The next morning we had our regular Tuesday meeting again… hurray.

But seriously, it was time to get into the routine again. Yes, I did not stand still during the last two weeks, but I felt as if I did. I was just not built for idle wasting of my time and I was rearing to go full ahead again.

Nonetheless, I had to gripe at the meeting. Couldn’t have them think that I actually enjoyed being there in person, could I?

And thus my opening after we had greeted each other:

“You know, we all have jacks now, we could hold these meetings in VR and get them over with in minutes.”

Maggie smiled sweetly when she rebuked me:

“And do what with the saved time? Lazing around and eating chocolate? Oh, by the way, thanks for the cloned cacao.”

I raised my eyebrows and answered equally sweetly:

“Oh, I don’t know, we could maybe, just maybe you know, do the jobs we are so princely paid for. Of course, if you think you don’t have enough to do for a full workday, maybe we should look into if your position is necessary.”

For a short moment, everybody was silent, and then Maggie broke out into laughter.

“Ok, that was a good one. We will get you up to proper banter soon enough.”

Michael rapped softly onto the table.

“So, now that we have the show done, could we start with the meeting, which by the way is part of our jobs?”

I just rolled my eyes.

“Fine. I just thought we could all use our time better than sitting here physically.”

Kenneth looked at his mug for a moment and then shrugged.

“I don’t know about you, but I like the coffee here. The android makes it perfectly.”

With a heavy sigh, Michael spoke again.

“Are we done yet? Or does somebody else want to change their job description to comedian?”

For a brief moment, Maggie and I made eye contact, before she grinned and answered:

“Nah, we’re good.”

That made Michael nod.

“Ok, then, how about we start with the routine business, get that out of the way?”

With that, he nodded to James, who cleared his throat.

“Our production capacity has doubled since we had the last meeting. That is mostly because we are now running the machinery on three full shifts and using the full potential of it.

This potential has grown by 52%. Partly because of the new construction of facilities, but in large part because the new machines we designed ourselves are quite a bit faster. That and the fact that we are pre-loading the replicators with nanobots, which significantly speeds up the production of them.

All in all, we are good, though the growth will likely slow down a bit when we filled up the buildings we had pre-build.”

Maggie was next:

“Our human workforce has exploded. In the wake of our opening the test of the fertility nanobots to our workforce and their families, the number of people wanting to work for us has more than quadrupled. We now have our 6k somewhat experienced workers and 20k new workers.

Unfortunately, the education of the new employees is… limited. We are working to remedy that, but it will be a couple of months before they are fully productive.

Additionally, we have gone to eight-hour shifts, to balance the three shifts each day. Our workforce is now working 48 hours a week instead of the standard 60, but surprisingly, we experienced an increase in productivity. More than we have lost in time worked.”

I saw several faces scowl in confusion, and I could understand that, as I did not quite understand it myself.

After a brief moment, Maggie sighed and continued:

“That is another holdover from the great war it seems. Just before the war, corporations were experimenting with going to 32-hour work weeks and experienced the same thing. Despite the workers working less time for the same pay, overall they provided more work.

But then came the great war and with it 84-hour work weeks, and after that the cut back to 60 hours seemed practically generous.”

Michael hummed and rubbed his chin.

“Do I understand you right that it would be better for us if we cut back the work time of our workers even more?”

Maggie nodded.

“Yes, I think it does. The studies done before the war implied that the reduced work time reduced the failure rate and increased the work speed because the workers were more rested, mentally more agile, and physically less stressed. They also were much more motivated.

I suggest we reduce it first to a 40-hour work week or five eight-hour days. We will see how that works out.”

This time, only James scowled.

“But our production… we have just brought it up that much. What will that do for it?”

As an answer, Maggie rolled her eyes.

“We have mostly switched to bots for the actual work by now. The humans are quality control and supervisors. I guess our production will suffer for a bit while we task a few replicators to build additional bots, but after that, we will be fine.

And in two to three months, we will quadruple our human workforce. That should be enough to have our production numbers shoot up as well. If we can get the production facilities for that. Sure, they won’t be all that effective. At least in the beginning. But they will be warm bodies that will gain experience.”

After a few seconds, James huffed and rolled his eyes.

“Fine. But that runs neatly into my point. We need more replicator time for our industry bots. Not just for the standard workforce. Our new Eitri bots are… well, let’s call them versatile. They can work in manufacturing or building, or essentially anything we could use a human laborer for.

The bigger Brokkr are less versatile, they are just too big for much of the fine work, but they are very good for large-scale work.

