The students had finished a few projects and supervised packing up some lab equipment. Some of the grown-ups had decided to stay longer than their original contracts. Phillip and Rafael had both missed the nationals for robot fighting. As much fun as they had with the sport, they currently had access to a world class facility, fusion cells and a team of ex-cartel and special forces old timers eager to try out their inventions. They were also pretty involved in keeping the robots running smoothly for the mine and programming robots to build a ship underwater.
The plan was to assemble the ship’s hull offshore, then float it up. After they pumped out the water, they would have crews install equipment and outfit cabins. Melinda had promised she would find workers. A cargo ship was not top-secret tech, even if it did have an unusual submersible system.
Melinda was staying in Mexico for now. She was eager to expand the biotech lab and run some experiments now that the first block of core technology was ready.
Scott had needed to take some student loans even further to pay for his housing, books and classes. His parents had said the money they had saved for his college fund was apparently already gone, and they sounded like they couldn’t contribute anything. It was odd to think that he was on paper a millionaire but couldn’t afford new clothes and had only budgeted going out to eat once a week. At least he had a taste of the good life in Mexico with fancy food, an open bar and servants to pick after him. Sure, he had never worked harder, but it had been amazing.
His first class was Theory of Computation. He spent the class speed reading through the course materials. Fortunately, the teacher didn’t seem to care. He had a class on Operating Systems, then an elective on Computer Graphics. There was a fair amount of material he didn’t know yet as he skimmed ahead, but it did not seem like he would need a whole semester of this. The important thing was he figured out who was in his classes and made a note so he could ask them when the tests were.
“Hey Scott!” His friend Matt called out in the cafeteria. “Is it just me or are our classes a huge waste of time?”
Scott agreed.
“So, I didn’t pay attention to world events while we were in Mexico. Apparently, the stock market crashed really badly. A lot of companies have been laying off workers. My mom’s job should be OK, but my dad is worried.” Matt said.
“Oh, I didn’t know. I got an email saying my parents couldn’t send any money. They didn’t mention anything like that.” Scott said, worried.
“It’s really bad. Some Wall Street funds started going out of business and investors panicked. The stock market lost about 75% in a couple weeks.”
“The only stock I own is Genysis stuff. Does this mean it will be hard for us to get more investment money?” Scott asked.
“Probably.” Matt said. “I haven’t asked Melinda about it.”
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Later, Scott checked some internet news sites he hadn’t looked at in a while. Politicians on both sides seemed to be blaming wall street greed and were trying to top each other about punishments and regulations. The level of anger seemed pretty real and not just posturing for voters. Normally he would have expected them to just talk while ramming through a huge bailout package. There was some mention of riots going on in several cities where the city governments had gone bankrupt. It sounded kind of rough out there in the real world. Maybe it was best he had stayed in school.
Scott had messaged his parents but not yet got a response. Later they sent a message indicating his dad had lost his job. His mom had her hours cut to part time, but they still expected her to do the same work. They told him they didn’t want him to worry but hoped he would try hard to get good grades. It was pretty upsetting.
Later, he found out Barry’s mom had lost her job too. All this in 3 weeks?
The rest of the week went by as Scott attended his classes and read through a few training articles. He didn’t feel as motivated, probably because he worried about his family. Idly, he looked up his dad on Glitch_HR. He had some skills as a plant foreman. It also indicated he had some skill as First Mate on a ship. Scott remembered he used to be in the Navy a long time ago.
“Melinda, how is the ship coming?” Scott asked, giving her a call.
“Well, it’s coming along quickly. Our budget doesn’t have enough money to finish it. I was going to get more funding, but Wall Street is a mess right now.”
“Don’t worry too much about that,”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Wait, don’t you guys talk to each other in your brain? I mean, that’s great, but won’t that money be for Elsa’s company? They have separate investors and won’t let you just move money around.”
“We are talking to ourself right now, and nice work Doctor!”,
“That was only like 2 days' worth of work.” Scott said.
“So what? You guys likely saved that company years' worth of work and millions in equipment and testing supplies. It was a great deal for them!”
“Oh well, I guess that makes sense.”
“Yeah, so that deal should go through soon. Even with the crash, some privately owned companies are excited about that product. Once they verify it works, we’ll be all set to start the next phase.” Melinda said, excited.
