After I was done with my work, I looked over the new files and felt slightly listless. So much to do, so little time. Or rather, so little resources. Some of the items on the first list were simple, for example the air-taser. That one was childsplay, probably even on a level that selling it would be viable, it I managed to make it without my energy-crystals. With others, like the glue-grenade, I was uncertain if they were possible at all. And then there were some I was uncertain if they were either possible or feasible. Sure, it was easy to picture the gunship in my head but making it a flying, fighting reality? Not so easy. And there was the question of practical usage.
A weapon-platform able to threaten most countries, that was something countries would be a little uneasy with, if it was in the hands of an individual, making it an invitation for huge trouble. Even if having it, would give me the biggest and baddest toy on the block. Luckily, I was lacking the part, that drove some males to buy hugely overbuilt, impractical monstrosities, like 1500 horsepower-sports cars or three ton four-wheel trucks to drive around suburbia, by lacking in size. If I wanted to compensate for that, I would build the needed equipment for myself. And it would vibrate!
“Maybe, you should change your plans a little.” Galatea threw in, as I was separating the items on the first list by estimated work-effort.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, some of those, even if they were finished just this moment, would take time to work. Even if you had, right at this moment, a treatment to change the way your body builds its muscles, it would take time for it to take effect. Certainly months, maybe even years, depending on the exact process and the additional efforts taken by you. So, why don’t you start with the things that need the most unsupervised time and go from there?” Galatea reasoned. And she was right, of course. It was incredibly unlikely that some kind of super-drug to quickly change my muscle-tissues into a stronger or more efficient form was possible, most likely it would slowly change my muscles as they were replaced by natural body-processes. Without any outside interference, that would take years, maybe even decades. But at the end, hadn’t Napoleon joked about planting trees, so his soldiers could march in the shade?
“You are right. I should start with that research. I guess we need to install a biolab.” I was not happy about that idea. There was a slight trauma remaining from biology class, something to do with a dead pig, a bloated stomach-cavity, formaldehyde and a stab-happy classmate.. Getting showered in pink bio-slime was amongst my worst memories.
“Here is another idea. Don’t start from zero. There is already private research in that direction, if we do it right, we can buy their results. And if we use my idea, we can even sell part of our results, to recoup costs.” Galatea suggested.
“Explain.” I ordered, and Galatea did just that.
“With a legitimate company, you can buy the needed tools, or at least some of them, and even results from other research companies. Your own research will most likely go in different directions, but that does not mean that you can’t sell sanitized versions of your results. No need to tell anyone what you plan with them, but I’m sure that we can make money with some of it, looking at your lists. Probably even a lot of money. And getting a legitimate company is not that hard, if you register a parent-company in Cantonia.”
As Galatea spoke, I was skeptical at first, a company meant a papertrail. But her idea to use shell-companies to obfuscate the origin and the true ownership of a company was a good one. And Cantonia was certainly the best way to create secret holdings. It was, after all, a large part of their business-model.
Cantonia was a small, neutral country, in the middle of the european alps. It was also rumored to be the most secure country on the planet. Not because they had such a fierce military or such a great police, even if both were very good equipped and trained. No, Cantonia was secure because everybody kept money there. A dirty politician was using it to hide his retirement-funds, arms- or drug-dealer used it to hide funds from investigators, companies used it to keep money from taxation. One time, a european government was pressured into an attempt to act against them by its populace. The result was devastating, not for Cantonia. Nobody wanted anything to do the the investigating government and both, the united nations and the Powered Guild put tremendous pressure on them to back off. The inherent object-lesson was direct, dirty and very, very convincing. Go after Cantonia at your own peril.
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After that incident, they did install a process for foreign governments to request and, in theory, receive informations about businesses in their country, even bank-accounts if they had a reasonable cause. There was just one tiny, little problem with that. People who requested information died before they got it. Not because of anything that was done to them, no, by simple virtue of the fact that the office that was responsible for such requests was designed to work slowly. Very, very slowly. Humans simply lacked the lifespan to get answers out of their office, before dying of natural courses. And due to their policy that the person that requested the information had to be the person to receive it, their secrecy remained unbroken.
And using a more direct way to settle things, for example attacking or invading Cantonia? Every autocratic regime, every democracy, every monarchy, every villain and most heroes, they all would jump onto the invaders, as they were protecting their very own bank-accounts. Or, in the case of the democracies, the bank-accounts of their donors. No, Cantonia was secure and secretive.
Their business model was simple, they did not care who you were or how you appeared. As long as you played by their rules, mainly to keep your active business out of their country, and they were happy to do business with you. Registering a company under an alias or, in my case, a combination of alias and a mask? Not a problem, if you had the funds. Registering a foreign subsidiary of that country? Again, not a problem.
“Good idea. Can you put together the needed documents to register ‘Universal Exports’ as the main-company and ‘TitanTech-Research’ as a wholly owned subsidiary? Put Metis as the owner of Universal Exports and, after a few orders of separation, put a slightly changed picture of me as an employee of TitanTech-Research, maybe something like warehouse management. Once that is done, we can rent or buy a warehouse down by the river to take deliveries, maybe I’ll even build a connecting-tunnel between the bunker and the warehouse, if I can hide it enough. That would give me additional, hidden options.” I ordered Galatea as my mind raced with ideas.
A company-ID would hold up to a casual check, so it would delay the need to get a new identity but it would not change that need. In the future, I still wanted to go to Accord City to study at the main-Guild University, for that I would either need Guild-Membership or a very, very good hidden background.
“What name do you want on the ID?” Galatea asked. What joke had I made earlier? Call me Cat, because as of yet I have no name? So, what name did I want?
“Any ideas?” I asked Galatea.
“I do indeed have one. I thought about your identity problem a bit and there is a slightly tasteless but efficient way to get an identity that is pretty tight. Take one over. If we do it right and keep quiet about it for some time, you have a good ID, linked into all the appropriate databases, even those that I can’t infiltrate. I even looked around for a suitable candidate.” Galatea explained and on the screen in front of me, a bandaged, slightly squashed face appeared. It looked as if the owner of said face had been beaten to hell and back, making me wonder how that face had looked in the first place. Just as I was thinking that, another picture appeared next to it, no great beauty but strong and sharp facial features and grey eyes, similar to my own.
“Meet Diana Hunt. She was involved in an accident as you can see. The driver of a truck fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into the car her family was riding in. Her parents died, her brother died and she is the only survivor. I doubt she will stay alive, they keep her in an artificial coma but she has suffered significant to her spine, skull and chest. At this point, she is alive due to the machines they use but I highly doubt that she will ever wake up. The hospital security system is rather leaky, allowing me to make sure that her demise is never added to her file, it would just say that she was injured in an automotive-crash and the rest of her family died. After a year or two, in a different city, nobody should be able to question the fact that you are, indeed, Diana Hunt. A little plastic surgery and the simple fact that neither of you have finished growing and it should be an airtight cover.”
I had to shake my head, sad that I was using the death of someone else to my advantage. But at the end of the day, why not. If Diana Hunt died, there was no need to let her death go to waste. And I did not kill her, or harm her in any way, shape or form. Maybe she would reincarnate into another world... At that thought I realised that I should lay of the webnovels.
“Keep an eye on her. But don’t use her name with TitanTech, her identity will be an emergency measure, just in case I need it. Register Catherine Alleyne with TitanTech.” I told Galatea with a smile. Right now, I did not need an airtight cover, a slightly flimsy one would suffice. But having an airtight cover that only Galatea and I knew about, that could be useful.
And thus, the cat was given a name.