“No. Absolutely not,” Chad declares from the speaker in the conference room wall. “Not under any circumstances.”
“Chad,” Louise says as patiently and diplomatically as she can, “it’s not a question of whether they’ll be using our bots or not. They already have them, they stole them years ago. They’re already using them. It’s only a question of whether we have any control over them, and whether we get anything out of it.”
I don’t envy her having to chair this sibling meeting. She’s probably the best one to do it though. Chad’s always had a grudging respect for her.
“Let me get this straight,” Chad says. His angry face pixelates for a moment on the screen. “We get robbed, and you all want to cut a deal with the robber to let her keep everything she stole? Am I the only one who cares about Father’s legacy? This is outrageous!”
“If there was a better option, we would be talking about it now,” Evan says. “I didn’t like it either, but it’s our only choice that does any good at all.”
“Of course there’s a better option,” Chad shouts. “We go take our shit back.”
“What?” I ask, incredulous. “You want to invade Brazil and find wherever they’ve been developing the counterfeit bots? Then what? Tear the place down and hope that we don’t miss a single bot? Pray the plans aren’t also on some drive somewhere else?”
“We don’t need to take out all the bots,” Chad’s tone is getting colder as his rage gets more calculating. “We just need to take out all the people working on them. And the ones running the show and footing the bill.”
I shake my head and several of the sibs in the conference room do the same. I’ve been liking Chad more and more with him far away, but every now and then he has to remind me of what a dick he is.
“You’re talking about starting a war against one of the richest and most powerful men in South America,” I say, looking at Antonio Campos’s entry in my index. “The guy lives in a walled compound ten times the size of ours and has a small private army. Are you planning to go in like some kind of commando.”
“If I have to, yes!” he declares with all the confidence in the world.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“You going to kill him?” I ask. “And then kill Dorothy? How about all the folks in the VR headsets? They’re just techs who wanted to do some good in the world. You going to kill them too?”
“I’d only slag the headsets, the operators are just pawns,” he says. “But Campos and Dorothy stole from the wrong family.”
“Chad,” Louise interjects, ”the defensive system is designed to keep you from getting assassinated. It doesn’t make you invincible. You wouldn’t make it anywhere near either of them.” She pauses for a moment. Chad doesn’t start shouting at her, so maybe she’s starting to get through to him. “Even if you did kill them, the genie is out of the bottle. Once one person has made a copy and got a working proof-of-concept, you know others won’t be far behind. People all over have been working on this since the Gray Goo Incident. There’s too much potential in the technology. So unless you want to spend all of your time for the next couple of decades flying around killing everyone who gets their hands on nanobots and still failing, licensing the tech is the best option.”
The phone goes silent for a moment, then Chad spouts off another heated tirade. Guess she wasn’t getting through to him after all.
To Evan, Louise: This is going about like we thought it would. We’re going to just have to take the win by majority.
From Louise: You’re probably right, but give me a little longer to work on him.
Louise methodically lays out the benefits, now including among them not having to kill anyone and not getting killed storming a Brazilian plutocrat’s compound. Chad yells about it a few more times as she goes on. I glance around and check the vitals of my siblings in the room. His ranting isn’t convincing to anyone on our end of the call. Even Marc is tuning him out and he tends to hang on Chad’s every word even when he disagrees with him. After half an hour, Chad finally seems to finally realize that he’s on the losing side of the argument.
“Whatever,” he says sullenly. “Do what you want. It’s on your heads when this all turns to shit. I want it formalized in a vote. I want to be on record for when we look back at making the worst decision since Father died.”
“Of course,” Louise says. “All in favor?”
Everyone but Chad votes for it.
“And I’ll put you down as opposed, Chad. The motion passes.”
“Good,” I say. “I’ll get a meeting set up with Dorothy and Campos this week to discuss it. We still don’t even know if we can get them on board, so it may all be a moot point.”
“I hope it is,” Chad says. “You’re selling out Father’s dreams. Whatever. Goodbye. It’s late and I’ve got real work to do in the morning.”
The call abruptly disconnects.
“Goodbye to you too, Chad,” Louise says to the blank screen. She grabs the gavel and clacks it down lightly. “That’s all for this meeting.”
“Come on,” Evan says, grabbing me before I can slink off to my office. “Let’s go get lunch.”