The quick negotiations were a welcome surprise. And yes, I know that the real negotiations would happen later, and this was just the first sniff test.
And despite the tension that was thick enough to cut, I mostly felt at a loss for what to do. The new computer lineup was long since finished, and the first test specimens were happily chugging away.
I had created the first prototypes for each of the jacks for Darren and Kate and was now waiting on some brain-dead clones of the two to finish baking so that I could test them. Naturally, those clones would at best provide a marginal test subject, as the majority of the jacks functions needed a working brain, but I could at least eliminate the most egregious problems.
I had created a full simulation of their brains from the scans I had gotten from the BOU, but that was still only a simulation, and I was a bit unwilling to just trust those with the life of my friends.
I would have continued my studies of gravitics, but I was coming up to the end of that course, and I had realized that the one thing that I wanted to know about it, was simply missing. There were heaps of observational data, and many experiments on the various combinations, but apparently, it was completely unknown how the grav-coils even worked.
It seemed that Kobashigawa had just a lucky discovery when he experimented with some palladium-rhodium electrodes. I could not find out what he tried to get, but some subsequent experimentation of the strange gravitational effects when a certain batch of electrodes was electrified led to the invention of the grav-coils.
Don’t get me wrong, it was still a monumental discovery, but would it have hurt anybody to actually try and find out how they worked? And yes, I understand that it was an important step when he combined three coils into a grav-turbine.
The directional control of the gravity in its area of influence was… it is hard to overstate how important it was. It was not quite at the level of fire or the wheel, but it came close.
But humanity had some decent information about how fire and the wheel worked. For the grav-coils, we apparently were not much more than the neanderthals believing that the fire was a gift from the sky spirits. I hated that notion.
How could our whole civilization be built on something that nobody understood how it worked? How could generations of scientists and engineers not go stark raving mad with the thought?
It was pretty obvious what I had to do to get that knowledge, sure. I just did not want to do it. The Seeberger equation was a monster, and plugging in what we knew about gravity and the grav-coils would be a real chore, even for me. I did not fancy the headache that would cause.
I knew of course that it was just a matter of time, and a relatively short time at that, before I couldn’t take it any longer and simply did the work, but for now, I was not willing to do it.
Instead, I began early explorations on reactor tech. The simple fact that nobody knew how the grav-coil worked already told me that the fusactor was an equally fortunate discovery without anybody really knowing how it worked.
It couldn’t be anything else, considering that the main components of it were the grav-coils. At least this coursework would give me a basic understanding of fusion in general.
I was, admittedly somewhat morosely, reading up on the topic, when I got a message from a longtime customer of my soft- and hardware. D4N73, or Dante, was an Abyss-dweller, #57 on the ranking board. Quite a bit more sophisticated than Argo but still only barely accepted in the Abyss at all.
A good customer though, and he had sprung for a fully tailored Mk. IV board about three months before I had to get out of Seattle.
‘Hey, Seraphim. Have you seen the new video from Chuckles?’
Ok, I was moderately intrigued. Chuckles was the call sign of the self-proclaimed first reviewer of matrix warfare equipment. Of course, the first reviewer status was not contested, as there was no other. Well, at least not somebody who could be seen as impartial.
There were a couple of review sites that could as well have a ‘sponsored by:’ label, but nothing the people on the dark web could even moderately trust.
That still did not explain how somebody could get the idea to operate under the handle “Chuckles the Clown”. But he, she, it, whatever, we still did not know who was behind the mask, had a very good reputation, and was the keeper of the semi-official ranking list of our equipment.
And more important, as well as much more numerous, they reviewed and rated the utilities and software we could buy.
Nonetheless, being messaged about a new video from them was… new.
‘No, I did not know that they have released something new.’
‘A couple of hours ago. New hardware this time. And I think it is something interesting for you.’
Ok, now I was a bit confused. I mean, yes, Chuckles had reviewed some of the hardware that I sold, but over the last few months, I had mostly removed myself, in my Seraphim persona, from the dark web.
With a shrug, that of course I knew Dante did not see, I answered him:
‘Ok, I’ll look into it. And thanks for the head up.’
That finished this small, but curious interchange, and I had to shake my head. Nonetheless, I connected to Glory and dove into the matrix.
It was pretty quick to get to Chuckles’ page and find the newest video. The topic just served to heighten my confusion though.
