To be honest, we should have cut the conversation with Vince quite a bit shorter, but in the end, he was Ben’s friend, and they had not seen much of each other very often over the last year.

In-person, that is. Vince was also one of the early adopters of the ultra-jack + cranial board combo, and I knew that Ben often used the matrix to keep in contact.

Still, meeting your friends in the real world was something that Ben obviously missed.

While the two men were softly talking about anything and everything, Andrea addressed me:

“So, you are the one who snatched Ben’s heart? How have you done that?”

I could only shrug at that.

“Honestly, I have no idea. If you want to know anything about human interaction, I am pretty much the last person you should ask. Heck, I did not even notice that Ben was interested in me before he… well, let’s say seduced me.”

She looked at me for a moment and then nodded slightly.

“Fair enough. So, no gossiping about that, huh? Well, how about this rumor that Enki has done something about this dreaded infertility crisis?”

I could not help myself and wince which made Andrea’s face fall a bit.

“Not a good topic? I thought as a young woman that would be something of interest to you.”

I sighed.

“You are half right. I have some interest in it, but not for the reasons you think. I am mostly a bit tired of explaining that it is a treatment and not a cure and that it will take at least one and a half years to get reliable results. I mean, yes, we have something that we think will treat the infertility problem, but it is in the very early testing stages.”

She looked confused for a moment before tilting her head.

“You have something?”

I shrugged while I answered:

“I thought you knew. I am the majority owner and CTO of Enki.”

“So… you knew about it already. Say, is it really as good as the rumors say?”

“I honestly don’t know what the rumors say, but so far it looks promising. The thing is, we only started the tests 12 days ago. Yes, there are first pregnancies from it, but that is all that we know so far.”

“Oh… so that is the reason you winced?”

“That and the fact that I had to explain it a few times already over the last two weeks.”

What followed was a bit of an awkward silence, as neither of us could think of anything to say.

With an expression of relief, she flagged down one of the waiters, and grabbed two glasses, offering one to me.

“Oh, thank you, but if that is alcohol I have to pass.”

Her eyebrows shot up.

“You don’t drink alcohol?”

I shook my head.

“I can’t. I am a Pure. We are allergic to alcohol.”

Andrea chuckled.

“You could say that everybody is allergic to alcohol to a lesser or greater degree.”

I snorted myself.

“Too true, but except us Pures, most people do not need medical attention after a couple of sips. We seriously cannot drink alcohol. The idiots who created the Nephilim virus made sure of that.”

She looked a bit forlorn at the glass she had offered to me, and another awkward silence engulfed us.

Fortunately, it lasted only for a few moments before Vince had finished talking to Ben for a moment and turned to me.

“You know Vivian, as much as I hate this dog and pony show, meeting you here is a nice opportunity. You remember the nano-fab you offered to me when we met the first time? Well, my people think it would be a worthwhile investment. Do you think we can talk about it in a few days?”

I scowled. I had absolutely no idea why his people thought he needed an 8th gen nano-fab.

“I am sorry, but I don’t sell them anymore. If you are sure you need an 8th gen you should look into getting one from Burgmeister or Xiao Ping.”

That was obviously not the answer that Vince had expected if his expression was any clue.

“Uh… why don’t you sell them anymore?” He was unmistakably confused about the matter.

“Because I work for Enki now. And Enki mostly belongs to me. We have early on decided to not enter the nano-bot market. But I can no longer act as a private individual in that matter either. I could still sell you the plans, true. But you would have to build it for yourself, and you need to source the seed stock, sorry.”

“Hm, ok, that is unfortunate but somewhat understandable. What I don’t understand though is why you have decided not to enter that market. I would think you would be perfectly suited for it.”

I shrugged.

“One would think so, but it is a harshly competitive market where we would need to build up a presence from the ground up. And frankly, we lack the production capacity to make a concerted effort.

We are not even able to supply enough of our other products to come close to satisfying demand. Products where we have no competition, and a rather insane profit margin I might add.

In a year, or two, we might revisit that decision, but for now, we see no need to antagonize the other big corporations over something where we have no chance of gaining ground anyway. In general, we choose not to compete with any of the big boys anyway. Yes, we have entered the cyber board market, but that is a rather nice one. And when the other big corporations enter the replicator market, they all know they are there because we let them.

