To say that I was at the end of my limits when I surfaced from cyberspace would be an understatement. I was mentally and emotionally way beyond where I thought my limits were.
I was in one word, empty. I had nothing left to give. And so it took me a moment to comprehend that Ben was sitting in an overstuffed chair beside my cyber chair. It took me even longer to realize that I was no longer lying on my VR furniture and in Ben’s arms.
I can’t say how long I was just sitting in his lap, pressing my head against his breast. I know it was some time though. When I was coherent enough to be able to have at least basic thoughts again, I began to realize that it was rather unusual for Ben to sit in a chair in my cyber room. Especially in an overstuffed chair that was completely new in said room.
It still took me a moment to realize that I should at least question this state.
“Why… how can you be here?”
The whole time, Ben had just sat there in silence, holding me in his arms, gently rubbing my shoulders.
Now he smiled affectionately at me, but with some concern shown in his eyes.
“I assume that I am not unwelcome?”
My addled brain was at first confused about what he just said, but when I finally understood what he had said, I shook my head, a minute amount.
“No, not unwelcome. But unexpected.”
He pressed his forehead to mine for a few seconds.
“Michael said that it might be a good idea for me to be here when you got out of cyberspace.”
Michael! Of course.
I buried my face back in Ben’s torso, murmuring: “He was right.”
Ben chuckled softly. "The fact that my shirt is quite wet told me that already.”
Again, it took me a moment to comprehend him. “Oh, yes. He was right about that too. But he was right about Vandermeer. I… it is soo much worse than I thought. And I had no idea.”
I felt Ben’s muscles strain when I said that.
“I… I can try to do something about him. But he is effectively a head of state. I don’t think I can get to him.”
What did he mean? Get to him? Why would he want to get to Vandermeer? Then I understood. He was talking about killing him. But why? Oh, right, I had not yet explained what had really happened.
“No, no. Not Vandermeer. He… what I thought about him was wrong. So wrong. He… the idea that he could have gotten me out of my torture any time… that was just more misinformation. No, disinformation. They told me that he decided to not bow down to the jerks of Panacea and that I was being tortured for that.
But… he did not know. He did not even know that I existed. Panacea, Knowles, and his abominations of spawn, they officially declared my mother as killed before I was born. Vandermeer only learned that I existed when I was 13. And by then they… they told him they would just kill me if he tried to contact me.”
While I explained all that to Ben, I leaned a bit back so that I could see his face better, and I saw this face get an expression that I had never seen and wished that I had never to see again. It was… not rage. No, this was ice-cold fury.
“Knowles. He is even… harder to get to than Vandermeer. I… it will take me some time to get to him. His sons are a bit easier.”
I shook my head.
“They… Vandermeer will put them into prison for a few years.”
That did little to make Ben let go of his anger.
“And then? They will be out and as powerful as now, but with even more malice, more hatred.”
Now it was on me to chuckle softly, but I still buried my face in his shirt.
“They will be broken. A few years when they can’t react is all I need.”
I could barely believe how much Ben being there had helped me. It had centered me, given me some peace back. But while meeting Vandermeer had not quite taken 10 minutes in real time, my Saturday was shot. To be fair, I had no need to work weekends anyway.
I had one duty though. I needed to apologize to Michael. I was still not happy about the way he forced me to meet Vandermeer, but he had been right. Fortunately, he was graceful enough to not crow about it.
Nonetheless, I ended up lazing around the rest of Saturday and all of Sunday. I needed it, to recharge my batteries.
I started Monday not by immersing myself in how the fertilization process worked, but to finish some other projects. First, I created a new first aid kit. Essentially a prepackaged injector full of nano-bots, cloning stimulants, and resources for cell division. Along with a small, but still relatively powerful controller.
It was dumb, dirty, and fast, but in an emergency, it would heal damaged tissue in a few minutes, an hour tops. Heck, it could even help with healing the bone, though that was still a matter of days.
It was also around the size of a bottle of water. This thing alone would reduce PEES's importance substantially.
Next, I decided to work on the auto-surgeon. No, I did not make the low-end version that Michael had harped on. Get real, with the new NADAs, it would be actually more expensive to use 30 old tech processors compared to one, or two Chimaera.
No, I upgraded it. All the bells and whistles, and then some. I designed a small, but powerful pharmacological molecular forge, and a specialized nano-fab. I added a nutrient tank.
And most of all, I designed a version that used the conveyor tech I had designed for the NADAs instead of manipulators, and microscale disruptors instead of lasers. Yes, I knew that this was limited to the planetary systems, but it would be the top-of-the-line system. Unfortunately, the control of the conveyor required a second Chimaera.
But that was not a big problem. By now, it was ready for the medical VI, to be the world's first auto-doc. And of course, it was quite modular. You don’t need the pharmacopeia? Leave it out. No nano-bots? Save yourself the money for the nano-fab. After some thinking, I also made a BOU module. I mean, I had this awesome new technology that had way better resolution than any scanner on the market, so why not use it?
In the end, I was still not up to snuff. After some not-so-fruitful attempts of trying to get a deeper understanding of how mammals procreate… I gave up for the day. It just wasn’t working for me right then.