It seemed as if Chuckles had gotten their hands on the ‘new’ Kawamoto Ryu 50, and decided to test it. For some reason. The all-new Ryu would be mostly the same as the last 20 Ryus. As always. Kawamoto released a new version every single year, and the differences from all the previous models usually consisted of a new color scheme and now and then a slightly redesigned case.
Yes, the OS got an upgrade, but a customer in good standing, aka somebody who had done nothing to affront Kawamoto and paid promptly and fully, would get the same upgrade as well.
To be fair, the Ryu was by far the best of the commercial boards that one could get. But I don’t think they had changed anything over the last few decades.
But Dante seemed to think that this video was actually important, so I began watching it.
The video started with zooming in on Chuckles in their full clown getup, consisting of an oversized white jumpsuit with multicolored polka dots and painfully gaudy frills, a white mask with extremely exaggerated makeup of the multicolored variety, and a big, red bulbous nose in the center, a rainbow-colored wig on top and several accouterments like the pink and lime green artificial flower or the large rubber mallet.
“Hello my friends. Welcome back to Chuckles Computer Consortium, where we will today take a look at the new Ryu 50.”
They made a pause for effect.
“I know, I know, as far as we are concerned, if we want to get the performance data on the new Ryu, we can take the performance report from 10 years ago.”
They turned around and gestured toward something outside the camera view.
“But surprise, Kawamoto actually did it. They made a new Ryu.”
The always-present assistant of Chuckles, Squeaky, came into view, carrying a big board in its paws.
Squeaky was another of Chuckles’… idiosyncracies. It was obvious that it was a bot, as there was a strange shortage of 150cm tall squirrels that looked as if they had been rainbow vomited on by a unicorn in the real world.
The board itself was at least outwardly nothing spectacular. Sure, the case was nicely designed. But it was an averagely-sized board. A bit bigger than Precious I would say.
Then Chuckles continued: “Normally, we would now come to the part where I would show you the teardown. But for today, we have a little change in our usual script. You will realize the reason quickly I think. Instead, we begin with the benchmarks.”
A virtual display appeared behind Chuckles, showing the normal bar graphs.
“First, as always, we show you the Ryu in its pure form, as Kawamoto delivers it. One thing you should keep in mind though is that it has the typical utility accelerator that every Ryu comes with. So the results are not fully comparable to the other boards on the list.
As you can see, the Ryu gets 11,768 points in the Tesuta 49. It edges out the previous number one by 1.2%. That might seem big, but we all know that Kawamoto boards are always a little better in Tesuta than in other benchmarks. It is a feat nonetheless. The Ryu 49 lagged behind the Seraphim Mk. IV by 3.8%.
Now in Plato, it reaches respectable 14,911 points. That is still behind the 14,913 points of the Seraphim, but holly shit did Kawamoto get close. Just for comparison, the Ryu 49 reached 13,544 points.
Now to get to our own clown mark, the Ryu manages 8,372 points, compared to the 5,112 of the 49, or the 8,299 of the Seraphim. I have to say, I am impressed. And yes, nobody would use a naked Seraphim, the same as a naked Ryu.”
Chuckles waved at the virtual display, and the bars vanished.
“So, let’s come to the interesting numbers. The fully equipped board. We used our standard configuration, except for the Kawamoto 72A-66 app accelerator. For that, we have the integrated accelerator of the Ryu.
The rest of the configuration, just to remind you, is a Burgmeister M-877 Sector buffer system, a Nemian 7673 scrambler module, a Magna 72 speed loader, an Avalon Descron 4 scrambler module, three Dalgon G-55-MX network modules, a Type 22 virtual co-processor, and last but not least the Seraphim Mk. II en- and decryption module.”
The list of the parts appeared on the virtual display, and Chuckles continued:
“As you can guess, a fully populated board is a completely different type of beast. In the naked run, we only compared it to the Seraphim and the Ryu 49. Now we include the Nemian D-844 board in the ranking. You will see why.”
The first bar appeared.
“Tesuta now gives an impressive 32,811 points. That is still far behind the Seraphim's 34,538 points and even lags behind the Nemian's 33,826. The 49 is far beaten with 28, 874 points.
Plato makes it clear why we don’t trust commercial benchmarks all that much. It gives the Ryu 31,024 points. Compare that to the 43,093 of the Seraphim or the 40,076 of the Nemian it is clear that while Tesuta is biased in favor of the Ryu, Plato is biased against it. Still, for a Kawamoto board to get 31k points in Dalgon’s benchmark is a good showing. And just for completeness, the 49 had 22337 points.”
