Once my little practical test on the Argus was finished, I pulled up my status on the drive back.
Status
Level:
21
EXP:
1450/2100
Musculoskeletal:
211
Neural Reflex:
65
Visuomotor Coordination:
87
Endurance:
59
Sensory Perception:
127
Upgrade Points:
0
Upgrades:
* Stealth +7
* Hacking +5
* Cybernetic Engineering +10
* Stealth Technology +10
* Software Engineering +6
* Electrical Engineering +8
Enhancements:
SAID: Zenitech Sebastien v2
Bio-Coprocessor: SocialCorp Lightning II
Optics: Mirage Tech Clear-Sights mk.12
Cyberarm (Left): Nova Tech Heracle Mk. 3
Cyberarm (Right): Nova Tech Heracle Mk. 3
Auditory: SocialCorp Echo IV
Vocal: SocialCorp Orator III
Cardiovascular: BioGen Lifepump 5
Additional Processing: Halls Corp Custom ST
Miscellaneous: Halls Corp HSU Custom Shade
“Umm, sir. How did I do?”
I looked over at the woman, Yuki, who had volunteered to test my latest prototype.
“Don’t worry, you did great. I didn’t intervene because you did anything wrong.”
I couldn’t resist killing the kidnappers earlier, as they were just free experience points to be had. They were also an unredeemable bunch from what I saw of the atrocities they had committed and even had the nerve to record them. I just couldn’t stand waiting there and watching their handiwork along with them while I waited, so I pulled the trigger.
She released a sigh of relief and sank back into her seat.
We drove along the streets of Elevate City in silence for a brief moment, then I spotted the various screens displayed on the skyscrapers that advertised the upcoming event the Halls corporations would be attending.
“Oh, and I’ll be counting on you next week during the cybernetic expo. The test went well, so we’ll be going ahead and introducing the Argus as our latest commercial product.”
“Yes sir! You can count on me…” she responded excitedly at first, but then wore a troubled expression.
“What’s wrong? You had something planned during the expo?”
“Oh, no, sir. I was just thinking it’s a shame that we won’t be able to monopolize the Argus for ourselves.”
“Hmm, we’ll be keeping the more advanced version to ourselves, of course. The commercial version I’ll be working on until the event won’t give away the core aspects of it, rest assured.” I saw a pondering look on her face and continued. “The commercial version will be tuned down. It will have a shorter range, less detailed scanning, and most importantly, won’t feature the ability to scan things undetected.”
I thought back to the trouble I had when designing the Argus. Most detection devices were categorized into either passive scanners or active scanners.
Passive scanners were drastically less likely to be detected by the other parties, but their detection wasn’t as comprehensive as active scanners. Simply infrared cameras fell into this category, and their weakness showed as I was able to tweak my Shade to counteract it.
Meanwhile, active scanners had the disadvantage of alerting the subject that a scan had just swept by them.
I tried to find the best of both worlds when designing the Argus and I had made a small breakthrough, thanks to all the knowledge I had on stealth technologies. I was able to make an active scanner that had a much lower profile and blew everything I had compared it to out of the park. Though I could only compare it to what was known and commercially available, I had a pretty good idea now of what the smaller corporations were capable of.
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“Then what would be the selling point of the product compared to similar ones on the market?” Yuki asked.
“It will be able to filter out what you would like to scan with precision, as you had done with the kidnapped target’s SAID. The ones on the market aren’t nearly as precise.”
I’ll also be allowing the scans it will emit to be easily detectable. It will be a weakness of our tech that I will purposefully show in hopes of lowering the guard of others. But that was better left unsaid.
We soon arrived back at our office and I immediately got started on the commercial version. With all the data I got from the tests, the only time-consuming part left was optimization.
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“It always surprises me that this city could get even more crowded,” Joey said as he looked out the window from inside the spaceport. The blue ocean reflected the sun into our eyes. From this sight alone, it was hard to believe the world’s ecosystems were damaged immensely.
“I believe it is always like this around this time of the year. All the expos are held during this week. Will your corporation be announcing anything in particular?” I asked as I took a sip from my cup and surveyed all the other corpos in the cafe we were in.
“Yes, but my industry isn’t as exciting as the cybernetic one you will be participating in. It’ll simply be announcing an increase in efficiency, refined techniques, or new variants of existing foods. It will be a good marketing campaign with all the eyes it draws throughout the system, though.”
“That honestly doesn’t sound bad. I’ll definitely check it out.”
A food expo…There definitely will be free samples there! I can go sample everything and maybe even form connections to supply myself with what I like.
As we passed the time with some mundane chatter, the screens that were playing the news suddenly grew in volume, drawing everyone’s attention.
“Good afternoon everyone. As you can all see behind me right now, the SC Polaris is about to arrive. The two million-ton warship will be bringing along various corporate executives and leaders to visit Earth…”
I watched the reporter stand by the docking bay of the spaceport above. The camera zoomed in on the spaceship, but it was honestly hard to tell the size of it, with nothing beside it to compare it to. The screen then had various names of corporations and their leaders that were on board, which I wasn’t particularly familiar with.
