As I said, I had a good idea of what it was about. So when I opened Chuckles’ page, in 120:1 instead of the more sedate 4:1 of the Abyss, what greeted me was not a big surprise.
Still, I started the video, and as usual, Chuckles’ outfit served to bewilder me. Seriously, what induced a serious, intelligent being like Chuckles to use that sort of costume?
It always made my fingers itch. But I had mostly gotten used to it and quickly suppressed that urge to somehow reach through the matrix and rip that ridiculous stuff off of them.
And so the video started.
“Hello, hello my friends and connoisseurs of good electronics. I know you are hungry for new, exciting tech, and boy do I have a treat for you today.
Not one, but two new boards.”
Chuckles moved through their typical opening dance, but then stopped midmotion, and made an extremely exaggerated thinking posture.
“Hm…, no, not two. Sorry for getting your hopes up for nothing. It’s just one and a half.”
Then they resumed their very enthusiastic gesturing.
“But are they doozies or what? Because today I have the honor of presenting you…”
A drumroll sounded in the background while Chuckles moved to the table where two objects were covered by blankets. They grabbed one of the blankets, and ripped it off, revealing a board, one that I knew pretty well.
“The all-new Seraphim Mk. VI. We were all wondering why the queen of cyber boards had not answered the blatant provocation of Kawamoto with their Ryu 50, and at least had her new corp build her brilliant Mk. IV cheaper? Well, now we know the answer. Why spend time and effort building last year's technology, when next year’s is in the works?”
They held their hand behind their ear, in an overdone listening gesture.
“What is that you say? Why go from the Mk. IV to the Mk. VI? What happened to Mk. V? Well, that is one of the idiosyncrasies of our little angel. Her odd-numbered boards are reserved for her mentor, Spectre, and herself. Don’t expect to ever see a Mk. V in real life. Or a Mk. III for that matter.”
They moved around the table and caressed the Mk. VI along the way.
“But as you can see, we have another board to discuss. So, let me introduce you to…”
They ripped off the second blanket, and revealed another, identically looking board.
“The Seraphim Mk. VI.”
After a few seconds, they continued: “B. Yes, you heard right. There are now two distinct Seraphim Mk. VI available. Why, you ask? Well, Squeaky and I asked that for ourselves. And somehow we managed to ask Seraphim that. And we got an answer. Can you believe that?
The answer is already out there, we just did not know it. Some of you might have read through the comments of the Ryu 50 video and the thread about the best board… if not, you should. We pinned it on top, so it is easy to find.
The interesting part of it is that somebody asked Seraphim, yes, she sometimes lurks in our forums, why she thinks that the Ryu 50 is 8% weaker if they cloned her Mk IV. The answer was enlightening. Seraphim is, or was, a black market tech. Her board was as it was delivered, and if you treated it roughly it sometimes refused to work anymore.
Kawamoto is a big brand. They have liability. They need to make sure that the evil ogres out there can not frighten their boards. All that protection costs performance.”
Chuckles moved around the table again, to stand in front of it.
“The thing is, Seraphim is no longer a black market tech. She has a corporation now. A corporation that has the same liabilities as Kawamoto. But on the other hand, she has a reputation for delivering the best board one can buy. So, how do you go forward with those two completely disagreeable requirements? By making not one, but two boards apparently.”
They held one hand towards the board on the left, which they uncovered first.
“So now we have the Seraphim Mk VIa, the no holds barred, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead variant, where Enki gives a fuck about your liability. You bought it, you knew that it was precision technology and better tread it right.”
Then they reached out to the one on the right.
“And the Seraphim Mk. VIb, for those among us who are too scared of the big bad world to risk their precious board. It has all the safety features that you could reasonably expect. At the cost of performance though.”
They moved along, and with the help of Squeaky, they disassembled the boards, commenting on the build quality, which was to my relief, excellent, and then showed the differences between the a and b models.
Mostly in additional dampening material, additional, or thicker head spreaders, and some protective epoxy that all in all would make the b model physically significantly more rugged.
“Now that we all have seen what the difference is, let us show how it impacts the performance.”
The typical graph table appeared behind them.
