“So you two finally decided to return, huh?” Claire said while glaring at us.
“It’s been a while. Can’t say it feels like it since we talk almost every day, though,” I replied.
“Claire, has everything been going well?” Thorne asked.
He stood next to her as if he was awaiting orders, like a puppy staring at their owner.
“Just barely keeping it together since I had to juggle between my own responsibility, the communication app project, and Rollo’s stuff.” I could feel Clare’s glare from behind me, but I continued to load the car with our luggage, pretending not to have noticed.
“Here, we got you a souvenir.” My savior, Thorne, brought out our trump card.
Her expression visibly softened as she inspected her gifts. “Flowance Corp handbag? You guys got brand name stuff? And is this made out of mootant hides? Looks absolute zero!”
“Yeah, we got a good source for the high-quality hides, so they let us skip the queues for their new limited edition bag.”
“Thanks! I can’t wait to see how it looks with my terminals. Hmm… I may have to buy a new one that matches its style more.”
“Come on, let’s get moving already,” I said while she was distracted.
We quickly boarded the old Vanguard and made our way back to our office-cum-residence.
Vin would have our new Wraiths shipped out to us from NLA soon, though I couldn’t say I liked the shipping fees. I had to think of it as the purchasing fee for a cheap vehicle before I could sign off on that expense. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it.
Once we got settled and unpacked, I immediately went to visit the new server room they had set up. It was on the same floor as our security control room where Leo and Lana were, so I visited them first before heading in.
“How’s it going, you two?”
They were both seated and were visibly working on whatever was displayed on their optics. They continued typing away for several more minutes, with Lana’s mechanical keyboard making its loud clacky noises until Leo finally stopped and turned to me.
“Back already? I’d thought you three would’ve gone out to have lunch someplace nice before coming back. What’s up?”
“I wanted to check out the new server room and the app Claire and her new team have been working on. What do you think about it?”
“That… I left it up to them since I was busy with my own stuff. I think Lana was more involved with it, right?”
The mechanical keyboard stopped at the mention of her name.
“Yeah, it should be ready soon. Can’t say it’s that great, though. It’s just a watered-down version of our company comms, done in a roundabout way so other corps can’t find any clues about ours.”
“It’s enough, as long as it works. It’s for the general public, so we don’t need anything top-of-the-line for it.”
“That’s what Claire said, so I only helped with optimizing it. You give him the tour of the app, Leo. I’m busy.”
Me and Leo could only exchange rueful smiles as Lana started typing away on her keyboard again.
“Well, shall we?”
Leo then guided me toward the room next door, where they had set up racks and racks of servers. At the center were several terminals that controlled the operations. He listed off the specifications of the parts they used and the difference between brands, even with the same models. He went off on a tangent, into the territory of something I wasn’t familiar with, and I simply allowed him to let it all out.
Once he had a chance to talk to his heart’s content, we finally moved on to the terminal, where he gave me an overview of the current iteration of the app they were developing.
“Right now, we have the basic functions finalized. We still need to work on a new encryption that is entirely separate from ours. However, the transfer speed isn’t the best and is honestly decent at best. Compared to a lot of what the other corps that specializes in apps have to offer, ours hardly stands out.”
“And those other apps also charge a lot more, right?”
“Well yeah. They start from a monthly fee of fifty credits, and that is entirely separate from the fees you have to pay the carriers for your plan.”
“Ours will be a one-time payment of ten credits, and I doubt the general populace would care about milliseconds difference in performance.”
“Ten credits…That’ll barely cover the server fees if we don’t get at least tens of thousands of users.”
“That’s good enough. This main objective isn’t to make a profit but for intelligence gathering. How is it on that end?”
“Well, at the end of the day, we created the architecture and encryption. We’ll be able to see what we want within our traffic if we really want.”
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Be sure to highlight how we only keep their information for 24 hours for operations purposes only. That should save you some on server costs.”
It’d also reassure the users about their privacy to a certain degree. Even back in my world, where privacy was an actual concern, most users didn’t really care and sent sensitive information all the time, anyway. The people here should care even less, except for the mercenaries and highly anti-corporate folks.
“Yeah, I’ll make a note and send it to Claire as a reminder.”
“Thank you. I’m going to get back to the workshop now. Let me know when you guys are ready to launch the app.”
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“The next stop is District 10. Doors will open on your left.” The PA on the train announced.
I quietly walked around the train and observed the passengers. About half of them used their optics for most things, so I couldn’t view what they were doing, but I could for the other half that were on their terminals.
I watched the screen that a seated man held as I stood nearby, sipping on my milkshake. He was dressed like the typical corpo drone, wearing a dull-colored suit, with lifeless eyes. The app he was using gave away his affiliation with Zenitech.
