After the successful tests, Ben ushered me into his limo and to his home. Shortly later he noticed that I had invested in some more appealing underwear.

As much as I wanted to, we could not spend the whole weekend in bed though. At some time we had to come up for food, and bodily needs.

And after a bit more than a day, even our appetites were mostly sated. For the time being that is.

On Sunday afternoon, we relocated to his library, where he moved toward a comfortable-looking overstuffed chair sitting next to a small table with a newspaper lying on it.

Just before he reached it, he suddenly stopped, turned to me, and then looked over the books.

A few seconds later he apparently found what he searched for and took a book from a shelf, pressing it into my hands.

“Here, I think that might something for you.”

I just stared dumbfounded at the book in my hands, while he sat down in his chair before grabbing the newspaper.

I had a sudden and completely random image in my head that he was missing his pipe. I honestly have no clue where that came from but it seemed strangely fitting for the surrounding.

Still standing mostly forlorn in the room, the book in my hand I finally shook my head and moved to another of the chairs to sit down.

I decided I would have to get a few of these chairs for myself pretty quickly, while I studied the book.

While the cover was nothing remarkable, the pages themselves had a strange texture that I had not encountered before.

“Uhm, is there something wrong with this plasfilm? It… I don’t know it feels strange.”

Ben chuckled.

“That is because it is no plasfilm. What you have in your hands is a genuine paper book.”

I was silent for a moment. Genuine paper?

“How… how old is this book?”

“Not quite sure if I have to be honest. It was written around the year 2000 as far as I know, but this example was printed sometime in the 20s or 30s of the 21st century.”

In other words, it was worth an inordinate amount of money, and not just for being made from paper. Not many books had survived the war or its aftermath.

And so, while Ben read his newspaper I started to read the book.

Sadly, I quickly realized that it was… too much of a children's book for me. Sure, the story of the orphan that is more or less tormented by his caretakers did indeed touch a few strings inside me, and while I did not have a magic school with talking hats I had Apollo and cyberspace.

But I still could not get into it. The whole… world, the writing, it was all so… childish, so I could just not get into it.

When I placed the book somewhat frustrated on the table beside Ben, he looked directly at me.

“You don’t like it? I would have thought that it suited you.”

I just shrugged.

“I… can see how you get the idea, but… mentally I am over 150 years old. This is a children's book. It… I can’t get into it.”

He lifted an eyebrow before he placed the newspaper back on the table to put the book back on the shelf.

“Well, it was worth a shot. Hmm, maybe this one is more to your liking.”

And he gave me another book made out of real paper.

I looked at it questioningly. From the cover, it was another fantasy novel, but…

“Try it. I think you might like the genre. If not, you could try science fiction, but most of what I have here is… well reality has overtaken much of it by now. That always rips me out of the immersion.”

“Ok, I’ll try.”

I have to say, this book was much more to my liking. The whole concept of this world was so… absurd but it was just… funny. I especially liked the tourist and his luggage of course. And the incompetent wizard… of course, it was nothing to take seriously.

But it was exactly what I needed. I could not help but laugh at some of the absurdities, but it just… fitted.

I have to say I was so engrossed into the book that I did barely notice the time passing and was momentarily confused about what was going on when Ben softly shook my shoulder.

I realized only then that I had completely curled up in the chair. When I looked at Ben he smiled at me.

“It seems that this book is more to your liking.”

“Yes, it is… I don’t know, funny of course, but it just works.”

Stolen novel; please report.

“Where are you?”

“Well, the tourist has just sold the insurance to the bar owner.”

“Well, the book won’t run away, and it is dinner time.”

Reluctantly I closed the book and placed it on the table, and we moved toward the dining room.

Michael was there, of course. And while I can’t say that the food was comparable to what I made by myself from fresh, real ingredients, over the weekend I came to agree with Ben that a better food replicator was adequate.

I would definitely look into getting one for the fortress. I was a little bit miffed that I had just bought the standard algae tank, but that’s life.

And considering that Warden had sold another 37 ultra-jack and cranial board combos… giving me another 1.295 billion dollars… at least before taxes that is… I could afford it.

And I would guess that Ben was quite happy with our deal. After dinner, I brought up the topic.

“One question Ben. Do you have a specific account where I should send the tribute?”

He looked at me confused for a moment before he shrugged.

“That depends. For smaller numbers, you can use the account we gave you earlier. If it is more… well I will have to ask Paul where he wants it.”

“Then I guess that for a bit less than $650 million you have to ask Mr. Hanratty?”

Michael, who was just sipping his beer, spit selfsame all over the table, while Ben’s eyes widened for a moment.

While Michael fought the coughing fit, Ben nodded.

“Of course. You said yesterday to Amelia that you earned over $5 billion since you came to New York. I’ve completely missed the implications. I assume the number has grown?”

“I’ve tasked Warden with selling the cyberware. By now we have sold 185 combos of ultra-bandwidth jack and cranial board.”

