After Darren had left I checked on the experiments I had running here.

The results the BOUs had given me were so far inconclusive. Oh, there were results, but the different growth accelerators were all over the landscape in how they worked.

I had yet to find the common ground. Of course, I was just in the first test series. I still had several other GAs to test. But I had hoped that I would find a common principle that I could refine, but no luck here.

With a sigh, I left the bio lab, contemplating what to do next. As so often, events practically exploded all at once, and I had gone from coasting comfortably to running into three directions all at once in the blink of an eye.

I could have informed Vincent about Falconer, but that would have been a serious break of protocol.

I was for all purposes a retainer of Mr. Walker, and ‘sidestepping him’ by informing the ‘competition’ would be a loss of face for him. Nobody would care that he was on life support. It was on him, or his deputy, to inform the other clans and families.

Unfortunately, good old Dylan, who Ryan had informed, seemed to sulk and did not convey the information.

Again, that would be a serious loss of face for Mr. Walker, but it would not be my fault. I had made sure that the Walker-clan had the information.

If I thought, even for one moment, that the information would be in any way critical, I would have bitten the bullet and told the others, but it would be much longer for Falconer to mount another attempt than it would take for Mr. Walker to take the control back into his hands again. If he did survive at all, that is.

If he did not, well, then I would have to negotiate with Walker’s heir anyway.

I then decided to put a few obstacles into Falconer’s way. It was, of course, easier said than done, but I had enough contacts on the dark web to sell the information about Falconer to Ralcon and Enertech.

I got a cool $200k for it, which I simply deposited into the house account. That took slightly more than six hours to get done, though the actual work for me was around a quarter-hour to find a reliable in-between who did not know who I was.

I could have earned more for it, but that would have taken longer, and slowed down the reaction of the two local powerhouses accordingly.

As it was, there was already unrest in a few US cities, and the situation became increasingly unstable.

Even here, in New York, we had not contained the violence completely. Yes, I managed to get the organized crime families to keep calm, but several of the less organized street gangs were not quite so accommodating. Fortunately, the relatively isolated incidents were quickly put out by the organized groups working together.

Yes, there were many a head cracked open, but I honestly had not all that much sympathy for these street thugs.

While the difference between organized crime families and street gangs might be small on the surface, the difference became much more pronounced when you looked deeper.

Yes, both groups used violence, dealt with drugs, ran prostitutes, sold illegal weapons, and many other things.

The difference was that the families with few exceptions actually protected their territory, and the people in it, while the gangs terrorized anybody unfortunate enough to live in their hunting grounds.

That and the fact that such things as protocols existed for the organized groups, while the gangs were more akin to packs of rabid dogs. There was not a day when there was no shoot-out between one gang and another.

But a full-blown gang war would be hell for any civilian in the affected cities. Well, not the rich and mighty in their arcologies and glass towers, but the common folks.

I did guess that, having been warned by me, Ralcon and Enertech would actually get off their behinds and slap down the gangs. Unless there was something in it for them, they would simply ignore the suffering. Even make a buck or two from selling weapons to the different sides.

That was exactly what Falconer wanted to exploit. After all, if the riots destabilized the US it would be much easier to use their compassion and help out with corporate military to pacify the cities.

With good enough timing, and liberal campaign contributions they would then instantly establish themselves as a new major player in the US. Reducing the influence of Ralcon and Enertech in the process.

But, if for some arcane reason Ralcon and Enertech instead decided to protect the population of the USA… well, no more opening for Falconer to move into. And as New York City was actually no more violent than usual, they could ignore us here.

After I washed my mouth from the bad taste corporate politics left behind, I decided to design the basic neural interface for the replacement arm.

I could use the designs from before the great war as a foundation, so it was not as arduous as it could have been. The mappings of the neural pathways and connections had at best marginally changed.

While I was at it, I finished the interface design for both arms and both legs. While the difference between left and right was rather minute, it was enough to make a simple one-size-fits-all design impossible.

On a lark, I added a couple of additional pathways for new functions that could be added later.

With that done, I integrated that interface into a coupling plate, where the actual cyber limb could be connected to the stump. I made it so that one of the additional pathways could be used to release the coupling.

That would make it possible to exchange the arm or disconnect it for maintenance. As the material, I decided on Titanium for the plate.

