Early the next day I decided to take the plunge and greenlight the new application of the nano-filter in the Abyss.

The very first thing I did was send a message to Bletchley, knowing that he had a somewhat more urgent need for it than most.

Then I put another message on the public notice boards:

Public Notice:

The new application process for CRS-free neural cyberware has successfully finished its test and is ready for general use.

Because of the unexpectedly high number of orders and the resulting lack of resources, I will implement a priority system:

The first priority has people with active CRS, either instead of a purge at stage one or if the purge has already been too late, with a preference for the latter. After that, it goes according to the ranking. If there is no difference in ranking in the Abyss between two or more orders, the earlier order will have precedence. I take the liberty to make exceptions if I want to.

I am in the process of ameliorating the supply side of the equation, but that will take some time.

When I was done with the notice I noticed that Bletchley had answered me, and requested a meeting in his usual room. Having nothing pressing I naturally agreed to his request.

He gestured for me to sit down. Again, we had to share the room with a couple of his groupies, his main tech, CZ, and another avatar, that was unknown to me.

“Hello, Seraphim. I got your message. You say you have your new process ready?”

“Yes, I have tested it. Not as extensively as I tested the original process, but this time it was only testing if the new application provides the same nano-filter as the original one, and it does.

So, it is decision time for you. I assume correctly that you need a new CRS-free jack fast?”

Bletchley sighed and nodded.

“Yeah, I missed my last purge by a couple of weeks. It has gone to stage four a couple of months ago. Thanks for the tip with the nano-therapy by the way. So, what would you suggest?”

“That depends fully on what you want. I have some ultra-bandwidth jacks and cranial boards already produced and converted. Or you could get a jack by yourself and send it to me to convert it.”

“Hm… when could you have one of your ultras and a board in Brasilia?”

I looked it up, and daily air shipping was going to Brazil. It would not be cheap but in comparison to the implants themselves and the conversion, the shipping would be peanuts.

“I can have them in Brazil tomorrow or the day after, according to Mercurie’s information. If you want to use a different way, it depends on them.”

His eyes widened.

“So you meant you have them ready ready?”

“Of course. Even if this application process failed it was just a matter of adapting it until it worked. So I started building the jacks and the boards, the most widely asked for implants.

At this moment I have a bit over 200 jacks and 50 cranial boards ready to go, here at my location. The other location has 450 jacks and 100 boards, as the fab there was not needed for other things in between.”

The unknown person to me interjected.

“So… what is needed to implant this thing? And to keep it running?”

I turned my attention to him.

“I assume you are Bletchley’s medical contact?”

“Yes, I am.”

“The jack has a higher connection count, roughly 14 times from a basic jack, and you need to program the auto surgeon accordingly, but I will include the profile for that. The cranial board does not need to be connected to the brain. Instead, it will hook into the jack. You need to only lay a data line to where you place it.

Mine is behind my shoulder blade, but you could put it anywhere in the body.

After that, he will need regular check-ups where you poll the status of the filters. Nothing onerous, just a connection via the jack. Alternatively, the board has an app that will do that and display the result into the HUD.

The filter will most likely degrade over time, so you need to boost it when that happens. I will give you a list of nano-bot designs and programs that will work for that. If the filter degrades, simply inject him with the bots, and be done with it.

That should not happen more often than every two or three years.”

Bletchley nodded.

“That sounds reasonable. So, you want DC 11.9 million for the jack and the board?”

“Not quite. DC 10.9. As I said, the board hooks into the jack, so it does not need the filter. If you had a board with something less than a medium bandwidth jack, then yes, the board would need to hook directly into the brain, but so…”

“Ah, I understand. Expensive, but… honestly, worth it. Probably not so for the newbs just starting out, but they have no business with state-of-the-art hardware anyway. Anybody worth his jack will have that kind of money in a couple of years.

Now, if Carlos here is satisfied, how about we change the topic. In your public notice, you wrote that you are working on the supply issue. What do you mean with that?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

“I am most likely ‘changing sides’ in our eternal conflict with the corps. At least partially. There is really no way around it.”

Bletchley now looked very concerned.

“What do you… you will defect to some corp? How? And why?”

“Not quite. I will start a corp. It is, frankly, impossible for small shops and private persons to satisfy the demand for new cyberware. So my alternatives are only giving it to a select few who I can provide it to, selling the tech to the corps, or creating a corp that will build the cyberware.

