The next morning came faster than I wanted. I was relatively sure that I was as prepared as possible, but that did nothing to soothe my insecurities. Somehow I had maneuvered myself into a meeting with virtually every criminal boss of New York City.
Oh, sure, I knew exactly how it had happened, but that still did not make it easier for me to accept the situation.
Ryan Wallace was chosen to accompany me, and I had upgraded his clothing with the same armor structure I had in my new clothing.
On his request, I added an outer layer of normal synthetic fabric to make it look like the relatively cheap suits he had worn normally.
Mr. O’Donnel of course got the same treatment. I was sure that they would make a couple of suits more for themselves, but the industrial fabber was there and it was a laughingly easy thing to produce once I got the material. And carbon was cheap.
Natalie helped me put up my hair into a halfway professional bun, and I hoped that it mitigated my youthful appearance at least a bit.
Punctually at 7:30, Mr. Walker's limousine entered the parking lot, accompanied by three SUVs full of men. Ryan and I were just inside the entrance and left the building immediately.
The front passenger of the limousine got out and opened the door in the back for me, while Ryan walked toward one of the SUVs.
Inside the limousine, I found Mr. Walker of course, and Dylan Cox as well as two other gentlemen I did not know. I took my seat opposite Mr. Walker.
“Good morning, Kitten. Thank you for coming with us.”
“Good morning Mr. Walker, Mr. Cox. I have not yet been introduced to you other gentlemen, so please accept a generic good morning from me.”
“These are Brendan Kilroy, my legal counsel, and Alex Doolan, my, well, you could call him my ambassador.”
Kilroy was a dark-haired slender man wearing a good suit and having a briefcase placed on his knees, while Doolan was a blonde man with an athletic build and a winning smile.
Surprising was that he was wearing glasses.
And as far as I could tell they were real old-fashioned sight correcting glasses, as even with modern technology it would be impossible to place the electronics of smart glasses in this thin frame of them.
“Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Doolan.” A collective “Kitten” answered me to my dismay. “While I accept that a nickname bestowed by the boss is a nickname that will stay, as much as I dislike it, I think we should treat this excursion professionally. If only to not give the other leaders the impression that my expertise and opinion are irrelevant, considering that we want to convince them that what I discovered is real.
So would you please call me either Veronica or Ms. Sinclair? Thank you.”
I kept my smile up, and my tone conversational, even if my temper began to flare a bit. Mr. Walker leaned back into his seat and placed his chin on his hand.
“Yes, I think our Kitten is right in this instance. I have to confess her irritation is a point of amusement for me, but this meeting is too important.
So from now on until the end of the meeting let’s keep it professional.” The others made sounds of assent before Mr. Walker continued.
“Now, Veronica, do you have anything new to add for us?”
“If you have checked what I gave you on Friday then no.
I did not think you would appreciate me raiding the computer systems of the other organizations. On the more personal front, Mia has managed to get all the parts for a functional Pulse III ready for sheathing, so it should be ready in a bit over five weeks.
You should plan for the operation on Thursday, December 21st.
That reminds me, can I look at your nano controller for a moment?”
He nodded and held his right hand out to me. I took a look at the controller and scrolled through the information.
“That is not good. You have to slow down quite a bit or you will die in 3½ to four weeks.
From the information, you move way too much around. And use the stairs almost exclusively.
So from now on you enter your office in the morning and leave in the evening unless an emergency happens, and you will use the lift.
If there is no lift where you have to go, you don’t go there. Do you understand?”
He was visibly taken aback, but after a moment he nodded slowly. I then realized that Mr. Cox and Mr. Doolan also wore nano controllers on their right hands.
“Do you two want me to control the progress too?” Dylan shook his head and murmured something about Richard, while Mr. Doolan offered his right hand.
“Ok, you actually don’t need the therapy yet, if I interpret this right.
You have just entered stage two and only your limb muscles are affected. With the situation as it is now, with the therapy it is much more likely that you die in an accident or because of your job than from CRS.
Dying from old age is not impossible but unlikely, considering that new experimental rejuvenation treatments could let you live as long as 250 years.
But to make it short, you have, if nothing changes, several decades of life ahead of you.”
Mr. Walker had observed the exchange with interest.
“Why don’t you tell him to take it slow?”
“You have stage four CRS verging on stage five, for all effects terminal.
The cyberware affected is your heart. Every time you stress it above resting rhythm you damage it further, accelerating the end of its life, and as such, yours.
If I would think you would go for it I would tell you to let yourself put into a medical coma to reduce your heart rate.
With that, your chances of surviving would be around 90-95%.
But unless you accept that you are dying and we race against time to keep you breathing you will kill yourself before we could save you. So do us all a favor and slow down.”
I fixed my eyes at Dylan.
“That is also for you, Mr. Cox. Among all of his men, you are the one most capable to make him take it slow.
And as apparently he is not everywhere with his bodyguards if his controller begins to blink red call me immediately, and send a skimmer to get me.
Call Dr. Schaeffer and get him as fast as possible. If it blinks red he is dying, at that moment, and we have to put him on life support immediately.”
Mr. Walker smiled at that.
“Quite bossy little thing, isn’t she?” I have to confess, I was irritated at that moment.
“Yes, of course, I am bossy. In this respect, you are my patient. I do what I can to make you survive. That includes nagging you and the people around you to do the right thing. If you don’t want that, just say a word and I begin negotiations with Mr. Cox right now.” Dylan on the other hand defensively lifted both hands.
“Whoa, hold your horses' lady. We all want the boss to be around this time next year so yeah, we will watch it.
Is it possible to make an audible alarm beyond just the blinking? You are right that he is sometimes alone. Best to give more warning than just a blinking red light.”
Oops, I had missed that the protocol, the program in the credled, and all that were designed with the idea that at stage four the CRS patient would be under permanent medical supervision. I would have to adapt that, and that quick.
“You are right. My only excuse is that this is the first time I actually used the therapy and it was not developed with stage four patients on the mind. If you will give me a moment please, then I will just do that.”
They all nodded and I dove into the cyberspace. My cranial board was severely limited in its capacities compared to Precious but it still gave me up to a 32:1 compression. That maximum though was only advisable in an emergency, as it raised the temperature dramatically and it is for some reason unpopular to heat up the brain beyond a certain point.
To make it short, in everyday use I was limited to 25:1, but that still left me several virtual hours before we reached the Plaza.
I was certain it would not take that long. I was right, but also nearly wrong.
The actual change in the program was a trivial one, but I had to figure out how to activate and control the integrated Bluetooth transceiver as well as establish a communication protocol. It took me nearly ten minutes in real-time to get that done.
“Ok, I have adapted the system. We have to link your controller via Bluetooth to your com and have that set up to call help. I hope you have one of the standard com operating systems, as I had to write an app to call the on-duty guards and whoever you declare as an emergency contact.
If you have something exotic I would suggest you get a throwaway com for the next few weeks.”
Mr. Walker shook his head.
“Should be no problem here. I have a Kawamoto Mercury C44.” Ok, KOS I could work with.
“Yes. Now you have to trust me a bit here, as I need to send you the app, so please activate your Bluetooth setup and connect to CBS dash 71148 dash G.