Then, with the immediate work done, I finally could get back to Glory.

I would love to say that I sailed smoothly through creating the new OS. Sadly, that would be a lie.

I even had to remanufacture a couple of modules when I simply could not get the firmware to work right. But in the end, after two grueling days, I had a working board.

My Glory was ready for the first test ride. I had, of course extensively tested the connector before I directly connected my brain to the new technology. I also had the cluster simulate and test the design extensively.

So now the big moment had come. I gave the VI a direct, if temporary, disconnect for my jack so that if something would go wrong it could simply cut the connection.

And then I dove into cyberspace. At first, I tested the basic functions of the board at low compression. Except for the excellent responsiveness, there was nothing unusual.

Then I carefully, and slowly increased the compression. 60:1 came and went. As did 120:1, with Glory still nearly idle.

At 180:1 I was a bit baffled. But Glory still had massive reserves available. The processor barely got above room temperature.

At 240:1 I slowly became concerned. While the maximum compression is a pretty complicated thing, usually for every user it could be graphed on a curve, with the rough power of the board as the only variable.

And my curve with the power of Glory should have maxed out at a bit below 120:1. Around double what Precious could do. Yes, there was always a bit of tolerance, and I would have been happy at 120:1, but not very surprised. A 100% increase and still room to go up was… well, it was not bad, but it was something I did not understand, and until I would understand it, I would not use Glory.

The first test was having the VI test the real compression. If the algorithm calculation compression was faulty, that could explain it and would be easy to correct.

But the VI confirmed that the algorithm was within the 0.01% tolerance.

Bewildered I decided to first test the limit of what Glory could do. Luckily for my peace of mind, the power usage rose rapidly after 240:1. Now finally Glory was behaving like any other board, in that the needed resources to increase the compression were increasingly taking away resources from the other functions.

I finally hit the wall at 244.78:1. Of course, at that level of compression, there were essentially no resources left for anything but running cyberspace. The mindscape was reduced to a monochromatic empty space, my avatar was gone, and there was nothing I could do at that speed.

Nothing but think. After a few seconds in real-time, I suddenly got an idea. I desperately wanted to bang my head into a wall.

If I was right, I had made my life unnecessarily hard for the last few months. I would have to test it.

But first the next test. I needed to surface, and look at how long it would take. I already knew that it would be a monstrous hit.

I tasked the VI to keep an eye on my mental integrity while I surfaced. Slowly at first, while the VI told me that I could go faster. Until I reached the maximum that I could take and still be fully functional when I disconnected.

At that speed, the math told me it would take a bit less than 12 minutes to surface.

That was the big disadvantage of a high compression.

Then I surfaced and looked at Glory, lost in thoughts.

After a sigh, I started Precious and connected to her. I repeated the compression test I had just done with Glory.

And lo and behold, when I reached my maximum functional compression of 57.663:1 and kept going, the workload on precious did only rise marginally. I kept going and at 114:1 I finally got to the point that the performance suffered under the compression, terminating in 118.131:1.

For several minutes I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep calm. I was furious. The bad thing was that I had left a significant advantage laying on the ground in my matrix fights lately. The worse thing was, that it could have ended the fight with The Justicar easily and quickly.

Twice as fast was, at comparable skill levels, an insurmountable advantage. I could have ripped him to shreds before he could have hidden the kill switch.

The worst though was that the only one to blame was me. Fricking idiot that I am I had not for a single moment thought about what the fricking higher bandwidth of the fricking ultra bandwidth jack would mean for my connection.

I had set the functional compression on Precious when I had built her. And then it was the best I could get out of her, which was still the unofficial world record as far as I know, by a considerable margin.

But I failed to adapt it when I exchanged my basic jack with my cranial board, which included said ultra bandwidth jack. I mean, it is in the fricking name. But I missed it.

I never tested the limits of Precious with the new jack.

That of course made Glory’s compression completely within expectations. An increase of around two times was what I had calculated.

I did not bother with testing the maximum surfacing speed. I realized now that at over 240:1 it should have taken me nearly an hour to surface, so obviously, it would have been possible to get out of the matrix way faster during the attack.

But in the end, that was water under the bridge.

At the new maximum compression of Precious, and the old surfacing speed, it took me around eight minutes to surface.

Afterward, for the rest of the day, the only thing I accomplished was calming down.