Chad laughs when we show him the video again of Dorothy getting fired and thrown out. It’s become a kind of ritual for our weekly meetings.
“I still vote no, but I appreciate your efforts more every time I watch that,” Chad says from the speaker.
“Duly noted,” I acknowledge. “We gave it our best shot. The previous vote still stands.”
“I know, and you’re all still wrong. This isn’t what Father would have wanted,” he says, though the anger that used to permeate the argument for him doesn’t show up in his tone. “He probably would have appreciated your treatment of Dorothy, though. He hated her so much after he caught her stealing from him.”
“All right, then,” I say. “On to logistics for the first leg of the Mekong trip. Chad, you’ll arrive early, flying from Congo. The jet will take off and come get us once it drops you off. Does that still work for you, Chad?
“Sure.”
“Great. We’ll bring the control boards for the boats and the builds. The Vietnamese have given us permission to scavenge from a scrapyard near Ho Chi Minh City, so building the boats and growing our clouds should be easy there. Chad, can you get yourself some formalwear between now and then? We’ll need to attend some fancy events along the way and let some local leaders have photo ops with us. It was the price of admission to some of these countries.”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” he responds, nodding.
“Our rooms are already booked at the Reverie Saigon Hotel. Our guides have provided a recommendation for a good restaurant where we can meet up to have dinner.”
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“Works for me. Is at least one of the guides set to meet me at the airport?”
“Yeah, Thao will meet you with a car, he’s the most familiar with the area out of all six of them. He’ll show you around town and get you whatever you need. I’ll send you his number so you can coordinate with him.”
“Great, just get it to Keeya. She’s handling all of that for me,” he says with a smile. “Hey, have you and the dev team got the filters finished?”
“We’re into the live production trials stage. We’ve seen a couple of minor kinks in the sequestration systems after they’ve run for a few days in thick sludge, but we’re working them out. We’ll be done in time.”
Chad nods approval.
“Marc,” I say, turning to address him. “Is everyone from class two good to go for the trip? I’ve seen Erik still struggling in your practices.”
“He’ll be OK. He’s better now than I was when we went to Djibouti and he’s still improving. The others are all at least as good as I am now.”
I appreciate Marc’s frank acknowledgement of his limitations. That’s progress for him. I add another notch in his favor for upgrading him to the full capabilities of the implant at some point.
“I’ll trust your judgment,” I tell him, and he nods in thanks. “Last issue, I’d like to move up and lengthen the simulator times for class three when we start them. I’ve run through metrics with Marc and we both agree it would help. With what we’ve seen with the Geologists, the biggest difficulty they all report is with basics like learning to type and deal with the console while performing other activities.”
There are nods around the room and from Chad’s screen.
“All in favor?” I call.
I get agreement from everyone.
“Great,” I say. “Any other business before we call it good?”
No one responds. I slam down the gavel with a satisfying thunk.
“See you next time, Chad,”
“Until then,” he replies. His face disappears as he disconnects.