I glanced over at my friend to find him frowning.
“Something on your mind?” I asked.
He snapped out of his musing and took a swig of his cup. “Just a few unpleasant names.” He gestured to the screen. “Some of them are powerful people that have some relationship with those High Gate people, but they could be just coming for the annual meeting that takes place after the expo. They are too powerful for us to monitor, though, so we’ll have to wait and see.”
I nodded at his words while I dug up what I could on the names displayed. There wasn’t a lot of information publicly available, so I sent a quick message to my intelligence department to compile everything we had on them and be on the lookout.
I doubt it would uncover anything vital, as they all seemed to be from large corporations that could easily hide any information they see fit. It didn’t mean we wouldn’t do our due diligence, though.
The spaceship on the screen didn’t keep the audience in suspense for long as they swiftly closed the distance to the camera. Its growing size became more apparent as sections of the space station came into view and I could only imagine the costs associated with building such a behemoth.
“Well, I will have to depart to get ready for our panel, Rollo. Please feel free to visit if you would like,” Joey said as he stood up, buttoning his suit.
“Yes, I’ll be looking forward to it.”
I watched him disappear into the crowd of people, surrounded by his guards. It was a first for me to see such a crowd gather within the spaceport. Not everyone could set foot here, so it was a surprising sight to see so many people.
I finished off my drink and checked in on where Thorne and Claire were on the company tracking app before making my way toward the convention hall area where the food expo was being held.
Several expos were going concurrently every day with a large range of industries it covered. The cybernetic one I was going to attend was going to take place the day after tomorrow, so we could take the chance to look around on the other days.
I waited off by the entrance with my guards for several more minutes before I spotted the arrival of my two trusted confidants.
Claire walked up to me with a spring to her steps. “I can’t believe we get to go to expos in person! I’ve followed the live streams of it every year until now. I’m so excited!”
Thorne followed closely behind her and gave her a skeptical look. “It’s just a marketing event between dirty corpos and gives them a chance to flex on their competitors.”
“Still doesn’t change the fact it’s a giant convention that showcases a lot of cool new stuff.” She shrugged.
“Let’s go before it gets even more packed,” I said and impatiently led the way.
We entered the convention halls that hosted the food expo and were thoroughly inspected again despite the careful examinations we had to endure on our way to the spaceport. Our guards also couldn’t proceed further with us, probably because it would only make it unnecessarily more crowded.
The staff at the entrance scanned our credentials, and we then received a link that led us to the expo website that had the schedule for every ongoing and upcoming panel listed.
“Which one do you guys want to go first?”
Claire closed her eyes and put on the most serious face I’d ever seen her wear, deep in thought, as if she was making a life-changing decision.
“Hmm…I have no idea. I can’t decide between the panel for Penny’s new chocolate bar, materialized sushi, or the latest auto cook.”
I took a look at the listed panels myself and found a majority of them were much simpler, going over the increased yields for existing fruits and crops. The few Claire picked up would likely be popular owing to the fact it introduced a breath of fresh air rather than reiterating the old.
“It’s all going to get crowded. Let’s head to the closest one. I would much rather have a seat.”
We navigated through the sea of corpos and soon entered a medium-sized room that could hold around three hundred people. The seats were already filling up, so we hurried to take ours before it was too late.
Once we were seated, I glanced around and had Kiri match the faces and logos on the clothing of the surrounding people to pull up a preliminary profile. I noticed that many of the people up front came from increasingly larger corporations. They all seemed to be less visibility augmented too, and could be easily mistaken for being entirely natural. Their optics looked entirely organic. Even the ones who were likely viewing something, as they were staring blankly ahead, didn’t have any glow in their eyes.
It was quite ironic considering the less fortunate people judged people’s wealth by their cybernetics, causing some to flaunt them around while the corpos tried to hide theirs as they went up the ladder. I guessed it was also fitting as survival in the streets relied on deterrence, while survival among corpos relied on scheming and hiding your aces.
The doors soon closed, and the lights dimmed, signaling the start of the panel.
“Thank you everyone for coming to our Penny Corporation panel. I’m sure you have all heard, our company plans to introduce a new product made with our authentic cacao beans. It has been several years since we established significant production facilities in space that have allowed us to grow a large and consistent supply of…”
As the presenter talked, I took note of how the entire presentation was set up. We would be doing a similar presentation in a few days, so I wanted to learn as much as I could while I still had the chance to fine-tune my own performance.
It was vital to make a good impression. There were only a few hundred people here, but they represented numerous companies in the industry who could be potential partners, whether it be distributors, suppliers, retailers, and so forth. By giving a great presentation in these panels, you could kick start the interest in both your product and business, which may lead to additional business proposals.
The presentation wasn’t too long as they weren’t trying to bore their audience to death. Once they had a chance to elaborate on the selling points of their products, they swiftly proceeded to hand out samples to make a bigger impression.
While I was sampling the chocolate I received, I couldn’t help but think it was worth it to come to this panel, allowing me to get a feel of what was to come.
I can’t wait for the panel on pizza that grows from trees.