The pin is 07112248. And no worry, that is a temporal guest connection from my sandbox. In 20 minutes it will be gone, including the sandbox itself.”
He got his com out and tapped a bit on it before my cranial board told me that the connection request had been made.
I accepted the connection and started the file transfer, to shove the app over to his com. Immediately after I started to talk to it again when he already had begun to install the app.
Meanwhile, I connected to the controller and installed the new driver and routine. The connection between the controller and the com was a matter of seconds, and soon he was busy declaring his contacts.
I was still surprised when he asked me for my com number. I realized that I had forgotten something. My com was actually a virtual one running on the cluster, and the number was still the one I had used in Seattle.
“Uh, I have no local number yet. At the moment you can contact me via the fortress but it completely slipped my mind that I would need a new one here. I will create an account later today and send you the number.”
It would be comically easy for me to create a new account and get a new number, or to even use the old number, but that would reveal the existence of the Q-link, and I was not ready yet for that unveiling. It would lead to too many uncomfortable questions that I did not want to answer, as well as negating much of my biggest advantage.
“Hm, ok, but don’t forget it. Now, what does this new app do exactly?”
“That is simple. When the controller recognizes changes that it thinks are dangerous it tells the com to sound an alarm.
The controller itself will give a warning beep every five seconds until acknowledged, and the com will sound an alarm while contacting everyone you have selected on your contact list for that time frame. I have sent the update and the apps to Dr. Schaeffer, so in the next few days, you all should get it. Not that it is likely to be important unless you have stage four CRS.”
“All right. I am all for saving my life so good girl. I have another important thing to tell you, Kitten.”
I did not attempt to even limit my frown.
“Did you not just a few minutes ago tell everybody here to keep it professional? What happened to Ms. Sinclair or Veronica?”
He had the audacity to laugh at that, something that did not make my mood any better.
“Oh, that was for the peons. I am the boss. If I want to I still can call you Kitten, Kitten.”
The others joined in his laughter, though Mr. Kilroy’s appeared a bit forced.
“But seriously, I will call you Veronica when we arrive, until then you have to bear with me calling you Kitten. I like that name. Now, what I wanted to tell you is that Oleg is in one of the other cars.”
That name did send cold waves down my back. Oleg was, for obvious reasons, not exactly my most favored person.
“Unfortunately he is known to be my bodyguard and a highly effective one at that. His size and strength make others back down without the need for violence, so I use him nearly every time I leave my territory. It would be an issue if he would not be here. Also, he is actually quite nice. And he is sorry for what he did.”
I had to swallow a few times before I could answer him.
“I understand. I will try to keep it calm, but unfortunately, I can’t promise anything yet.”
Be strong, Vivian, be very strong. I believed him when he told me that Oleg was a nice guy, but his sheer size triggered a severe childhood trauma for me.
I had spent the first five years of my life in prison, and the guards there were not of the understanding friendly kind.
Add to that that they were selected for their high alpha, meaning they were even bigger than Oleg, and… well there are things you simply can’t live down, especially as a high gamma pure with perfect recall.
I should be thankful that they refrained from doing permanent damage, but, oh well, they all are broke, shunned, and prisoners themselves. I had to only frame a couple of them, and even for them, it was less than 2k Ȼ.
That did not dampen my instinctive reaction to really big men, and that was not helped by my introduction to Oleg in the slightest.
For the rest of the drive, we remained in silence.
The plaza was, in one sentence, a typical airport hotel. These things sprung up shortly after the first airports were built, and have not changed much in the 300 years since. It was of course a grey concrete block with mirrored windows.
As soon as we exited the limousine, after what seemed like a whole battalion of guards surrounded it, I stood face to face with Oleg. I could not suppress a slight whimper, seeing him there, but I steeled my nerves as fast as I was able to. To my dismay, Oleg actually came up to me.
“I am sorry, Miss. The boss told me that you are helping him. Somebody lied to me. Told me you were hurting him. I am sorry I hurt you.”
While I still was trembling, his obvious outrage that somebody dared to lie to him was, strangely endearing. If he just weren’t that big, I might actually have liked the guy. As it was though, he had to make do with me accepting his apology though.
“I… understand. And thank you.” Well, good first impression here. Even to me, I sounded mousy and timid here. Not quite the professional appearance I wanted to project.
With a downright inhuman exertion of my will, I placed my right hand, cast and all, into his offered hand. When he moved into a position at the rear of the formation I managed to calm my nerves and breathe a bit easier. Mr. Walker came closer to me, and whispered into my ear:
“You really do not like him, or am I wrong?”
“It is not him personally. I have a bit of a phobia concerning big men. Big for Pures that is. Unfortunately, Oleg would qualify in that regard, and he triggers my phobia.” I whispered back to him, to spare Oleg the anguish, slight as it may be. Sure, I was in fear of him, but it was easily observable that he would take that bit of information and would beat himself up over it.
“Interesting. We will have to talk some more about it. But now, let’s go in. The meeting starts at nine AM but I want to be early.” With that, he offered me his elbow.
I have to confess in the first moment I was confused at what he was doing until I remembered that it was once a matter of good manners for a man to offer his elbow to a woman and that the same convention of manners required me to put my arm through it.
He started to open his mouth when I did not react immediately, but I was fast enough to make his explanation unnecessary. Still, he apparently could not help himself from teasing me.
“That took you long enough. Were you deciding if I was worth it?”
“Not really. My problem was to place this archaic custom and remember the correct reaction. But I don’t know if we should keep it up for long. If the other bosses see me on your arm in this fashion it might make them disregard me as arm candy.”
He nodded but kept his position. “You might be right, but I think you are knowledgeable enough to convince the majority of them that you are more than an airhead. And the rest will fall in line.
The more important of the bosses have their position not on brute strength of will and muscle, but their intelligence.
They are also the more powerful ones. If you manage to convince them and we can negotiate a peace treaty for the time of this crisis the other bosses will have to fall in line or be annihilated.”
He grimaced.
“Sure, there are bosses who have their position because they intimidate their underlings, and a few of them have that as the only redeeming quality, but they should be smart enough to keep it low.
Or the gang war that will erupt by them being stubborn will destroy their organizations only, and we will divide their territories among the neighbors. I give you the nickname but on that, I will have it my way.”
Sometimes we had to pick the battles we had at least a chance to win, and as much as I wanted it otherwise it was clear to me that no amount of arguing would change his stance. So I sucked it up and kept my hand where it was, while we walked into the lobby.
But I had a small measure of vengeance a few minutes later when he moved towards the stairs. I tried to steer him away from them towards the lift, but he proved too strong, so I had to be verbal in my admonishment.
“We will take the lift. You can take all the stairs you want in two months when it won’t kill you, but for now, you will not.” While I spoke at a low volume, I was loud enough that all the guards heard me, and the whole group steered towards the lifts, making the decision for their boss. His reaction was part amused, part annoyed.
“That, my dear, was not very nice. You are aware that I can make decisions all by myself?”
I had to hide a grin at that.
“Can’t we all? But for some reason, some people make decisions for others all the time. I won’t even try to tell you how to run your territory, or what to eat or wear.