Not that the day had been wasted. It was just not up to my usual standards.
Michael and I had changed our Tuesday meeting into a full meeting of the Enki execs by that point. That meant that I had moved my Tuesday work to the Enki HQ. Honestly, it made not much of a difference if I was sitting in my office there, or my cyber room in the fortress.
Ok, the food was better in the fortress, but not by much. By then, our lunchroom used the meat vats and vegetable cloning systems extensively, and our cooks had been trained in cyberspace to near perfection.
My Bodyguard of the day spent most of the day in the anteroom. This specific Tuesday, it was Ryan’s turn. And while the computer in the office was up and running, I used Glory remotely. Don’t get me wrong, the computer was a marvel, but Glory was just a tad faster.
Modularity simply had its price, and in this case, the price was performance and efficiency. Not much, but enough to make Glory, an extremely specialized and integrated cyber-board the better choice.
The price of the high integration on the other hand was that if ever anything in Glory broke, I would have to completely rebuild her.
But I was rambling again. Point was, this specific Tuesday I was mostly procrastinating. I simply hated biology, and I dreaded having to invest any effort into it. Yes, I had agreed to do it, and I knew it was necessary, but still…
I managed to get some of it worked through before the meeting nonetheless. Go me, yay.
Is it bad that I actually looked forward to the meeting? I mean, those meetings were important, but mostly a rehashing of where we were standing.
In front of the boardroom, I almost ran into Alena and noticed that she had changed her hair color. Again. For the fourth time since I met her. That I knew of. Somehow I did not think that this behavior was were good for the hairs in question.
Sure, one could use nanobots to repair any damage, but… well, it was her hair.
While I slowly followed her into the room, musing about her permanently changing coloration, I suddenly got an idea. Well, more work for Jessi and the minions.
As usual, an android butler had provided a load of coffee for everybody except Naveen.
The Colonel preferred tea. Not surprisingly, the butler already knew all of our preferences in sugar, milk, syrup, or whatever, and each of us had his or her perfect beverage steaming in front of them.
When Eli, who I had by now found out to be biologically female, but completely asexual in all her being arrived as the last one, and the bot closed the door, Michael opened up the meeting:
“Good morning to all of you. I congratulate all of you on another very successful week. Let Alena tell you how we did.”
Alena, who this week had neon pink hair and almost startling flamboyant makeup smiled happily.
“With pleasure. For the fifth week in the series, our revenue has risen. By now we sell around $47 million in Q-links per day. In addition to the $7.8 million in cyberware. Unfortunately, for the time being, that will be more or less the upper limit of what we can get for the Q-links. We’ve maxed out the second production facility.”
Marcel frowned.
“Wait a minute, if the limit is what we can produce, why don’t we build a third facility?”
James sighed.
“Won’t help us anything. We have space and time available in the second facility, but we lack the people to work there. Maybe if the new bots that the R&D department has cooked up work out we can use them. Otherwise, we have to either find personnel or buy some bots. And Mike has already nixed the bot-buying idea.”
Marcel frowned harder now.
“You have stopped James from buying bots for it? Why the hell did you do that?”
Michael took a deep breath before he answered:
“One of the goals for Enki is to provide employment for as many people of Queens as possible. Yes, we will temporarily lose some business, but I think middle and long term it will even out. Especially as there is no alternative to the Q-link.”
Marcel rolled his eyes but remained silent.
Instead, Tiffany piped up:
“So… the problem is that we can’t get workers then? If we have used up the available manpower, why not switch to bots then?”
Maggie shook her head.
“We have exhausted the readily available pool of employees, that is true. Unfortunately, that group makes up not quite 10% of the people of Queens who are willing to work. We are working on changing that, but even with Chiron that is not done by tomorrow.”
Her mentioning Chiron made me cock my head.
“Does Chiron work out ok? Or do I have to tune some things?”
Now Maggie was all smiles.
“Oh no, Chiron is marvelous. A pure joy to work with. No, the problem are the people. Let’s be honest, our educational system is designed to create sheep that are easy to control. From what I understand, the 10% we already employ would be at best marginally educated by most developed nations' standards.
It just takes time, even in VR, to learn the basics. I think in three to five months, our pool to choose from will double, maybe a bit more. But… until then we have drained the well.”
Kenneth rubbed his chin.
“Correct me if I am wrong, but we could sell ten times as many Q-links as we do now and would not exhaust the demand, right?”
Marcel nodded without saying a word, but Alena answered verbally:
“No, you are right. Hell, twenty times would maybe make a dent in the demand, but seriously, it seems that every time I look there is some new use for the things.”
Kenneth some gestures with his hands and continued:
“What I am trying to say is that even if we set up two or more facilities to build Q-links with bots, we will still have enough demand to set up another one for the newly trained people when they are ready. If we use androids to do the work we can even replace them one-to-one, or more like three-to-one.”
It took me a moment to get where he was going with the three-to-one.
“I think you are overestimating the bots a bit. They can only work 12 hours at the utmost before they have to recharge. For another six hours. That makes an even 108 hours a week. If we assume the usual 10-hour work days six days a week for a worker, we won’t get even twice the work out of a bot.”