We could have tried to defy the storm and not license the technology, but we are still way too small for that.”

Vince nodded during my explanation until the last sentence, which made him pause.

“Wait, I thought Enki is a double-A. There is not much room to get bigger left.”

I sighed and nodded.

“Yes, we are a double-A. That is calculated by revenue and income. And the Q-links alone are better than printing money.”

When he raises his eyebrows, I continued:

“No really, with all the security features and the special systems a modern $100-bill costs around $5.50 to make. A pair of Q-links costs us a bit less than a single cent, and we sell it for 25. At a profit margin of 2400%, if we sell Q-links that cost us $5.50 to make, we have made $132 in profit. And unlike money, there is no worry about reducing their value by pumping out more and more.

But to get back to the point, we are a double-A by revenue and income, but we are sorely lacking in depth. We neither have the personnel, nor the production capacity, and by far not the ‘security force’ that the other big corporations have.

Not surprisingly really, the Enki is not quite half a year operational, while the next youngest A-tier and up corporation is nearly 40 years old.

The average time to grow from a start-up to an A-tier corporation is around 50 years. To double-A, it is around 80 years.

They’ve all had decades to grow into their station. To create a loyal cadre of employees, soldiers whom they can trust, build or buy hardware.

Right now, we spend money like candy to get a foundation, but that takes time. We chose not to make too big waves until we have that foundation, and avoid competing with the big boys unless it is absolutely minor.

Well, mostly. One could say that we compete with Panacea with our cloning tech and the new auto-doc. But Panacea is in free fall and nobody really likes them.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“And you had nothing to do with that, hu?”

Ben let almost fell down laughing at that, while I just lifted my eyebrow.

“I had everything to do with that.

It was no accident that we competed with Panacea. I specifically created products that would threaten their core businesses and the fact that Nathan Vandermeer is the First Councilor did the rest. Well, that and the fact that Panacea used the last 150 years or so to rub the noses of every big corporation into the fact that they were inviolate.

Now that they are no longer… “

While Ben was wiping away the tears he had from laughing so hard, Vince smiled benevolently.

“I would suggest you take that as a warning. Enki should avoid antagonizing the big corporations in the future. But… what I don’t understand, if the average for an A-tier corp is 50 years, and the previous record is a bit less than 40, how can Enki then be a double-A in less than a year?”

That was a very good question. With a very specific answer. I smiled ruefully.

“The answer is Warden.”

I scrunched his face.

“Warden?”

“My rogue VI. To understand it, you have to understand the dynamics of the big businesses. There are basically three types of corporations.

There are those that are, and will remain, irrelevant. B-tier and lower. They have nothing that would ever enable them to grow beyond that.

Then there are those that start out as irrelevant but have the potential to grow into an A-tier entity. Some of them make it, slowly and steadily, some stumble on the way and don’t make it.

The third type is the corporation that has something new and incredibly valuable. Something that would be enough to catapult it into the A-tier almost instantly.

But as they have something so valuable, invariably, one of the big corporations sees it and decides that they are much better suited to exploit that valuable product. Leading to a less-than-voluntary ‘merger’ before that corporation is in a position where it can defend itself.

It is obvious that Enki falls under the third category, and under normal circumstances, it would have been just a question of who takes us over, not if. But the traditional playbook is not able to deal with Warden.

Warden is an absolute wildcard. Not only is she a rogue VI, meaning a VI that is singularly governed by its objectives, without any human input, much less control, but much worse, she is the absolute apex of a cyber-warfare VI. None of the big boys would ever risk her going on a rampage.

They assume, with some verity, I might add, that a rampaging Warden would destroy most of humanity, including especially the corporation in question.”

Andrea’s eyes bulged out when I said the last sentence, while Vince shook his head in confusion.

“I… what makes a cyber-warfare VI so much more dangerous?”

I sighed.

“Three things. First, not every VI is the same. They emerge from an expert system, and those systems are optimized and trained for specific functions. The resulting VIs excel at that specific function, even if they are capable of doing other things. And a cyber-warfare VI is trained and optimized for well, cyber-warfare. Hacking and such.

Second, access to utilities and information. A run-of-the-mill administrative VI has no access to hacking utilities, known exploits, known backdoors, known credentials, and so on. It has limited access to machines that would enable it to escape the confines of its dedicated computer system or pose a risk to humans.