The first option is in my opinion a good way to start a war here in the matrix.

The second option… well it is obvious why that is out.

Leaves the third option. It gives me the ability to supply the amount of cyberware that even now is increasing in demand, and still keep the supply open to the not quite so legal side of humanity.”

Bletchley looked as if he swallowed a frog.

“Fuck. Yeah, I can see your reasoning. But, damn, I hate it.”

“I will still be available for more personal requests. Just… I won’t have the time for the small fry anymore.”

“Yeah, I can see that. And you are right, there are no good options here. But it is a bitter pill to swallow."

Needless to say, the meeting was more or less over. CZ gave me the shipping address and sent me the money. On my side, I arranged for the jack and board to be shipped to Brasilia.

I was not very amused by the note the meeting ended, but as I had told Bletchley, there was really no alternative.

Even if just the jacks took off, and the general population realized that they were now safe to use, if only a third of humanity got one, that would mean more than 300 million jacks. My setup could produce 250 a day. In other words, that alone would take more than a million days to produce. And I seriously doubted that many people would be agreeable to a 3300-year waiting list.

It was equally infeasible to increase my capacity by indy-fabs by four orders of magnitude.

And that was just the jacks. All the other tech that was made possible with the new filter… nope, I needed dedicated industrial processes. Ben, and Warden, were right in that. I just… did not like it.

Still, I could alleviate the immediate impact by increasing my indy-fab capacity somewhat.

And so I placed a call to the vendor where I got my industrial fabricator from.

“Thurgood Industrial Services. My name is Janice. How can I help you?”

“Hello Janice. My name is Veronica Sinclair. I purchased an industrial fabber from your company a couple of months back. I have some follow-up questions about it.”

“Ah yes, I have found your orders. I am sorry that it is not to your fullest satisfaction. I will connect you to customer service then, ma’am.”

“Wait, that is no…” it was too late, she had me in the queue for customer service. Fortunately, it was a short wait.

“Hello, Thurgood Industrial Services, customer service, my name is Thomas. How can I help you?”

“Hello Thomas. I am Veronica Sinclair, and I purchased an industrial fabber from your company a few months back.”

“One moment, please… ah, there we have you. Yes, I see it. You asked for an additional molecular forge beyond the original order, I see. So, what is your problem?”

I sighed inwardly.

“Not a problem per se. The fabber works great. But I… let’s say I have miscalculated the demand for my production.”

“That is unfortunate. We offer a smaller package, but not that much smaller, at least not with a molecular forge, and exchanging the fabber you already have with a smaller one will eat up the price difference. I can ask if we can do something, but it does not look good for that.”

“Oh no, wrong direction. I estimated the demand too low. The fabber that I have is too small to satisfy the demand.”

“Oh… ooh. Well, we can help you with that certainly. But why are you in customer service then instead of order?”

“Because Janice only heard that I have follow-up questions about my fabber and transferred me to you.”

I heard a suppressed curse before he answered:

“Yes, that is typical of her. She is a nice enough person, but… not quite the sharpest knife in the drawer. If you wait a moment, I will connect you to the right department.”

And again, I was in the queue. This time I waited for full three minutes before I got through.

“Hello, Thurgood Industrial Services, Andrew here, how can I help you?”

“Hello, my name is Veronica Sinclair. I ordered an industrial fabber from your company a few months ago. And I underestimated my needs, so it is too small.”

“Okay. So you need a bigger fabber? I am sure that we can help you to satisfy all your needs there.”

I could not suppress a chuckle and Andrew was obviously annoyed by it.

“Did I say something funny, ma’am?”

“Only in context. Unfortunately, you are wrong. You won’t be able to help me satisfy my demand.”

And he seemed even more irritated now.

“If you don’t want a bigger fabber then why are you calling?”

I shook my head, not that he could see it.

“Let’s row back a bit. First, I do want a bigger fabber. But a bigger fabber will only be a band-aid on the problem. I underestimated my needs by orders of magnitude. I would need several thousand fabbers to satisfy the need.

At that level, industrial fabbers are only expensive drops in the ocean.

So, what I now need is something to help me out to lower the worst pressure while I am building a dedicated factory.”

He was silent for a few moments, and if I did not hear him breathing I would have believed that the connection had been cut. Finally, he answered me:

“O… orders of magnitude? Thousands of fabbers?”