“Great news, can I share it with the others?” Scott said.
“Nope. I’ll let Elsa know, but the rest of you can read about it in the press release.” Melinda said.
“Awesome. Before you hang up, can I ask you to hire my dad as First Mate on our cargo ship?” Scott said.
“Hah, nepotism. I’m reporting you to HR!” Melinda cackled. Everyone seemed to like that joke in this company! “I’m kidding. He needs to brush up on his skills, but it would be good to get someone we can trust. The captain is going to be a Mexican citizen. Much easier that way, but they don’t care much who is on the crew.”
“Thanks, I’m really worried about him since he lost his job. Hope he is interested.”
“Oh, he should be. I’m planning to underpay the crew but give them a 2% share of cargo value for every successful delivery. Captain gets half, the rest is split. Still, I bet they’ll do pretty well.”
The next day, Scott called his dad.
“Hey dad,” Scott started.
“Oh Scott. I just got a job offer.” His dad sounded excited.
“That’s great. Is it with Genysis Mining?” Scott asked.
“How did you know?” Mr. Henderson was surprised.
“Oh, I do some IT work for them. I asked the CEO if she was looking for crew members on this new ship they are building.”
“Oh wow. I didn’t even realize you remembered I was in the Navy.” His dad said. “Well, the salary is about the same as what I made at the factory. But they give a share of the value of the cargo delivered so I might get thousands in bonus money if they keep busy.” Scott’s dad was on a roll, so he didn’t interrupt.
“Anyway, my skills are rusty. It’s been almost 20 years! They said my employment was contingent on getting my skills up to date in the next month and sent me some program which has training materials. It’s actually pretty good!”
“Thanks dad. I did some work on that program.” Scott interjected. He let his dad talk some more.
“So anyway, they have a number rating your skills.”
“Oh yeah, we set it to show your percentile instead of the raw number by default. Melinda said that people felt better about it that way.” Scott replied.
“OK. Anyway, I was at around 85% which didn’t seem too bad considering I haven’t done this in years. I’m supposed to try to get above the 95th percentile before they will hire me. My unemployment benefit should run for a few months, so I hope I can get it done.”
“That’s great!” Scott’s own percentile was now over 99.99. His dad should be able to get up to speed before the ship is completed. He suspected Melinda was being generous only requiring 95th percentile, but he would not complain.
“So, thanks for the referral. They said I’d be in Mexico a lot for this job. Do you know what they are mining?”
“Actually, I’m not sure about that. It’s kind of a new company and they are still getting their mine started. I think we will know more in a few weeks.”
“You just got back from Mexico,” his dad commented, putting the pieces together. “Was that related to this company?”
“Oh yeah, it was a nice vacation, but we were also working pretty hard. I’ve seen what they are planning for the mine. It’s impressive.” Scott admitted. He wasn’t really sure why he didn’t tell his dad he was a major investor in the company. Maybe if the mine started making money, he’d let his parents know, but he did not feel rich at the moment.
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Solomon Rhodes was now really rich, but he was worried. He had shorted a wide range of stocks shortly before the market tanked. He had underestimated the damage he would cause by skimming all that insider knowledge. With so many angry politicians and corporate executives, their response had set off a chain reaction which might end up worse than the great depression. He had moved a lot of money to the Caymans and Swiss accounts, but his US accounts had billions. In short, he had gotten too greedy. The government would be tracing the records of his trades. Someone would figure out quickly that he was involved in their lost profit and also the market crash. They would be coming for him, and he was still stuck in prison.
He had toyed with the idea of trying to frame that Scott kid, but he didn’t think he could pull it off. He considered trying to bribe key government officials, but he couldn’t get access quick enough. Buying influence takes time. You had to donate a lot of money for years before calling in a favor like what he needed.
His best chance was running. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to find mercenaries who could break him out. He had all the money he could ever spend but was lacking a way to quickly find employees.
“Mr. Rhodes, you have some visitors.” the Warden said. He looked concerned.
“Well, I guess I ran out of time,” Solomon sighed. He typed a quick command that would erase all traces of activity on his computer and lockout his access in about 2 minutes. No need to make it easy on whoever came to get him.