. My deal for the island was to leave no permanent structure when we left, that is why everything was built within the unfinished ship from the start. In any case, we needed for everyone to get accustomed to living on the spaceship.

Things were shaping up in the right direction, I could not help but remember that all this started with Michael falling down the Excalibur’s entrance shaft, and breaking almost every bone in his body. If he had died at that moment, none of this would have been possible… so I ask myself, was it fate, or a butterfly effect?

In some way it is not important; we are here, building a future as fast as we can, so all those rhetorical questions about causality will be left for some other time.