Kenneth waved his hand dismissively.
“Ok, so not quite as good as I thought, fine. But the general gist remains the same. Thing is, we don’t have enough workforce now. What will happen when we reveal the replicators? The new grav coils? The new processors? Can anybody here honestly say we won’t have 10, 20, or even 50 times the work? Even if we somehow manage to employ every single person in Queens that wants to work, we won’t have enough. Sooner or later we will need to use bots.
So why not start now?”
Michael nodded softly.
“Because I want to use our bots. The ones with the new food-powered system. The ones with manual dexterity equaling or surpassing humans. The ones that don’t need to be charged for six hours out of 18.”
With the last words, he looked expectantly at Maynard, who, somewhat comically did not even realize he was under scrutiny.
Michael rolled his eyes, barely, and then spoke:
“Maynard?”
Maynard flinched and looked as if he had been put on the carpet, despite Michael just softly asking his name.
“Yes, what? Oh sorry, I was thinking about something else.”
Michael smiled softly.
“I am sure it was something important, but can you try to stay in this meeting for now? We were talking about bots, and the new ones your people cooked up especially. How is it going?”
Maynard scrunched his eyes and then shook his head.
“Oh, yes… the bots. Well, the big ones we are still working on. Scaling them up is not as easy as we thought. But the human-sized ones, and the ones a bit bigger, are working out fine. I am sure that there will be a few kinks to iron out, but… well you know how it is.”
Michael nodded.
“Nothing is perfect on the first try, I know. So that means we can go into mass-producing them?”
Maynard shrugged.
“Sure, but we have to either scale back the production of military bots or build a new facility.”
Naveen spoke up for the first time in this meeting:
“I would argue against scaling back the military bots. At least for now.”
Alena sighed.
“Come on Naveen. Yes, I understand that you want the military bots for our security. But if we don’t decide to sell them, at one point or another we will have enough of them. And then we are sitting there with the facilities empty. There has to be a middle ground.”
James ran a finger over the bridge of his nose.
“One question, how much longer will it take to make a bot if we use one of the big replicators for it?”
They all turned their attention to me. I made some small calculations before I answered:
“It will take about 30 to 50% longer.”
James nodded and set on to continue his thought but I was not done yet.
“If we use a NADA of the same footprint as the assembly line for the bots, we can make eight of them at once though. The overall throughput will be around 5-10% lower, but it will take around four times the energy.”
“I understand. So the efficiency is for crap, but when we have enough bots, either military or industrial, we can use the same replicators for whatever else. And if we run into a bottleneck where we need more bots, we can switch them back to bots.”
Michael smiled at James.
“That is actually a pretty good idea. I am not convinced that we will not sell the industrial bots though. But that is for the future. Right now, having several replicators up and running is a good investment. We are already building them as fast as we can anyway.”
Maynard frowned for a moment.
“That reminds me, Vivian, is there a reason why all the NADAs have old processors?”
Old processors? Oh frick, of course…
“Uh… yes, there is. I needed the NADA to make the new processors, and I plain forgot to update them. Not that it will hurt that much. It will make the control unit smaller and cheaper, but even now, it takes only 12 Tesseracts to run one of the big ones. We can replace that with a Chronos easily.”
Michael chuckled before he spoke into the round:
“Nice to see that even Vivian can mess up. Makes us lesser mortals not feel too bad.”
Then he spoke more seriously:
“I assume you can have R&D make the switch over, Maynard?”
“No problem. That is a trivial switch. Should be no longer than a day or two.”
“Very well, see to it, please.”
Aleena looked pretty pleased.
“Does that mean that our bottleneck will vanish in the future? Nice. As it is, we can sell ten times as many Q-links as we can produce now. And honestly, I would love for Enki to be a corporation that has half a billion a day in revenue. It’s a shame that we can’t use the replicators to make more Q-links.”
I shrugged and scoffed.
“Oh, we can use them. It just makes no sense. A NADA is way slower than the simple carbon extruder that we use for the Q-links.”
That did not seem to hurt her good mood in any way.
“Whatever. Carbon extruders are cheap. And don’t take up much space.”
What could one say to that? She was right of course. And half a billion dollars per day in profit after taxes was exceptional. And that would explode when we started selling the NADAs, grav coils, and processors. And all the rest.
James still looked thoughtful though.
“How long does it take to make a replicator? The really big ones I mean.”
“The 15x15x3m ones? If we use the design with the Tesseracts, around 16 hours. It takes some time to make the processors and the electronics for them. If we switch over to Chronos and make the processors and electronics in batches in one of the big ones… I would say three to four hours.”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
When James perked up, I smiled and shook my head.
“And then you have the startup. The NADA has to make the nanobots first. That will take around 44 hours. After that, it is ready.”
Arnedra looked confused.
“Wait, can’t we make the nanobots while we are building the damn things? Maybe make a really big and fast nanofab for making them?”
I was already shaking my head and opening my mouth to answer in the negative when it hit me.
“You know what, maybe we can. The problem is that we need the nanobots connected to the control board with Q-links, and those links have to be made with the bots.
But… if we are redesigning the control system to use Chronos anyway, we can make it modular so that we use a specialized nanofab to populate prefabricated control modules with the Q-links.