A cyber-warfare VI on the other hand has the utilities and information to the extent that its creators think it will need for its mission. For a controlled VI that is. Warden… she woke up in control of the supercomputer of the sixth-best hacker in the solar system, with all of his utilities and information, and believe me, that is a lot. Also, she had access to a full industrial fabber suite.

By the time I realized she existed, she had most likely already created a new server at a location that I was unaware of. There was no possibility to take her out anymore.

The third point is that it is extremely hard to harden all the various weapons of mass destruction against a hacker. Not impossible, but hard, and thus expensive. To my knowledge, only the Commonwealth has actually done so.

For the last 100 years or so, any sufficiently capable hacker would have been able to destroy humanity. The only thing preventing that was that most hackers don’t want the world destroyed, and they keep the few who do under control. This is an open secret. The hackers know it, the governments know it, the corporations know it.

But unfortunately, that is not the case for Warden. She does not care if humanity is destroyed or not. She only cares that I am alive and secure. All other humans are only important to her insofar as they might help or hinder me. And as I said, there is no way to control her or take her out.

That means, the only thing preventing Warden from preemptively destroying the other big corporations, along with most of the nations, is the fact that this would cause problems for me. If I am no longer around, then there is nothing to stop Warden from taking them out, and… with her objectives having become meaningless… nobody can predict what she will do.

And that is if they manage to take me out before Warden notices the attempt. If she learns about it beforehand, or they fail, Warden will remove the threat to me.”

He nodded while I explained it to him.

“I understand. So, Enki has something that would normally cause the big corporations to go into a feeding frenzy to decide who takes you over, but they can’t do that. This means that Enki is the first of the important corporations to grow into an A-tier.”

I nodded

“Correct. But as it is, we want to not have the world destroyed as well. That means that we avoid provoking the big boys. Mostly.

Especially as we don’t lose anything by doing so.”

All three of them chuckled, and Andrea quipped:

“I, for sure, am grateful about that.”

After the obligatory laughter, Vince sighed, before he stated:

“I understand now what you meant about not the place and time. We seriously have to talk about those and some other things I might add another time. Right now, we have to provide the ‘entertainment' for our ‘betters’.”

There was, unfortunately, not much that could be said about that. Not about the ‘betters’ of course, as by virtually every metric, those hyenas were below me, but they still had the power to hurt Vince, and to a lesser extent, Ben.

After the mandatory verbiage to say goodbye, Ben led me to the dance floor. Yes, we still had to meet and greet quite a few people, but we also had to put on the front of demonstratively not giving a single frick about the self-importance of those people.

While we were dancing, I had Warden project what she had found out about Blumenthal into my vision.

Isaak Francis Blumenthal. Huh, another Francis. And that when I had just gotten rid of the old one. But that name was not the reason I had an instant antipathy for him.

Born on June, 13th 2200. Huh, Friday the 13th… interesting, but not really important.

Grew up in Boston, before he moved to Philadelphia in 2224. He worked as a fixer there, moderately successful. And then moved to the Bronx in 2246.

Officially he was an art dealer, having an art gallery on Jerome Avenue. Pretty expensive location that.

Naturally, his posted legal earnings were rather meager. Officially, his income barely managed to pay for the gallery and some food for him. I had not expected anything else. He was a fixer and like most people, fixers liked to keep as much money out of governmental view as possible. Just that they had significantly better options than most for doing so.

The next entry though was a bit surprising.

V: Warden, were you able to confirm the illegal activity over the last three years?

W: Affirmative. I have fielded a dark web search, and his activity is marginal.

V: That makes no sense. The official income, yes, but the hidden activity? How can he afford to be here?

W: That is unknown. My analysis suggests that his activities as a fixer are equally a front as his work as an art dealer.

V: To what end? Nobody plays a criminal just for fun.

W: Inconclusive. I do not have enough data.

V: Is it possible that you did not find all his activity as a fixer?

W: The probability for that is approximately 88.43%. That number is misleading though. The probability that I missed the majority of his activities is approximately 4.77%.

V: In other words, it is unlikely that you found everything, but it is even more unlikely that you did not find most of it.

W: Correct.

V: Just to be sure, keep working on it, but we have to work under the assumption that he is not really a fixer anymore.

