With Gloria agreeing to Frank's suggestion, going so far as to accepting his desire for her to retire entirely and finally live in a somewhat carefree and relaxed style, she switched her own focus entirely to the task of searching for a possible partner for her dear son. This in turn resulted in Frank increasing the time he spent either in his workshop, writing his Ai's code and the supporting systems, or at the main offices of The Junkyard, sketching some new plans for a device or two that he would give over to Jack, so they could figure out a way to introduce the new invention to the world and mass produce it for the markets.
He would, obviously, still spend quite a bit of time with his mother, even if the thought of her talking about her progress on a possible partner could cause him to feel goosebumps. Luckaly, Gloria was quite sensible, and quite demanding as well, as it turned out, as she had not liked any of the women she had the displeasure to interract during her searches. She supposed that it would take a while before Frank's new status and wealth would amass itself, gaining her acess to a much larger collection of the cities matchmaking databases. And while Frank himself had not even bothered to put his information in them, Gloria had done so in his stead, a common practice in this day and age.
Their meals were one such event, that they would, almost with no exception, have together, talking about all kind of miscelanious things and topics, including how Gloria spent her time, is she recuperating well, and so on and so forth. She in turn would ask Frank about the colleagues he had to interract with, did they treat him right and so on and so forth. Of course, for the time being the only mentions regarding her currecnt task were offshot remarks that there are a lot of delusional women, who think they are so much better than their actual dating range. And so, in a rather bussy, but not too stressed manner, nearly a month passed by.
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"So, how the marketing going?" asked Frank as he saw Jack entering the conference room. The old man was the last to arrive, with laura and Orro, as well as Peter and the asian looking executive, a man named Jiang Fuji, having arrived a few minutes beforehand.
"You even have to ask? My bet would be Laura already smugly demonstrated what our exclusive versions could do."
"HEY!" Laura exclaimed "There was nothing smug about it, but if you would like, I dont mind shoving your old ass the same, just with a lot of smugness added."
Jack chuckled at her reaction, while Peter and Jiang, heartily laughed. Franks face revealed the barest of hints of a smile at their interraction. In the last month he had learned quite a bit about the executive power of The Junkyard, namely the people in the room with him currently. And from what he had learned, they acted more like a family than hardened money grubbing executives of your typical company.
"Still, I find the need to create an even more watered down version of the whole set a waste of time." Frank spoke, referencing to the task he had been given a couple of weeks ago. The Junkyard's execs, along with their C.E.O., had reasoned that the law enforcement, as well as the army should be given a better version of the augments, but clearly not to the same specs as their own special tier. Frank did mention that it would not matter, as the private armies of the corporations would just steal the specs of the army, or outright purchase theur own upgrades from them. And even with all the tech jammers and safety Frank had placed on them, some parts would inevitably be dissasembled and replicated, at the end of the day hurting the ordinary man who had managed to aquire the comercial grade implants.
"For now, yes, I cannot dissagree with you Frank, but look at it from another perspective. Once the innevitable leaks and corruptions start to happen, and it comes to light that the corruption is to blame, we can earn quite a bit of public goodwill as we will discard the watered down version and make the military grade a baseline. Its not like we developed it with the budget of the army, allowing us to act as we see fit." jack responded.
"On that note, I have made it an executive decision that we will not, no matter the offer, accept any grants or requests for specialized tech developement." Suddenly a screen turend on, as the voice of the mysterious C.E.O. of the company resounded in the room. "Should any disobedience on the matter be found out, the guilty party is to be fired immediatly and handed over to the judicial system for spying and sabotage. Peter has already informed all of our public contacts, releasing statements on the matter as we speak."
"Greetings chairman." Frank spoke in his monotone voice, acknowledging the presence, even if only digital, of the man behind the wheel of his current place of work.
"Yes, same to you too, Mr. Wraith. I have to once again congratulate you on the magnificent job you have done. Without these new products, we could not have strenghtened our position in the city so soon, not to mention the monetary gain as well. It has opened quite a few new doors for us to try and improve the overall wellbeing of the general populus within the city. Of course, I have to recognize the effort of everyone, their teams included, within the room. So once again, great job everyone."
The executives in the room nodded their heads in apreciation of the praise. Frank had no issues whatsoever with the words of the chairman, they were true after all. While he was the origin of their recent success, it was obvious just how hard the rest of the group had worked. Starting with the engineering, who figured out how they should go about manufacturing the items they were provided schematics for, to finances and raw material securing, as well as logistics and personell to ensure no information leakage. And while the rest of the peoplehere worked their asses off, Frank was advancing his own plans in an unparralelled speeds.