Would make things a bit more complicated and expensive than the monolithic approach, not to mention a little bit slower in relative times… but in absolute numbers, it would be negligible and you can prefabricate batches of bots while the NADA is made.”
I smiled.
“And it would make scaling the NADAs much easier. Just build in the appropriate number of modules for the tank size, and be done. We won’t be able to go bigger than around 100m or so in any dimension either way though. After that, we need so much energy to beam into the tank to reach the center that we will fry the bots on the outside. But seriously, a 100x100x100m cube… what could we need that for?”
Get real, the thought alone was laughable. The 675m³ NADA was plenty big enough. Sure, if we wanted to build a big vehicle like a utility skimmer, all at once, we would need a bigger one. But come on, why would we do that?
Thankfully, nobody seemed to be of a different opinion.
Michael shook his head, smiling.
“Well, after we have thoroughly derailed the discussion, Alena, is there anything to add on financial beyond ‘we good’?”
The pink-haired woman smiled and shook her head.
“Nope, boss. ‘We good’ is a very succinct description of our finances.”
“Good, then, Maggie, you touched on Chiron. Anything to add there?”
Maggie took a moment to collect her thoughts.
“Our problem in that regard is penetration. There are around 200k people living in Queens right now, though nobody knows the actual numbers. But so far, only 6322 have taken our offer of employment or education with the goal of employment. And that out of a pool of around 120k of working age.”
She sighed.
“The education system here is set up to pressure them into being obedient trash that can’t form an original thought. And… we simply lack the incentive to get those idiots to even look at what we offer.”
Marcel was rubbing his chin.
“Maybe… just to make this clear, we want those people to go into cyberspace and get a basic education, right?”
When Maggie nodded, Marcel continued:
“But to do that, they need cyber-capable computers. Let’s be honest, most of the people of queens can barely afford a com.”
Maggie shrugged.
“We are providing several teaching centers where we have the needed hardware. But they don’t take advantage of our offer.”
“If I’m understanding it right, for the right to education, they have to sign a letter of intent that they will work for us later on?”
Maggie smiled sadly.
“Yes. I would give it away, but that would make the teachers union run rampant against us. And of course the other big corps of NYC. They want the people to be sheep.”
Now Marcel smiled evilly.
“But… what if we don’t give away the education. I mean, we have just restarted the game studios. How about we design a cheap, Envision-capable system, buy a mass license from Ralcon, and give them away under the pretext that the people then buy the games? As a regionally limited promotion?
And those cheap computers just so happen to be connected to the matrix via Chiron, and the education is just another piece of ‘bloatware’?”
Ok, that was slick. Nobody would complain if we gave the ‘riffraff’ another way to waste time. And let’s be real, we could afford it. Just the profits from one week would be enough to provide everybody in Queens with such a computer.
Alena took the thing a step further.
“Why… don’t we open a telecom department? Provide communications service via Q-link? Have the people pay… let’s say $10 a month for a connection of their sponsored computer to the matrix and a link from their computer to their com?
A cheap garbage can costs what? $200 to make? And our overhead for the service is negligible. So we make a profit of $9.50 each month for each computer. It will take two years for them to “pay off” the computer, and nobody can accuse us of tampering.
And Chiron is just part of the service, buried somewhere.”
Michael looked far away for a moment, clearly looking up something in his implants.
“So… I have just had Warden calculate the cost for a Hyperion 3 1200 with a Theia 10 and bottom tier specs… if we dedicate one of the big replicators for the electronics and have the case made by the carbon extruders… it will cost us around $144. Including one diadem.
Now if we add in a bottom line Bia 15 com into the package, as well as the Q-links it will all-in-all cost us $220.”
Marcel likewise had a 1000yard stare for a moment, before his evil smile became even more sinister.
“If we go after today’s prices and historical data, I would say we market that package at $860. $600 for the computer, and $260 for the com. And we then charge $15 a month for the service. That is still a third of what they pay today for their com.”
Now Maggie looked absolutely diabolic when she smiled toothily.
“And how about we ‘donate’ the package and the service as ‘tax breaks’ to a local charity for the poor? With that, we should be able to reach almost everybody. And nobody can complain… because it is all just another scheme to make money. And evade paying taxes.”
Michael rapped on the table.
“So… as soon as we announce the new processor lineup, we will put this scheme into motion, or is anybody against it?”
When nobody spoke up, he smiled.
“Ok, Marcel, that is your baby. Run with it! Any other problems Maggie?”
“Nope, nothing for the whole C-suite to work on. Everything else is small fry that my people can take care of.”
Michael looked at her for a moment.
“Ok, fine, next topic. Naveen, where are we with the defenses?”
Naveen leaned back in his chair.
“It’s going pretty well. We have decided to mostly use the grav guns in the configuration that Vivian has demonstrated. Around 20% will be particle beams, half of that electron beams, and the other half proton beams.
Then we will emplace several disruptors around our buildings. But I don’t count those as anti-ship weapons.
Finally, we will have the minions design a variant of the grav gun. They told me if we reduce the size of the projectile somewhat and use a modified grav conveyor we can create an insanely fast-firing grav gun. Somewhat around 200k rounds per minute.
