She raised an eyebrow, " This other section is a bit more problematic, as it is vague. It is a prohibition on you from producing such technology or products in certain geographic areas, even after your employee relationship ends, so long as the Arasaka has either a license from you to produce them, for example, your sleep inducers would qualify, or shared ownership of IP. It is listed as a protective measure to ensure the continued confidential nature of any shared or licensed technology, but it isn't clear where this would apply or which geographic locations would be prohibited. I can't recommend you sign this agreement with this vague language attached." She turned to Yuki and asked pointedly, " Shindo-san, can you enlighten us as to the purpose of these clauses?"
Yuki blinked and glanced down at the virtual sheet of paper before pausing and nodding, " Of course! It's meant to prohibit Hasumi-sama from, for example, building a factory in a location with either lax patent protection laws or lax rule of law in general. Basically, we don't want you to start production in an area where your inventions will be immediately seized, either by some corrupt application of local patent law or through simple lawless force of arms. I didn't realise the language was so broad, and we can definitely adjust it. This language was added at the last minute after we received word from our Intelligence division about some developments in the NUSA. I was going to talk to you about them after you read these documents... if you don't mind me speaking in front of your attorney, I can elaborate."
I inclined my head, and he continued, " We received word from our NUSA sources that the fix, as they say, is in." He waggled his eyebrows and even tapped the side of his nose in the British spy gesture, which was amusing. He continued, "The NUSA government will be invalidating your patent on technical and legalistic grounds. They don't have any actual grounds to do so, but they'll just make something up. Militech is already working around the clock to reverse engineer your design, and we expect them to succeed within eight to fourteen months, hence our desire for alacrity on releasing our own product. We need to build an initial market share, plus... uhh.. other considerations..."
He then frowned, looking annoyed on my behalf, which I found cute, " That's basically the reason for that clause. There does need to be some amount of leeway in it, though, to deal with situations where a country might have, on the surface, robust patent protection but, in practice, might seize your invention anyway, like the NUSA. I'm talking to my former boss right now, and at a minimum, we would be willing to specify that this clause wouldn't apply to Japan or the European Community as a whitelist. It's not a huge issue, as these clauses would mostly only apply if you left employment at Arasaka in the future."
Our discussions lasted several hours, as my legal situation was complicated by the contract that I had paid Veritas to execute for me. Arasaka couldn't just pay me individually for my IP, as that would trigger Veritas to execute. So, Arasaka had to pay my company the royalties. I was transforming it into, at least while I worked here, more of a paper entity to hold my IP and to receive payments on my behalf. I was surprised that Arasaka wasn't trying to screw me over for the royalties, as they would amount to slightly over a hundred million Eurodollars a year for the foreseeable future.
It was later when the attorney left and Yuki went over my options for where I would live when I got back to Japan, I discovered that they had screwed me over, at least a little. Honestly, it felt comforting, as if a Corpo didn't pull something with you, then it was really worrying.
Arasaka was paying me my total owed royalties. However, they were charging me for "security services" that I was required to have that they would provide. They were, in effect, billing me for my own gilded cage. There were also additional requirements as to where I would live, which made only the most expensive options compliant with my employment contract.
A large apartment in Tokyo which was the most expensive city for housing on the planet, additional apartments next door for my security service, buying or leasing an aerodyne or two for transport to and from the office, the salaries and equipment for almost a platoon of security specialists for full twenty-four-seven coverage, even Yuki's salary, I was paying for. They probably would have had to provide all of these things for free just so that I could do my job, but they were making me pay for it all out of my pocket. What cheeky little bastards.
All-in-all, it would cost something like twenty million Eurodollars per year, so it wasn't as though I would beggar myself; I would still be pulling tens and tens of millions of Eurodollars in profit, but it was amusing noticing that the company I worked for had managed to arrange things so that they gave me a bunch of money and then immediately grabbed handfuls of it back. That had been an area where both I and my outside attorney had failed to realise the scale of the liabilities.
Surprisingly enough, the Arasaka-provided attorney-woman had noticed that part in the employment contract in the past and had even told me that the associated charges might be substantial; I just hadn't guessed how substantial. However, the company had insisted on such a clause in exchange for shortening the employment contract from a standard ten years to three. I didn't really have any expectation that Arasaka would let me go after three years, so I had just negotiated that to make myself feel better at not acceding to all of their demands at first. Now I was a bit regretful.
Still, in some ways, it was good. There were, no doubt, many middle managers in Arasaka involved with my hiring and management of my licensed patents, so if I didn't give them some relatively benign way to screw me over, they would invariably look for some other method. I was sure that it was part of their KPIs to "recoup" some money, lower costs, or increase the "value" of the investment, i.e. myself. This ensured the obvious way to screw me was taken and not something I wouldn't expect.
Also, I wasn't surprised at all at NUSA's decision to use some figleaf to invalidate my patent. A number of defence magazines were humming with the idea of sleep inducers becoming a force multiplier for essentially any military force. That made it not only a valuable invention but a strategic imperative to acquire. And nations just took things when they thought it necessary. It was the standard behaviour of all polities. I was a little surprised at the length of time that Arasaka guessed would be necessary to defeat the copy protection I had installed in the wreaths, though.
I wouldn't have guessed more than six months, but I supposed I had done something right in the DRM department. Even after they cracked the protection and could build and sell their own versions, they'd run into issues of not precisely knowing exactly why it worked, too.
After I finished with all of the paperwork, Yuki made me dinner, and then we sat down to watch a film. I didn't get much out of the experience, as watching films when they weren't on my operating system so that I could speed them up resembled something akin to a slide show rather than a video. In order for me not to detect individual frames in a video, they had to be played at least one hundred and thirty frames per second, and that wasn't standard at all. Still, the pretty boy had seemed so enthused at the prospect that I didn't have the heart to correct him.