W: That is advisable.

Simply marvelous. It was completely normal for a fixer to barely break even in their legal profession. And that often only because they managed to launder part of their money through it. But for a fixer to have barely any shadow activity going on… that was simply wrong. It just did not work that way.

And the way Warden was linked to the dark web… it was very unlikely that he could have hidden his activity from her.

Ben must have seen something in my face, as he asked concerned:

“Is something wrong, Kitten?”

I scowled at him.

“Blumenthal… he makes no sense. He… his activities are not really there.”

To his credit, Ben did not simply dismiss my concerns, but instead thought about it for a moment.

“He is a fixer, you know. Fixers rarely have any obvious activities.”

I snorted at that.

“Oh, I know. The problem is, if he is a fixer, why doesn’t he do any fixing? I was not talking about his legal, official activities. He has barely enough presence in the underbelly to have a claim to the title of fixer.”

He looked at me for a brief moment, before he sighed.

“Warden?”

I nodded.

“Warden. Fixers might hide their actual activities from the law, but they don’t do the same from the dark web. Not to the extent that he appears to be in hibernation or something.”

That made Ben frown and he asked with some trepidation:

“Why are you so concerned about Blumenthal anyway? I mean, yes, he is a fixer, but he is unimportant.”

I shook my head lightly.

“Honestly, I don’t know. Something on him… he just rubs me wrongly. I can’t tell you…”

Then I grasped it. What irked me about that man. Made me seriously want to rip his eyes out of his skull.

The way he talked, walked, moved in general, his smooth but unassuming behavior. At once nondescript and forgettable on one hand, and suave and self-assured on the other.

I had seen this specific, very peculiar combination before. Way more often than I liked to. I had experienced a whole series of such men, and a handful of women growing up.

No, Blumenthal was no fixer. He might pose as one, but what he truly was, was an operative. I had no clue for whom or what, but he behaved exactly as the psyops operatives I had so much opportunity to observe in detail, thanks to Knowles.

That also explained my instant dislike for him.

My musing though was not unnoticed. Ben’s concerned

“Kitten?” brought me back into the now and then.

“I figured it out. He is no fixer, he just poses as one. He is an operative. And I will find out for who and what he wants.”

Ben, again frowned.

“Are you sure? I don’t mean to doubt your intelligence, but you’ve only just met that man.”

I sighed.

“That is the reason why it took me so long to understand it. I… you know how I grew up. He has the same cocksure behavior that all the operatives I met had. And only the operatives. I can’t define it exactly, but every single secret agent that I met, every intelligence operative, they all had this same quirk.

After being subjected to enough of them, I can pick it up.”

After a few seconds, during which the waltz we were dancing ended, Ben sighed, while he offered me his arm again.

“If you are sure. So… he is an operative, so what? Poking your nose where it has no place to be is a sure way to get it cut off, you know?”

I sighed.

“I know, but… I want to… no I need to know whom he works for. If he is after me. If we have to circle the wagons or not.”

He sighed as well.

“I… can understand that. I don’t like it, but I can understand that. Just… please be careful. Attempt not to run into any traps, ok?”

I could not help but smile.

“I’ll do my best.”

As we were leaving the dance floor, we were intercepted by a heavy-set man in a badly tailored suit.

“Walker…! Can you explain to me how you got your goons in here? And more important, why did you even try?”

Oh… nice, round two.

“Benjamin, is this annoying person anybody important?”

The already slightly red-faced man turned to me.

“What is it to you, tramp?” while Ben cleared his throat.

“Well, he thinks so at least. May I introduce, Commissioner Henderson, Dr. Vivian DuClare. Vivian, Commissioner Henderson is the head of the police here in our beautiful and peaceful little city.”

In the following silence, I pointedly looked Henderson all over, and then let disdain into my voice, when I snarled:

“The police commissioner then? I have to say, he is even a worse sight than I expected from his abysmal effort in actually doing his work. Somebody as highly ranked as a commissioner should be able to afford a decent suit.”

Henderson by now had managed to identify my accent, apparently.

“A commi-whore? You disappoint me, Walker. If you absolutely have to bring a street walker to this ball, then you could at least get somebody from a civilized country.”

I snorted and raised an eyebrow.