“As usual, we start with the board au naturel. And in Tesuta 49 we get the first surprise. The Mk. VIa does not beat the previous record, held by the Mk. IV, but shatters it with a mindblowing 1.4 fucking million points. 1,440,312 points to be exact. That is onehundred-fucking-nineteen times the points of the Mk. IV. Remember, just four months ago, we were arguing if eight percent were worth it.
The b… is not quite as good, unfortunately. It only reaches 1,382,700 points.”
Squeaky let out their robotic “ha ha ha” and Chuckles turned to the nearly human-sized robot squirrel.
“Yes, you are right, Squeaky. Only 1.38 million points. What was I thinking? But well, as you can see we did not put the reference boards on here. No need to humiliate them with how small their bars are. I am sure they are just cold.”
Chuckles chuckled for a moment but then continued more earnestly.
“But seriously, there is no point. This is the next generation. It is so far beyond everything else out there that it became meaningless.”
Again, Chuckles made the hearing gesture.
“Do I hear you say that good old Chuckles lost their mind? No board could get those numbers? Man, do I have a surprise for you! It is true.
Some of you might have noticed that our little avenging angel has gone legit. Yeah yeah, booh and all that. I get it. Who is she to switch sides like that? What I learned is that she had no other option. Too many people wanting new shiny cyberware, and only one angel making them… it couldn’t work.
So the options were to simply not produce enough cyberware for us, sell out to a corp, or make a new corp. She chose to make a new corp, and surprisingly, she hasn’t forgotten us little people. Nope, her new rising star of a corporation sells to us the same as to the other big shots.
The point here is, she has other new exciting tech that she sells. And one of them is ‘THE REPLICATOR’.”
For the last two words, Chuckles added in a thundering voice effect.
“Yes, you heard right. We have it. Humanity finally has the ultimate fabrication tool. And she sells it. I should know, I bought one after all, and I had it only for a week, but I love it already. I love it and cuddle it, and call it Steve.”
Chuckles waved around and the camera panned to one of our 3x3x3m NADAs.
“Say hi to Steve.”
The camera panned back to Chuckles.
“Now, why do I tell you about it? Because Steve’s family makes it possible to make these incredible new processors. Something about a 414 pico-meter process. Remember, the Cirrium that was the standard of all things only a few months ago, was a two-nanometer processor. But that’s not all. The Q-link also makes it faster.
How much faster? A little birdie tweeted to me that it is around 3000 times faster. But Chuckles, you ask, why is it then only around 120 times better than the previous boards?
Well, boys and girls, the culprit is the UEB standard. When the big shots hammered out UEB 7.3 some 50 years ago, they thought they had created the end of the line. They build in, in their experience, generous room for the tiny growth that was expected.
Unfortunately, they did not predict that somebody would create something so much faster than what they knew. And here we are, bashing fully into the limit of the UEB.
But the point is, even with the limits of UEB, Seraphim managed to get around 120 times the power from her new boards that her old ones had.
So, let’s continue with the benchmarks.
In Plato… well, the new architecture reacts a bit better with Plato than Tesuta and the Mk. VIa gains an insane 1,849,212 points. That is 124 times as much as the Mk. IV. The Mk. VIb only nets 1.775 million points, or around four percent lower again.
But hey, for that you get a much more rugged board. Why you would need one I don’t know. Maybe Enki expects some of the corpo-drones to use their expensive precision-manufactured pieces of electronics as a club, but whatever.
But as it is, again, there is no point in showing you the tiny sliver on the left side of the graph that any other board would have.
But we are now coming to the highlight of the show. The clown mark. And again, the numbers are simply insane. We have a seven-digit clown mark score, with one million, twelve thousand, and four hundred seventy-eight points.” Chuckles stressed each part of the number.
“When me and my people designed the clown mark, we were disgusted with the ever-rising numbers without any base in reality. Sure, Tesuta and Plato have gotten better, but we designed clown mark to stand below 10k with a naked board. And now that. All that work… for nothing. But whatever, I will console myself with my brand new Seraphim Mk. VIa. The VIb is, naturally, a bit below that. It bottoms out with 971,979 points.”
Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Chuckles walked around the table again, petting the Mk. VIa on the way.
“But as usual, we have to test the build-out board. A little bit of warning, the results are not quite what you would expect. As usual, we use our standard load out, the M-877 Sector buffer, the 7673 scrambler, the Magna 72, the 72A-66, the Descron 4 scrambler, three G-55-MX, a Type 22, and the trusty Seraphim Mk. II.