Not even how you generally behave. But as one of your doctors at this moment for this very life-threatening situation, I will insist that you don’t unnecessarily make our work harder or even impossible.
You have the choice, either follow relatively simple and minimally invasive instructions that will keep you alive, or reject the advice and die. And as long as I am here, I will nag you to the survival side.”
The gaggle of bodyguards called three lifts side by side. I had not known that this functionality existed from the normal controls, as usually, you would need matrix support to reserve three at once.
But it was not interesting enough to warrant a deeper examination. If I ever needed such functionality it would almost every time be far faster and easier to hack the building computer. When the first lift arrived I started to get into it, but Mr. Walker held me back.
“The first lift is for the vanguard, to see if there is danger, the second is for us, and the third is for the rearguard.”
“Oh, ok. I will keep that in mind.” Finally, we rode up to the 5th floor. In front of the conference room, we encountered another similar-sized group. The apparent principal of this group was a bit bigger in every aspect than Mr. Walker. He was also around a decade younger. Mr. Walker seemed anything but delighted.
“Kursalin.” He managed to sound nearly polite, but still disapproving in this one word.
The light blonde man had an annoyed and arrogant expression on his rather brutish face. I was no expert but it seemed that this Kursalin was at least once on the receiving end of a fist to the nose. Why he had not had it corrected I could not even speculate.
“Walker. I hope this meeting is really important. I have important things to do. More important than having an orgy with the other old farts.”
Then his gaze fell on me. It was rather leering, but nothing I was not used to. “If I had known that entertainment was allowed, I would have brought a whore too. Whatever, we can share yours.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and puffed himself up. From my perspective all that this managed to achieve though was highlighting the involuntary muscle contractions and cramps in his arms and chest muscles.
I hoped he had a messias at hand and could live without cyberware because while he had CRS I would not waste any resources on rescuing him, and the costs for my services as implant surgeon went just up into the stratosphere for him. Walker on the other hand touched my hand reassuringly.
“I know thinking is not your strongest point Kursalin, but yes, this meeting is important. Even for you. And no, Veronica here is not entertainment in any form.
So if you would let me and my people into the conference room I would be thankful.” Kursalin’s face muscles distorted for a moment, and his eyes twitched, but after a moment he, and his troupe, stood aside.
After we crossed the door, Mr. Walker leaned down to me.
“Don’t worry, he is all talk and bluster but he knows that if he angers me he will be annihilated.”
“I assume he is one of your neighbors? Is he always this twitchy?” Walker pondered the question for a few seconds before answering.
“No, not really. Maybe he is distracted with something else.”
“No, he is dead. He just has not yet gotten the message.”
“You should not threaten the people here. While I like you to some extent and would protect you, if you piss enough of the people here off I won’t be able to save you.”
“That was no threat that was a statement of a fact. That twitching is symptomatic of neural CRS in stage 5.
There is no coming back from that.
His immune system has begun to attack his own nerves, the natural ones. Even if I gave him the same nano therapy I gave you, there is nothing that would keep him alive for more than a couple of months at the extreme outset. So he is dead.”
He stopped walking and looked intensely at me.
“How sure are you?”
“It is possible that I am wrong, but for that, he would have to have replaced his facial nerves with cybernetic ones. That is, of course not impossible, but one, serves no purpose, and two bears an unacceptable risk of developing neural CRS.
I have not heard of anybody ever doing that. So for his face to get out of his control this much the nerves have to be damaged.
And once the nerves begin to be damaged it is over but the suffering and crying.”
“That is worrying information. While I simply can’t stand him and see him as a primitive thug with a touch of megalomania, his second in command is even worse.
Dumber, more aggressive, and much more ambitious. He will start a grab for territory regardless of the situation. But forewarned is forearmed so thank you.”
The bodyguards gave us a bit more room, and except for Oleg and Ryan stood back. We came up to a group of men between 50 and 60 years old if my guess was correct.
They were deep in a conversation, but when we closed one of them, on the upper end of the age group if one could make conclusions based on his grey hair, held a hand up in greeting, which stopped the discussion.
“Ben. Nice to see you. While I always enjoy meeting you, I hope you have a good reason for calling this meeting. Some of the people here are not among my favorite acquaintances.” Then he, like Kursalin, looked directly at me, with some disapproval in his eyes.
“You should not have brought this child here. It is no place for her.” Walker shook his head.
“You know as well as I Vince that I will not abuse the protocol. This is extremely important. And Veronica here plays a vital role today.
Now, Veronica Sinclair, meet Vincento Luciani. He is something of the elder of our little society.
Vince, Veronica is a new arrival here in New York and a commonwealth trained implant surgeon.”
That let Vince perk up. “Implant surgeon? We had recently many cyber surgeons move away so more are always welcome. But as you are here, maybe you can give an opinion. How would you treat somebody with CRS?”
At that question, the attention of the other men immediately turned to me. Obviously, they knew the answer was of some import to them as well.
“Before I answer that, bear in mind that I speak completely hypothetical. Without real data on the patient, I can’t go into details. The answer depends on what type of CRS, what stage, and what implants are affected.
Now take for example muscular CRS. Until you reach Stage three you can live mostly normally, but I would advise using nano therapy to extend your life.
Stage four nano therapy is strongly advised. If at all possible remove the affected implant, and replace it with cloned material.
If it is a vital muscle, like the diaphragm or the heart it might be too late, but with nano therapy, the patient might survive the three months until a cloned replacement is ready.
If necessary the patient might be placed on life support to ensure survival until the replacements are ready.
For neural CRS, if it is stage three or below, I would strongly advise nano therapy or better removal of all cyberware with neuronect.
At stage four the only chance of survival for more than three months is the removal of the cyberware. As soon as possible. As soon as stage five is reached the only thing that can be done is making it easier.”
One of the other gentlemen asked: “What is this nano therapy you are talking about?”
“That is a relatively new development in the treatment of CRS. Nanobots specifically suppress the immune reaction to cyberware.
Unlike traditional anti-rejection treatments, this will not leave the patient vulnerable to the bioweapons still being around.
It can be done with 3rd generation nanites and upwards, but the better the nanobots the better the result. Also, the results depend on what stage the therapy is introduced.
At stage two with regular injections of nanobots, CRS will most likely not impact your life expectancy in any meaningful way.
You will die from old age before CRS will kill you, even with 3rd gens. At stage three 3rd gen will extend your life by a few decades.
12thgen on the other hand will extend your life theoretically a century or two.
At the beginning of stage 4, 3rd gen will at the very best extend your life by a couple of weeks, while 12th gen manage a few years there.
At the end of stage 4, you don’t need to bother with 3rd gen, and 12th gen will manage, with luck, a couple of months.
Stage 5, if you don’t have cloned replacements ready even nano therapy won’t be enough to save you.”
Another of the men was visibly confused.
“What do you mean 12th gen? There are only ten generations of nanobots.”
“No, there are definitely 12. Of course, the 12th generation was only revealed three or four months ago, but 11th gen has been available in the Commonwealth for a couple of years now. It might be hard to get 12th gen as that needs a new generation of nano fabs, but 11th gen should be no problem for your infrastructure.”
