However, the police never bothered investigating it further after they discovered that the driver was a University student who also was the son of a high-ranking Corpo. Today, he was a low-to-mid-ranking one himself, but clearly, he still had a chip on his shoulder based on who his parents were.
I listened to him finish his spiel, "... , and as such, I believe that we can offer your shareholders an offer of twenty million Eurodollars for the company, lock-stock-and-barrel." He smiled as though he was doing me a favour.
I just regarded him levelly for as long as I could before he started looking uncomfortable. Then I opened my mouth and sighed, "We decline."
He started to say, before I interrupted him, "Now, look here... this is more than a reasonable offer-"
"It's an insulting offer, which was what I expected," I told him flatly, then laid my hands on the table, "I'm sending a document to you. It's a certified copy of a contract I have prepaid for and executed with Veritas Corporation. In the event that either this company changes hands or this technology is licensed without suitable remuneration-see tables three, four and five-this contract will automatically activate. This will cause Veritas to, without further action from us, transfer both the technology and a pre-signed license to the largest competitor of the firm performing the acquisition."
There were a number of other clauses, some of which I had redacted from the copy I sent this Dynacorp guy, but others I highlighted for his perusal. For example, if I, "Sakura Hasumi", disappeared, the same thing would happen, with Veritas trying to figure out which Corporation was likely responsible and then giving my technology to their competitor. If they couldn't do so within two weeks, then the technology would transfer to a random company from a list that definitely didn't include Dynacorp.
The term for what I had done was a "poison pill." It was a way to either make the acquisition of a company cost a lot more or, alternatively, to poison the fruits of the investment, in this case, by handing the same technology to their competitor for free. If this was Brockton Bay, this wouldn't make much sense as my company was private, and generally speaking, this type of "poison pill" defence strategy was only used when dealing with publicly traded companies. In my old world, the only way to perform hostile takeovers was to buy outstanding shares that were publicly traded, after all.
Since shares in my firm weren't available for trade anywhere, nor were the shareholders (consisting of only myself) publicly known, the strategy would sound a bit odd. But that wasn't the only way to perform hostile takeovers in this new world. The simplest way a hostile takeover happened in this world was by military force of arms. If someone placed a literal gun to my head, like a feudal king that had been captured, I would agree to whatever terms they set. Checkmate. This contract was a hedge against that scenario, as I could not call Veritas up and tell them not to do this anymore. It was already done.
This wasn't fool-proof by any means, and I had to pay a significant sum for Veritas to agree to execute this kind of contract in the first place, but it would still force this little shit to consider his options. If he was smart, he would ask to license the technology at the level where this agreement wouldn't be executed, although that would cause me to receive a percentage of revenues and probably many hundreds of millions of Eurodollars a year in royalties. It would still be less expensive than having to compete with someone else who had the same technology and was therefore driving the price down against their monopoly, though.
There was no way he had the authority to make such an agreement, though. Not by any means. I watched the man, that was only a few years older than me and a few years younger than Dr Hasumi, get red in the face until he said, clipped, "You've made a mistake." Then he slapped the disconnect button on his end and immediately hung up, his hologram derezzing and falling into the desktop.
Well, that was ominous. I didn't really know what he would do now, but I would be looking underneath my car for bombs from now on. Twenty million Eurodollars was probably the limit of his authority to make deals on his own say-so, and he was clearly upset that he would either have to cut this one loose or draw in his bosses and lose most of the credit.
It would be wrong to consider him a stupid young master, too, like out of a wushi or xianxia story. It wasn't as though such tropes didn't exist, and he might even be an excellent example of them; it was just that you didn't succeed even marginally, even if you were a young master in this world without a fair bit of animal cunning, if not straight intelligence.
I called Kiwi.
"Yo, just the doctor I wanted to talk to," she answered with an affable grin.
I raised an eyebrow, "Oh? What about?"
"Can't talk about it on the air. Give me about an hour, and I'll be in your office. Can what you want to talk about wait till then, too?" she asked and then hung up after I nodded.