Each Eitri is around six times more effective than the Burgmeister Journeyman that we use to pull up our buildings. The Brokkr are much more versatile than the Burgmeister Maultier, and of course, can work quite a bit longer.

I want to phase out the Daedalus and Maultier bots and replace them with Eitri and Brokkr. We can run the replicators a bit longer on the Eitri and use them for manufacturing.”

I had to frown.

“Uh, who thought of those names?”

For a moment, they all looked at me as if I had grown a second head, but then Kenneth began to chuckle followed by the others. When they were finished laughing at my cost, Marcel shook his head for a last time and then answered my question.

“That was me. Sorry, I think we forgot that you were busy with the Folly when we made that decision.

The names come from Nordic mythology. They were dwarves that created among other things Mjölnir. I thought it would fit in well with our overall theme and honestly, they and their brother Sindri are the only crafting spirits in mythology not quite gods, but more than human who are literally brothers.

After that, we named the military bots Einherjar. We thought if we try to market those things we should name them.”

I blinked a few times. Was I honestly that much out of it when I worked on the Folly? It seemed so at least.

“Ok. I was just surprised.”

I felt Michael’s hand on my shoulder.

“It’s ok. I did not think of telling you about it.”

Then he placed his hand back on the table and addressed the room:

“But back to business, what would be the impact of diverting a few replicators to build more bots?”

Kenneth rubbed his chin.

“Wouldn’t it be better to build additional replicators for that? Even if we have all the bots we might ever need at some point, the replicators will not go to waste. And… honestly, I don’t like diverting our industrial output if we can help it.”

I was really sorry, but I could not help it, I involuntarily rolled my eyes.

Which led to Kenneth narrowing his, and he hissed.

“Do you seriously disagree with that Vivian?”

I sighed before I answered.

“Sorry, but yes. Does it make any difference if we use some of the NADAs we have up and running to make the bots and replace them with current production ones? As I understand it, we are barely able to bring on enough bots to support the new NADAs coming online.

So we either try to find a balance between NADAs for what we sell and NADAs we use to increase our production capacity, or we will run into problems at one point or another.

I would guess this balance is somewhere between what you and James are proposing, but I am not sure.

But in the long run, it makes no difference if we err on the one side compared to the other.”

He looked at me intensely, but I held his gaze and did not relent either. Then he sighed.

“Yeah, you are right. We have to find a balance. Let’s model it through to get the optimal numbers.”

I smiled at that and nodded, along with all the others.

For a few moments, nobody said anything before Michael nodded to Alena.

“So, next point, financial?”

Alena smiled brightly.

“Our costs have increased substantially. The new charity we have is costing us around $12 million a month, and the new employees who are not yet productive are another $70 million in sunk cost.

The remodeling of the L5 facility is costing us around $400 million per month, and the ongoing construction here in Queens is another $800 million. Our payroll for our productive workers and management is $125 million per month.

The buildup of our new asteroid mines for iridium costs us another $900 million per month.

We use resources worth $107 million per day. That makes an average of $3.2 billion per month.

All in all, we have right now costs of $5.1 billion per month.

From what I heard, that is a bit higher than the average for a double-A but not by much. We are mostly in the middle of the pack there.

For our income though we are not even close to the average. For the small fry first, we sell $9.8 million per day or $294 million per month in cyberware.

The auto-surgeon brings us around $215 million per month.

Computers are gaining traction, but for now, we sell around $425 million.

Surprisingly, replicators ‘only’ have an income of $800 million. That sounds like much, but the average replicator costs $25 million. In other words, we only sell 32 replicators a month on average. But I expect that to grow substantially in the future. Right now, many are waiting to see how the technology works out.

That brings us to the two big ones. First grav coils. I don’t know if you noticed, but right now there is a regular bonanza in new grav ships, skimmers, and other things that need grav coils. While our coils are significantly cheaper than the old ones, we have completely cornered the market here, and we sell $5.6 billion a month in grav coils.

And it is growing. Just keep in mind that every product we sell pays for itself. We do not make a loss anywhere.

Most of the material costs are for carbon for the Q-links. Around 65% that is. And Q-links are still a license to print money.

We sell an average of $1.7 billion in Q-links each day. With an assumed 30 days per month, we get an average of $51 billion per month.

In sum, our income is a bit over $58 billion per month. That gives us a profit before taxes of around $53 billion. After taxes, which are 23% or $12.2 billion per month, we get a profit of a bit over $40 billion each month.

The average for a double-A is around $17 billion.