The result was… a bit disappointing I fear.
In Tesuta, only 2.45 million points. I guess you are as confused as I was. How could this absolutely brilliant board score so low with the components? Well, so low compared to its naked ratings that is.
And the answer lies in… the components. The new Mk. VI is new tech, eeking the last iota of power out of the old UEB interface it can possibly get. The components we used? Not so much. There was no point, as nothing could ever come even close to maxing out the connection anyway. Well, now there is, and all the old components no longer stack up.
That of course means two things. A challenge for all the tech-heads out there to create new tech that does use everything UEB 7.3 got to give, and that Squeaky and I have to create a new standard load out.
But back to the boards here. The Mk. VIb comes up to 2.33 million points in Tesuta.
In Plato, we get 3.33 million points for the a, and 3.12 million for the b. The trend here is that the ruggedness harms the loaded run a bit more.
And finally clown mark. Fully specced out the a reaches a whopping 1.32 million points. The b has to be content with 1.24 million points.”
Chuckles walked to the front of the table again.
“Now, the hot question is, of course, how much does it cost? We all know that the Seraphim Mk. IV was the best money could buy, but boy did you need the money for it…
Compared to the DC 750k of the Kawamoto Ryu 50, the DC 2.7 million for an Mk. IV was an investment. One that, in my opinion, was worth it, but for the first time we actually had to think about it.
So, how is it now? What do you guess? Is the new board more expensive than the Mk. IV? Does it cost DC 5 million? More? Less? If you guessed more, you’re out. If you guessed less, then it depends on how much less.
It does not cost four million, not three million, not two million, not even one million. No, you can get it for an unbelievable DC 650k for the a, and DC 750k for the b.
Yes, you heard right. You can get the new best board one can buy for less than the Ryu 50… is that not a kick in the balls for Kawamoto? Not only is their ‘new’ and ‘revolutionary’ board thoroughly trounced, and downright obliterated, the one board that did it is even cheaper.”
Chuckles made some strange form of victory jump.
“There you have it. Not only did Seraphim not cut us off, but her tech has also become cheaper. So… I for one am not mad at our cutie that she switched sides if she behaves in this way. And what a cutie she is. Wowzah! Don’t tell me you have not looked her up! Come on, her anonymity is gone. That is the price for her going legit I guess.
But I would not mind tapping that one for a bit, you know.”
Ok, I could live without that statement, but whatever.
“Now, I already said it, even though not so directly, but this VIa here, that is my new personal ride. And if you are in any way smart, you do what you can to get one as well. I have never been able to give such a sure recommendation ever before. If you are a jack, go out and buy a Mk. VIa!”
With that the video cut to the usual outro, and I left it, returning to the Abyss once more. I realized, remotely, that there was no commercial segment this time, but honestly, I was not interested enough to wonder about it.
When my consciousness recovered in the Abyss, the two men at the table with me were talking softly but stopped immediately when they realized I was back.
“Oh… you’re back? Did you skip parts of the video?”
I shook my head.
“No, I am just that fast. The video was barely 10 minutes, and at 120:1 it took essentially five seconds for me to watch it. The Abyss is 4:1, so 20 seconds for you.”
Colossus frowned.
“Wait, you can go 120:1? Seriously?”
I sighed.
“Think about it. This video was about my Mk. VI boards. I personally am using the Mk. V, and that for quite some time now. 120:1 is an easy stroll for me.”
Bletchley snorted.
“Fuck, do I even want to know what your limit is?”
I just shrugged. That he would have to figure out for himself.
“You talked about a problem concerning that video. What exactly is the problem?”
Colossus cleared his throat a bit nervously.
“Ah… yeah… quite a few of our tech-heads and many of the bigger names here in the Abyss are a bit unhappy about it. They feel that you’ve essentially pushed them into a corner and we now can only use your tech to come out ahead.”
That… did not make even the slightest bit of sense.
“Why?”
Colossus sighed.
“Because your boards are so much superior to everything else, that the techs can’t compete and the Jacks have to be content with what you give them.”
I snorted.
“I understand that part of the reasoning. What I don’t understand is why they think that they need to buy my boards to compete?”