“So there are now 7th generation nano fabs in nowhere?”
It slowly dawned on me that there was some sort of communication problem. Accordingly, my answer became insecure.
“Noo? The newest nano fabs in the commonwealth are 8th gen. I have the feeling we are talking about slightly different things here.”
We stared at each other for a moment before Vince changed the topic.
“Well, alright I don’t think this will lead to anything. It is irrelevant what is available in the commonwealth. We have to use what we can get here. So, Ms. Sinclair, are Ralcon or Enertech nanos better suited for the therapy?”
“I… I don’t understand the question. I know that Ralcon and Enertech are megacorps but what has that to do with the therapy?”
One of the men who had so far been silent scoffed at that. “Yeah, would have been too good to be true. Well, at least it is a good prank.” It was Mr. Walker who answered him.
“Timothy, remember she is new here in NYC. She arrived a bit over a week ago, and neither Ralcon nor Enertech have the same privilege in Nowhere as they have here.” Then he turned to me.
“The thing is, except for a handful of older nano fabs in private hand, Ralcon and Enertech have a duopoly for the production of nanobots.
They stopped selling nano fabs a few decades ago. And even then they did cost over a billion bucks each.
I don’t understand how they can afford to have one in each hospital as it seems to be in the commonwealth. The nanobots alone are expensive as hell.” I stared at him open-mouthed for several seconds.
“You… you are serious! How… why? A billion? I mean, yeah, the first generation, but the second generation already did only cost a few million to make.
A modern nano fab, like the 8th gen from the commonwealth, could be had for less than two million. And that is with a hefty markup.
The nanos I gave doc Schaeffer did cost me no more than 20 bucks. You could build a 6th gen fab with parts off the shelf. Standard electronics, a micro-computer, and some control elements. The only thing you would need to get is the seed stock for the nanobots.
With my new industrial fabber, I could make the complete 8th gen fab except for the seed stock in a couple of days.
Not an exceptional good 8th gen, but working.
And for the seed stock, while it is expensive, we are still talking about the six-digit range.
And that is for the 8th gen. 6th gen would cost around 10k in the commonwealth.”
Now all the men looked surprised. Walker was the first to get a hold of himself.
“You have to be wrong. We all know that it costs billions to make a nano fab. And that the nanobots are worth their weight in gold.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“The first generation, yes, they did cost that much. That was because there was no seed stock, except what they made in nano positors.
It took them around two hours on a machine that did cost around 1.4 billion dollars to make a single nanobot.
They needed roughly a million nanos to seed each of the first generation fabs so to get the first nanofab in something approaching reasonable time they needed 50 nano positors.
But it was nearly trivial to make new, better seed stock with that first-generation fabs. That was the second generation. The tech was new and took quite a bit of human supervision so they did still cost in the ballpark of ten million or twenty.
Now it is mostly automated. I could download a couple of dozen open source 6th gen fab plans from the commonwealth.
Sure, usually for an 8th gen you need to pay a licensing fee, as there is not yet an open-source version, and I am not sure there is an open-source 7th gen yet, but 6th there are dozens.”
I took a deep breath.
“To answer your question now that I understand the context, Mr. Luciani, I would have to look into the specs of the nanobots sold before I could give you the answer, I am sorry.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Can you instead give us some of these open-source plans you talked about? And maybe sell us seed stock?”
“The plans are no problem, but my nano fab is in nearly continuous use for the next five weeks, so I could not make the seed stock until then. After that, I promised doc Schaeffer an 8th gen fab.
What we could do is that I build the fabs without seed stock and you order the seed stock via the darknet from the commonwealth. Or I sell you the plans for the fab so you could have a workshop build yours.”
Ok, I was not quite honest with them. The industrial fabber could make one of the frames in a few hours if I used the different stations in parallel instead of sequential, and of course, while my 8th gen fab was busy, I had still the enhanced 8th gen in the NADA.
There was nothing that my nano fab could do, that the NADA could not. But I had the feeling that I did not want too many of these nano fabs floating around and I wanted even less to be seen as the source of them.
The frame, sure. That was a simple electronics system. Every workshop with the appropriate machinery could build them. But giving them the seed stock would be a bad precedent. The plans would be for a generic, low-quality 8th gen. Mine had some proprietary technology integrated, and the controller was not a mini-computer, making the range of nanobots it could make quite a bit larger.
Vincent nodded. “Too bad about your nano fab. I won’t ask you what it is busy with but your idea has some merit. How much would it cost for you to build the fab?”
I thought for a moment. I would have to design the fab first before I had a definite answer, but that would be simple cad work. No special design was needed here. I could even downgrade my personal fab design enough for their use but that would be actually more work. While not quite the work of art that Precious was, I had put much thought and work into the nano fab. So I took the generic answer.
“I guess that the price would be around $250k for me to make it or $300k for me to sell you the plans. The first price includes one license for the design, while the second one would allow you to build as many of them as you wanted.
You could then license the seed stock nanobots or other designs. The nice thing is, as soon as you have a running nano fab you can simply buy the nanobot schematics online and your fab will be able to make them if it is at all capable of that.
But you should be aware that 12th gen schematics are expensive. The seed stock schematics will cost you somewhere in the range of $5 million. But with that and the plans, you can build as many new nano fabs as you want. Each further nano fab would cost you around $50k to make.
Oh, and you can get 10th gen nanobot schematics as open source. The cost of making these would be in the single-digit price range for the liter.”
Vince nodded again. “I will think about it. It is a good idea. Now I fear we have to cut this discussion short. There are others here I have to speak to. I will talk later with you.”
Mr. Walker led me away from the group and softly asked me.
“What happened with making the tools to make the tool?”
“That was before I bought the industrial fabber. And if you think your people can be silent about it I can even give you the seed stock. If nothing comes along that will take up even more time of my fab. I have enough breathing room to make one or two sets. But I don’t want to have it known that I sell it.”
“Yes, I can see that. I think Vince will also buy a fab without the plans and the schematics for the seed. He is one of the smarter people here. Many of the rest will probably jump on the chance.”
“And bring Ralcon and Enertech down on themselves if they are not careful. They know of course how cheap and easy it is to make nanobots, so I would guess they milk the situation for what it’s worth.” Then I stopped moving.
“Do you think it might be worthwhile to anonymously publish the plans for the open-source 6th gen nano fabs and the specific Raclon or Enertech nanobots that can be used to make the seed stock?” He chuckled.
“Yes, that might be a big fuck you for the two corps. You don’t seem to like them very much.”
“If I understand the situation correctly they are responsible for several thousand deaths each year, just to pad their profit margin beyond the obscene and well into the ludicrous. And if the open-source nano fabs and schematics lift off, it will be hard for them to maintain the lie.
I would love to really hurt them, but that is beyond my abilities. Also if shops are springing up that can build 6th gen nano fabs all over the US then they might miss the small number of 8th gen that spring up in New York. Naturally, I will register the patent for the nano fab under an assumed name in the commonwealth first, so they can’t claim it as their patent.”
“That might actually be a good idea. But back to business, don’t bring up the nano fab you gave the hospital. It is too late to keep your nano fab a secret, and it might bite you in the ass later but the plan you proposed might help you there.”
