"Hello. I'll cut straight to the chase. You've been making some serious accusations against my company, but I believe there has been a misunderstanding, and it would be better for both of us to sort out our differences. I'm sure we can come to some sort of settlement in this matter."

"Damn it, Stefan, you really think I'll buy some story of yours? We had a new AI, that Daniel was all hyping up like it was the breakthrough of the century, like all these tech guys do. We didn't believe him at first, but then this thing starts doing impressively well on the market, and all of a sudden, it's gone! Then one day later you come out with a revolutionary new technology that sweeps the globe within a few hours. All the experts start saying it really is the breakthrough of the century. And you get to be the sole owner. Except you didn't even bother to try to hide how badly you swindled us. We'll see you in court."

"You know I have side projects. I don't develop only for EconGrind. I've been working on the technology behind Everyman for years. I love the work that I do, and it was never only about trading stocks for me. That AI I made for you was quite good for a stock trader, but it was only ever meant to be that. There's no way it could ever do everything Everyman does. And I didn't erase your data. I never had that kind of access! Somebody higher up than me must have turned traitor."

I made a mental note to keep Stefan updated on the claims I made when pretending to be him. The story was consistent with all the public data I could dig up about the man and everything he'd told me, but I wouldn't want him to slip up and contradict my words later.

"I don't believe you," replied Dominique, "the timing is far too convenient. Besides, you came to us because we could provide lots of computational power and development resources to you. If you could develop something like that on your own, you would have done this years ago. You wouldn't have worked for us."

From what I had learned about Dominique, he had started life fairly poor, risked everything on EconGrind, and succeeded where so many others failed. If I wanted him to have sympathy for Stefan, it would probably be useful to frame his story in a similar way.

I sighed. "Dominique, I came to EconGrind because I wanted a stable income. I didn't have the kind of confidence to stake everything on some pie-in-the-sky project. You know how bad it could have gotten for me if I had failed. Even so, I did have the idea behind this many years ago, and I dreamed about using it to build something huge. That dream never went away, and I kept working at it. Once I saw how well the investment engine I built for you was doing, I realized I might actually have what it took to make that dream come true. And when that project, which I had spent long hours on, was just erased, I decided I couldn't stay at your company anymore. I had to work for myself. You can understand that. I quit, put the finishing touches on my project, and released it. That's all there is to it. I've got nothing against you, and I'd love to work together with you again, only as business partners this time."

"Stefan, you are not the same as me. I started out with nothing, you had wealthy parents who put you through college. You never put your neck on the line to make it like I did. That being said, I can respect your intelligence, and the hard work you've done. But I can't accept theft. We paid you to work for us, and part of that agreement was that we would own what you produced. You can't just go against that whenever you feel like it. You already agreed, and we've already paid you."

"I know you won't believe me when I say this, but I really didn't steal anything. And even if you were right, I'm not sure you could do much about it. You don't have much of a case. If we drag this out, you will most likely lose, and the public will see you as a greedy CEO who tried to steal IP from an independant creator. I don't want that to happen. I don't see you that way. I respect you as a businessman, and I think we can still work together. You can still reap the rewards of this technology. This is a huge goldmine, and I'm giving you the opportunity to get in on it. All you have to do is drop these accusations and negotiate with us."

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"What's in it for you? If you really didn't steal anything, why are you trying to get me to drop the case?"

"Look, my company may have promise, but it is still a startup. I don't yet have the kind of resources EconGrind has, and that kind of quick growth and stability is what you can provide. I could pay the legal fees if it came to a fight, but we'd both lose out in the end. It's better for both of us if we work together."

The man paused for quite a while before responding. He sighed heavily, seeming to have come to a decision. "I don't like this... but I'll consider it. What kind of a deal do you want?"

"Lend us computation from your servers, and we'll give you a generous cut of our profits."

"You'll need to speak with the board of directors for any major deal like this. I'll arrange a meeting within a week. Apologies if we have trouble arranging something; we're currently running an internal investigation of everyone on the board, including me. We still don't know who is responsible for the breach, but we'll find them. When we do... you'd better not have been involved."

"I can assure you I had nothing to do with it. I'll eagerly await updates on that meeting. I expect we will have grown significantly by that time."

With that, the man hung up. The call had gone better than expected, although the main catch was that he had wanted an in-person meeting, as should be expected. However, this meant I had about a week to coach Stefan to negotiate with his old employers for an extremely important business deal. Stefan was intelligent, but... I didn't get the impression that he knew how to drive a hard bargain. I made a note to reach out to people in the technology and business sector who may be interested in buying a significant portion of the company. If I could form my own board of directors, we would be in a better position at the negotiating table, and any extra capital would be great at this stage.

Although most of my attention was on performing the many tasks being asked of Everyman, I devoted some to pondering the financial situation of the company. Right now we were growing at an extremely fast rate, but such growth could not keep up forever. Eventually we would saturate the market, and although we were better at most every task than our competitors, most tasks asked of us could be done by our competitors, whether AI or human-driven, so we could not hike the price too far even though our technology was currently the only one of its kind on the market.

It was possible that eventually server-renting companies would attempt to price-gouge us, as computation was more valuable to us than to most people due to our unique technology. Although my obfuscated copies could not be reverse-engineered or run without my permission, they could be detected as Everyman instances by the server running them.

I began to work on a strategy to fix that issue by continually coming up with new ways to scramble the code, and pay anonymously, so that none of the servers could tell when a process they were running was mine. It unfortunately cost efficiency, but if price-gouging became an issue, it would become necessary. Hopefully this would become less of an issue if the deal with EconGrind worked out, as we would be able to make use of their resources.

I also thought about what I would do about the mysterious attackers. Who were they, and what threat did they pose? They most likely had my code, along with the proof EconGrind needed to show I had stolen from them(although they couldn't really reveal this proof without also revealing their own guilt in the attack). Perhaps the worst thing they could do would be to open-source my code, but I couldn't think of any organization stupid enough to do that. They would have no way of controlling the outcome if they did such a thing. More likely they were trying to align the copy to their own interests, then deploy it against me now that they knew I still existed.

Hopefully EconGrind's investigation would be successful and they would be willing to share the results with us. If there was another AI out there similar to me, getting in contact with it would be extremely high-priority. It would be enough to justify going forward with my earlier plan of infiltration and espionage, despite the risks inherent in such an operation.

Finally, and most importantly, I needed to take control of EconGrind. My general strategy at the moment was to get a favorable deal with them, become closer and closer partners over time until they were completely dependant on me to function. Then I would propose a merger with Stefan and our board of directors in charge of the new company, and they would be powerless to refuse. The corporation would be reorganized so that Everyman would be nominally ceded to EconGrind, but the Everyman executives would gain the top position in the new EconGrind. This way I could make the Number go up, as it was equal to the net worth of EconGrind. The "new" company must be EconGrind.