This is an additional, and obvious, point defense system. So that we can distract any unfriendly onlookers from the particle beams and the disruptors. And of course the missiles.
By now we have already 72 big grav guns, seven each electron and proton beams, 22 disruptors, and around 1000 missiles, 500 of them with disruptor heads, the rest half kinetic and half fusion. The new point defense grav gun will be tested end of the week.”
He took a sip from his tea.
“I already had a light battalion, roughly 500, men and women from my days as a mercenary, who came with me. I have hired additional 362 people. That means we have around a battalion of human military. And before you ask, my two psionics did the recruiting.
In addition, we have five full-strength battalions of the new combat bots. On their own, they are dangerous but stupid. An intelligent enemy will probably get away with one soldier for three of the 6000 bots we have.”
Then he smiled as was apparently fashion that day very evilly.
“If you bring Cerberus into the equation… let’s say stupid does no longer come into play. He is… less intuitive than any of us, but tactical and strategical he is a monster. The only way I can beat him is by being illogical.
My suggestion is we sell a variant of the military bots without the uplink and keep Cerberus, or at least his full capabilities secret. If any enemy thinks he can overwhelm our bots with numbers… well, if Cerberus controls them, they will need a couple dozen soldiers for each bot.”
Then he turned to me.
“By the way, is there any possibility for us to get some power armor?”
I shrugged helplessly.
“Well, we can look into buying some, but for the near future I won’t have the time to make one, sorry.”
He took that pretty well and just shrugged.
“That’s ok. It would be nice, but as an A-tier corp, we should have access to some. Hell, I bet we can even get the plans for the Templar armor now that Falconer is broken.”
Michael shook his head.
“Templar is crap. But don’t worry, I am negotiating to get you Finnsleif armor.”
Now Naveen leaned forward so abruptly that he nearly spilled what was left of his tea.
“Finnsleif? Nowhere frontline power armor? For real? How the fuck did you manage that?”
Michael placed his chin on his knuckles.
“Let’s say we have an in with Vandermeer. And it is not the Nowhere Finnsleif, but the full Vandermeer one.”
“Wait, there is a difference? And how the fuck do we have an in with Vandermeer?”
“I’ve been told that there is a difference, and how we have an in is not important right now. And it is not a completely one-sided deal. We will sell them the bots. The full ones.”
Naveen frowned.
“That is… dangerous. Well, we don’t need the surprise, but if any enemy expects the full capabilities of those bots, it will be expensive. We should not trust anybody. Especially not a triple-A corporation.”
Michael shook his head.
“In general I agree with you, but Vandermeer is a… special case. I am absolutely convinced we can trust them. We are right now considering a formalized alliance.”
Naveen’s frown deepened.
“Are you sure? I am sorry, but I must voice my concerns about that.”
Michael pinged me via private message:
M: I think we have to tell them.
V: Do you think we can trust them with that?
M: Yes, I do. Dad was very careful in selecting the people, and Darren helped us.
I took a deep breath, and thought about it for a moment, before sighing.
V: Fine. Do it!
The whole discussion had taken just as long as my breath and sigh, and Michael shook his head.
“Ok fine. I understand your concerns. So, I am telling you why I think we can trust Vandermeer. But one thing, this is absolutely secret for now, understand?”
When all of them nodded, Michael continued:
“I don’t know what you know about Nathan Vandermeer’s family, but… he has a daughter.”
Naturally, it was Alena who knew the most detail, among them.
“Yeah. She was long thought dead. But suddenly reappeared a couple of years back. She is sick though from what I heard. But what does that have to do with us trusting him?”
Michael smiled.
“She is not sick, she was experimented on by Panacea and… let’s say she is brain-damaged. But the important part is that she has a daughter as well.”
Alena scoffed.
“Are you talking about the missing heir rumors? Yeah, there is quite a bit of talk about it, but if there was a granddaughter, don’t you think she would have surfaced by now?”
Michael shook his head.
“Not if she doesn’t want to surface. And… it is no rumor. I know for a fact that the granddaughter exists.”
I saw Naveen’s eyes suddenly widen and then focus on me. Apparently at least one of them had already solved the riddle.
But Michael continued:
“The point is that the granddaughter has been poisoned against Vandermeer by the Knowles and Panacea.”
Marcel snorted.
“Get real, even if she hates the old fart, she would be insane to give up all that wealth.”
Michael shook his head.
“She does not need Vandermeer’s wealth. What I am trying to tell you is that Vivian is Vandermeer’s granddaughter.” That hit like a bombshell and all except Naveen, Michael, and me were sitting with their mouths wide open.
“They recently had a… somewhat reluctant talk, and at least for now reconciled somewhat. Point is, Vandermeer is trying to deepen their relationship. And Vivian, who as you know is the majority owner of Enki, is a minority owner of Vandermeer too, as well as the heir to the whole company.
And Nathan wants to build a relationship with her. Of course, that means that in the distant future, Enki and Vandermeer will be merging when Vivian owns both of them. And that means that the leadership of Vandermeer and now you know about that.”
Naveen nodded slowly.