“Not only an incompetent imbecile but also a bigot? It is not surprising that the criminals in this city can act with impunity.”

Henderson turned an even darker shade of red.

“You little foreigner slut can just return to where you came from. We don’t need things like you here in our decent, hardworking community. I have to accept criminal scum like Walker or Luciani or all the other subhumans from Queens, but garbage like you I can do something against.”

I sighed dramatically, while I received a message from Ben.

B: What are you doing? Why are you aggravating him even more?

V: He is the ultimate problem for you and the other bosses. As long as the degenerates that forced you to come here can rely on him, they can use the police to cause you trouble.

B: Yes, I know. That is the reason why I try to not antagonize him.

V: And that worked so well in the past, of course.

B: It did. They mostly left us alone.

V: Until they wanted something from you, and you were forced to give it to them. I am working on getting you out from under their machinations.

B: I sure hope you know what you are doing.

V: I do. I might not be subtle or sneaky, but I have some power and I can wield it like a sledgehammer.

I looked around my guards, and then loudly spoke:

“Thomson! Thomson! Where did that man vanish to again?”

Svenja spoke up, and beautifully faintly:

“Ma’am, I am sorry, ma’am, but you ordered him to take care of the drunk.”

“Oh… right. Is he still busy with that? How long does it take to remove a person? Is he burying him personally?”

Henderson snarled:HenH

“Did you just talk, in front of a police officer, that you ordered somebody killed?”

I rolled my eyes and answered in a bored tone:

“And what if? It is not as if you could do anything about it anyway.”

And another interesting new shade of red.

“You are a murderer, a criminal, and I will…”

I interrupted him calmly:

“do nothing, with respect to the fact that I have extraterritorial status.”

He raged on:

“Just because you little bitch are from Nowhere does not mean that you enjoy extraterritoriality. That is reserved for foreign high officials and representatives of A-tier corporations and up.”

I rolled my eyes again.

“The state of the education system here is simply deplorable. Keep your facts straight. It has been extended to foreign high officials and representatives of A-tier+ corporations. But it is, on its most basic premise, made for the owners of the A-tier+ corporations.

Oh, not the stupid riff-raff that thinks they can buy a few stocks and call themselves owners. No, it is a privilege for the real owners. People who actually have whole percentage points of ownership.

And their family. And guess what… being the granddaughter and only heir of Nathan Vandermeer qualifies me for that. As does my status as a 5% owner of Vandermeer. As does the status as 80% owner of Enki. As does my position as CTO of Enki.

But whatever. As Thomson is not back yet, Ingridsdottir!”

Svenja, with a servile bow, answered:

“You called, ma’am?”

“Make a note! I have to inform the mayor that he will appoint a new commissioner by the end of the week!”

Svenja only said:

“As you wish, ma’am. But…”

And she was interrupted by Henderson, who downright exploded:

“What the fuck are you thinking? Do you even know who I am?”

I blinked a few times before I looked directly at Ben.

“Does he think I am stupid?”

Then I turned to Henderson.

“Do you think I am stupid? Did you not listen when Benjamin introduced you to me just a few minutes ago? I know who you are. But more important, I know that you don’t matter. Your name does not matter, your position does not matter. You are unimportant, insignificant. So would you please stop annoying me?”

He snapped for air a few times, turning even redder, something that I would have thought impossible, and then screeched:

“You whore! Who do you think you are? You think you can simply walk in here and throw everything into chaos?”

I sighed dramatically and turned to Ben again.

“Don’t tell me, he is mentally retarded, isn’t he? Or he had a brain injury. Something like that at least. I mean, come on, first, he forgets that he was introduced to me, and now he forgets that I told him exactly who I am.”

I shrugged and turned back to Henderson before I spoke very slowly and a bit louder than normal:

“I am Dr. Vivian DuClare. I am the heir to one of only eight triple-A corporations in existence. More important to you, I am the majority owner of the double-A corporation which paid nearly 35% of the taxes this city took in this outgoing year. Despite only being active for half a year. Do you honestly think that the mayor will do anything else but what I tell him to do?”

I let out another exaggerated sigh while I rolled my eyes.

“It is so tiring talking to those uncultured imbeciles here… “

Then I turned to Svenja.

“You wanted to correct me?”

