And then, the big moment was there. I was to get to know the great Jason Schuyler. Too much sarcasm? If you ever had the pleasure of meeting Jason, you wouldn’t think so.
He had no idea I was there and expected only his other brethren. Some of whom knew him for years. Nonetheless, he stormed into the viron, with an honest to god cape virtually waving in the imaginary wind. Roughly half an hour after the meeting… get together…? Ah, dang it, roughly half an hour after the thing had started.
And with a booming voice, he announced:
“I am here. We can start now.”
He did not even care that he interrupted any conversation that might have happened. He just continued:
“I know, I was a tiny bit late, but you can now rest, your wait is over. We can now work on…”
We never learned what we could now work on, because that was when he saw me.
“What the fuck. Who are you? What are you doing here? I have not invited you.”
I looked him over and shrugged.
“Nope, that was Danielle.”
He turned red in the face amidst quite a few snickers and even a giggle or two.
“That does not tell me who you are. Are you not aware that this here is a K4-exclusive meeting? Oh, I understand, you wanted to meet me. Well you did, you can go now.”
When I made no movement, he tilted his head and in an overly dramatic motion waved at me to go away.
When I still just sat there, he waved again, accompanied by:
“Well, what are you waiting for? I told you, this is K4-exclusive. I did not invite you, so leave your betters alone.”
I could not help and roll my eyes.
“Well, there are a few problems with that. First, as far as I know, Nathan Vandermeer set this meeting up. Not you. Second, as I told you, I was invited. Not just by Danielle, I might add, but also by Nathan Vandermeer. And third, I am a K4 as well, which is why both Danielle and Nathan Vandermeer invited me to this meeting.”
He growled and was clearly angry.
“Poppycock. I know all the functional K4. And you are not one of them. So… for the last time, get out!”
Rose intervened.
“Would you please shut up? We looked it up. She is indeed a K4. She just hid it well.”
His anger directed itself to Rose now.
“What do you mean you ‘looked it up’? There are eleven of us. Everybody knows that. There have always been eleven. And until our children are old enough there will always be eleven. There is no way you would just find another K4 under some rock somewhere.”
I rolled my eyes again, not alone this time.
“I would not quite say I found her under a rock, you know?”
Danny was sounding at once pleased and amused.
“So, where did you find her then?”
“Several places. First, Nathan Vandermeer himself ordered me to a meeting with her. After that, I found her right in the documentation of Project Revitalize. Along with the rest of us. That is also where the others looked it up.”
Jason brought a decent imitation of a fish out of the water to the table.
“But… but…”
I sighed.
“Yes, I also have a butt, not that that is a proper topic I would think.”
That gave another round of snickers and giggles, and despite me swearing it could not be possible, Dr. Schuyler turned even redder.
“That was not what I wanted to say. And you damn well know that. What I want to know is how your name landed in the documentation of the K4.”
I shrugged.
“You have to ask Vandermeer that, you know. I know that it was not there when I gave the data to him. I made sure to erase it.”
Now he was visibly confused.
“You… erased it? Why? Why would you do something like that? Do you not understand that you would then forgo all the benefits of being a K4?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What benefits? The label of being an easily exploitable valuable asset for corrupt corporations? The branding of being a nice, convenient broodmare for their empire building? Or the benefit of everybody expecting miracles every time I even think about working on a project? You mean those benefits?”
His eyes nearly left his skull, and when I looked into the round, the others were not much less shocked.
In the end, Tim cleared his throat.
“You know… she’s not wrong. I mean, yes, we men have it a bit better. We are just asked to ‘stud’ whoever the big corps ‘ask’ us to, but in the end, yeah she’s right.”
Danny scowled.
“Yeah. I mean, we could at least convince them that we should use egg harvesting and uterus replicators… but yeah, we go where the corp says we should, we breed with whoever the corp tells us to, and after we put in all the work, the corp receives the reward…”
Rose nodded.
“Yeah, that was that way.
But to be fair, now with Vandermeer, I don’t know how you are, but they treat at least me quite a bit more fair. I can finally work on what I want, get the resources, and sure, my new anti-rejection drug has been mostly rendered useless by this new cyberware from Enki, but before that, Vandermeer shared the income 50-50 with me.”
Unfortunately, that made Jason perk up again.
“Ah, so you see, these are the perks of being a K4. So why would you throw that away?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Well, let’s see. I created a fortune for myself working in the grey and black market, then had several inventions, including the new cyberware that Rose just mentioned, created a new corporation with some friends, of which I am the majority owner, can work on whatever I want anyway because, well majority owner and CTO, and nobody pesters me to become a broodmare.
And of course, neither Panacea nor Dalgon got their dirty little grubs on me. Yeah, I can clearly how being wide and far known as a K4 is better than that.”
As an answer, Jason balled his fists and rolled his eyes, angrily, but then caught himself again.