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
While they talked, the bars in question were shown on the display.
“So, let’s come to the main course here. The clown mark. With 17,876 points, it more than doubles its result from the naked run. So how does it stack up to the competition?
Let’s find out, after a message from our sponsor…”
The usual commercial was displayed. Usually, I used an adblocker, but for some content providers, like Chuckles, I had deactivated it. Yes, stupid, I know, but I was quite sure that nobody would be able to put malware on my board. Well, not malware that would work anyway. That was one of the reasons why Glory, and Precious before her, run an absolutely unique, one-of-a-kind operating system.
That did of course, not mean that I enjoyed being bombarded by advertisements, but for a few selected sources, I had decided to support their work.
A couple of minutes later Chuckles appeared again.
“Welcome back. Now the Nemian is still #2 on the list, but with 18,070 points, that is a very small lead of 1.1%. Now, most people have already guessed it, the new and old king, or should I say queen, is Seraphim. Her Mk. IV is still the best board money can buy with 19,430 clown points. But that is an interesting showing from last year. And naturally, the 49, which came to #21 last year14,658 points.”
I was now a bit confused. Sure, it was nice to hear that the best Kawamoto had to bring to the table was still behind what I had made, but why did Dante think this was something I should see? Well, for now, Chuckles continued.
“Of course, that is not the whole story. We all know that a Nemian sets you back around DC 2.3 million. And compared to the increase in performance, the Seraphim with its DC 2.7 million is a very good deal. But the 8% weaker Ryu is available for ¥225 million, or DC 750k. If you have the money, I still say get a Seraphim. Those 8% can someday save your ass. But on the other hand, the Ryu costs 28% of what a Seraphim costs. But as always, the decision is yours.”
They grabbed a standard screwdriver and moved around the table where the Ryu was laying.
“But now, let’s get to the teardown.”
They opened up the case and removed the cover.
“As you can see, Kawamoto has some serious sound-dampening going on here. Thanks to it being silent-breeze™ that has, fortunately, no negative effect on the cooling and the performance.”
He removed the sound-dampening foam, and I understood immediately why Dante had pointed me toward this video.
Sure, they had switched a few things around, and the utility accelerator took up the space of two of the UEB connectors, but the core of the board was impossible to mistake. For some reason, Kawamoto had decided to make the new Ryu a clone of my Mk IV! Well, around 95% clone I would say. They changed the casing of course, but I mostly had the customer provide the design for the case, so that did not count. But the rest… well, it explained how Kawamoto increased the performance by nearly 22%.
I felt a spike of anger going through me, but it took me only a few minutes to calm myself down. Kawamoto would not be very happy when Michael revealed the Q-link, quickly followed by the new processor family, and the new Mk VI.
So, let them have their 6 months of place in the sun. Heck, even producing the Mk IV industrially and selling it that way would rain on their parade.
But for now, Chuckles continued:
“As some of the more tech affine of our viewers will probably already have deduced, we now look at the reason why the new Ryu is so much better than the last Ryu. And for those who have not noticed it, here is a picture that I have taken from a board review roughly two years ago.”
A picture of the innards of the Mk IV was shown.
“As you can see, there are some similarities between those two boards. And the board I’ve shown you? That was the Seraphim Mk IV. So Kawamoto managed to close the gap to the top, by mostly cloning the best board one can buy.
It has to be very grating on Kawamoto, that they still drag 8% behind the Queen. Maybe we will, in time find out why the Ryu is weaker than the almost identical Seraphim.
It couldn’t be the only difference in the configuration. The UA that is integrated into the Ryu is a bit better than the 72-A66 that is commercially available.”
That was actually a good point. I looked closer at the insides of the board, and I have to confess, it took me a bit to find a real difference.
And I was pretty sure that Kawamoto did know it as well. But liability laws required this change.
Meanwhile, Chuckles finished their presentation:
“If we judge only by performance, the result is pretty obvious. There is still nothing more powerful than the Seraphim Mk IV available anywhere. But we are business people. If all you have are less than a million DC, then the Ryu is a decent alternative. I still would suggest that if you can afford it, get a Seraphim, but the Ryu is better than anything else in its price class, and it beats several boards around the DC 2 million mark.
