Matt and Zaliha were sharing lunch at the onshore cafeteria. Zaliha was still working from the onshore base, while Matt typically worked inside Proteus at the new factory. Matt frequently went inshore to work on the production line for the air trucks, so he would often stop to meet up with his girlfriend. The CEO Hisashi had a much more laid-back style than Trinidad, who shared the four-acre property. Where Trinidad was energetic and hyper-focused, Hisashi gave off a feeling of calm. He encouraged his workers to enjoy the process of designing and building. Meditation or even napping was allowed, but electronic distraction like surfing the web or playing on a phone was strongly discouraged. If you weren’t completely engaged coming up with design or improving factory workflow, he would transfer employees to a different task. No one got in trouble for ideas they presented and there weren’t deadlines, but if you were transferred too many times, Hisashi would fire you. When people couldn’t find satisfaction in their work, he thought they would be better off working somewhere else.
As a result of their perfectionism, Matt found it was taking several times as long to get the robotics working. For the first time he found himself changing designs because they disrupted the visual aesthetic, their motion was not ‘smooth’, or the sounds they made were too jarring. It was weird getting requirements that didn’t directly translate to bottom line profitability, but Matt enjoyed that this was a different kind of challenge. Previously he had worried about burning out, but the days he worked at Hisashi’s factory he came home feeling relaxed and content.
“I can’t believe people just take a nap in the middle of the day and no one cares!” Zaliha exclaimed, raising her eyebrows.
“Well, usually people are meditating on their designs, but if you fall asleep it's no problem unless you snore too much. Then they tell you to go to this conference room where people can’t hear you.” Matt replied. He hadn’t actually taken a nap there but had seen several people doing it.
“I can’t believe Melinda is letting him run the company that way.” Zaliha still couldn’t wrap her head around napping.
“Melinda said she was happy with Hisashi and thinks that some of the other companies should be more concerned with the mental health of employees.” Matt said. “Anyway, we are going to start the initial production run next month. We will be sending vehicles to various places to get approvals to fly them. It will take longer to get approvals than we spent on the design and factory setup. Well, except in Yucatán. Melinda managed to get special approval for transport between our facilities from the governor. He’s supposed to tour Proteus next week along with some other dignitaries.”
Elsa had been listening in on the conversation from a couple tables over. She decided to join them at their table.
“Oh, I actually heard about that. Melinda has been really busy with Biotech; we are setting up a health spa. Rich, old people will come in and get illegal rejuvenation treatments. She said some important people were going to come in.” Elsa said, twirling a finger through her light blue hair.
“Illegal?” Zaliha asked, her eyes widening.
“Well, the treatments were tested illegally in Thailand. We are using medicines and genetic engineering that have not been approved by any government health organization.” Elsa explained, a smirk turning up the corner of her mouth.
“I hope you guys didn’t kill anyone.” Matt said.
“No, that one security guy almost died when we tried to change his bone chemistry and Carl technically died a few times. Carl actually had his heart stop once and was brain dead twice! We had plenty of other mishaps, like Gabriel’s hand and some lady who had tumors growing all over her face. “Elsa explained.
“I think Gabriel seems to be enjoying his conspiracy crowd celebrity status. “Zaliha added. She had watched some of his videos and found them entertaining.
“We had to do quite a bit of work on the tumor lady, but she looks fantastic now. I heard she’s divorcing her husband. He got jealous about all the attention she is getting now,” Elsa continued.
“I’m not even sure what to think about that.” Matt said. “What kind of treatments are you guys going to sell?”
“Muscle fitness, but a weaker version of what we did to Scott and Carl. It should really help older people with mobility and energy. Bone density improvements and teeth regrowth will also help some people. We have a skin treatment which can knock off about 5-10 years of sun damage in the first round. It has diminishing returns on additional rounds of treatment, but you can do multiple rounds or target specific areas if you are really vain, like
“Your hair looks pretty great too,” Zaliha commented. “I was waiting to see if it would fall out, but I might want to get mine done too. Maybe Matt will give it a try!”
“Awesome! Barry already asked to get purple hair, but we can’t do that color yet.” Elsa said before continuing. “We have some other stuff we are testing for cardiovascular, digestive, and even brain health but those still have some problems.” Elsa’s eyes looked away for that last part.
Matt suspected they had a few other patients who were not currently enjoying being test subjects.
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“Are you really sure this is all safe?” Matt asked. It would not be good if they had complications while treating the governor or his wife.
“Not really. I mean it all worked on at least one person. We can handle unintended issues much better than a typical hospital. We’re still testing a couple dozen volunteers from the latest group of immigrants and paid volunteers we found locally. We should have at least ten tests for each procedure underway or finished before we start on the governor.” Elsa concluded before changing the subject. “How is the air truck project going?”
“The prototype flew, but the control systems had problems, and we nearly crashed it into Trinidad’s factory. He would have killed us all!” Zaliha said, her dark eyes widening.