“Whatever, now you are known. So, have the others informed you about the rules here in our little community?”
Rules? Nobody said anything about rules. Not that most of them seemed to care an iota about what Jason was saying.
“No, no rules. Why?”
His face transformed into something I believe he thought was friendly, and he magnanimously continued:
“Well, in that case, let me educate you. You need to learn them after all. Most important, we have a ranking structure here, based on IQ, age, family status, and achievements. Mostly we mind our betters and try to not irritate them too much. I am sure you will learn.
Of course, as I am the highest ranking in all four of those points, I am the ranking member of our club.”
He was… a look in the round told me that he was the only one who insisted on this stupid ranking system, and the others had simply stopped arguing with him about it. And of course, he was… somewhat mistaken.
Unfortunately, it was at this moment that I messed up.
“Hm, one out of four. But ok.”
He turned red again.
“What do you mean, one out of four?”
I immediately realized my mistake. I let my head hang and sighed.
“Oh frick. Well, too late now.” That of course was mostly murmured to myself.
“What was that? Speak up if you have something to say. And I asked you a question.”
I shrugged.
“Frankly, I don’t think you really want the answer to that question. So, how about you do yourself a favor and forget I said anything, ok?”
He spread his fingers before he slowly balled them back into fists, and then, slowly, and I think what he thought was menacingly snarled:
“I know full well what I want, and I want you to fucking answer my question! WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ONE OUT OF FOUR?!?”
I shrugged.
“Well, if you insist, you are definitely the oldest of us. Though what that has to do with ranking I have no clue. I mean, most of you are the same biological age, somewhere around 21. And in a few years, we all will be there. In a hundred years, the ten years age difference is meaningless.”
It took him a moment to parse through what I had said.
“Does that mean that you think I am not the smartest, the most accomplished, and the one from the most prestigious family here? Do you seriously think that? That I, who has an IQ of 370 am not the smartest? That I, who has two Genolt-prizes for my physics work am not the most accomplished? That my family, with my father a manager in Ascombe&Fillani, is not the highest ranking among us?”
Genolt-prize? Oh, right that was some Dalgon-internal price for work. Yeah… impressive, the Nobel it was not quite. Though the Nobel had lost dramatically in importance since the war, there was still nothing coming even close to it. Everything else would require the cooperation of the nations and the corporations, and that was… unlikely. And so the Nobel prize, with its politicking, its brownnosing, and its corruption remained the most important.
But the Genolt was… at least in my opinion, not that much in the form of accomplishments.
And it seemed that at least some of the others were the same opinion. I heard Danny shouting:
“I wouldn’t go there, Jason. I would definitely not go there.”
Followed by Harry’s “Oh shit!”
That turned Jason’s ire first to Danny, and then to Harry, who by now had turned beet red.
“Don’t you understand? We all know that whatever boost K4 gave us to our intelligence, it is multiplicative.”
Jason looked a bit confused but then shrugged.
“Yeah, so what?”
Harry rolled his eyes.
“All these times when you crowed how you are 30-40 IQ points smarter than the rest of us because your family has an average IQ of 108 instead of 105? Well, Vivian’s family has an average IQ of around 200!”
I waved him off.
“I wouldn’t go that far. As far as I know, my father had an IQ of 192, not 200.”
Again, Jason’s eyes threatened to fly to the other side of the room, while Harry now waved me off.
“So the General had a whole eight IQ points below 200. Yes, that is significant, I agree. After all, your mother ‘only’ has a documented IQ of 247. So no, your family clearly doesn’t even come close to an average IQ of 200. I must have been in error.”
Ok, that was sarcasm in its purest form. He even made the air quotes when he said ‘only’. I had to give him that.
The interesting thing that Jason took from it though was what Harry had called my father.
“The… General?”
Harry smiled at Jason and nodded.
“Oh, yes, I know. Not quite as prestigious as being a low-level manager in a C-tier corporation. But still, I think we can forgive Vivian for her father ‘only’ being a brigadier-general in the CDF. After all, her mother is just the only child of Nathan Vandermeer.”
That made Jason, who had by now walked around the seating arrangement to the free chair, fall down into it and look at Harry in utter shock.
Danny, who sat beside Harry, offered him a fist bump with the words:
“Yeah, that’s more like it!”
Jason meanwhile turned to me:
“You… you… you’re a Vandermeer?”
I shrugged.
“Nope, I am a DuClare. My mother is a Vandermeer.”
He mumbled to himself:
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck…”
Then his eyes turned hard again.
“That does not change anything. Yes, your family is important, but the other factors are still in my favor. I am still the smartest, the oldest, and the most accomplished.”
Danny told him with a sickly sweet voice:
“I wouldn’t bet on that. I mean, sure, she does not have some fancy prize from some corporation as an atta-girl. But that does not mean she has no accomplishments either.”
With the steel back in his voice, he turned to Danny.