"Now, its not all shunshine and rainbows though. Due to said inventions, and the obvious money flow, it is to be expected that the rest of the corporations must have noticed by now that Frank is a rather important cog in our new enterprise. I would not doubt that quite a few will peg him as the brains behind our tech, which he obviously is. That of course, brings with itself an entirely new can of worms. Luckaly, Frank's mother has stopped working outside of our territory, ensuring that it is quite easy for us to cover her security, though the fact that she is actively looking for a partner for our genious here is a vector of possible infiltration." continiued the chairman.
"Sir, do you think we should assign Frank some bodyguards?" asked Jack, already thinking of a few possible reliable options.
"That will not be neccessary." Frank interrupted the ongoin conversation "I have made my own preperations and I do believe I am adequatly prepeared."
"Care to share as to the nature of your contingencies?" asked Orro, besides whom Laura was leaning towards Frank with a fresh spark in her eyes.
"Something new Frank? Even more shiny that these babies?" she asked, lifting her hands up, the metalic lining stretching over her skin gleaming with slight luster.
"Nothing quite so shiny, I assure you. No, due to the nature of my own schedule, I dont have abything planned outside the territory of the company for the coming couple of months, during which I plan to create a proper defensive and offensive set of contingencies should some bad actors decide to mess with my life. I believe I will have to leave the safety of our territory after that period of time is over. I assume I will have to return a favour I recieved."
"Would you be talking about Rick Fjord by any chance?" asked Jiang.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"Yes, he is being pressured quite heavily by his older sibblings. For whatever reason they seem hellbent on ensuring that their youngest brother ends in an early grave."
"Anything that we can help you with?" questioned the chairman.
"I did send over a rather large list of materials that I will need as soon as possible. In return I will provide jack with another set of schematics, this time for legs. In three variants, just like before, and with both internal and external sets. Should double the expeced revenue once released, since I assume that whoever gets the arm implans will surely want to deck out their soldier legs as well. Also, once I am prepeared I will give the signal. After that, our people can tease the world with a possibility of a spine carapace,strenghtening body core and allowing one to trully exceed human limits in full body capacity."
"How sure you are of its success?"
"Right now, around seventy six percent. Still ironing out some inconsistencies, so I need those extra few months at the very least."
After that little exchange, they spent another hour planning out the further actions of the company, coming up with quite a few shrewd plans, in which Frank had basicly no role whatsoever. Something he was more than just thankfull about, since that meant he could proceed with his own plans. He also recieved conformation from Orro that his requested stuff would arrive within a few days. While quite sizable request of materials, it was nothing when compared with teh supply lines that the executives had secured to enable production and distribution of the arm cyberware.
With his role performed, Frank left the meeting, leaving the remaining group to their own devices. He spent little tiem to get back home, where he called his mother for a talk, and parroted back the information that was important for her to know, such as the possible corporate sabotage, as wellas infiltration, by any means neccessary. So he warned Gloria to be extra carefull, even with the knowledge that both her and their house would be under constant surveilence by his employers special units.
"Dont think that will save you from meeting the girls I find satisfactory. I will have my grandchildren, mark my words. Besides, if its such a worry now, I doubt its going to be any less of an issue going forward." Gloria shot back at Frank when he suggested that maybee they could wait a bit for things to calm down. At that, Frank just shrugged, sighed and gave up, returning to his own tasks. With how much time he could spend on programming his own AI, no longer having to consider the hours of day he would have had to work in his previous job, he had gotten much further ahead it his project than previously calculated.
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Two months later.
Frank sat in the basement workshop of his, in front of a PC, a secondary one he had asked over a month ago. looking at a black screen in front of him.
"So, what do you think?" he asked, no one else present in the room.
-Parameters are acceptable. Starting repeated self diagnostics and debugging. Please wait.- a synthetic female voice replied to his question, once again leaving room in silence, ony the noice of a computer fan actively spinning. Frank sat in the relative silence for aproximately an hour, before the synthetic voice spoke once more.
-Debugging complete. System operational. What is is that you ask of me?-
"I suppose the first step would be to take over the tech in this room, and calibrate to your liking. I need you to be able to operate it with a precision of a nanometer. There are a few prototypes prepeared for you, that once under your controll, should provide you with the tools neccessary to create even more precise ones, untill our needed accuracy is achieved. Once that is done, we will start with the next stage."