The room had meanwhile filled with people, and gradually the important persons drifted towards the conference table. Walker steered us to one group of seats, and he actually pulled back a chair for me. I began to feel a bit suspicious of his behavior.
Oh, I could understand him being friendly and supportive.
After all, I had so far been courteous and helpful to him and I would be an extremely valuable ally in the not too distant future, but this courteous behavior I simply could not assess, and that was slowly driving me to insanity.
To distract myself I inspected the other participants in the meeting. They all were placed in groups of four to 5, around 40 or so groups and while the majority of them were men, I was not the sole woman in attendance. Even a couple of the bosses seemed to be women. Talk about progressive. When everybody was seated, Vince called the meeting to order.
The next morning came faster than I wanted. I was relatively sure that I was as prepared as possible, but that did nothing to soothe my insecurities. Somehow I had maneuvered myself into a meeting with virtually every criminal boss of New York City.
Oh, sure, I knew exactly how it had happened, but that still did not make it easier for me to accept the situation.
Ryan Wallace was chosen to accompany me, and I had upgraded his clothing with the same armor structure I had in my new clothing.
On his request, I added an outer layer of normal synthetic fabric to make it look like the relatively cheap suits he had worn normally.
Mr. O’Donnel of course got the same treatment. I was sure that they would make a couple of suits more for themselves, but the industrial fabber was there and it was a laughingly easy thing to produce once I got the material. And carbon was cheap.
Natalie helped me put up my hair into a halfway professional bun, and I hoped that it mitigated my youthful appearance at least a bit.
Punctually at 7:30, Mr. Walker's limousine entered the parking lot, accompanied by three SUVs full of men. Ryan and I were just inside the entrance and left the building immediately.
The front passenger of the limousine got out and opened the door in the back for me, while Ryan walked toward one of the SUVs.
Inside the limousine, I found Mr. Walker of course, and Dylan Cox as well as two other gentlemen I did not know. I took my seat opposite Mr. Walker.
“Good morning, Kitten. Thank you for coming with us.”
“Good morning Mr. Walker, Mr. Cox. I have not yet been introduced to you other gentlemen, so please accept a generic good morning from me.”
“These are Brendan Kilroy, my legal counsel, and Alex Doolan, my, well, you could call him my ambassador.”
Kilroy was a dark-haired slender man wearing a good suit and having a briefcase placed on his knees, while Doolan was a blonde man with an athletic build and a winning smile.
Surprising was that he was wearing glasses.
And as far as I could tell they were real old-fashioned sight correcting glasses, as even with modern technology it would be impossible to place the electronics of smart glasses in this thin frame of them.
“Mr. Kilroy, Mr. Doolan.” A collective “Kitten” answered me to my dismay. “While I accept that a nickname bestowed by the boss is a nickname that will stay, as much as I dislike it, I think we should treat this excursion professionally. If only to not give the other leaders the impression that my expertise and opinion are irrelevant, considering that we want to convince them that what I discovered is real.
So would you please call me either Veronica or Ms. Sinclair? Thank you.”
I kept my smile up, and my tone conversational, even if my temper began to flare a bit. Mr. Walker leaned back into his seat and placed his chin on his hand.
“Yes, I think our Kitten is right in this instance. I have to confess her irritation is a point of amusement for me, but this meeting is too important.
So from now on until the end of the meeting let’s keep it professional.” The others made sounds of assent before Mr. Walker continued.
“Now, Veronica, do you have anything new to add for us?”
“If you have checked what I gave you on Friday then no.
I did not think you would appreciate me raiding the computer systems of the other organizations. On the more personal front, Mia has managed to get all the parts for a functional Pulse III ready for sheathing, so it should be ready in a bit over five weeks.
You should plan for the operation on Thursday, December 21st.
That reminds me, can I look at your nano controller for a moment?”
He nodded and held his right hand out to me. I took a look at the controller and scrolled through the information.
“That is not good. You have to slow down quite a bit or you will die in 3½ to four weeks.
From the information, you move way too much around. And use the stairs almost exclusively.
So from now on you enter your office in the morning and leave in the evening unless an emergency happens, and you will use the lift.
If there is no lift where you have to go, you don’t go there. Do you understand?”
He was visibly taken aback, but after a moment he nodded slowly. I then realized that Mr. Cox and Mr. Doolan also wore nano controllers on their right hands.
“Do you two want me to control the progress too?” Dylan shook his head and murmured something about Richard, while Mr. Doolan offered his right hand.
“Ok, you actually don’t need the therapy yet, if I interpret this right.
You have just entered stage two and only your limb muscles are affected. With the situation as it is now, with the therapy it is much more likely that you die in an accident or because of your job than from CRS.
Dying from old age is not impossible but unlikely, considering that new experimental rejuvenation treatments could let you live as long as 250 years.
But to make it short, you have, if nothing changes, several decades of life ahead of you.”
Mr. Walker had observed the exchange with interest.
“Why don’t you tell him to take it slow?”
“You have stage four CRS verging on stage five, for all effects terminal.
The cyberware affected is your heart. Every time you stress it above resting rhythm you damage it further, accelerating the end of its life, and as such, yours.
If I would think you would go for it I would tell you to let yourself put into a medical coma to reduce your heart rate.
With that, your chances of surviving would be around 90-95%.
But unless you accept that you are dying and we race against time to keep you breathing you will kill yourself before we could save you. So do us all a favor and slow down.”
I fixed my eyes at Dylan.
“That is also for you, Mr. Cox. Among all of his men, you are the one most capable to make him take it slow.
And as apparently he is not everywhere with his bodyguards if his controller begins to blink red call me immediately, and send a skimmer to get me.
Call Dr. Schaeffer and get him as fast as possible. If it blinks red he is dying, at that moment, and we have to put him on life support immediately.”
Mr. Walker smiled at that.
“Quite bossy little thing, isn’t she?” I have to confess, I was irritated at that moment.
“Yes, of course, I am bossy. In this respect, you are my patient. I do what I can to make you survive. That includes nagging you and the people around you to do the right thing. If you don’t want that, just say a word and I begin negotiations with Mr. Cox right now.” Dylan on the other hand defensively lifted both hands.
“Whoa, hold your horses' lady. We all want the boss to be around this time next year so yeah, we will watch it.
Is it possible to make an audible alarm beyond just the blinking? You are right that he is sometimes alone. Best to give more warning than just a blinking red light.”
Oops, I had missed that the protocol, the program in the credled, and all that were designed with the idea that at stage four the CRS patient would be under permanent medical supervision. I would have to adapt that, and that quick.
“You are right. My only excuse is that this is the first time I actually used the therapy and it was not developed with stage four patients on the mind. If you will give me a moment please, then I will just do that.”
They all nodded and I dove into the cyberspace. My cranial board was severely limited in its capacities compared to Precious but it still gave me up to a 32:1 compression. That maximum though was only advisable in an emergency, as it raised the temperature dramatically and it is for some reason unpopular to heat up the brain beyond a certain point.
To make it short, in everyday use I was limited to 25:1, but that still left me several virtual hours before we reached the Plaza.