“So you think? What accomplishments could be remotely important enough to even be mentioned here?”
Danny, still smiling sweetly, cocked her head:
“Well, how about the fact that she almost certainly beat Sanderson’s Folly just a few days ago? Would that be important enough?”
That shut up Jason, but the rest of the K4 were equally in shock, and shouts in that regard called through the viron.
I sighed.
“Come on, I just found out what the Folly does. It’s on you to actually beat it.”
Danny did not seem particularly impressed.
“And those new nano-bots that are now classified as Project Revitalize Batch N1 are nothing? Yeah, sure.”
I perked up a bit.
“So they are directly going to test them?”
Danny rolled her eyes.
“You know better than I that we are talking about bog standard medical nano-bots here. Of course, they are starting human testing.”
Rose looked from Danny to me, and back.
“One moment… what are you talking about?”
When I did no moves to toot my own horn, Danny sighed and explained:
“Apparently a couple of months ago, Vandermeer, the bossman, not the corp, asked Vivian here to look into a cure for the Folly. Yes, I know, why did he ask a comp-sci nerd and nano-engineer for that bla bla bla? For one, he did not ask any random comp-sci nerd, but his granddaughter, and otherwise… well, among Vivian’s other achievements are such unimportant things like this new cyberware that you complained about, Rose. Or this new cloning tech that has you running up the walls, Nads.”
Nadia jerked her gaze to me.
“You created this new cloning tech? But… what has that… nano-engineering?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I have, let’s say an OCD for learning new things. Yes, I have my credentials in computer science and nano-engineering, but only because I didn’t bother to get them in other disciplines as well. And honestly, the cloning tech is a windfall from the cyberware project. Which I solved by using nano-technology. Nothing major, just a bit out-of-the-box thinking.”
Danny laughed.
“Seriously, Nads, where do you think all that biodata I showed you yesterday came from?”
“Wait, that came from you? How… it is so insanely detailed, how did you get all those data?”
I sighed.
“Mostly by an invention of mine that I call bio-observation unit. It’s essentially a batch of nano-bots that observe biological processes on the molecular level and then report what they see not quite in real-time. The rest is just building a machine that can do thousands over thousands of artificial fertilizations to generate a big database so that my supercomputer could analyze the data for correlations.
That is what I mean by that it was just a bit of out-of-the-box thinking. Everybody could have done that.”
Logan leaned forward.
“How did you get all that functionality into nano… oh, I see. It’s the same tech that is used in the NADAs, right? So… those are also from you?”
When I just nodded, he began to giggle. Jason was increasingly annoyed, not that any of the others were in the slightest distressed about that fact.
When he barked at Logan:
“What the fuck do you find so funny?”
Logan broke out in loud laughter. After a few moments, he managed, interspersed with further laughter to press out:
“Oh fuck, Jason… that’s too good. You don’t even… even realize… oh how you fucked up… that is just…”
“Get a grip on yourself and speak English, asshole.”
Logan slowly brought himself under control, which was not helped by Jason again and again demanding what was so funny. I mean, come on, even I had understood what he was laughing so hard about. Well, ok, the others did only grin broadly and did probably not connect the dots yet.
When Logan was breathing more calmly, and before Jason managed to set him off again, I was able to ask the other nano-engineer:
“I assume you are working for Burgmeisters NADA?”
Logan, who was wiping away tears, could only nod, but it explained it. Yes, it was no secret that the NADA was based on the Q-link. But we also did not go around advertising that fact. What I did not quite understand is why that little factoid made him laugh that hard.
When I raised my eyebrow and looked at him questioningly, he managed a hard-pressed:
“You will learn.”
Which only served to confuse me even more. Not that anybody else showed any understanding in his cryptic sentence. When he refused to elaborate, Jason, turning redder by the minute, turned back to me.
“So… you have some achievements? And you think they are more important than mine?”
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I shrugged.
“Well, I would concede that what I’ve done has had some impact.”
Nadia interjected.
“Yeah, I would say that also. You have to sell me this bio-obs thing… it could be exactly what I now need.”
I held up my hands defensively.
“Cool down. It is on regular sale from Enki. I don’t exactly know the price, but you work for Vandermeer, so it won’t be that bad.”
Her eyes widened.
“It is? Why do I not know about it?”
I could only shrug helplessly.
“I have no clue. Probably because we announced it along with quite a slew of new products. And honestly, it all was drowned by the NADAs and the new grav coils. I guess nobody thought it would be that important.”
“Not! That! Important?!? Does nobody understand what this thing could do? And seriously, if that is an application of nano-technology, why the fuck did you not create something like that long ago, Logan?”
That nearly brought Logan to laughter again, but he held it in heroically, and after a few deep breathes, managed to answer:
“Because I am missing, or was missing at least, the secret ingredient. The one thing that makes it, and the NADA possible in the first place. I am sure I could make this observation unit, now. But I am also sure that, unlike the NADA, Enki did not offer licenses for the technology. So you have to ask the old man for it, or Vivian here.”