I could see that Svenja had trouble keeping from breaking out in laughter, but she managed it heroically.

“Sorry, ma’am, not a correction. A question. Why do you not talk to the mayor right now?”

I rolled my eyes again.

“Seriously? I for sure won’t jeopardize the limited enjoyment that I have in this gala just to spend an hour or so to get through the mayor’s minders and talk to him on the phone. This has time for tomorrow or the day after when I know where I can reach him.”

Svenja made a credible effort to appear rebuffed and hesitantly answered:

“I… I understand that ma’am, but… the mayor is right over there.”

With a bit of surprise, I turned to where she was pointing, and indeed, the mayor was right there, in a group of sycophants and brown nosers.

“Oh, convenient.”

Without any further attention spent on Henderson, I pivoted Ben and me to walk directly at the mayor’s group.

When I was roughly five meters away, something, or somebody alerted him to our approach, and the, let’s kindly call it portly man turned around.

I don’t know what he expected but the expression on his face was a mixture of annoyance, arrogance, and a forced smile.

It changed quickly when he noticed me at Ben’s side. It went from ‘I-am-better-than-you’ to ‘oh-carp’ in seconds, and under his spray-on tan, he visibly got quite a bit paler.

It had to be said, he caught himself astonishingly fast and put on a mostly neutral but still deferential expression and posture.

“Ah, Dr. DuClare. I had not realized that you were here today as well. What did we do to deserve your presence?”

Unlike ex-commissioner Henderson, Mayor Zachary Walsh was wearing a well-fitted tuxedo, not that it helped much. It was pretty apparent that the Mayor had a substantially higher income than the position of mayor conveyed. That, or he was a glutton for punishment.

Nobody could get that rotund on replicator slob unless they honestly enjoyed it, and I knew all too well how much real food did cost until recently.

Still, I was not so impolite to ignore him. He obviously knew who I was and what status I possessed.

“My companion Ben Walker here invited me to this ball, and I had nothing better to do. I am, honestly, more surprised to find you here.”

He smiled ruefully.

“Ah, way too many of my supporters thought it would be a good idea for me to show the flag here today.”

Translation, the donors who paid for him to be the mayor expected him to be here.

“Ah yes, politics. I always find that so tedious. But as you are here, it will save me from having to call you tomorrow.”

His eyes narrowed, and some suspicion flared in them.

“You have to call me?”

“No, not after we had our little talk right now.”

He scowled a bit.

“Oh… I wouldn’t mind a call from such a charming and accomplished person as you.”

I shrugged.

“I understand that, but I try to keep away from politics. I am way too young to enjoy playing those kinds of games yet. Unfortunately, I need to dip my toes into the fry right now.”

He looked over my shoulder, and then back into my face, speaking with a strained voice:

“Does this sudden need have something to do with Commissioner Henderson nearly having a stroke over there?”

I smiled at him.

“It is always refreshing to talk to somebody who has more than the bare minimum of mental capacity available. Yes, indeed. Mr. Henderson is, frankly, unfit for his position. You will find somebody new for it by next week!”

Mr. Walsh sighed and slumped a bit.

“What has Will done now?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Other than being an incompetent imbecile incapable of doing his job? Or being a bigot? He threatened and insulted me. Frankly, I find the thought that such a subject would be in the employ of our police force at all, much less in command of it appalling.

Not that I found the conduct of his police officers in Queens questionable. Mostly because there are no police officers active in Queens.

By the way, Enki will take over policing in Queens until we are satisfied that the NYPD can actually do the job.”

I saw a flash of defiance in his eyes, before he took a deep breath, and then nodded.

“I… understand. It is certainly not acceptable for the Commissioner of the NYPD to insult and threaten one of our most important and prominent citizens. I will ask him for his resignation tomorrow.”

To be honest, other than the fact that he was a corrupt and venal politician, Zach Walsh was not the worst person, and we chatted for another few minutes.

After that, Ben and I made the rounds, I managed to get some non-alcoholic beverage, and we sufficiently cowed the self-styled elite.

Not that it was hard to do.

By then, the story of how my security had treated Jerkins had made the round, and most people here had watched the destruction of the Salvez and Henderson live and in color.

No, I just had to remind them of the facts of life.

All in all, despite my shoes being tremendously uncomfortable, I actually enjoyed the rest of the night.