I was certain it would not take that long. I was right, but also nearly wrong.
The actual change in the program was a trivial one, but I had to figure out how to activate and control the integrated Bluetooth transceiver as well as establish a communication protocol. It took me nearly ten minutes in real-time to get that done.
“Ok, I have adapted the system. We have to link your controller via Bluetooth to your com and have that set up to call help. I hope you have one of the standard com operating systems, as I had to write an app to call the on-duty guards and whoever you declare as an emergency contact.
If you have something exotic I would suggest you get a throwaway com for the next few weeks.”
Mr. Walker shook his head.
“Should be no problem here. I have a Kawamoto Mercury C44.” Ok, KOS I could work with.
“Yes. Now you have to trust me a bit here, as I need to send you the app, so please activate your Bluetooth setup and connect to CBS dash 71148 dash G.
The pin is 07112248. And no worry, that is a temporal guest connection from my sandbox. In 20 minutes it will be gone, including the sandbox itself.”
He got his com out and tapped a bit on it before my cranial board told me that the connection request had been made.
I accepted the connection and started the file transfer, to shove the app over to his com. Immediately after I started to talk to it again when he already had begun to install the app.
Meanwhile, I connected to the controller and installed the new driver and routine. The connection between the controller and the com was a matter of seconds, and soon he was busy declaring his contacts.
I was still surprised when he asked me for my com number. I realized that I had forgotten something. My com was actually a virtual one running on the cluster, and the number was still the one I had used in Seattle.
“Uh, I have no local number yet. At the moment you can contact me via the fortress but it completely slipped my mind that I would need a new one here. I will create an account later today and send you the number.”
It would be comically easy for me to create a new account and get a new number, or to even use the old number, but that would reveal the existence of the Q-link, and I was not ready yet for that unveiling. It would lead to too many uncomfortable questions that I did not want to answer, as well as negating much of my biggest advantage.
“Hm, ok, but don’t forget it. Now, what does this new app do exactly?”
“That is simple. When the controller recognizes changes that it thinks are dangerous it tells the com to sound an alarm.
The controller itself will give a warning beep every five seconds until acknowledged, and the com will sound an alarm while contacting everyone you have selected on your contact list for that time frame. I have sent the update and the apps to Dr. Schaeffer, so in the next few days, you all should get it. Not that it is likely to be important unless you have stage four CRS.”
“All right. I am all for saving my life so good girl. I have another important thing to tell you, Kitten.”
I did not attempt to even limit my frown.
“Did you not just a few minutes ago tell everybody here to keep it professional? What happened to Ms. Sinclair or Veronica?”
He had the audacity to laugh at that, something that did not make my mood any better.
“Oh, that was for the peons. I am the boss. If I want to I still can call you Kitten, Kitten.”
The others joined in his laughter, though Mr. Kilroy’s appeared a bit forced.
“But seriously, I will call you Veronica when we arrive, until then you have to bear with me calling you Kitten. I like that name. Now, what I wanted to tell you is that Oleg is in one of the other cars.”
That name did send cold waves down my back. Oleg was, for obvious reasons, not exactly my most favored person.
“Unfortunately he is known to be my bodyguard and a highly effective one at that. His size and strength make others back down without the need for violence, so I use him nearly every time I leave my territory. It would be an issue if he would not be here. Also, he is actually quite nice. And he is sorry for what he did.”
I had to swallow a few times before I could answer him.
“I understand. I will try to keep it calm, but unfortunately, I can’t promise anything yet.”
Be strong, Vivian, be very strong. I believed him when he told me that Oleg was a nice guy, but his sheer size triggered a severe childhood trauma for me.
I had spent the first five years of my life in prison, and the guards there were not of the understanding friendly kind.
Add to that that they were selected for their high alpha, meaning they were even bigger than Oleg, and… well there are things you simply can’t live down, especially as a high gamma pure with perfect recall.
I should be thankful that they refrained from doing permanent damage, but, oh well, they all are broke, shunned, and prisoners themselves. I had to only frame a couple of them, and even for them, it was less than 2k Ȼ.
That did not dampen my instinctive reaction to really big men, and that was not helped by my introduction to Oleg in the slightest.
For the rest of the drive, we remained in silence.
The plaza was, in one sentence, a typical airport hotel. These things sprung up shortly after the first airports were built, and have not changed much in the 300 years since. It was of course a grey concrete block with mirrored windows.
As soon as we exited the limousine, after what seemed like a whole battalion of guards surrounded it, I stood face to face with Oleg. I could not suppress a slight whimper, seeing him there, but I steeled my nerves as fast as I was able to. To my dismay, Oleg actually came up to me.
“I am sorry, Miss. The boss told me that you are helping him. Somebody lied to me. Told me you were hurting him. I am sorry I hurt you.”
While I still was trembling, his obvious outrage that somebody dared to lie to him was, strangely endearing. If he just weren’t that big, I might actually have liked the guy. As it was though, he had to make do with me accepting his apology though.
“I… understand. And thank you.” Well, good first impression here. Even to me, I sounded mousy and timid here. Not quite the professional appearance I wanted to project.
With a downright inhuman exertion of my will, I placed my right hand, cast and all, into his offered hand. When he moved into a position at the rear of the formation I managed to calm my nerves and breathe a bit easier. Mr. Walker came closer to me, and whispered into my ear:
“You really do not like him, or am I wrong?”
“It is not him personally. I have a bit of a phobia concerning big men. Big for Pures that is. Unfortunately, Oleg would qualify in that regard, and he triggers my phobia.” I whispered back to him, to spare Oleg the anguish, slight as it may be. Sure, I was in fear of him, but it was easily observable that he would take that bit of information and would beat himself up over it.
“Interesting. We will have to talk some more about it. But now, let’s go in. The meeting starts at nine AM but I want to be early.” With that, he offered me his elbow.
I have to confess in the first moment I was confused at what he was doing until I remembered that it was once a matter of good manners for a man to offer his elbow to a woman and that the same convention of manners required me to put my arm through it.
He started to open his mouth when I did not react immediately, but I was fast enough to make his explanation unnecessary. Still, he apparently could not help himself from teasing me.
“That took you long enough. Were you deciding if I was worth it?”
“Not really. My problem was to place this archaic custom and remember the correct reaction. But I don’t know if we should keep it up for long. If the other bosses see me on your arm in this fashion it might make them disregard me as arm candy.”
He nodded but kept his position. “You might be right, but I think you are knowledgeable enough to convince the majority of them that you are more than an airhead. And the rest will fall in line.
The more important of the bosses have their position not on brute strength of will and muscle, but their intelligence.
They are also the more powerful ones. If you manage to convince them and we can negotiate a peace treaty for the time of this crisis the other bosses will have to fall in line or be annihilated.”
He grimaced.
“Sure, there are bosses who have their position because they intimidate their underlings, and a few of them have that as the only redeeming quality, but they should be smart enough to keep it low.
Or the gang war that will erupt by them being stubborn will destroy their organizations only, and we will divide their territories among the neighbors. I give you the nickname but on that, I will have it my way.”
Sometimes we had to pick the battles we had at least a chance to win, and as much as I wanted it otherwise it was clear to me that no amount of arguing would change his stance. So I sucked it up and kept my hand where it was, while we walked into the lobby.