She visibly fumed, rolled her eyes, and then turned to me.
“Fine. Whatever, when can I get one of those things?”
“I call it a bio-observation unit, or BOU for short. And that depends.”
I was suddenly reminded of the old adage about if looks could kill. If that were the case I would now be a smoldering husk.
“Depends on what!?!”
I sighed.
“Calm down. It depends on how big you want to have it, where you want to have it, and such things. Depending on how big it is, you will need to wait up to a few days before you can use it.”
When she inhaled, I held up my hands again.
“Hold on, that is an inherent problem. This thing is, at its heart, a very specialized nano-fab, and before you can use it, it has to make the nano-bots first. And because of its principle, it has to be this unit that makes the bots. They can’t be simply preloaded. I mean, we have something similar for the NADAs, but we have nothing for the BOUs. Simply because the need to justify it is just not there. That means if you want to use it on, for example, the combined mass of a Stomper, you will have to wait around three days before it is ready.
Also, you have to decide what size you want to use. Personally, I would suggest that you get several. A few smaller ones which can be used for normal-sized biological entities, and a few bigger ones.”
Then I realized that with the sudden need for BOUs for the hopefully pregnant women, we actually might have set up a similar system.
When Nadia opened her mouth, I held up a hand.
“Wait a moment. I have to look something up.”
A quick dive to 120:1, and I looked up if maybe one of the minions had thought about it. And indeed, we were in luck. We had a very big preloader.
I surfaced back to 30:1.
“Ok, I was wrong. We do have a pre-loader. So we can make you one the size you want, and it will be working when it arrives. But don’t go overboard, please. There is a reason why we set up the pre-loader, and if I divert enough of it to you, it will hurt us.”
Again, thunderclouds were figuratively coming into existence above her head.
“What the fuck could be so important?”
I rolled my eyes.
“You do know that I could ask you the same? What could you research that is so important and time-sensitive? But to answer, that Revitalize batch N1 that Danny mentioned, well, we of Enki have its twin project running. We thought it would be unethical to keep this away from our employees, so we informed them and if they want to they can partake in the test. Fully voluntary, I have to stress.
For their good, and of course, to observe the test, we insist that each woman has to be injected with a BOU as well so that if something goes wrong we are immediately informed and can react.
The response was a bit overwhelming, and we literally need every single BOU we can get.”
Danny perked up.
“Wait, you are testing it too? And with this BOU? Are there any results?”
I sighed but looked it up quickly.
“There are so far 73 women who had successful fertilization. But it is way too early to talk about success.”
That made Rose suddenly look very interested.
“Wait… you already have results? And there are 73 fertilizations? When did you start?”
“Thursday afternoon. And so far, we have injected 1379 women with the nanobots. So only a bit over 5% success rate for now.”
That made Rose shake her head in bewilderment.
“Do I understand you correctly, you started this test not quite one-and-a-half days ago, for a process that, if everything goes perfectly, can be randomly anywhere in a 28-day cycle, and you have the audacity of using the word only with a 5% success rate?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Statistical optimum would be 5.36%, the results are 5.29%. So 0.07% below what I hoped it would be.”
For a moment, Rose just looked at me without showing any understanding. Then she threw up her hands and screamed.
Followed by jumping up and walking around randomly, ranting incoherently.
I looked at her a bit confused, before I turned to the others:
“Uh… did I break her?”
Nadia took a very deep breath before she answered me:
“Vivian dear, please don’t get me wrong, but are you insane? We are talking biology here. In biology, 0.07% is spot on.”
I honestly thought for a moment that she was trying to play a trick on me, but it looked as if she was serious.
“Really? Frick, no wonder I don’t like biology.” Which was answered by another loud “Argh” from Rose, and groans from Nadia and Danny.
Then I saw Rose storming towards me.
“Vivian, sweety, what the fuck are you thinking? You’ve done something humanity could only dream about for 180 years. And you managed it in a mind-boggling way. You had a rate of success that is simply insane. Please do some math for me. How many women should statistically have ovulated in the what, 36 hours since you started the test?”
The math was, honestly, trivial.
“Well, 74, why?”
She threw up her arms again, before placing her hand left and right of my head on the backrest of my chair.
“Think, goddamn it, think. You are not looking at 73 out of 1380 women, you are looking at 73 out of 74! That is more than a 98% success rate. That is phenomenal. And there is no knowledge of why that one woman did not yet get a successful fertilization. Maybe her husband shoots blanks, or they simply had a bad day. It could be anything.
But do you know how high the success rate of the most successful drug in Project Revitalize is?
0.83%!
Yes, that is right, C3 has less than a single percent change to work. Fortunately per ovulation.