He had fallen asleep in the first fifteen minutes, too, and now was draped somewhat awkwardly on me. Sighing, I rearranged him on the couch so that his head was resting on my lap. While I didn't have any desire for a sexual relationship with him, especially since I knew his first loyalties were not to me, he was cute in the same way as a pet kitten or helpless rabbit was, and affection didn't have to be sexual.
I'd let him sleep for now. I'd gift him one of the sleep-inducer samples when they arrived, too.
April 2067
Night City
Gloria's Apartment, Santo Domingo
Gloria and David had made it back to Night City along with Kiwi and her entire mercenary team, although it took them several weeks in the end, and apparently, according to David, there were thrilling adventures along the way.
Gloria was a bit peeved with me, but not as bad as I thought she might have been. Still, she didn't precisely appreciate me dragging her off for her own safety and away from all of her plans twice, but at least she already had tentative plans to return to Night City; it was just she wanted to work at least a year in the ER in LA first.
She was especially irked with David being pulled out of school on a moment's notice, but that really wasn't a big deal at all. It would have been if he had been going to public school as in the past, as it would have taken a significant amount of time for his "benefits" to catch up with him.
People on public assistance were denied mobility in many ways, from not being able to enrol their children in a new school if it was out of their district to having a food assistance debit account that would only allow charges to go through within a few kilometres of your "home address." The stated reason was that if you moved, then your public assistance was supposed to go through a different regional office which generally had a backlog of nine months to a year to process new claims. I felt the actual reason was just to keep the underclass in place and easy to control, personally.
Still, Gloria wasn't amongst this underclass anymore and moving on a few minutes' notice was pretty common amongst some kinds of Corporate workers. Sure, we had lost some of the tuition we paid, but it was simplicity itself for them to transfer David's grades and student records to his new school in Night City. Nobody cared that his family had represented themselves using a different last name in LA, either, as that happened somewhat frequently too. I had memories of NC-Taylor going by Taylor Dubois for a few months, briefly, when she was in kindergarten in a different city.
Still, I had the feeling that if I dragged Gloria away from her entire life again for her own safety, she might not welcome me back around again. I probably wouldn't blame her, either. We were all together this evening as a kind of housewarming. Although Gloria was going back to her old Megabuilding, she was paying for a larger and better apartment.
After dinner, she pulled me to the side, taking me out onto her balcony. As I gazed out at the skyline of Santo Domingo, Gloria followed me out and sat on a chair next to me. Santo Domingo wasn't as developed as downtown or Japantown, so the two Megabuildings in the district dominated the sky. Gloria's apartment was only about halfway up the structure, but still, she was at least twenty stories above the rest of the district. I gave her a side-eye, wondering what this was about.
She sighed and asked, "I wanted to talk to you, as I think you're the most highly augmented person I know, except for, I guess, myself now." Oh. That's good. I was a little concerned that this was going to be a love confession or she was kicking me out of her house. I was much better able to deal with discussions about cybernetics. She continued, and asked, "Do you ever find yourself thinking that you're better than the average person?"
I blinked and then tilted my head to the side, "What has brought on this line of questioning?" It was a standard diagnostic question for screening possible cyberpsychosis, as Gloria would know, and she would know that I knew, too.
She sighed, "Well, something happened while we were in the desert coming back to Night City. We were attacked, and I was forced to shoot someone, and they died. And I have been worried since then about how it hasn't seemed to have bothered me. In fact, I feel good about it." Oh. She was worried about herself. For a second, I was worried she wanted to have some sort of intervention with me. I put on my therapist hat for a moment.
"Ah... I see. And you sometimes have feelings that you're better or superior to average people? And you're combining this with the fact that you had to defend yourself and don't feel bad about taking someone's life when they were attacking you? And you're worried about becoming a cyberpsycho?" I asked, slightly amused.
She nodded rapidly and sighed, "I just had the feeling tonight; after I saw my mom and all of her friends, it was as if nothing had changed at all. They're like a fly trapped in amber, and I had a sudden feeling of disgust when I thought about it. Combining this with how I felt after I shot that Wraith guy..." she trailed off.
I turned to face her completely and continued leaning back on the railing of her balcony, crossing my arms under my breasts before saying, "To answer your question, of course, I consider myself both better and superior to the average human being." I mean, how could I not? Your average person experienced life at a snail's pace, couldn't think about more than one thing at a time and could only be in one place at one time. I was obviously better than them in almost every respect.
This caused Gloria to widen her eyes in surprise, but I waved a hand, "But I felt the same before I had more than a couple of implants. It isn't as though people are equal. They never have been; the best we can hope for in some ideal utopia is that people might be treated equally." And that wasn't too likely, at least in the near term.
I sighed and paused for a moment before glancing at her, "Plus, I imagine you would have felt this way even if you weren't in a Gemini. She's reminding you of your past, and it isn't based on your cybernetics that you've achieved something for yourself; it is from your own hard work and effort. You intuitively recognise that she is, basically, demoralised. She has no further ambition or desire for growth. Ten years from now, you suspect, correctly, that she'll be exactly as she is today, except older."
I then shrugged my shoulders, "The reason for this can be debated. Perhaps it is as some say that she is a product of her circumstances, or maybe it is her own fault. It doesn't really matter because you're not really disgusted at her. You're disgusted at what you might have been. A mother to a daughter is a mirror of oneself, one path of life that you could have taken, following her footsteps. That's what disgusts you, I think. You see a path in life that you might have taken, that you now abjure."
It was for the same reason that I had a romantic attachment to English literature, but I had a much more healthy relationship with Mom before she passed away.