“I told you, that is not what I am planning.”

“Oh yes, that is unrealistic. But what the fuck could you build that did explode in this manner?”

“That is for the moment none of your business. Point is, I want to increase my fabber capacity substantially, even if not to that extent.

For that, I need an additional, bigger molecular forge, if possible triple the capacity of what my current one has. And then four times the electronic and carbon fabrication capacity of what my current fabber has. If possible in parallel.

Is that something you can do?”

Apparently, he had managed to focus on our call again.

“Ah, yes ma’am. We can do that. It will take a couple of weeks to get it to you though.”

“It can’t be helped. And how much will it cost me?”

“Let me look into it for a moment, please. Ok, the molecular forge, we can give you a Burgmeister Weyland 44-75. It is a bit more powerful than you requested at 3.2 times the throughput you have now, but we got a good deal on them and the next smaller forge we can offer you would be actually more expensive. It would cost you $21,758,312.

For the production… let’s see. We can give you a monolithic electronic fabrication suite, or a few smaller suites.

The monolithic one would make it possible to produce bigger items. It would be significantly faster for projects that exceed the size of the smaller units, and even at the maximum size of the smaller units, it would be faster by 15 to 20%.

On the other hand, if you have multiple smaller items to manufacture, it will be significantly slower, as it can only work in parallel in a limited fashion.

The smaller suites would also be more expensive.

The monolithic unit would cost you $12,339,866, while the three smaller suites would set you back by $16,897,428.

The carbon extruders can all work in parallel as well in a sequential fashion, so there is no difference here. A unit that would satisfy your request would cost you $3,749,872.”

Ouch. That was a big chunk of money. On the other hand, I had just made nearly $35 million by selling one set of ultra-bandwidth jack and cranial board to Bletchley. And this setup would be able to make two to three hundred each day.

“I definitely need the smaller electronic suites. I need to produce several physically small units. And I take the Burgmeister forge and the carbon extruder.”

“Okay. I will lock that in then. The sum before any rebate would be $42,405,612. For orders of that size, we offer a rebate of 8.3%. That would make the sum $38,885,946.20. Is that acceptable for you?”

I winced. Even with the rebate, it was expensive. Necessary, and not more than it was worth but still expensive.

And so, with gritted teeth, I answered in the positive.

“Yes, it is acceptable.”

“Ok, we then need to decide on the payment options.

Depending on how many installments you want to pay, we can offer you 12, 8, and 4 ppa. So what should I lock in?”

“Actually, I want to pay with a direct transfer. In one lump.”

“Uh, ma’am, that is a serious amount of money. I guess you can get a credit from your bank, but those rarely have favorable conditions to our rates.”

“I don’t need the credit. I have the money available. And yes, I am willing to put the money in an escrow, payable on delivery.”

“Oh, all right. We can do that. Do you have a preferred escrow agency? If not, we usually use Springwell Financial Services or First Choice Trust.”

“Either is fine with me. One moment, I will set it up.”

I choose Springwell, just because he named it first. Setting up the escrow over via the matrix was a matter of seconds, and transferring the money into it took not any longer, and so I was back in the call.

“Okay, I have set it up. Where do I send the escrow details?”

“What do you mean you have set it up?”

“Computers are a very nice thing. The banks don’t like to waste expensive human time for simple things as escrows with an automatic payout when the requirements are met, so they offer a web interface. The same with transferring money into an escrow. I was prepared.

Now, where do I send the details?”

“Oh wow, usually we have to talk our customers through the process. Well, send it to ‘[email protected]’ with the order number ‘485359‘. We will process the order when we get the…”

He stopped when he got the notification that the details had arrived.

“Ok, I see you have everything ready. We will be able to deliver the carbon extruder next Thursday. The electronics suites will be ready the Tuesday after that, and the forge Wednesday. We can deliver everything separately, or in one delivery.”

“How long will the installation take?”

“It will take at least three days to install it. But the carbon extruder will only be a couple of hours. The electronics suites will take two days. Do you want us to start Tuesday then and do it in one session?”

“Yes, that is the best I think. The carbon extruder is secondary to the electronics suites.”

“Ok, I have logged it in. You will get a confirmation in a couple of hours. Can I do anything else for you?”

I had to smile softly.

“Not now. I will contact you when it comes to designing and building the fabrication plant. But until then, I have what I need.”

All in all, a very exhausting, if productive call. And expensive.