Bletchley sighed deeply.
“Isn’t that obvious? Your boards are so superior that everything else now not even qualifies for ‘also rans’ any longer.”
“I think there is a major disconnect here. Yes, my boards are absolutely superior. No question about that. But what prevents the techs out here to create their own boards based on this technology?”
Colossus threw his hands in the air.
“How about the simple fact that you control those new processors?”
I shook my head.
“And what is the difference to how it was before? Sure, everybody could make their own processors, but tell me, how many high-end boards not based on the Cirrium 8k do you know of? I bet the answer is zero.
Why? Because it was the best, and no amount of tinkering with it managed to make it better. Yes, all of us techs played around with it, and I might have been able to squeeze a tiny bit of more power out of it, but in general it was not worth it.
So now the techs have to buy the standard processors and the chipset, instead of having an industrial fabber spit the standard model out.”
I took a deep breath.
“Or… and that might just be an idea, they should buy a NADA. Sooner or later they need it anyway, and they are not that expensive.”
Colossus frowned.
“A… NADA?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“A Nano-Assembler-Dis-Assembler. That is what a replicator is technically called. Replicator is just a colloquial description.”
Bletchley leaned forward.
“So, you are saying that all those techs need to buy a replicator? Heck, those things are expensive.”
“Those things replace most of an industrial fabber. Only the molecular foundry and the carbon extruder are a bit better at what they do than the NADA.
And yes, one of Enki’s NADAs is a bit more expensive than the average indy-fab. It is also five to ten times as fast, several orders of magnitude more precise, and more economical in terms of raw materials and energy.
As I said, sooner or later, they need a NADA anyway. And here’s the kicker, as soon as they have a NADA, they can either license the Q-link for integrated functionality, buy already fabricated Q-links for integration, or they can buy the license for the new processors.
And after that, they can create to their heart's content. If they have the license for integrated Q-links, they can make their own processors. Or they can use the Hyperion and Theia, and build their homebrew chipset.
The thing is, doing anything with an indy-fab will cripple them. They need a NADA to remain competitive.
But they don’t have to get an Enki-NADA. They can wait until Burgmeister, Xiao Ping, or Dalgon bring one to the market.”
Colossus reeled back and shook his head.
“Wait, wait, you are saying that Enki is willing to license the processors? Or the Q-link? For real?”
“Sure. We take ITB 40 per processor, and the NADA has to be linked to the account so that we can withdraw that immediately. Or around ITB 1 for 50000 integrated Q-links, though for our processors that is already in the licensing fee. Or you could buy a batch of Q-links ready for integration, the 500k pack for ITB 15.”
Bletchley looked at me with some concern.
“So… you have locked the replicators down so we others can only make things that are licensed?”
I shrugged.
“That was necessary. The other big corps… let’s say insisted on it. We could have circumvented it, but that would have led to a corp-war. Nobody wants that. And honestly, the ITB 40 per processor is in my opinion quite reasonable.”
Colossus sighed.
“But look at how it is now. The Cirrium costs what? ITB 30? And that is with raw materials, energy, and fabrication. How is an ITB 40 licensing fee reasonable?”
“The Cirrium is old tech. It is nearly 50 years old. The Hyperion on the other hand is new. And it is, used appropriately, about 120 times more powerful than the Cirrium.
With all the inefficiencies of a large multi-processor network, you would need around 140-150 Cirrum to get the performance of a single Hyperion. That means at least ITB 4200 in processors, maybe ITB 4500.
On the other hand, for one Hyperion, you make it in license, it costs you ITB 40 in licensing fee, ITB 20 in materials and energy. You sell it for ITB 120, compared to the 50 that you take for the Cirrium. You have made ITB 60, the customer has paid a bit more than double for 120 times the computing power. Everybody is happy.
If you design your own processor though it will be more expensive. Frankly, the Hyperium 12 has around eight million Q-link connections.
But we could do either such a licensing deal or no deal at all. We could not make it free, because the other corporations would jump on it like sharks. And we can’t make exceptions.”
Colossus rubbed his eyes, while Bletchley groaned.
“So… if the license is ITB 40, or DC50, what does it cost to buy the processors?”