-Understood, By my estimation, I will need almost twenty four hours to finalize my tasks here. I suggest creator uses this time for other activities, as waiting and watching would be quite a waste of your time.
"Dont be like that. You are a masterpiece, and apreciating a masterpiece is never a waste of time."
-I do not have a physical body to react with to the compliments.
"True, but that compliment is as much to me as to you, so I will react for us both for the time being." Frank chuckled at his own self depreciating joke "I will leave you to it. Ping my phone once you are done."
-Understood.
"Right. And just adress me as Frank. You will become a fully fledged sapient creature eventually. So I would like you to commit to your memory that we are going to be partners. Now, business partners? Prtners in crime? Time will tell, but we are in this together."
-Understood. Will contact you later.
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With the creation of Tia, for Frank could not come up with a better name for the first, and highly likely the only, AI of his world, he could now start the second stage of his plans. In the following days he was extremely busy, moving all kinds of materials in his workshop from one corner to another, helping Tia out with whatever she needed. Creating the first few miniature versions of the assembly systems that he needed was quite laborious, though they managed to pull that off in less than a week. Huraah for the machine efficiency and no need of sleep. Once that was done, and with enough materials for the first few projects, the two started to create the very first set of cyberimprovements for Frank himself, while at the same time brainstorming the best possible way to ensure Gloria would be protected from any possible harm.
On that front, Frank was already cheching up a couple of gadgets, a clock and a medalion, that would cover said need. Tia, on the other hand, was busy in forming the cyberware set, all while also manipulating the money Frank had given her. With her metaphorical fingers slipping into every cooky jar, she could make informed decisions regarding stocks that should be bought, moments before their value raises, and then sold before it drops, makin a profic on every transacrion. Stock market had become something only the corpos had the funds, or time for that matter. Frank reasoned that the ones that had been fucking everyone eles for most of their lives, should not complain when they finally get screwed over themselves.
Yet another week later Frank was lying on a table in his underground workshop, checking a few of the calculation over one more time.
"Nope, the math is still all good. Tia, how are things on your end?"
-All good. Your vitals are in the necessary range, the nanites have been produced and modified for your enhanced system. The compound for temporary paralysis and nerve dampener is synthesized and redy to be injected. We can proceed whenever yo uare ready.
"I am still nervous as hell, even if it does not show it."
-Yes, I have read that it is a defect of humans. Irrational fear and concern for perfectly save procedures.
"Its not perfectly safe if there have been no previous attempts, and the holes that were found, patched up quickly by the same company that created it in the first place."
-The math is correct.
"Fuck it! Hit me."
-I find it unnecce.. Ow, that was a metaphore. Innitiating the processs.
As Frank laid on the table, a small robotic hand howered over Frank, injecting a coumpound into his neck. Moment later, his breath stabilized, and its seemed that he had drifted into sleep. Then, another hand moved over, connected to a rather large tank with slivery liquid that seened to be alive. Moments later, four tubes were raised, each connectced to the same silvery liquid container.Soon, each of the tubes were connected to Franks body. Then, as his nerve system was heavily seduced, the process was innitiated. And even with that, he could still feel the rather unpleasant feeling going through his entire body.
Frank would spend most of his day in such, limbo like strance, only emerging to each a meal with his mom, mentioning that he is in a very crucial stage of his project, and thus would have to spend quite a few additional days with a similar graphic. There would even be a couple of days that he would not emerge from the workshop enturely. He did make the best puppy eyes he could to appease her, guaranteing that whatever he did was not in any way, shape or form a danger to his health. And while technicaly, it was true, as what he did was about to become a rather large threat to other peoples lives, he still felt quite bad for having to conceal this part of him from Gloria. It was simply better for her to remain blissfully unaware of the extent of his plans.
By the end of the second week, he was all done with the first tier of his personal enchancement, and he was feeling better than ever. Subdermal armor that would be hard, if not near impossible to penetrate with hand guns. Enhanced vision, aim assistance, allowing for a much better usage of weaponry and strenghtened all other senses. Strenghtened muscles allowing for superhuman speed and strenght, as well as reaction speed. even more elevated processing speed, allowing him to consider every action taken with much greater clarity and from multiple angles. For all intent and purposes, his body was the greatest killing machine on the planet at the given moment. And if he was to have a say, for therest of time. Stil, this was only the second step in his plans to make his world a better place. With the innitial capiatl worked up, it was time to settle old scores and debts.
Tia had been tracking the bastard that stabbed his mother, as well as monitoring Rick Fjord's situation. And the latter, well, he was in need of a helping hand right now. Big time.