To sum it up, we are in a very good position.”

For a long time, nobody said a word, until, finally, Arnedra uttered a long:

“Fuuck!”

It seemed that except for Alena, Michael, and me, the people at the table were in shock. At first, I could not understand it. As far as I was concerned, this development was predictable.

Come on, get real, how often have I already mentioned that the Q-links are a license to print money? For the next 19½ years, until the patent ran out, maybe even longer if we managed to bribe the right regulatory agencies, we owned communication.

The darn thing was so insanely useful that the $51 billion per month was just the beginning. And the real perverse thing about it was the fact that for our customers, it was still the cheaper alternative.

Then I got it suddenly. Why the people were so shocked. Michael and Alena of course had seen the numbers before now.

Other than that, the ownership of Enki was quite easy, honestly. I owned 80%. Ben and Michael each owned 5%. The remaining 10% was divided among the other 11 people on this table.

Each of them owned .9%. That doesn’t sound like all that much, but… as Alena had just explained Enki earned $40 billion per month.

That translated to each of them getting $360 million per month. Compared to that, their yearly salary of $4.5 million was mostly symbolic.

And that was where the shock came from. It had just sunk in that every single one of them was close to being a billionaire in their own right.

Alena, on the other hand, kept a downright manically smile going, which swiftly faltered when she looked at Michael and me.

“Puh, you two are no fun.”

That made Michael smile mildly.

“Dear Alena, you forgot that I have access to the numbers the same as you. I am also a 5% owner. I had my shocking moment a few months ago, thank you.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Yeah fine. But what about Vivian?”

What what about me? I was somewhat confused by what she was trying to say. Fortunately, Michael was not.

“Vivian is in a completely different league to us. She was a billionaire before she came to NYC. She would never have to work a single day if she wanted that.”

“But it has to be surprising how much her fortune has grown.”

I sighed, finding back into the discussion.

“After a certain point, it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

By now the rest had recovered from the shock, and Tiffany narrowed her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter? But… you are a billionaire. How can that not matter?”

I smiled somberly.

“That is something you all will experience as well. Money is a strange thing.

At the lowest end, it means the difference between dying and surviving.

A bit higher, and it means the difference between surviving and being comfortable.

A bit higher, and it means the difference between being comfortable and growing.

Then it makes the difference between simply growing and flourishing.

Beyond that, it becomes a matter of luxury.

And then finally, any more money makes no difference at all anymore. It just represents points in a game, or how much you can use it to help others.

It conveys bragging rights, or a tool to better the world.

You are on the cusp of it making no difference anymore.

Think about it, a year ago, the $4.5 million you earn as a salary a year here was a gift from the gods for you.

You could finally afford all the cool stuff, the luxuries, and the comfort you ever wanted.

Sure, you were not in a position to buy your company mercs from that money, but otherwise, what would you buy now that you could not buy then?

Everything from now on is showcasing your wealth. You already are in the bragging rights territory.

So what if I could buy 200 T-240 each month? It makes no difference to me anymore.”

Sadly, that had the effect that they looked scolded.

Then Marcel shook his head clear.

“But… I enjoy some of the things I can now buy.”

Michael answered him:

“There is nothing wrong with that. I think the point Viv was trying to make is that yes, you do enjoy the stuff you buy, now. But there will come a point where your only reason for buying something is to demonstrate that you can afford it.

To rub the noses of anybody who ever gave you problems into the fact that you’ve made it.

Trust me, I have reached that point already, and it is a hollow victory. You bought something out of spite, or obligation, then you won’t have fun with it.”

It took a moment for the suddenly way too somber mood to return to something more normal.

In the end, Michael had to bring the meeting back on track.

“Now, Alena, those numbers are more than good, as you know. But do you have any projections?”

That brought the happy smile instantly back on Alena’s face.

“Oh yeah, do we have projections. Right now, we estimate that we can satisfy around 13% of the ongoing demand for Q-links.

Even when we have reached that magical 100% number, we will have to work down the mountain of demand that is even now growing. With the current expansion, my department estimates that it will take us around another six months to reach the break-even point in that matter. Any increased capacity after that should be carefully evaluated.

We obviously expect the demand for grav-coils to increase, as soon as the first fusactors with the new coils arrive, and every skimmer and grav-ship producer has switched over.

All in all, our projections say that at the anniversary of us starting to sell things, we will have a profit of around $450 billion per month.”

And just like that, we were a trillion-dollar company.

For a moment, nobody said anything, before Marcel, rubbing his chin, mused:

“Wouldn’t that make us a triple-A?”