Well, well. All of my calls with her were encrypted as highly as possible, so it must be something pretty interesting. While I waited, I logged into the dev system that only I and my engineer Phillipe used. The first version of the software for the ruggedised military version of the sleep inducer was done, and we were beginning to assemble units for testing. Phillipe had commented on how simple it was to produce because most of the squad management systems already had trigger and event hooks for things like 'possible enemy detected' during rest time. For the version that did not include that, all he had to do was create a master control that could override and wake all members of the squad so that a lookout could rapidly wake everyone up.
The military version of the sleep inducer only really had two features, beyond the fact that it was rugged as hell, that the standard did not. That was the main one, and the other one was adding a "last rested" attribute to each soldier in the management system. I didn't do anything with this data field, but most brigade management was done partly by AIs these days, and they would definitely notice the new data field and adapt it on the fly to the suggestions and options given to field-grade commanders.
That was all I thought it needed to be very successful in the first place. I had already bought some of the special tooling necessary to assemble them. The exterior was made mostly of a specialised flexible nano-polymer that was five times stronger than polycarbonate and very flexible. I had carefully designed each module that used other plastics so that it was almost impossible to fracture, too. I had run over one of the prototypes in my car multiple times, and it would always snap back into shape. It was also waterproof enough that it would only be damaged by total submersion in water for over two hours, at least at small depths. If you dropped it in the ocean, well, you better go after it before it sinks more than twenty metres or write it off.
After I reviewed any commits that Phillipe had submitted, I checked a couple of messages, frowning. I had been forwarded a post on a BBS that focused on high-end consumer electronics where this user claimed that he accidentally dropped his Cherry sleep inducer out of the tenth floor of his apartment complex but managed to recover it.
It stopped working as a braindance wreath, but the sleep-inducing parts still worked, and moreover, apparently, it was causing him to have lucid dreams every night. There were a number of replies claiming that he was spreading bullshit, but a few were curious if it were true.
I gaped and quickly went through the process of registering an account and replied directly in the thread:
"Dear xX69XxMightyThunderCockxX69Xx,
I urge you to cease using the damaged product immediately. Please return it to our headquarters personally or via mail, and I will, in this instance only, waive the negligence exclusion to our warranty and provide you with a fully-functional replacement.
I have no idea how or why this could be happening, and that means it is dangerous. I remind you that Cherry Limited will not be liable if you fry your brain using an obviously damaged product. See product license, end-user-license-agreement and hold-harmless policy for details.
For the good of your brain, please return this device immediately,
Dr Sakura Hasumi, MD, PhD, CEO"
The truth was I was a little bit concerned about his brain, but I was more interested in examining the faulty device to see why it might be causing this novel effect. I did know a bit about the phenomenon of lucid dreaming and thought there could be a number of reasons why. If it could be replicated and was safe, I might sell it as a "DLC" for the device.
I got both a reply and a DM from a forum moderator. The latter was asking me for proof of my identity, and I raised an eyebrow. Honestly, that wasn't easy to do. Even if I called them, machine-learning systems could credibly fake any person these days. I thought about it.
Ah, that would probably work. Nodding, I took a screenshot of the DM and uploaded it to the Cherry Limited net site. Then, I sent the link back to the moderator in a reply. The ability to instantly upload anything and serve it on the verified net site of the manufacturer was likely proof enough. I could have sent them a cryptographically signed e-mail from my net site as well, but this BBS specifically did not include mail addresses for the administrators or moderators. This site was a hobbyist or enthusiast BBS-right on the periphery of what I would have considered "dark net" sites, so it tried to be edgy.
Sure enough, they replied with a thumbs-up emoji and added a special badge and title to my account. How interesting. I had never browsed this BBS before.
The reply from the original poster claimed that he was concerned that he would lose the "additional functionality" as he had gotten used to being able to lucid dream every night. I didn't have to reply again, though, as he got dog-piled by many posters. Some people requested that he continue to use it until his brain melted for science, but most called him an idiot for not taking a good deal when he got it. Finally, he sent me a private message and said he would stop by after work in a couple of hours.