You have already beaten C3 by more than 100 times. That is why we are so excited about your numbers. Even if it was a fluke, and the improvement turns out to be half of what this first day suggests, it will be enough to ensure the survival of humanity.
And I am pretty sure that us medical types can improve whatever is not perfect over time if that’s the case. For the first time since that asshole Sanderson released his Folly, we see the light at the end of the tunnel. So yes, celebrate it. And let us celebrate it.”
Then she shoved herself off my chair, turned to Jason, and scathingly said:
“And if you believe that anything you’ve achieved comes even close to being in the same zip code as that, you are simply insane. So that finishes that topic as well.”
She huffed for a last time and stomped back to her chair, falling into it.
Jason did not look very pleased either. He, the only way to describe it is that he sulked in his chair, and in the same tone a spoiled child would use when they were unhappy, he spoke up:
“Fine. She has some achievements. But can we please change the topic to something not revolving around her?”
For a moment, nobody said anything, though most of the others visibly fought the urge to laugh out loudly.
After some time, Kelsey rolled her eyes and answered him:
“Ok, we can do that. Have you made any progress with the Seeberger equation then?”
Jason pouted even harder as a reaction.
“You know pretty damn well that this blasted equation is impossible to figure out.”
Kelsey stared at him with fire in her eyes.
“Somebody did figure it out though. So it is possible.”
Seriously, he was the smartest of them, well the second smartest of us, and he had that hard a time figuring out the equation? What was going wrong here?
Before I could say anything, Jason blasted at her:
“Then fucking find that somebody. Maybe they can explain how those fucking grav coils work. Would that make you happy?”
Kelsey snarled back:
“Yes, it would. Because it would explain to me how the new grav coils work.”
I scowled. This seemed to be an old argument, but…
“If I may ask, what are your problems with the grav coils?”
Kelsey turned her burning brown eyes toward me.
“They should not work, that is my problem with them. My scans of them show no continuous structure that would conduct the electricity.”
Then her look softened.
“Sorry, I am a bit on the edge here. Those things drive me insane. They clearly work, but I can’t understand why.”
I tilted my head.
“You tried to scan the new grav coils? With a 3D scanner?”
She sighed.
“Yeah. And it simply makes no sense.”
I nodded.
“Of course not. A three-dimensional scan won’t give you the information you need. The grav-coils are four-dimensional.”
You could hear a pin drop directly after that, before Kelsey, with a very shaky voice asked:
“What… what do you mean with four-dimensional?”
I shrugged.
“The gravity bending field is created by four-dimensional structures. And there is no continuous 3D structure because most of the mass is just structural carbon to keep the coil in shape. The continuous structure is in the fourth dimension, so a three-dimensional scanner simply can’t show it to you.”
Jason barked:
“How the fuck do you know that? I thought you were a nano-engineer and software weenie?”
I rolled my eyes.
“I told you, I have nearly a compulsion to learn new things. I could get my Ph.D. in physics, or math if I wanted. But why bother? And I know that because it took me nearly six months to figure it out. Fortunately in VR or I would still be busy with it.”
Kelsey frowned, then scowled, and was obviously thinking hard. Then she spoke up.
“That… doesn’t add up. If these new grav-coils are four-dimensional, how could it be that the old three-dimensional ones worked?”
“They worked because they were not three-dimensional. That was one of the problems I had so much fun figuring out. As it is, the Kobashigawa-alloy naturally creates four-dimensional structures when it is cast. A strange artifact of the composition of the alloy. That also explains why the old coils are so… anemic compared to the new ones. They are far from optimal.
It also explains why the result of the casting process was so random. It is pure chance where the four-dimensional structures are formed.”
Before Kelsey could answer me, Jason, who had listened apparently in shock, screamed angrily.
“Fuck it! Fuck it all! Is there anything you are not perfect in?”
He jumped up and paced around while he descended into a tirade about how unfair the world is, and how he deserved better blah blah blah.
When he made a short pause to breathe in, I intervened:
“You think I am perfect?!?”
I stood up as well.
“Look at me! That is how I look in real life. I am tiny. I am small compared to Mongrels, much less Pures. I have severe social anxiety, and my social intelligence can best be described as ‘I have to have some somewhere’. So no, I am far from being perfect.”
Rose groaned.
“It’s okay, sweety. We were all young once. That is nothing you have to be ashamed of.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Rose, I am 19. Yes, I still have some maturing to do, but growing not so much. This is my final height. Add in that I am the only Pure I ever heard of who is alpha-negative, and yeah, physically I am less than impressive.”
“Alpha-negative? We can be negative?”
“It seems so, I am at least.”
“But then, why are you beating Jason at everything so far?”
I sighed and shook my head.
“That is owed almost exclusively to the fact that he based his strange ranking system mostly on things where he thought he was the best, and where I am just a bit better. He is almost certainly better than me in several things, but I assume those are things where he is not better than every one of you.”
That made Jason perk up.