“That is still… around $6.5 billion. You made $1.5 billion in sales over two days?”

I shrugged.

“Yes, nearly. But don’t get used to it. This is the first glut. Mostly Abyss dwellers and other well-off Jacks. I would guess a handful of corpo-rats will jump onto the train, but my estimate is that we will satisfy the demand for the high-end implants in at best a week.

The cheaper ones will not generate that amount of income. Especially if the customer forgoes the cranial board.”

“Yes, I can see that. Still, you’ve generated more tribute for me in just a few months than Frankel did in all his 10 years doing business here.”

I scoffed.

“I would say that is mostly because slavery is not new or hot. And absolutely not exclusive. Frankel had a significantly smaller market share and a much lower profit margin. I on the other hand am the only one where you can get these implants at the moment. Makes it a seller's market.”

Michael had in the meanwhile gotten himself under control again.

“And the people who buy from you still think it is a steal, I bet.”

I shrugged.

“Might be. You tell me, is the utility worth it?”

Now he laughed.

“Oh yeah. You should have seen Eric’s face when I used the synaptic accelerator during training. Sure, it did not make my movements any faster, but… the ability to think out what is happening, to act instead of only react… I guess we will have to get our other men these things in time.”

“Probably not the full package I think. Even if it will drop in price significantly in the next year or so, it will be expensive. I think they can get away with a low- or mid-jack and the accelerator and HUD connected to that.”

Ben nodded solemnly, while Michael looked more contemplating. Then the younger of the two men gave me his patented half-grin.

“Yeah, I see what you mean. If we put the ultra at $1 million, then it will be too much even after the prices fall. We haven’t spoken about the cranial board, or maybe we should call it something else that does not sounds like matrix combat. If I see the specs correctly it is just an upper-end com, am I right? So I think the cost of more than $20 million is a bit excessive.”

“Not really. It is complicated to build and was complicated to design. Yes, the price will go down as well when we start mass production, and I will have to design a couple of low-powered models to get something of a lineup, but for now, the price is appropriate.”

“Ok, it is your decision. And apparently, people are buying it. By the way, you think so far there have been no corpo-rats among your customers?”

I shook my head.

“Unlikely. The ones who can afford that sort of expenditure are also the ones who wait and see how it works.”

That reminded me, that I had to amend the potential customer list somewhat. I would not sell to Panacea execs. Ever! Dalgon… well they could wait for a couple of years.

I sent a message to that effect to Warden. And yes, of course, I knew that with the dark web and grey and black markets the rats would eventually get their dirty mitts on my implant tech. But they would have to pay black market prices.

Hmm… maybe… I could Warden control the black market for these implants as well. Let the people on the banned list pay four times as much for the same.

But that was mostly the end of my divine weekend. Ben had to go back to work the next day, and my new ABAS 675-S would arrive on Tuesday, so I had to prepare the garage.

But that was essentially all the work I did for the next week. I did, however really try to learn an instrument. And yes, I did try it in VR, even if at a very sedate 4:1.

I had chosen the keyboard for it, thinking that it might be the easiest instrument to learn, but I can’t say that I had become particularly good at it. At least not in that first week.

It did help me with my emotions though.

And as I had predicted the demand for the cranial board had mostly waned by now, and for jacks, it was mostly the high-bandwidth and lower ones that sold.

Mostly that is. I was surprised by a big order from the Commonwealth. Somebody there had decided to get 45 ultra-bandwidth jacks along with cranial boards. Naturally, I had Warden look hard into the order, and it seemed that Vandermeer had decided to equip their execs with it. They also ordered nearly 1000 high-bandwidth jacks without the board.

At 999k DC the high-bandwidth jacks were just a hair below one million, and with the conversion that alone promised nearly $6 billion. The ultra-board packages added another $1.575 billion to the bill.

I had nothing against taking the old man's money though. What was surprising though was that they also wanted to license the Mk. IV board for internal use only. They offered me an additional one billion DC for that.

I had to think about that for a moment. Or more. The whole order was… strange. How did they decide that it was actually working? Don’t get me wrong, my reputation on the dark web was sufficient to get the Jacks on board with relative ease, and from there the other less than legal folks.

But a newly minted AAA corp? Oh yes, after the eternal war between the AFS and the NWC was concluded, Vandermeer was in the unique position of absorbing most of Falconer’s market, elevating it to an AAA as well.

But I digress. I could not understand why a triple-A corp jumped onto this new tech so… early. And then I got it. It was a less than pleasant thought, but it was the only explanation.

Vandermeer knew not only about me being C-Dot but Seraphim as well. It seemed that they had a much closer eye on me than I thought. The only reason why I did not panic right then and there was the fact that they obviously did not intend to go after me.

Ok, that was not that strange, as I had avoided going after them. So no enmity here. But… it was a dangerous thought. I just hoped that they did not know about Spectre as well.

But I decided that as long as they left me alone I would not antagonize them.

In the end, brooding about it served no other purpose than to torture myself, and I was left with no other option than to let it go.