Michael shook his head slowly.

“No… not really. The step from double-A to triple-A is quite a bit more complicated, but it can be summed up with one word. Power. Triple-As have an incredible amount of power. Not just economic, but military, political, and social.

It will take years for us to come even close in that regard. Sure, we will be the absolutely most profitable double-A ever, but building up a viable military takes time. Getting the fingers into the political pie takes even longer.

And you don’t want to take social power fast. That will create hype, and hype has the tendency to burn itself out when fickle public opinion wavers. No, we want the slow, methodical, and lasting kind of social power. The stable one. But that is for the future.

I would suggest we all develop some ideas about what we can do with that money. Except for giving it out at dividends. Remember, one of the values of this corporation is that we want to make the world a better place, not just enrich ourselves.”

He shook his head and took a few deep breaths.

“Now then, any new business?”

Surprisingly, Maynard, Jessi, and I signaled our intent to speak.

We had a very short non-verbal discussion before Maynard shrugged and took the lead.

“It is something I think James will like, maybe Kenneth as well. A few of the minions have done the same thing to the molecular forge that they did to the carbon extruder.

They took them apart and looked into what part they could make better with our new technology.

A standard molecular forge works by using an insane amount of energy to melt and/or vaporize the material it is refining. The resulting liquid or gases will be diverted into a magnetically sealed centrifuge and the materials will be separated by that.

To create a specific alloy or compound the forge will then pump the appropriate amount of material into the reaction chamber and use nanobots to force the atoms into the required form.

As you can understand, both the melting phase, as well as the centrifuge, take prodigious amounts of energy.

The minions now have replaced the melting phase with a disruptor, and the sorting with a combination of magnetic fields and gravity.

So far, the nano-bots at the end are run-of-the-mill 10th to 12th gen bots, but we could as well put one of our NADAs at the end to make a completely integrated machine.

The not-so-surprising part is that this new machine is at once cheaper to make, cheaper to run, and way faster.

It costs us roughly 80% of what a similar-sized commercial molecular forge would cost. It will need around 5% of the energy of the standard forge. And it is nearly three times faster.”

Oh freck! There goes the no antagonizing the big boys…! Industrial machinery was Burgmeisters bread and butter. We had already cut into it with the NADA but we had given them the license… that might be it. I spoke up.

“That might be a dangerous technology. Burgmeister and to a lesser extent Xiao Ping need to prevent it from cutting into their business. So… how about we approach them and license the technology to them?

We sell them the disruptors, the grav-coils anyway, they already have the license for the NADA.

We can use our machines internally, but give the market to those two.”

Maynard was a bit disappointed, but Naveen simply nodded.

Michael rubbed his chin for nearly a minute.

“It would, at least, prevent any animosity. We get some money from them for the design, the disruptors, and the coils.

And would most likely make them more friendly in respect to us. Especially when we don’t compete with them in that market.

Not that we need to. We can not even satisfy the demand for tech that we are already selling. There is no point introducing even more stuff that we can only trickle out. I am all for it.”

A quick vote later, we had decided to offer the technology to Burgmeister and Xiao Ping.

Michael continued:

“Eli, I charge you and Marcel to open up the negotiations.”

Both of them nodded, and it was Jessi’s turn.

“What I have to say will probably not have that much of an impact. We have sufficiently concluded the tests for the new cyberware. As far as we can test it with research clones at least. The next step is to test it on volunteers. After that, we can convert our security people into combat cyborgs, if they want to.”

That was good news. And I also knew who would be at the very forefront of the line.

“I have promised Mark Holt that he could get the first fully functional cyberware. Is that ok with you?”

Jessi tilted her head but then nodded.

“No problem. At least we can consider him. We have to make sure that he is a good test subject, but other than that, if he wants to he can.

But that brings me to the other point. We have identified the problem with reflex boosters.”

Now that was interesting, and I leaned forward in interest. Jessi continued.

“It is… was essentially a configuration issue. As it was, the boosters relayed the signal much faster than the nerves, and the brain started reacting to it. Then the signal from the nerves arrived, and the brain started reacting to those as well, not realizing that was the very same event.

Then the boosters send the orders from the brain to the limb. Again, much faster. At the same time, the nerves transported the signal. By now we had four signals for the same event. But it got worse. The signal from the boosters caused another return signal over the nerves. Getting two signals back to the brain.

All that cascaded so much that both the natural nervous system, as well as the booster, were wasting about 90% of their capacity on these gridlock messages.