“ITB 70. Well, the smaller ones are cheaper, but I assume we are still talking about the new boards.”
Bletchley took a deep breath.
“So, you are saying it will be the cheapest to buy the processors from Enki, but if our techs want to create something for themselves, they have to pay the licensing fee or buy the prefabbed Q-links?”
I shrugged.
“Yup. But if you look at it, the NADAs will make building the rest of the board much cheaper. Roughly a tenth of what it costs to use an indy-fab.”
Bletchley rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, but now they have to pay you. It doesn’t matter where they go from here, they have to use your tech, your inventions, and your tools. And that still will probably only bring into the fight for second place.”
I shrugged.
“Seriously, the processors and the chipset aren’t that expensive. And if they manage to create a new processor that is a valid competitor to the Hyperion, they can make money as well. I am sure there will be people who will want something different just out of principle.
I am also sure that Ralcon will throw everything they have into creating a new processor line. The thing is, my processors are ready now. That is the big advantage they have. But for the first time in decades, the game is wide open. I think the Hyperion is the optimal balance between performance and complexity. Anything more and it becomes too unwieldy for a desktop processor.
But others might think differently. And who knows, in two years we will have a dozen competing CPU designs, all with their strengths and weaknesses.”
Colossus sighed.
“So, you are saying all our techs need to get a replicator and begin experimenting? And what about those Q-links? If you say that the big Hyperion has around 8 million pairs of them, any serious competitor would need at least around that number. That means each of them will cost ITB 160 just for the Q-link license.”
I shrugged.
“And? I invented the thing. I made it work. I made the replicators work. I made it possible to create the new processors. So yes, my corporation will earn more if somebody makes their own processors, but it is still relatively cheap. Before the great war made the chip-maker a necessity, a processor in the roughly same category as the Hyperion 12 1990G did cost around $5000. Just the processor. That was the equivalent of more than 1400 transfer bonds. Or nearly 1800 deep creds. So yeah, 160 bonds for the Q-links are cheap. Even if the rest of the processor comes in at another unbelievable ITB 160, we are still at ITB 320. And for that, it needs to be made out of mostly solid gold.”
Colossus hissed.
“Yeah, the prices were high. We get it. But for the last 50 years, they were low. ITB 100 for a CPU was high-end.”
I snorted.
“Yep, because nobody bothered paying any licenses anymore. That is the point here. Nobody paid licenses, and that meant there was no money in developing anything better. Guess what, that time is behind us.
Feel free to use the old, license-free processors if you want. But everything new, everything that somebody has spent time, money, and work creating… that you have to pay. But for the first time in decades that includes the basic chips themselves.
People will get used to it. The price isn’t excessive, and let’s be honest, a high-end board of the last generation did cost maybe DC 200k to make. The rest was markup. And yes, I was as guilty of that as everybody else.
With the NADA, the same general level of board will cost DC 500 to make. So now the processors cost DC 200 instead of DC 50? And you think I find that unfair? Yeah, the processors cost four times as much. But the rest of the board costs one four hundred thousands as much. In the end, the techs will come out ahead.”
Bletchley looked a bit tired when he nodded.
“Yeah, you are right. Viewed from that perspective, they have nothing to complain about. Except that they need to buy a replicator. And those things are expensive.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“Compare them to a full industrial fabber suite minus the molecular forge. Don’t get me wrong, the NADA can work like a molecular forge, but the forge is just more efficient. But an indy-fab of roughly the same size costs about 90% of what the NADA costs. And the NADA is multiple times more efficient. And sooner or later they will need one anyway. They are just too useful.”
Colossus rubbed his temples.
“You are right. It is just… it feels wrong.”
“Honestly, the moment they use the NADA for the first time will be the moment they stop complaining. It is like a village blacksmith with his hammer, ambos, and whatever else they need to forge something, and then they complain that they need to switch to an indy-fab because the hand tools don’t have the necessary precision to make the modern tools anymore. Just that the indy-fab is now in the place of the hand tools. I would suggest they sell their indy-fabs to whoever is stupid enough to buy one, but that market will probably dry up quickly.”
Bletchley nodded.
“Yeah, we will tell them. Honestly, not much we can do about it anyway. It was a quantum leap in technology, and whoever does not jump on the train will be left behind. I get it. I just don’t like it.”