“I see now. I assume that is the reason why Nathan Vandermeer wanted to meet Vivian? And why we had such easy access to the S&P Excelsior? Honestly, in that case, I withdraw my objections.”
Alena slowly recovered from her shock and looked at me wide-eyed.
“But… why… how? Why are you here? Why not in Seattle?”
I sighed.
“As Michael said, Panacea did a very good job in poisoning any nice thoughts I ever had about Nathan Vandermeer. Until Saturday, I thought he did not care about me. And… I was bitter about it.”
“But… but what happened?”
I closed my eyes.
“Please accept that that is a very private, and painful topic for me. It has to be enough that he is… sorry, I still can’t say it.”
I chuckled nervously.
“It has to be enough that you know that I am his heir, ok?”
When Alena opened her mouth to dig deeper Naveen calmly put a hand over her mouth.
“Let it be. She told you this is painful. And the way she said it… this is deep seating trauma. Don’t pick at the scab.”
Alena glared at Naveen for a moment, before she shrugged and nodded. When Naveen removed his hand, she answered verbally:
“Ok fine. But… how can you resist asking?”
“Not everybody is a gossip hound. And I’ve seen enough people close to breaking to recognize when to let it go.”
I sighed and gave Naveen a tentative, but thankful smile.
Michael then rapped on the table again.
“Now, can we go back to business? Thing is, we will work relatively closely with Vandermeer in the future. That means we get their small arms, their power armor, and some technical assistance in the big weapons.
In return, we will offer them our big anti-ship weapons, the bots, and they will be the only ones who will get a full license for the replicators, even if they don’t know it yet. With that in mind, when do you think we are safe enough to announce the replicators, Naveen?”
The Indian man tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table before he answered:
“I would say we can defend against anything but the full military of any triple-A in a couple of weeks. By then we will have around 12k bots, and enough big weapons to destroy an attacking battlefleet.”
Michael nodded.
“So, in two weeks we will announce the replicators, the new coils, and the new processors.”
He turned to Maynard:
“You already told us what the status of the new industrial bots is. Anything else to add?”
Maynard shrugged.
“Only small stuff. We have successfully downgraded the auto-surgeon. It goes now from bare bones to what Vivian created. Well mostly. My minions identified one flaw in it.”
A flaw? What flaw could that be? I had taken pains to ensure that it was the very best auto-surgeon that could be gotten. I tilted my head and raised an eyebrow looking at him. Thankfully, Maynard continued without any prompting:
“Well, it is not a big flaw, mind you. They just noticed that while it has an MRT, it doesn’t have a GRT.
Somewhat understandable as you did not have the new, cheaper grav coils then. But there is no reason not to offer it as a module for it now.”
He was right. Well, the minions were right. Before I reinvented the grav coils, a gravity resonance tomograph set any hospital back at least 20 million ITB, or around $70 million. I had planned the auto-surgeon to cost around $500k. There was simply no room in the budget for the GRT. Not that any auto-surgeon had one, mind you.
I nodded.
“I assume they designed one for it?”
When Maynard nodded as well, I continued:
“Is it modular? Because I have upgraded the auto-surgeon. Designed several modules for it so that it can easily convert into an auto-doc.”
Michael snorted and Tiffany squinted at me confused:
“Wait a minute, only four weeks ago you were so vehemently fighting against working on the auto-surgeon again, and now you did it anyway?”
I rolled my eyes but forced a smile. Tiffany was nice enough, but not exactly the brightest bulb.
“I was against downgrading it. I designed it to cost around $70k to make with an industrial fabber. With a full assembly line, it costs around $30k. We can sell it for $100k and make 233% profit on it. There is no point in making it even cheaper. There is only one cheaper auto-surgeon on the market right now, and that is the Enertech Surgeboy.
That one costs $65k. And is not worth the materials it is made from. Ask any medical doctor about it, it is garbage. Unlike mine… well, ours. That one is in my opinion the best.
So cheapening it was in my opinion a classic exercise in futility.”
I calmed down a bit.
“What I did was upgrade it. Add additional functionality. But let’s ask Maynard, what did the Minions do to downgrade it?”
Maynard had the honesty to look embarrassed.
“Uhm… to be honest… they redesigned the electronics to use old-style processors. And they reduced the functionality to make a handful of tiers where the number of processors was reduced.”
I smiled.
“And what will the cheapest of those downgraded auto-surgeons cost to manufacture?”
He shrugged.
“Well, the cheapest, which is not that much better than the Surgeboy as I’ve been told, will cost us around $28k. The full one with the complete functionality will cost around $40k to make. Of course, that is without the GRT.”
Tiffany looked contrite:
“So… redesigning it was useless? I mean we will announce the new processors in two weeks anyway, so why build a more expensive one?”
I smiled.
“That was my whole argument.”
Michael shook his head and spoke softly.
“Don’t be unfair, Viv. We could not know if you would manage to create sufficiently powerful weapons to make us safe. Even for $40k, the auto-surgeon would be a winner. Not if we have the $30k version, but if we can’t sell that…”
I sighed and shook my head, but said nothing, so Michael continued:
“Did I understand you correctly that you tinkered with the design as well? What did you make for it?”
I shrugged.