Sighing, I didn't have anything pressing to do until Kiwi came over, so I started my word processor and opened up the latest chapter in Rage Of A Villainess and started tapping away. I had been slacking a bit in releasing chapters, much to the dismay of the readers. Right now, the plot was, chronologically, in the middle of the third sequel to the otome game, which the protagonist hadn't actually played yet. Would our plucky heroine, who was now an Archduchess in her own right, discover the chilling truth behind the [Anti-Saintess] and her capture targets before it was too late?!
Well, the readers would just have to see. I could write quite fast these days, and I was also even experimenting with drawing, partly as a way to compensate the readers for the reduced release schedule of twice per week. Not to create, say, a manga but more to make it more of a traditional light novel, with illustrations every fifty pages or so. Normally, my art skills would not be up for it. But I've found if I focused all my brain power, I could draw things in numerous styles, even "manga style." It might help that I spent hours every week "painting" new bodies into existence, but it was probably mostly because the way my brains worked together had expanded the way I thought.
That was clear when I had partially disconnected the other week while meeting Gram. The experience was pretty terrible from both perspectives, but it was the worst for the part of me that was the smallest. It felt as though I had a stroke, almost. I was sure I could have recovered from it, but it would have taken some time. That was something to keep in mind, as it could possibly even cause some danger. My third body was in space, learning how to work safely as a construction worker and electrician in microgravity. If I flipped out in a hostile environment, there was a chance I could do something to put myself in real danger.
I got through the chapter and started the first couple of paragraphs for the next before I was interrupted, which was good. I liked to immediately write at least three or so paragraphs for the follow-on chapter, as I found it was much easier to motivate myself to continue writing a chapter than it was to begin one. Kiwi stuck her head into my office door and asked, "Hey, is anyone using your OR?"
OR? Singular? Girl, please . I had three now. And yes, someone was using one. But the two new ones upstairs needed to start earning their keep, too, "I have two new operating theatres upstairs. Let's go up there." I was curious why she wanted to talk there, but my curiosity didn't last long. She had a bodybag with her, so that answered a lot of questions.
When we got to the free OR, I started to unzip the bag but was stopped by Kiwi, and I quickly raised an eyebrow. She said, "Wait, let me start a jammer real quick, just in case." I peered at the bodybag, and sure enough, it was one of the few that also had a fine wire-mesh lining to stifle radio-frequency emissions. Just what had she brought me?
I hummed and waited until she got set up before unzipping the body bag. I gaped at what I saw. The first obvious thing was that the corpse was missing half of the body; only the torso from the waist up was in the bag.
Second, the cybernetics I saw were very distinctive. I glanced around, looking left and right, "Please tell me you didn't bisect a Netwatch agent, Kiwi."
She laughed and shook her head, "No! We found him like this on a job last night. How long do you suppose he has been dead?"
I frowned and considered that question before confidently stating, "One hundred and fifty hours, plus or minus six hours."
That caused her to let out a sigh of relief, nodding, "I figured it was pretty long, but that means there's no way the netpigs really knew he died. Otherwise, they would have extracted his corpse here before we got there." She then grinned and said, "That's the highest-end Netdriver that NetWatch makes, to say nothing of the cooling system. None of that tech is available on the market, not even for large Corps. Do you think you could remove it? I am almost certain I can crack the firmware on the Netdriver. At least that will let me install a customised OS and not get tracked using it."
I nodded slowly, pulling the torso out of the body bag and getting my tools, thinking about the cyberdeck the former NetWatch agent had. "Yes, I can maybe even add some customised panelling to disguise it. I can make it look like a high-end Tetratonic cyberdeck from the outside easily enough. The cooling system, though..." I just shook my head, "There is no way I can disguise that, so I recommend you forgo it for the moment. It's too much. Too large. You can't hide it. One pic of you gets out, and they'll be after you, I bet. I'd like to examine it, though, so I'll buy it from you if you want."