“I am still the oldest, and I am still the one with the best equipment here. I am certain that old man Vandermeer hasn’t organized a Seraphim Mk. III for anybody else!”
At first, I was just speechless. He did not really just say that, right? I had to have misheard him. There was no other possibility. Then it dawned on me that he did indeed claim to be using a Seraphim Mk.III. And I winced. But decided to leave him this small sliver of his pride.
Unfortunately, Logan at least had seen me wince, and he was clearly unwilling to let it stand.
“You are disagreeing with him? Anything to say about that?”
I sighed.
“Is it really necessary to humiliate him any further?”
That, interestingly, was answered in the positive by ten of the people present. And after some pressuring, accompanied by further sulking from Jason, I grudgingly agreed.
“Ok, fine. I am very sure that he is not using a Seraphim Mk.III. A Mk. IV maybe, but not a Mk. III. And even a Mk. IV would be at best a suboptimal choice for one of you.”
Tamara was the one who posed the obvious question:
“Uh, why that? I mean, from what I heard it is said to be the best board one could buy.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, collecting my thoughts and trying to find a way to formulate the answer in a way that was not insulting.
“It is, in a way. But you are missing one very important fact. Until five months ago, jacks were almost exclusively to hackers. Yes, you and a few others got some of the first CRS-free ones made by an industrial fabber, but those things were very expensive. The combo you received did cost around Ȼ13.5 million a piece.
That also means though that every comparison of boards is made from the perspective of hackers. We are talking about cyberwarfare boards. They have parts that are completely useless for you, and some that are even a detriment. Things that make cyber combat more survivable for the Jack.
What you need is a lean, clean system with the sole function of providing you with virtual reality and assisting you in your scientific endeavors. You could compare it to ground vehicles. What you need is a race car. Lightweight, agile, very specialized, and it also only needs to function under very controlled circumstances.
A typical cyberwarfare board on the other hand compares more to an APC. Sure, you can try to race it against a racecar, but it will not be very good. Now the Seraphim Mk. IV is more akin to an MBT. Three times the weight of the APC, 30 times the weight of the race car, but virtually indestructible. Not in any way slower than the APC, but ten to twenty times as expensive.
And that is wasted money for you when you need a racecar that costs 10% of that.”
Tamara seemed to listen carefully.
“I think I understand. It is the best board you can buy, for its purpose. And until recently, that was the only purpose one would buy a board for. But for us, it is simply the wrong tool.”
I nodded.
“Yes, that is correct. And frankly… I will have to look into what is a good board for people like you.”
Tim cleared his throat.
“But that still does not explain why you are so sure that Jason doesn’t have a Mk. III.”
I shrugged.
“As I said, I am relatively sure he does not even have a Mk. IV. It costs around Ȼ3.6 million, naked that is, and it offers at best marginally better performance than a vastly cheaper board to a scientist.
But I am absolutely, one hundred percent sure that Jason doesn’t have a Mk. III because there are exactly two Mk. III in existence. The Mk. III is what is called a bespoke board. A board specially designed to be optimized for the hacker it is designed for. And that is an insane amount of work on the tech’s side. So no, he has no Mk. III. The Mk. IV plans are available on the dark web, and several techs can build you one. The Mk. III, nope, not available.”
Jason now defiantly threw in:
“And how can you be so sure that old man Vandermeer did not manage to organize that for me?”
I sighed and switched to my Seraphim Avatar, along with the voice change and size change. Then I edited in a certain resonance in my voice, to make it sound more dramatic.
“Because I have not built one for you.”
Jason just scrambled backward to get away from me, and the others looked equally shocked. After a few seconds, I switched back to my normal appearance.
“In case you have not figured it out, I am Seraphim. And only I have the plans for the Mk. III. I know for absolutely sure that there are only two of them because I have built only two, and I know where they are. And neither is in your possession.”
After a moment of awkward silence, Nadia scowled.
“Wait, does that mean that you are using a Mk. III?”
I rolled my eyes.
“No.” That seemed to confuse them all, and I quickly added:
“Not anymore. I’ve switched over to the Mk. V. And before you ask, yes, there are also only two of them. The new ‘best board one can buy’ is, since yesterday, the Seraphim Mk. VI.”
Jason had by now stabilized himself and whined:
“Why do you have to destroy everything?”
Rose answered softly:
“Because you’ve built your castles in the air on lies. You are a K4, you are the oldest of us, one of the smartest humans to have ever lived, you are working on unraveling the secrets of the universe, and by now you work for Vandermeer, one of the very few corporations that could be described as ‘good’.
You have no reason to make yourself more than you are. None of us does. You are good enough already.”
Wow, I had to say, that was very deep.
After a few moments, Kelsey coughed politely, and then asked me:
“To get back to the topic, what makes you think that the new grav coils are four-dimensional?”