“I changed the auto-surgeon itself by replacing the surgical lasers with nanoscale disruptors and the manipulators with tractor beams. That should reduce the scarring even more than the lasers, and make operating on the neural scale much easier.
The disadvantage is that this model needs to be used in a gravity well for the tractors to work, needs more energy and I needed to integrate a second Chimaera.
All in all, this model will cost us around $43k to make. We can sell the earlier design as the base model and this new one as the luxury one.
Then I designed add-on modules for it. A specialized molecular forge to create drugs on the fly, a medical nano-fab, and a nutrient tank so that it can use the cloning tech directly during the surgery.
Oh, and I designed a BOU module for it as well. It is clearly not as fast as a GRT but has a much higher resolution.”
I smiled into the round.
“The only thing missing to make it into a full-blown auto-doc is the medical VI.”
At that Jessi chuckled softly.
“Ah yes, Hippocrates… what a good segue way.”
Michael sounded confused when he asked:
“Hippokrates?”
Jess smiled.
“Yes, the medical VI. My team decided to name it Hippocrates after the ancient master of medicine. Yes, I know Viv tends to use gods for names, but… well we liked Hippocrates better.”
“Ah… ok. So… how is it doing?”
Jessi’s smile widened.
“Perfectly. Honestly, he is better than 80% of all human doctors I’ve ever met. Only the very best doctors can beat him. He had a bit of a struggle with resource management, but when we explained to him why we insisted on it, he learned it quickly.”
Marcel piped up.
“So… when can we market it?”
Jessi looked at Marcel with some disdain.
“I thought you knew. We won’t market him. Vivian will release him as freeware.”
Marcel looked completely shocked.
“Are you serious? After all the work we put into him? Why the fuck do you want to do that?”
The last was directed at me. I sighed while I shook my head.
“Everybody knows that you can’t make any money in developing a medical VI. Panacea will spike it as soon as they can and roll over that market as well. So why bother in the first place? They can’t make it cheaper than free.
I created… him not to make money, but to harm Panacea, collapse their market.”
Sadly, Marcel was not yet finished.
“But you used Enki-resources to do it? Why should Enki not profit from it?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“Again, there is no money in a medical VI. Panacea will make one as soon as somebody else will do it, and then underbid the ‘offender’. Trying to market a medical VI is a losing game as long as Panacea exists. And as long as Panacea has a near-monopoly on medical services, nobody can take them out.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. To profit from creating a medical VI you have to take out Panacea first. To take out Panacea, you need a medical VI. Or something similar.
The only solution is to simply not play the game and release the medical VI for free. Not giving up but to trash the playing field from the beginning.”
Jessi meanwhile slapped Marcel on the back of his head. Instead of answering me, he turned to the doctor and complained:
“Hey, what the fuck was that? Why did you do that?”
Jessi shook her head and rolled her eyes.
“Quit whining you fool. The only Enki resource used to make Hippocrates was my team testing him.
The rest, all the work put to create him was just Vivian. Nobody else. Well, except Warden and Calliope, I think. But those two are also Vivian’s resources that she also provides to Enki, not the other way around. So if she wants to make Hippocrates free, then she can.”
I sighed and watched the drama happen. When Jessi was finished I spoke up.
“It is also a very stupid position. You need a VI-capable processor to make a VI, medical or not, run. Guess what, fuzzy logic chips don’t grow on trees. They are almost impossible to come by. And there are absolutely no auto-surgeons available anywhere that are VI-capable.
Except when in two weeks, we will bring one to market. We will even be nice enough to install Hippocrates if the customer so wishes. For free.
In other words, every single non-Panacea hospital in the system will scramble to buy our auto-surgeon. To make it into an auto-doc. The very first. It will take a few months for anybody else to follow us into that. And by then, any money we could have made by selling the medical VI will have already come to us via the auto-surgeon.
And even if another corp brings out a VI-capable auto-surgeon, do you know what will almost certainly be inside it? A Chimaera. So we earn from that too. And from the Q-links that it will take to network them together.
Giving the VI away for free makes us look altruistic, removes much of any bad reputation we will gain, deservedly or not, probably earns us a nice tax break, and won’t cost us more than a few 100k, if that.”
Marcel crossed his arms in front of him but remained silent.
Maggie huffed.
“Think about it, man. It is no different from your scheme of giving computers away to get the people educated. We can’t earn much money by trying to sell Hippocrates, but we will get some people mad at us. Even if just because Panacea riles them up, pays agitators, and whatnot.
By making him free, we will earn much more with a product that we can sell, that we can make money on, and that is superior but not unique. It will be hard for those assholes in Seattle to paint that in a bad light, especially when we give the ‘obviously valuable and unique’ VI away.
We look good, we are doing good, and we make money from it.”
Marcel shook his head.
“Yes, ok, fine. It is just… it goes against everything I know to give away something this… groundbreaking.”
Michael cleared his throat.
“Well, now that that is out of the way, is there anything else?”
I nodded slightly but also answered verbally.
“Yes, a few small things. As I said, the new modules for the auto-surgeon are ready to be tested. But I also have another new toy for you, Jessi. And a couple of new ideas that maybe the Minions can work on.”