All in all, the new Kawamoto Ryu is a surprisingly performant board. But it is just sad that the second biggest corporation in the whole world needs to steal the technical design from somebody else to make their very best. I would hope that they had a very good R&D department.”
They reassembled the board and closed the case.
“But as things are, and as scummy as I think this behavior is, we will have to live with Kawamoto doing what Kawamoto wants to do. Now, that’s all for today folks. I wish you a good day and stay safe in your quest to set the matrix on fire.”
I had managed to get my anger back under control. Yes, it was a jerk move. And it told stories about Kawamoto. But Kawa was at this time most likely the most powerful and richest corporation in the world. It had been Panacea, but those jerks were falling fast.
I was guessing that at the time when the Mk VI was coming out, and for sale, it would be at once significantly cheaper than the Mk IV, and I already knew that it would be orders of magnitude more powerful. 22%? Well, they tried.
When I looked into the comment section, I found the expected nearly flame war going on.
I found the usual hordes of fanbois, of Kawamoto, of Chuckles, and, of course, of me blasting their ever-surprising ignorance and mindless devotion into the matrix. Like everybody else, I had learned to mostly ignore them.
There were a few more sane people there, stemming against the tide of brain-damaged chimps sprouting nonsense they believed to be true.
Still, sometimes you find something interesting in those comment threads, and I skimmed through it.
At first, it was a crowing of my fans that Kawa had to steal my tech and still couldn’t do it right. The response of the Kawa-fans was mostly about how the price-for-performance was sooo much better and if I were so good as everybody said, I would make the boards as cheap as Kawamoto.
Idiots, all of them.
Fortunately, things had calmed down after the various zealots had spent their powder, and saner heads had mostly taken over.
Still, by now it had devolved into an argument that some people declared the Seraphim Mk IV the best board there is.
I struggled with myself for a moment, but in the end, I had nothing better to do right now, so I entered the fray.
My message, “To make it clear, the Mk IV is the best board one can buy, not the best that exists.” was followed first by a moment of silence.
Then one member of the “Mk IV for president”-faction with the handle Serarocks answered me:
Serarocks: “Just because you are too stupid to make something like the Mk IV does not mean that Seraphim is too. You are just jealous of her!”
What the… did I stutter? Where did this person get the idea that I was jealous? Of myself?
Thus came my message: “?!?”
Serarocks: ”You know full well what I mean. You are just a sniveling little coward who can’t accept that a woman is better than him. You are not even man enough to create an account here for your bullshit. Grow some balls and give us a name! Coward!”
That was disturbing. How… what… then I noticed that my messages had been sent under the name of USER2t5edhl8. I realized that this was the first time I had used Glory to go to Chuckles’ site.
I typed my next message:
“Oh, sorry. New hardware. I had not realized that I was not logged in.”
The login was really fast. After all, like most of the dark web sites, Chuckles used the neural imprint as authentification. That was accompanied by the system message of the comments:
User2t5edhl8 is now known as Seraphim
The nice thing about this type of authentification was that once you had obtained the handle, nobody else could use it. The reaction was almost instant:
Bluefin: “Burn!”
TrustyMallard: “Oh the gringe!”
LoneYeti: “Ouch, that must hurt.”
After a few seconds Serarocks came back:
Serarocks: “But… why? Why are YOU saying that your Mk IV is not the best?”
Urgh, I hated that. But… I could not let those stupid souls wallow in ignorance.
Seraphim: “Do you know what makes the Mk IV the best board one can buy?”
FarmDessert: “Because it is the fastest?”
Barnaclue: “Yeah, it is better than the rest.”
Serarocks: “Even Chuckles says it is 8% faster than the rest.”
Seraphim: “Than the rest you can BUY. That is the important point. Every jack is different. And their boards have to be adapted to their way of navigating the matrix. That makes it necessary for the better boards to be modular. So that the jack can adapt it to their individual style.”
Seraphim: “But modularity has a price. The interface between the modules costs a microscopic amount of time for each and every action. The modules are a bit farther apart, so the signal path is a tiny bit longer. To make the modules modular, they have to sacrifice a bit. An integrated system of the same functionality is smaller, which means you get more systems in, or you can upgrade to the next size without sacrificing volume in your case.”
Seraphim: “That means that if you have a talented Tech at hand, who you can trust, you are almost always better served with them creating a board specifically to your needs.”
Seraphim: “The thing that makes the Mk IV so much better than the other boards you can buy, that are modular, is that I managed to optimize the signal paths, to make it that much faster than other modular boards, giving it almost the performance of the better integrated boards. Nemian managed to copy a part of my design, so he captured the #2 spot.