But I had a small measure of vengeance a few minutes later when he moved towards the stairs. I tried to steer him away from them towards the lift, but he proved too strong, so I had to be verbal in my admonishment.
“We will take the lift. You can take all the stairs you want in two months when it won’t kill you, but for now, you will not.” While I spoke at a low volume, I was loud enough that all the guards heard me, and the whole group steered towards the lifts, making the decision for their boss. His reaction was part amused, part annoyed.
“That, my dear, was not very nice. You are aware that I can make decisions all by myself?”
I had to hide a grin at that.
“Can’t we all? But for some reason, some people make decisions for others all the time. I won’t even try to tell you how to run your territory, or what to eat or wear.
Not even how you generally behave. But as one of your doctors at this moment for this very life-threatening situation, I will insist that you don’t unnecessarily make our work harder or even impossible.
You have the choice, either follow relatively simple and minimally invasive instructions that will keep you alive, or reject the advice and die. And as long as I am here, I will nag you to the survival side.”
The gaggle of bodyguards called three lifts side by side. I had not known that this functionality existed from the normal controls, as usually, you would need matrix support to reserve three at once.
But it was not interesting enough to warrant a deeper examination. If I ever needed such functionality it would almost every time be far faster and easier to hack the building computer. When the first lift arrived I started to get into it, but Mr. Walker held me back.
“The first lift is for the vanguard, to see if there is danger, the second is for us, and the third is for the rearguard.”
“Oh, ok. I will keep that in mind.” Finally, we rode up to the 5th floor. In front of the conference room, we encountered another similar-sized group. The apparent principal of this group was a bit bigger in every aspect than Mr. Walker. He was also around a decade younger. Mr. Walker seemed anything but delighted.
“Kursalin.” He managed to sound nearly polite, but still disapproving in this one word.
The light blonde man had an annoyed and arrogant expression on his rather brutish face. I was no expert but it seemed that this Kursalin was at least once on the receiving end of a fist to the nose. Why he had not had it corrected I could not even speculate.
“Walker. I hope this meeting is really important. I have important things to do. More important than having an orgy with the other old farts.”
Then his gaze fell on me. It was rather leering, but nothing I was not used to. “If I had known that entertainment was allowed, I would have brought a whore too. Whatever, we can share yours.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest and puffed himself up. From my perspective all that this managed to achieve though was highlighting the involuntary muscle contractions and cramps in his arms and chest muscles.
I hoped he had a messias at hand and could live without cyberware because while he had CRS I would not waste any resources on rescuing him, and the costs for my services as implant surgeon went just up into the stratosphere for him. Walker on the other hand touched my hand reassuringly.
“I know thinking is not your strongest point Kursalin, but yes, this meeting is important. Even for you. And no, Veronica here is not entertainment in any form.
So if you would let me and my people into the conference room I would be thankful.” Kursalin’s face muscles distorted for a moment, and his eyes twitched, but after a moment he, and his troupe, stood aside.
After we crossed the door, Mr. Walker leaned down to me.
“Don’t worry, he is all talk and bluster but he knows that if he angers me he will be annihilated.”
“I assume he is one of your neighbors? Is he always this twitchy?” Walker pondered the question for a few seconds before answering.
“No, not really. Maybe he is distracted with something else.”
“No, he is dead. He just has not yet gotten the message.”
“You should not threaten the people here. While I like you to some extent and would protect you, if you piss enough of the people here off I won’t be able to save you.”
“That was no threat that was a statement of a fact. That twitching is symptomatic of neural CRS in stage 5.
There is no coming back from that.
His immune system has begun to attack his own nerves, the natural ones. Even if I gave him the same nano therapy I gave you, there is nothing that would keep him alive for more than a couple of months at the extreme outset. So he is dead.”
He stopped walking and looked intensely at me.
“How sure are you?”
“It is possible that I am wrong, but for that, he would have to have replaced his facial nerves with cybernetic ones. That is, of course not impossible, but one, serves no purpose, and two bears an unacceptable risk of developing neural CRS.
I have not heard of anybody ever doing that. So for his face to get out of his control this much the nerves have to be damaged.
And once the nerves begin to be damaged it is over but the suffering and crying.”
“That is worrying information. While I simply can’t stand him and see him as a primitive thug with a touch of megalomania, his second in command is even worse.
Dumber, more aggressive, and much more ambitious. He will start a grab for territory regardless of the situation. But forewarned is forearmed so thank you.”
The bodyguards gave us a bit more room, and except for Oleg and Ryan stood back. We came up to a group of men between 50 and 60 years old if my guess was correct.
They were deep in a conversation, but when we closed one of them, on the upper end of the age group if one could make conclusions based on his grey hair, held a hand up in greeting, which stopped the discussion.
“Ben. Nice to see you. While I always enjoy meeting you, I hope you have a good reason for calling this meeting. Some of the people here are not among my favorite acquaintances.” Then he, like Kursalin, looked directly at me, with some disapproval in his eyes.
“You should not have brought this child here. It is no place for her.” Walker shook his head.
“You know as well as I Vince that I will not abuse the protocol. This is extremely important. And Veronica here plays a vital role today.
Now, Veronica Sinclair, meet Vincento Luciani. He is something of the elder of our little society.
Vince, Veronica is a new arrival here in New York and a commonwealth trained implant surgeon.”
That let Vince perk up. “Implant surgeon? We had recently many cyber surgeons move away so more are always welcome. But as you are here, maybe you can give an opinion. How would you treat somebody with CRS?”
At that question, the attention of the other men immediately turned to me. Obviously, they knew the answer was of some import to them as well.
“Before I answer that, bear in mind that I speak completely hypothetical. Without real data on the patient, I can’t go into details. The answer depends on what type of CRS, what stage, and what implants are affected.
Now take for example muscular CRS. Until you reach Stage three you can live mostly normally, but I would advise using nano therapy to extend your life.
Stage four nano therapy is strongly advised. If at all possible remove the affected implant, and replace it with cloned material.
If it is a vital muscle, like the diaphragm or the heart it might be too late, but with nano therapy, the patient might survive the three months until a cloned replacement is ready.
If necessary the patient might be placed on life support to ensure survival until the replacements are ready.
For neural CRS, if it is stage three or below, I would strongly advise nano therapy or better removal of all cyberware with neuronect.
At stage four the only chance of survival for more than three months is the removal of the cyberware. As soon as possible. As soon as stage five is reached the only thing that can be done is making it easier.”
One of the other gentlemen asked: “What is this nano therapy you are talking about?”
“That is a relatively new development in the treatment of CRS. Nanobots specifically suppress the immune reaction to cyberware.
Unlike traditional anti-rejection treatments, this will not leave the patient vulnerable to the bioweapons still being around.
It can be done with 3rd generation nanites and upwards, but the better the nanobots the better the result. Also, the results depend on what stage the therapy is introduced.
At stage two with regular injections of nanobots, CRS will most likely not impact your life expectancy in any meaningful way.
You will die from old age before CRS will kill you, even with 3rd gens. At stage three 3rd gen will extend your life by a few decades.