“As I said, six months of trying to figure it out. But in the end, the Seeberger equation explained it fully. I have to confess I did the work several times because I could not understand how the old grav coils could work when four-dimensional structures are needed either.
But then I went at it from another direction and examined if the Kobasigawa alloy could make four-dimensional structures.
The rest of the time was trying to figure out how to make four-dimensional structures.”
Kelsey frowned.
“Wait… does that mean you understand the Seeberger equation? For real?”
For some reason that made Logan laugh again, and it took a few seconds before he could talk:
“And there we have it. Why I laughed earlier? Nads, you asked why I did not make the BOU for you. Well, the secret ingredient for the NADAs is that Vivian has used Q-links to put everything she could outside of the nanobots. The same Q-links Jason swore up and down to us could not exist. Because the Seeberger equation was just idiocy.”
Instead of answering him, Jason just glowered at our fellow K4. When nobody else said something for some seconds, I answered Kelsey:
“I would not exactly say I understand it. I understand parts of it, but it is so insanely complex and so multilayered that it will take decades, maybe centuries before anybody really understands it.”
“Oh, ok, but you do understand the equation for the grav coils? And… apparently the equation for the Q-links?”
“The equation for the Q-links is easy. Seeberger himself was only a couple of steps away from inventing them. Just follow his work and go the last few steps further.
The grav coils… that was a bit harder, but yes, I do. I am sorry, but I won’t fully explain it to you. I have my reasons though.”
Jason snarled:
“How can you make any sense out of that monstrosity of an equation?”
I shrugged.
“No clue. I just do. Oh, it was quite a bit of hard work, but it just clicked for me. I am slowly learning that this is something unusual.”
“But… but how?”
I rolled my eyes. I was sure I would regret my next decision, but I could not let it go.
“How about you show me where you have problems? Maybe I can help you over the hump?”
After some consideration, Jason agreed, while the rest groaned, but did not complain.
A few moments later, Jason had summoned a whiteboard, with part of the equation on it.
I did not see anything wrong, but it was strangely quite early in the process. I mean, he had according to Nate around a decade of work in it, and it was… not even halfway done.
And then I saw what the problem really was. And I blurted out:
“STOP! STOP! What the fuck are you doing? You have a goddamn jack! Use it!”
He had, indeed materialized a dry-erase marker and had begun writing manually at the board, obviously trying to solve the math in his head.
He stopped doing that and with some annoyance showing on his face turned to me.
“What the fuck do you think I am doing? I am in a VR after all, am I not?”
I could not help myself, I let myself fall into the chair that I had teleported behind me and placed my head into my hands.
“Oh lord. That can’t be true.”
When I lifted my head out of my hands, not only Jason, but all the others looked at me confused.
“Are you seriously telling me nobody taught you the difference between a diadem and a jack? For real?”
Danny asked in an uncertain shaky voice:
“There is a difference? I mean beyond the speed thing?”
After I had stared at her for a moment, I shook my head and mumbled to myself:
“Well, that answers that.”
Then I spoke louder again:
“Yes, there is a gigantic difference. A diadem has to work through your skull. It can only receive weak impressions and only give you the same. The effect of that is mostly the limited bandwidth which limits the compression.
The jack is directly wired into your brain. That enabled much higher bandwidth, and in turn higher compression, but it also enables other parts of your brain, that are mostly ignored by the diadem to work along the computer.
Mainly your subconscious.”
I addressed Jason directly:
“What you are doing is using the jack like a fast diadem. You use this processor” I tapped at the side of my head, “instead of the one in your board or your supercomputer to do the number crunching.”
Jason looked at me openmouthed but then asked:
“But… how do I do that? And what supercomputer?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Figures that nobody thought about giving you access to a supercomputer. But the process is simple. Just relax and think about what you want your board to do. Not what you want to do, but what you want your board to do.
At first, it will be a conscious effort, but quite soon, you will do it automatically.”
When he made no move in that regard, I sighed.
“Go ahead, try it.”
When he still did not act, I spoke more forcefully:
“I said try it!”
That shook him out of it, and he turned back to the whiteboard. You could literally see his concentration, and then the symbols on the board moved seemingly of their own accord. From my perspective, having worked with Warden and a super-Grendel, it was glacially slow, but it seemed for the others it was miraculously fast.
It was Owen who remarked:
“It works? Fuck me, it works. Why has nobody told me that?”
The last was directed at me, and I could only shrug.
Danny then mused.
“That means I have to wheedle a supercomputer out of the old man? Fuck… that will be expensive.”
I briefly flashed back to the talk I had with Nate about how I seemingly was so much smarter than even the other K4. But if they were this crippled… I was not so sure that was really the case.
After the commotion had settled down a bit, mostly because Rose sharply demanded everybody calm down, for a few moments we were all sitting or standing in silence.
And then Jason had to open his mouth again.
“I knew it, you cheated! You are nothing but a dirty cheater!”