Seraphim: “But in the end, an integrated board is in most cases better. I personally think my Mk II is the best, but I can’t say for sure. It is the integrated version of the Mk IV. I’ve made two of them. One for Spectre, and one for me. And they perform roughly 14% better than a similarly configured Mk IV.
Serarocks: ”But, why don’t you sell the Mk III then? If it is better?”
Seraphim: “Unless I spent the time and effort to design the board to the jack in question, it is much worse than the Mk IV. For them. The Mk III is a bespoke board.”
Serarocks: “Bespoke? What does that mean?”
Seraphim: “That means each of them is made specifically to complement the intended user. Like a perfectly tailored piece of clothing. Those just don’t fit right for anybody else. And the process of tailoring the board to the jack costs a premium of time and effort. Depending on the jack, I would have to spend up to six months exclusively analyzing their style.”
Seraphim: “If we just ignore the cost of it, and believe me, six months of exclusive use of my time is Expensive, the amount of trust is simply not there with anybody else than Spectre.”
Serarocks: “Trust? But you are the most trustworthy of all the techs.”
Seraphim: “Think about it, if I analyzed the jack down to this detail, I know EVERYTHING about them. I almost certainly know their real name, their family, where they live, and so on. I also know exactly where to hit to make them spiral out of control. You don’t give that amount of control to somebody who you don’t absolutely know. Reputation for trustworthiness or not.”
Serarocks: “But you still make the best board there is?”
Seraphim: “I like to believe so. So far I have not found any indication against it. But I can’t be sure. In the same way I won’t give specifics about my Mk III, most jacks don’t give specifics about their boards. Yes, the ones who don’t have a tech who can tailor their bespoke board will most likely have a Seraphim or a Nemian. But the bespoke boards are an enigma.”
IslandBanana: “That is all nice and fine, but what I want to know, is how come the Kawa is so much cheaper than your Mk IV?”
Seraphim: “Kawamoto has real manufacturing plants. The Mk IV is always made in industrial fabbers. That increases the cost between two and 4 times. Just making it. The raw materials for a small shop with an indy-fab are also significantly higher than what Kawamoto can get with their bulk purchases. Then of course the shop where the indy-fab makes the Mk IV wants to get a cut of the action.”
Serarocks: “So, if you were to make the Mk IV in your new corporation it would be cheaper?”
Seraphim: “That is the plan. But that will still take some time, and we will not be able to compete with Kawamoto on price. They are one of the biggest corps and simply get better prices.”
Bassasin: “Hu, won’t Kawa be angry if you compete with their new Ryu?”
Seraphim: “Well, I think it is pretty clear that the Seraphim Mk IV is the original. But we will burn that bridge when we come to it. I think the overall increase in board demand will make that irrelevant.”
DefiantDiva: “But, well, they used your design. How does it come that the Ryu is 8% slower?”
Seraphim: “In one word, liability. The Mk IV scrapes on the limit of what is possible. Everybody who buys it knows that and if something breaks, they curse and have it repaired. Kawa can’t do that. They have commercial liability.”
Seraphim: “Sure, they don’t care if it is a small shop or even a B-class corp. But if it is an A-class or higher, they have to honor the liability. That means they have to make sure that under normal circumstances nothing breaks. For that, and their UA, they have changed the signal paths slightly. Also, they have put a heat spreader onto the CPU and GPU. That alone increases the temperature under the same load by I would guess 15, maybe 20°. That is room for the Mk IV to use more power.”
Seraphim: “Oh, and they use KVOS for it. While not a bad OS, it is designed to work the same with their peon boards as it is with the Ryu. On the other hand, I have created and optimized the OS of the Mk IV specifically for the Mk IV. Even the Mk III uses a slightly different OS. That results in some slowdown.”
TwinCruncher: “So, if they said fuck you to the liability, they could get to the same performance as the Mk IV?”
Seraphim: “Not with the UA and KVOS. But they could come closer.”
Serarocks: “But if Kawa had to conform to liability, then if you sell the Mk IV through your new corp, won’t you as well?”
Seraphim: “Yes, of course. But unlike Kawamoto, I know how I got the performance out of the board, and where I can tweak it and still be within the bounds of liability.”
After that, the discussion came down to the general issues of board design, and another 20 minutes later, I logged off.