Moving on, I found another woman who was more casually dressed. She was typing away on her terminal, opening multiple chat groups she was in, and responding to each one of them. The magnification on my optics could clearly make out the words on her screen.
*Did you guys hear? The sales agent that sometimes shows up at the store is going to get terminated.! We won’t be seeing him anymore.*
*What?! The pretty-looking one from Quantum Flavors Inc.? The one with the long hair?*
*Yea, his entire department apparently screwed up big time on some procurement deal they lost to their rival.*
*OMG, where did you find out?*
I moved on down the train and continued my relaxing people-watching exercise. It was really awkward in the beginning when some corpo with decent optics noticed me and we stared at each other for a full second, but I learned to spot who to avoid. It just wasn’t worth it to use my Shade for this excursion.
By the time I finished my milkshake, I got off the train and began my way back to the office.
Gunshots rang out every so often around the city, but when I got out of my station, I was met with the scene of an active firefight. I instinctively took cover and assessed the situation. Once I got in cover, I took out my terminal and placed it around the corner to get a view of the firefight from the camera without putting myself at risk.
Two gangs I didn’t recognize were actively shooting at each other right in front of the station. There were around half a dozen on each side who wore their own colors, so they were easy to differentiate, with one side sporting yellow clothing, and another sporting green clothing.
I glanced around and surveyed the camera coverage of the entire area, and opted to stay out of it. If I went into camouflage, the cameras would instantly spot me disappear. It had also already captured footage of me from before, making it easy to expose myself if I acted.
I backtracked to the garbage bins to throw out the empty cup I was holding, and when I went back, the shooting had abruptly intensified.
By the time I could view what happened, I found the scene filled with the bodies of the gang members from both sides of the conflict, and some newcomers that sported black and snow blue gear. On their shoulders was the insignia of the snow owl that I’d become familiar with.
A squad of them quickly surrounded me and were alert for any remnants of the gangs.
“Rollo, I told you it was a bad idea to take the public transit.”
“What? They weren’t even targeting me. I was just enjoying the show and letting them fight it out.”
Thorne gave me an unimpressed look.
“Whatever. Let’s go back already. Let’s be present before they finish their final adjustments and launch the app.”
“All teams, we’re extracting from the area!” Thorne yelled out.
The security guards instantly escorted me out of there, surrounding me the entire way and dictating the pace.
I had wanted to take a relaxing walk, but oh well. They’ve been getting more protective the more training they received, so it proved their competence in a way.
When we returned to the office, I found the entire area where the intelligence department had settled in, filled with the sound of chaos, as people conversed loudly in a rush. It was as loud as the street markets, but people barely moved from their seats as they scrambled about electronically and not physically whatsoever.
At least I’m not the one who has to handle this.
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??? - Retail Worker
“Did you guys hear? There’s a new messenger app at a ridiculously low price and only needs one-time payment!”
“What? Is it some crappy app someone stole and is reselling? Those happen from time to time, but will get shut down within the week.”
“No, it’s verified to be from an actual corp. They aren’t big or anything, but they shouldn’t get shut down anytime soon.”
“Let me take a look. What’s it called?”
“EchoHalls. It’s not in the ranking lists yet, but I heard a lot of the low-level corpos are using it already since their company apps don’t work well with other corps and this one is so cheap to use.”
“Heh, they’re probably trying to outprice their competitors out of the market or some other corpo scheme they always busy themselves with. Let’s download it before they bring their prices up or something.”
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“Rollo, look! The downloads have increased by another ten thousand already!”
“Yeah, yeah. I know we’re growing rapidly. You’ve been refreshing the page for the past hour already. Give it a rest already.”
“What? No. You won’t understand the feeling I’m getting when I see my creation blowing up like this. It’s too exciting for me not to track.”
“At least take a break for lunch. Let’s go out to celebrate.”
“Wait…Give me another hour or so. I can’t be at ease until we make enough sales to cover all the maintenance and bandwidth fees for the week. It was way more expensive than I thought.”
“...You do remember this wasn’t a for-profit project, right?”
“Leave me alone. I want to see my baby project mature before my eyes.”
“Claire, I think you should listen to Rollo this time,” Thorne interjected.
“No means no!”
“...Fine, I’ll order delivery. Let’s go, Thorne, leave this idiot to it herself.”
“Hey, what did you say?” Her voice grew quieter as I walked away. She didn’t give chase though, as she was glued to the terminal, refreshing the statistic page.
I walked past Claire’s assistant, just as she finished talking to the new person Claire had put in charge of the intelligence department, Lucy.
“Sir, what time may I contact you from now on?” Lucy called out as I was about to pass by.
“Oh, that’s right. You’re going to be reporting to me from now on. You can contact me whenever, my SAID will screen your message for its urgency, so don’t worry about spamming me.”
“Perfect!”
A perfect launch we’re having so far. Those always get me nervous as I expect something to go wrong.