I was not the only one to roll their eyes, but I was the one who answered:
“You do know that this is a very well-documented technique that until around a year ago, virtually every owner of a jack knew, right? It is not my fault that you were too incompetent of knowing it. Just asking any Jack about how to use a jack the best way would have given it to you.”
His eyes crossed for a moment, as he tried to parse what I had said. Then he shook his head.
“What do you mean?”
I sighed and rolled my eyes again.
“Every single hacker with an implanted jack, well every hacker who survived the first three months or so, every single implanted corporate cyber security specialist knows how to do that. Is it my fault that you did not think of asking any of them?”
Rose intervened again.
“No, it is not your fault. And don’t let grumpy over there con you into believing it. But now that we know about it, can you help us, well those of us who will listen to you, to get better?”
I closed my eyes and thought for a moment before I answered:
“To be honest, that depends completely on what you have and what you need. We might have to get you some better hardware.”
I made a quick decision.
“And Danny, if you have problems with the supercomputer, call me. I will arrange something.”
That made Danny utter a “Huh?”, while Jason of course was offended again.
“Why her? Why would you arrange something for her and not m… us others?”
I did not miss that he nearly had said ‘me’ but whatever.
“Because I think her project is of vital importance for humanity. I have no clue what you others have as projects, so I can’t comment on that.”
He whined a bit more, but when he realized that I completely ignored him, he stopped and sulked some more.
When he was blessedly silent again, I turned to Rose.
“If you want me to help you I need to know for example what you are using now, and what you need.”
Rose thought only for a moment.
“Sure. You’re the comp-sci gal. All of us, except possibly Jason, got the Dalgon SL-53-12. Otherwise, we have the usual computer support, meaning a server, and a few lab computers. They run on Envision, so no VR.”
I had heard of the SL-53 series from Dalgon. It did not have a good reputation, and I was wondering why someone foisted those genius scientists with, well garbage, but before I said anything, I looked up the board in question.
I learned the why quickly. Both why it had a bad reputation, and why the K4 got them.
“I see. Somebody used their head to give you those boards. But they dropped the ball when they missed teaching you to use them.”
Now Jason’s whiney voice cut through everything.
“Used their head? The SL-53 are garbage. Worth more for their scrap value than as cyber boards.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before I, as calmly as I could manage, explained as if to a small child.
“Remember what I told you about why a Seraphim Mk. IV would not be suited for you? Every cyber-board out there has its reputation formed from the perspective of a hacker. And the Sl-53-12 is indeed garbage. From the perspective of a hacker. It has virtually no protection in cyber combat, and it has a minuscule fast execution storage, which is woefully slow.
Or, from your perspective, it doesn’t waste resources on that useless junk. To get back to the vehicle comparison, you need a racecar, but there is none. All boards are more or less built for cyber combat. But the SL-53-12 is the equivalent of one of those cars that can carry four or five soldiers, whatever they are called.
It is a bit more flexible, and it has more resources for what you need, but for a hacker, it is simply useless.”
I shook my head.
“But that does not help much. It seems to be the best that they could get you, but it is not really what you need.
Doesn’t matter, next year I will create something for you. And I would suggest the new Envision XE. We can replace your other computers at the same time, no problem. I have to look into it, but I would guess for most of you, a Chronos cluster should be enough. If you need more, we can talk about it.”
That made Tim frown.
“Envision? I thought we were talking about using VR?”
I snorted.
“The new Envision XE is VR capable. Heck, Ralcon has a free utility that makes most older Envision versions VR capable.”
Logan now tilted his head.
“And you think that is something usable? I mean, Envision has become worse and worse with each new version.”
I snorted again.
“Oh yes, it is something usable. And I can believe that it became worse. It has become so bad that they finally resorted to hiring me to clean it all up. The utility is something that I cooked up to bribe Ralcon away from trying to squash Enki, and the XE version, well let’s say that it took some work to get it mostly bug-free and cleaned up. But it is quite a bit faster, slimmer, and more stable than Envision 48.”
I shook my head and spoke mostly to myself.
“Now the bets are how long it takes for them to mess it all up again.”
Not that Logan was finished.
“Wait, you cleaned up Envision? I thought this was this gigantic thing that was way too big for anybody to understand. How could you clean all of that up? Alone?”
“I did not say I did it alone. Heck, I did hardly any of the work directly. No, I created a VI to do it and let it run on a supercomputer. But the important part is that the new version is not only VR capable, it is also relatively fast and stable.
Though I don’t know how much they messed with what I have given them.”
Nadia seemed to be thinking hard but now posed a question.
“What I don’t get is why next year?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Because we have 10 days left this year, and I’ve just finished a pretty hard project, which I did directly after I finished an even harder project. I need a bit of time to unwind. So, no more science this year, no more developing, no more tech.
But if you need special software I can give you access to Calliope. That should help you a bit.”