Chapter 45

---Several Days Later, Victor POV---

While we awaited approval from the school administration to move forward with our booth, I took the opportunity to begin development of a new power source for Project Homebase. Due to the immense power draw that the project would require to function properly, arc and fusion reactors were not practical options. According to my calculations, I would have needed hundreds of them to power the star base and I just did not have the room to do that. Having only dedicated four locations to power generation, I was left with only two options…harness the power of a star or dip into zero point energy. As zero point energy was incredibly difficult to collect safely, my decision was clear…I needed to create a star.

To begin the laborious task of creating a star, I built a specialized collection drone and sent it to our sun to collect some plasma. Bringing the drone in on a low angle of attack, Jarvis opened the containment device and began to collect material while I handled piloting the craft. Bobbing and weaving through the sea of fire, we almost ended up losing it a few times at the beginning of the collection.

"How are we looking, Jarvis? Is the containment field holding steady?", I asked, focusing all my attention on avoiding solar flares.

<The containment field is holding steady with no fluctuations detected. Solar storage capacity at forty percent and climbing.>

"Perfect, continue monitoring and let me know when we reach ninety percent.", I said, barrel rolling the drone out of a surprise flare up.

Calmly weaving through the mine field of fiery pillars, I continued on my heading till Jarvis gave me the ninety percent warning. Slowly pulling the drone away from the sun's surface, Jarvis closed the collection hatch and prepared to put the impulse engines at full throttle. Disconnecting from the drone, as I was no longer needed, Jarvis took over from there and brought our fuel home.

"Alright Jarvis, since the drone will not be back for a good fifteen to twenty minutes, I am going to head upstairs to get a drink. Let me know if you encounter any problems.", I said, getting up from my seat and heading toward the stairs.

<Of course, sir.>

Walking up the stairs and into the kitchen, I found Lucoa and Olivia giving everyone a crash course on cooking…emphasis on the word crash. Having decided to make a show of the food preparation, all of us needed to know how to cook and sell our offerings. Since we believed that the food would sell itself and we all could do basic math, the only real challenge was getting everyone up to snuff on cooking. Lucoa and Olivia took it upon themselves to help the others out, and it was going slower than anticipated.

"Slowly squeeze the batter into the oil, do not manhandle it.", Lucoa told Clarice.

"I am trying, it does not want to come out!!", Clarice grunted, having trouble forcing the batter out of the star shaped nozzle, "Come on already!!"

Offering to check the nozzle for clogs, Clarice assured me she had right before the nozzle shot off the bag. Watching both the nozzle and batter go flying into the oil, I used the Force to pull the two women out of the splash zone.

"How about we not deep fry ourselves while cooking in my kitchen, alright?", I said, in a teasing tone.

"I did not mean to do it, I swear!", Clarice assured me, "I am sorry Lucoa!"

"No one got hurt so it is fine.", Lucoa remarked, walking over to the stove and pulling the nozzle out with a spider strainer, "Shit…it is my fault, this is not the right nozzle. This is an icing nozzle, not the funnel cake one."

Relieved that she had not screwed something up, the two of them filled up another piping bag while one of my robots cleaned up the oil. Walking over to the fridge to get a drink, I poured myself a cup of black tea and made my way back toward the lab.

"Victor, before you go, can you try my funnel cake?", Roxanne inquired, eagerly jumping out of her seat.

"Of course, I am happy to be a taste tester.", I replied, quickly turning around and walking over to her.

Presenting me with her funnel cake, Roxanne had drizzled it with strawberry sauce and powdered sugar. Impressed that she found one of the most popular funnel cake toppings, I praised her for thinking outside the box. Watching her tail begin to violently wag, she clearly enjoyed my praise. Using a fork to cut off a piece for me to sample, she presented to me with an anxious smile.

"…say ah…", she requested, with a flushed expression.

'She is so fucking adorable…', I thought, "Ah...!"

Gingerly biting the food off the fork, I took a moment to savor her cooking. Finding the texture and flavor to be exactly the way I remembered as a child, it reminded me of the pleasant memories I had of the times my parents and I went to the county fair. Recalling those moments fondly, I hoped to find equally happy memories out in the expanse of space someday.

"Good job Roxanne, it tastes amazing!", I praised her again, "There is nothing I would change about it. Your creation is exactly the way it should be."