All that damaged both the nervous system and the booster, but the booster, being technology, could take it.

To make it work we simply filter out the signal from the nerves, if the signal from the booster has already arrived.

Ironically, with those problems taken out, the limit now is what the muscles and joints are capable of. It is way faster than the cyber zombies of the other big corps have.”

She paused for a moment and then snorted.

“We have not tested it with somebody who has the new cyber-limbs and a synaptic accelerator. That would be… quick I would guess.”

That… was an understatement of epic proportions. Reflex boosters worked by boosting the signal speed from the limbs to the central nervous system and triggering autonomous reflexes. They did that because the brain usually was way slower to react.

But with a synaptic accelerator, the brain could take the information and process it faster than the autonomous reflexes could. This would limit the reaction speed to what the physical body was capable of.

And here the new cyberware came into play.

I expected that our cyborgs could routinely capture flies in flight with chopsticks and then complain that that was too easy.

Include what Mark and the minions had done with the smart gun interface… that would be a deadly combination.

Naveen was the only other of us who was really interested.

“Does that mean we will get a fully upgraded security force soon?”

Jessi just smiled.

“We should be, if nothing goes wrong. So knock on wood.”

That left me with the final presentation of the day. I sent the signal to have the bot I staged in my office roll in the Archimedes case, as well as the two stand-alone systems.

“I… have been asked what computer to use to do research with a jack. It is a bit embarrassing, but I had not thought about it before that.

Now here is the solution. I call it Archimedes.”

The bot took the stand-alone units and placed them on the table.

The connector was roughly the size of an average office computer, while the research board was a bit bigger than a Mk. VI.

Marcel frowned.

“Uhm, I thought we would just make a standard computer for them, or they use a Mk. VI and optimize the load-out.”

I shook my head.

“That would work, but the standard computer would run Envision EX. The Mk. VI would work in a pinch, but quite a big part of its mass are things that are not only useless for a research computer, but actively a hindrance. The big multi-level buffer, for example, the ultra-fast application launchers. Things needed for cyber-warfare, but unimportant for anything else.

More importantly, the OS is written in a way to maximize the protection of the hacker during matrix combat. Again, that will create problems for a research box.”

Arnedra scowled.

“Why would it be a problem if a standard computer runs on Envision EX? I mean, it works doesn’t it?”

Michael was the one who answered.

“Envision is famous for its telemetry channels. Everybody who uses Envision has to expect that Ralcon learns everything that this computer is used for.

I don’t see many corporations allowing their eggheads to do their research with an Envision computer.”

I smiled.

“Correct. That is the reason why I had Calliope create a new OS mostly from scratch. It is optimized to work with the scientist to do math, physics, or whatever else a number cruncher can be used for. The computer itself is loosely based on the Mk. VI, but has way more I/O and is even more modular.”

Marcel looked at the three boxes.

“I assume that is the box that is roughly the size of a Mk. VI then? What are the other computers for?”

“The smaller one is actually the heart of the design. It is the connector, that connects the box, and the run-of-the-mill Envision computer to the secure network.

It is designed so that it prevents the Envision computer from being part of the network in reality, but still be available for the researcher to use office.

All the data goes through the controller, and only the data the researcher wants to go to the Envision computer will be available there.”

Tiffany looked confused.

“But… why does the Envision computer be connected in the first place? Don’t research labs now use a standalone Envision computer to do the work on? Wouldn’t that be enough?”

“No, not anymore, I fear. Think about it. A good scientist, with a good jack and a good research box, can easily get 60:1 compression. That means that if he only uses a single minute to surface, go to the stand-alone computer, write the report, and then save it, he has lost a whole hour of work.

Not to mention, the way I have set this up, after a bit of work in period, the reports practically write themselves along with what the scientists want to write, while he does the science.

To that extent, I designed the controller box to be the sole connection between the box, the Envision computer, and the rest of the network.”

“Oh… ok.”

Michael looked hard at the big case though. The one that had been rolled in.

“That does not explain the big one, though. Is that the accompanying supercomputer?”

I had to snort.

“Nope, that one is the all-in-one. It has the Envision computer, the research box, and the controller integrated into one unit. As I see it, we simply sell it as it is. We can offer to create specialized systems and applications for the research box, but as it is, this thing just needs to be plugged in at the lab and is ready to go.

No hassle, no bean counters who think a specialized controller is too expensive, you know the drill.”

The discussion lasted a bit longer, but effectively, that was the end of it. We would offer Archimedes either as an all-in-one, or the box and the controller separately.