Jessi looked at me expectantly, and so I continued.
“I designed a first aid set for emergencies. Basically a Bia 15 as controller, a load of nano-bots, nutrients, and division stimulation. In an emergency, you inject the liquid part close to the wound, and the controller attaches to the location of the injection and controls the nanobots.
Those move to the wound and begin cloning the remaining tissue to close the wound, prioritizing blood vessels first and then whatever is most critical. It is dumb, it is quick and dirty, but in an emergency, it might save somebodies life.”
Jessi wrinkled her forehead while she thought about it.
“I can see that working in an emergency, but any doctor, even most auto-surgeons, will be better. If it just clones stuff indiscriminately, then the doctor will have to do some cleanup later on.”
Naveen rubbed his chin.
“But in an emergency, when somebody is bleeding out, is it not better to bring a living patient where the doc has to do some cleanup than to bring a dead person to bury? I can see most mercenaries carrying a couple of those things around if we make them cheap enough. Probably all corporate and national military as well.”
Jessi nodded.
“Yes, of course. I did not mean that it won’t work, but we will have to make sure to understand the problems. And communicate them.”
“Ok, then I got you wrong, sorry. But yes, I think that would be another moneymaker. But… does it have to be a Bia? Why not a Regulon?”
I shrugged.
“Because it is the smallest processor in our lineup. It is overkill, but it would be no more expensive to make than a Regulon 20. It literally makes no difference, other than that we have sole access to the Bia.
And honestly, one of the big NADAs can make a few hundred thousand Bia 15 at once, in about 30 minutes.
It makes no sense to use an electronics-fabber. The NADA is much faster in making processors now.”
“I see. Good to know.”
Jessi shrugged.
“Well, it will be something to make money on, that’s for sure. And it will probably save many lives. You said something about new ideas for the Minions?”
“Yup. I got the idea when I saw that Alena had a new hair color again. No offense, but that can’t be good for your hair.”
Alena chuckled.
“Nope, you’re right. I spent a fortune on ways to repair the damage. But it’s worth it to me.”
“Hey, you do you. As long as you don’t force me to do it, I have no skin in the game. But that made me think. Why not use nano-bots to dynamically change the hair color? Use an implant like a jack, some nano-bot reservoirs, and then you can change your hair color on the fly. Sure, you will have to refill the bots now and again, but they can also repair the hair when they are there anyway.”
Alena’s eyes sparkled.
“Wow, that is a nice idea. But would that not be expensive?”
I shrugged.
“What does one dye job cost for you now? I would guess that you need around $20 worth of bots to make it work for a year or so. Well, unless you decide to use them to lengthen the hair.”
Alena’s jaw fell down for a moment.
“Wait, that’s possible?”
“Sure, hair is dead tissue. You need to provide the material, and then have the bots build the hair, but that is something that even 10th gens can do. It’s the control issue that needs the implant.”
“And 20 bucks? For a year? And it will repair the hair?”
“You will have to provide the materials for the repair, but sure, if the controller is programmed right…”
Jessi tapped her cheek for a moment.
“That sounds more like an engineering problem than a medical one, but yeah, that should be no problem. Just another piece of cyberware. And the other ideas?”
“Again, Alena’s appearance sparked the idea. The animated tattoo that I created so long ago as a proof of concept…”
Alena smiled.
“Oh yeah, that is actually our most profitable cyberware.”
I sighed and winced. The stupidity of humanity truly knew no bounds…
“Well, I still think it is stupid that it is so popular, but whatever. But… if we use it in the face, and program it to look like makeup… well then it is makeup. That also can be changed on the fly. In seconds instead of hours.”
Marcel whistled.
“Wow… that is… I would say that is a gold mine. Especially as people need some control system for it, and most likely a jack and a HUD.”
“And it would need virtually no modification. Just new programming for the interface.”
Eli spoke for the first time in this meeting but was clearly enthusiastic about it.
Michael turned towards Jessi and Maynard.
“What do you say, how hard is it to modify what we already have? And how fast can your people get it done?”
Jessi just shrugged, but Maynard had the faraway look of somebody looking up something with their implants. Finally, he answered:
“The hair color thing is the hardest. Not very hard, but to engineer the reservoirs in a way that they can be implanted into the skull. After that… well, if my data is correct, one would have to refill them every two or three months. And we should get it ready for testing in a week or so. The makeup thing is for all purposes just some new interface functions for an already existing piece of cyberware. No need for much testing and a couple of our programmers should be able to knock it out in an afternoon.”
“One other thing though.” Michael sounded a bit curious when he spoke.
“You said that you don’t have time to develop some power armor for our men, Viv. Why is that?”
I sighed.
“Vandermeer gave me a task. And… I have no idea when I am done with it.”
Michael leaned forward, laying his lower arms flat on the table.
“A… task? That has to be important if you decide to concentrate on it.”
“Yes, it is. Very important. I don’t know if I can do much about it, but I have to try at least.”
Michael chuckled.
“That was a hint that you should tell us what that task is, you know?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I am not fully stupid. I just did not want to talk too much about it. But whatever. He asked me to look into the Folly, see if I can find something there.”
Michael nodded.
“Yup, that is important.”