“Hello! My name is Katy Marcel, CEO of Tripwire. This is my assistant, Clark Edwards and our lawyer, Helen Dulles.”

“Nice to meet you Katy! My name is Charlotte Burke,” the woman answered in a familiar voice, returning the handshake. “I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of Morphix. I believe we spoke over the phone earlier. I apologize for my previous conduct. This is my lawyer Samuel Coulter.”

The silver woman’s warm expression stood in stark contrast to her neat and rigid attire. Katy was stunned to discover that this young lady was the mysterious CEO of Morphix. As incredible as it was that she had decided to personally attend this meeting, it was even more incredible that this woman was the owner of the groggy voice that had personally answered the phone this morning. What is a CEO doing answering phones? After a short round of hand shaking and introductions, the party entered the building and was seated in a conference room on one of the upper floors. Charlotte Burke immediately took control of the meeting.

“I figure we might as well start off with what Morphix has to offer,” she began, placing her delicate hands on the silver briefcase. As she spoke she began fiddling with the clasps. “Without any further ado, I would like to formally introduce you to the Morphix Regalia.”

Charlotte reached into the silver case and lifted a thin metal contraption into the air above the table. Lowering the object, Charlotte handed it to Katy on her right. Katy inspected it vigorously. There was a small silver box with symmetrical silver appendages branching off of it in all directions like a tree. On the ends of the branches were small circular nodes, about 5mm in diameter. The box itself was maybe 4mm thick and was about the size of a credit card. The branches were even less than a millimeter thick. The whole thing was almost weightless. It looked like some kind of elaborate crown.

As Katy examined it, Charlotte turned around and lifted up her long silver hair. Stuck to the back of her head was a little black box that looked just like the object in Katy’s hands. The tendrils reached up through Charlottes hair all the way to her temples. Here and there, small circular nodes could be seen. With her hair down, the Regalia could hardly be noticed.

Samuel, too, pulled a silver box out of his pocket and demonstrated the process of attaching it. All that was required was the push of a button as the tiny branches grew out of the box and branched out forming a silvery maze over the back and sides of his head and using the nodes on the temples to hold itself in place.

Pulling two more units out of the case, Charlotte distributed them to Clark and Helen and instructed the Tripwire party to power them on. Katy was a little bit hesitant, but her curiosity overpowered her sense of restraint. As they booted up, Charlotte explained a little bit about the technology behind the Regalia. She couldn’t explain too much without running the risk of sharing trade secrets, but it was enough for Katy to get a rough idea of what was going on.

The Regalia used waves to interfere with electrical signals in the brain, just like any other VR helmet currently in development by Virtech or Tripwire. There was a big difference in Morphix’s machine though. The Regalia didn’t require the user to be unconscious. Katy was stunned when a transparent blue menu appeared on the edges of her vision, but as Charlotte continued her explanation, she became even more amazed.

The Regalia was a combination of virtual reality and augmented reality. It was like hooking up a computer to your brain to assist you. Charlotte walked the Tripwire crew through the different applications that had the Regalia had been tested for. It could replace lost senses. The hearing-impaired could hear again. The vision-impaired could see again. It could directly translate foreign speech into the language of the user. Users could communicate with telepathy. There was even a math engine that could autocomplete any equations it witnessed. This alone was groundbreaking. It was already enough for the Regalia to stand on its own as a product when Charlotte got to virtual reality applications.

In addition to a massive improvement in graphic quality, a huge bombshell was dropped. One of the biggest complaints the public has with the entire VR industry is that it encourages laziness. You have to be comatose for long periods of time. Charlotte called her answer to this ‘training mode’. It is the ability to transfer real-world tasks into game stats. If you study for an exam, your wisdom stat could increase. If you run a marathon, your endurance stat could increase. If you practice a sport, your agility or strength stat could go up. It was amazing. This would completely separate Tripwire from the rest of the VR industry.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“How could Virtech have walked away from this?” Katy asked incredulously.

“Virtech never even let us explain,” Charlotte answered with a complicated expression. “They took one look at our product and called it useless. They said that they were above doing business with punks like us. They said that our helmet might be a little bit shinier and their game’s graphics might be a bit better on it, but that didn’t make it any more useful.”

Katy’s jaw dropped open. She knew that Virtech wasn’t exactly welcoming of outsiders, but she had no idea they could be this brusque. Back when she knew the Vallimonts, they would never have acted this way. What had happened?

After they had finished oohing and aahing over the Regalia, the conversation became serious. Charlotte mentioned that as long as she could have access to Tripwire’s codebase, Morphix would take care of writing a wrapper to allow the Regalia to handle their current code without rewriting anything. Once the code was wrapped, they would even supply the developers with special testing devices that had higher privileges.

Morphix also owned their own factory, so Tripwire didn’t need to worry about manufacturing costs. The Regalia was made from a lightweight metal alloy which they produced themselves, which did drive up costs somewhat, but in the end, the Regalia only cost about $100 to produce. Morphix did want to assist in the alpha and beta testing periods, but that was just for the sake of testing their wrapper and making sure that their devices were performing up to their standards. They also wanted the chance to provide input on the game, but did not want any of the rights for it.

It was eventually decided that Tripwire would purchase exclusive rights to development on all Morphix products for the next twenty five years. They would also order an initial 1,000,000 Regalias at $300 a piece to be distributed with their game. They would charge $500 for the final product. This was already half of the price of Virtech’s product and some users might not even want the game. They might just want the Regalia for use in their everyday lives. As progress continued on the game, the would update their initial order based upon estimates for the size of their user base and they would continue to purchase more as needed.

It was also decided that Morphix would be allowed to sell a stripped down version of the Regalia called the Providence for a cheaper price to users who wanted the Regalia to help with health issues. This version would only assist the user with sensory perception problems. Charlotte also disclosed that there were already several units that had been used for testing out in the wild, but Katy wasn’t worried about that. Morphix offered to take extra security measures to ensure that users would not be able to wrap Virtech software for use on their machines.

The final arrangements would be made between the lawyers. With that, negotiations were over for the day and Katy called her husband up to the conference room with the other senior officers in the company to share the good news. The entire company was abuzz with the exciting news. Charlotte excused herself to make a phonecall to the other co-owner to inform them of the result of the meeting.

The silver case that Charlotte had brought with her held an astounding 50 units which she offered to leave with the office as a goodwill gesture to let the employees get used to the devices. Tripwire decided that it would be for the best to keep the exact appearance and capabilities of the Regalia a secret until the project was a little further along. Charlotte agreed. Unable to wait, Katy and Jeff did snap one picture of themselves wearing Regalias and making victory signs with their fingers to send to James.

James understood the victory signs, but didn’t even notice the devices on his parents’ heads. He sent back a quick, “Congrats,” before continuing to listen to the review lecture for his physics class. James and Luke continued their uneventful day before finally heading back to James’ house with their backpacks stuffed full of textbooks that they wouldn’t normally need.

James shared the picture he had received with Luke on the way home. When they arrived, they immediately seated themselves in the spacious living room and reluctantly applied themselves to studying. It wasn’t until 7 that Mr. and Mrs. Marcel wandered through the front door with a fair bit of celebratory alcohol in their blood and a certain silver briefcase in their hands.

~~~

AN: Probably should have spaced out releasing these chapters, but I wanted to get them all out quickly since most of this is pretty basic exposition. I hate exposition. Anyways, let me know what you think.