“She’s exaggerating a bit,” Matt said. “We fixed the issues, and now we’re keeping it in the air for a few days at a time to see which parts are wearing out the most. The next version, we will use more expensive materials or change the designs for parts that have issues.”
“Yeah, plus there is a tropical storm nearby. We want to fly around the edges to see how it handles in weather and if it can handle a lightning strike.” Zaliha shrugged.
“Who would be crazy enough to test that?” Elsa asked. “Oh, I bet it’s Jansen.”
“Got it in one!” Matt cheered.
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Scott had a long list of projects, and they all seemed to keep stuck at about 80% complete. Whenever they made progress, more issues appeared, or they would come up with a feature that had to be included but required a rewrite of a large part of the code. He was managing over twenty people, and this was probably the source of his problem. When it was just him and maybe another couple people, he had a better grasp of the project and could just write whatever code was needed to patch it all together. It seemed like everyone preferred rewriting each other’s code instead of understanding what it did or making a little effort changing their own code to make it work.
Glitch_HR had suggested a number of techniques for managing programming teams remotely. He had tried to follow some of it, but it seemed beyond him how to make very intelligent coders accept that other people’s code was acceptable even if it didn’t meet their very specific standards. Not for the first time, Scott wondered if he was building his team wrong. Maybe they needed programmers with less technical skill, but who were more willing to work with others.
His first project was to get the heads-up display software Carl was using to identify people with hostile intent. It was a common feature in video games to display aggro, but in real life it required very complex AI which needed to leverage their HR database and video recognition tools. Also, there was only a limited set of data showing people who turned aggressive and attacked others. There was a small set of videos used as evidence in criminal cases, but a lot of people intending violence tried to avoid cameras or were in a war zone where nothing was working.
His programmers were all highly rated - at least as skilled as Scott or better according to Glitch_HR, but they had written the code and re-written it several times and the results were still not much better than a coin flip.
Scott decided to let them keep working on it, but he would try building a different team using more emphasis on interpersonal skills and teamwork and less on raw programming talent. Maybe the new team would work better, or maybe competition would inspire the original team to perform better. He was already over budget on this project, so he called Melinda for approval to try this approach.
“Hey Scott,” Melinda answered. He explained his idea.
“Sure, you have my approval to try this. We’re billing this to Biotech, which lost money this quarter, but I think they will be making a lot of money soon.” Melinda explained.
“I was wondering about that. I thought it would take years to get government approval for most of your treatments, even though they seem to be something a lot of people would want. I know my mom has been asking if you would let her get a few procedures.” Scott said.
“Scott! Why didn’t you tell me your mother wanted to participate?” Melinda scolded. “I’ll give her the employee discount, but you can afford to pay for it!”
“Sure, I probably have enough money these days. Out of curiosity, how much will some of the treatments cost?” Scott asked.
“Most procedures are from $200k to $500k. I think your mom would want skin, muscular system, and skeletal repair. Probably some other systems when they are ready. With the employee discount, we could probably do the first round for $800k.” Melinda replied.
“That is dollars, not pesos, right?” Scott was shocked at the price tag, but on the other hand, he could see rich old people paying for it.
“Don’t be cheap, Scott. You can afford it and your mother deserves it!” Melinda laughed. She knew perfectly well that Scott had received over $12 million in dividends for their third quarter of operations. Even after taxes, he could afford to spend the money for his mother.
“You’re right. Just send me the bill, and I’ll pay if dad wants anything too.” Scott agreed.
“This is why Biotech is about to become profitable. Rich people like you will spend a small fortune to look and feel young again. Someday we’ll drop the prices, so more people can afford it, but for now I think there will be more demand than we can handle. The governor of Yucatán and his wife along with a few Deputies, Senators and their spouses who are visiting are currently recovering from the procedure in the Spa. We gave them the treatments for free, claiming it was part of our testing, but they are well aware of what it will cost for everyone going forward. We’ll do a half price special for ‘public servants’ who work for the government.” Melinda explained.
“Sounds like the politicians will look the other way unless someone has a bad reaction to the treatments.” Scott said.
“Right. It’s still too expensive for some of the more honest ones, but I think people will be reluctant to shut it down if they might be able to afford it someday. The biggest problem is we’re worried about a flood of V.I.Ps showing up and getting disappointed we can’t treat them quickly enough. We will have a waiting list, but this type of person is usually not willing to wait for anything. I can only guess what type of carrot and stick nonsense we will have to deal with.” Melinda sighed.
“Glad I won’t have to deal with that. Good luck!” Scott ended the call.
Without further delay, he searched Glitch_HR for AI and video processing programmers with good teamwork skills. Scott was pleasantly surprised to find himself in the top 50, well above his nemesis Theofanis Zervou! In pure programming skill, Scott had stagnated around 70,000 in the rankings. Filtering for availability and cost, he picked a small team and started contacting them to explain the project.