"Thank you!!", she remarked, with a beaming smile, "Did you hear that, Lucoa? I did it on my third try!!"

"I did, Roxanne, congratulations!", Lucoa said, with a grin, "Now you can move to making hand pies."

"Alright!", Roxanne replied, full of determination.

Happy that they were making good progress, I was about to leave the kitchen again when Angelica and Olivia grabbed my shirt. Looking back at them, the two women presented me with their funnel cakes as well.

"Please let me know how this tastes.", Angelica nervously requested, "I…I want your honest opinion."

"Check mine too, I made some changes and want your opinion on it.", Olivia said, even though I knew she had the normal recipe down pat.

Knowing this was a competition for them now, I was not going to turn down two beautiful girls offering me their cooking. Nodding my head in agreement, the two of them offered me a bite of their cakes. Savoring each of them, both women had nailed the funnel cake taste itself but were lacking in the topping department. As sugar was incredibly expensive for most people, they had used it sparingly on the funnel cake which detracted from the overall taste of the dish.

"Both of you did an excellent job making the funnel cake batter, but you need to use more powdered sugar. It tastes a bit bland without the sugar or other toppings on it.", I said, walking over to the fridge to get them a few alternative toppings, "Do not hesitate to add generous helpings on the cakes. All the ingredients we use are grown by me so there is no shortage of items."

"If you say so…", Olivia gulped, adding some maple syrup to her funnel cake, "It feels so wrong wasting such expensive ingredients on this."

"Victor says it is okay, so just go with it.", Angelica remarked, "If he had a shortage of something, he would tell us."

Experimenting with the toppings I presented them with, the three of them began mixing and matching, trying to find the right combination. Pouring them tall glasses of milk to wash everything down, I playfully smacked Roxanne's rear end before heading back to the lab. Looking at me in confusion as I rounded the corner, Angelica and Clarice began asking her what that was about, much to my amusement. Listening to her explain what it meant, I could not help but chuckle to myself as the two of them gasped in shock.

---Ten Minutes Later---

Watching the drone slowly enter the hanger, Jarvis ran a few quick tests to confirm radiation was not leaking out before docking it. Hooking it up to the solar generator, we began siphoning off the plasma and sent it to the containment chamber. Closing the intake once it was full, I initiated the gravitational and magnetic stabilizers so we could begin compressing it into a sphere. Incrementally increasing the gravitational forces on the sphere, eventually, the hydrogen atoms began smashing together to form helium atoms like in a normal star.

"Jarvis, continue to increase the gravitational pressure on the star. I will begin adding the hydrogen gas manually.", I requested.

<Beginning incremental increases now, sir.>

Adding a compressed stream of hydrogen into the containment chamber, I quickly opened the taps enough to make the star roughly the size of a large yoga ball. Maintaining it to the best of our ability, my eyes fixated on the holographic screen that was displaying how much power we were generating and how much we used to maintain the gravitational and magnetic fields.

"Alright Jarvis, shut it down.", I said, noticing a significant spike in power draw as we hit a two thousand times normal gravity.

<Congratulations sir, it appears we have created a new source of clean energy. At full scale, each the four solar generators could theoretically output twenty ronnawatts electricity.>

AN: A ronnawatt is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts, or 1 octillion watts.

"Thank you, Jarvis, but I do not think it is a sustainable method of power generation.", I sighed, looking at our current operational power systems, "We used up all our stored power and maxed out all our current power generation just to run the solar generator for a minute. I think we are going to need another option, and I believe a star still holds the answer. Having seen how much energy that small amount of solar plasma had; I think we should harvest vast amounts of it to power the star base. Any time we run low on fuel; we just harvest more from a nearby star."

<Storing vast amounts of plasma would be relatively easy as well. I still highly recommend installing some form power generation on the star base in event you run out solar a precarious situation.>

"I concur, I believe we can further improve my fusion reactor design to get us enough power to run emergency systems in a pinch. There are also other power sources that could work, but I do not have access to them.", I remarked, 'It is not like I can find a Cosmic Cube or an Infinity Stone just lying around somewhere. All of that is going to have to wait till we are off planet to find.'

Jotting all of my notes down, I switched gears and began looking into methods to efficiently draw as much power out of solar plasma as I could.