12thgen on the other hand will extend your life theoretically a century or two.
At the beginning of stage 4, 3rd gen will at the very best extend your life by a couple of weeks, while 12th gen manage a few years there.
At the end of stage 4, you don’t need to bother with 3rd gen, and 12th gen will manage, with luck, a couple of months.
Stage 5, if you don’t have cloned replacements ready even nano therapy won’t be enough to save you.”
Another of the men was visibly confused.
“What do you mean 12th gen? There are only ten generations of nanobots.”
“No, there are definitely 12. Of course, the 12th generation was only revealed three or four months ago, but 11th gen has been available in the Commonwealth for a couple of years now. It might be hard to get 12th gen as that needs a new generation of nano fabs, but 11th gen should be no problem for your infrastructure.”
“So there are now 7th generation nano fabs in nowhere?”
It slowly dawned on me that there was some sort of communication problem. Accordingly, my answer became insecure.
“Noo? The newest nano fabs in the commonwealth are 8th gen. I have the feeling we are talking about slightly different things here.”
We stared at each other for a moment before Vince changed the topic.
“Well, alright I don’t think this will lead to anything. It is irrelevant what is available in the commonwealth. We have to use what we can get here. So, Ms. Sinclair, are Ralcon or Enertech nanos better suited for the therapy?”
“I… I don’t understand the question. I know that Ralcon and Enertech are megacorps but what has that to do with the therapy?”
One of the men who had so far been silent scoffed at that. “Yeah, would have been too good to be true. Well, at least it is a good prank.” It was Mr. Walker who answered him.
“Timothy, remember she is new here in NYC. She arrived a bit over a week ago, and neither Ralcon nor Enertech have the same privilege in Nowhere as they have here.” Then he turned to me.
“The thing is, except for a handful of older nano fabs in private hand, Ralcon and Enertech have a duopoly for the production of nanobots.
They stopped selling nano fabs a few decades ago. And even then they did cost over a billion bucks each.
I don’t understand how they can afford to have one in each hospital as it seems to be in the commonwealth. The nanobots alone are expensive as hell.” I stared at him open-mouthed for several seconds.
“You… you are serious! How… why? A billion? I mean, yeah, the first generation, but the second generation already did only cost a few million to make.
A modern nano fab, like the 8th gen from the commonwealth, could be had for less than two million. And that is with a hefty markup.
The nanos I gave doc Schaeffer did cost me no more than 20 bucks. You could build a 6th gen fab with parts off the shelf. Standard electronics, a micro-computer, and some control elements. The only thing you would need to get is the seed stock for the nanobots.
With my new industrial fabber, I could make the complete 8th gen fab except for the seed stock in a couple of days.
Not an exceptional good 8th gen, but working.
And for the seed stock, while it is expensive, we are still talking about the six-digit range.
And that is for the 8th gen. 6th gen would cost around 10k in the commonwealth.”
Now all the men looked surprised. Walker was the first to get a hold of himself.
“You have to be wrong. We all know that it costs billions to make a nano fab. And that the nanobots are worth their weight in gold.”
I shook my head in confusion.
“The first generation, yes, they did cost that much. That was because there was no seed stock, except what they made in nano positors.
It took them around two hours on a machine that did cost around 1.4 billion dollars to make a single nanobot.
They needed roughly a million nanos to seed each of the first generation fabs so to get the first nanofab in something approaching reasonable time they needed 50 nano positors.
But it was nearly trivial to make new, better seed stock with that first-generation fabs. That was the second generation. The tech was new and took quite a bit of human supervision so they did still cost in the ballpark of ten million or twenty.
Now it is mostly automated. I could download a couple of dozen open source 6th gen fab plans from the commonwealth.
Sure, usually for an 8th gen you need to pay a licensing fee, as there is not yet an open-source version, and I am not sure there is an open-source 7th gen yet, but 6th there are dozens.”
I took a deep breath.
“To answer your question now that I understand the context, Mr. Luciani, I would have to look into the specs of the nanobots sold before I could give you the answer, I am sorry.”
He rubbed his chin.
“Can you instead give us some of these open-source plans you talked about? And maybe sell us seed stock?”
“The plans are no problem, but my nano fab is in nearly continuous use for the next five weeks, so I could not make the seed stock until then. After that, I promised doc Schaeffer an 8th gen fab.
What we could do is that I build the fabs without seed stock and you order the seed stock via the darknet from the commonwealth. Or I sell you the plans for the fab so you could have a workshop build yours.”
Ok, I was not quite honest with them. The industrial fabber could make one of the frames in a few hours if I used the different stations in parallel instead of sequential, and of course, while my 8th gen fab was busy, I had still the enhanced 8th gen in the NADA.
There was nothing that my nano fab could do, that the NADA could not. But I had the feeling that I did not want too many of these nano fabs floating around and I wanted even less to be seen as the source of them.
The frame, sure. That was a simple electronics system. Every workshop with the appropriate machinery could build them. But giving them the seed stock would be a bad precedent. The plans would be for a generic, low-quality 8th gen. Mine had some proprietary technology integrated, and the controller was not a mini-computer, making the range of nanobots it could make quite a bit larger.
Vincent nodded. “Too bad about your nano fab. I won’t ask you what it is busy with but your idea has some merit. How much would it cost for you to build the fab?”
I thought for a moment. I would have to design the fab first before I had a definite answer, but that would be simple cad work. No special design was needed here. I could even downgrade my personal fab design enough for their use but that would be actually more work. While not quite the work of art that Precious was, I had put much thought and work into the nano fab. So I took the generic answer.
“I guess that the price would be around $250k for me to make it or $300k for me to sell you the plans. The first price includes one license for the design, while the second one would allow you to build as many of them as you wanted.
You could then license the seed stock nanobots or other designs. The nice thing is, as soon as you have a running nano fab you can simply buy the nanobot schematics online and your fab will be able to make them if it is at all capable of that.
But you should be aware that 12th gen schematics are expensive. The seed stock schematics will cost you somewhere in the range of $5 million. But with that and the plans, you can build as many new nano fabs as you want. Each further nano fab would cost you around $50k to make.
Oh, and you can get 10th gen nanobot schematics as open source. The cost of making these would be in the single-digit price range for the liter.”
Vince nodded again. “I will think about it. It is a good idea. Now I fear we have to cut this discussion short. There are others here I have to speak to. I will talk later with you.”
Mr. Walker led me away from the group and softly asked me.
“What happened with making the tools to make the tool?”
“That was before I bought the industrial fabber. And if you think your people can be silent about it I can even give you the seed stock. If nothing comes along that will take up even more time of my fab. I have enough breathing room to make one or two sets. But I don’t want to have it known that I sell it.”
“Yes, I can see that. I think Vince will also buy a fab without the plans and the schematics for the seed. He is one of the smarter people here. Many of the rest will probably jump on the chance.”
“And bring Ralcon and Enertech down on themselves if they are not careful. They know of course how cheap and easy it is to make nanobots, so I would guess they milk the situation for what it’s worth.” Then I stopped moving.
“Do you think it might be worthwhile to anonymously publish the plans for the open-source 6th gen nano fabs and the specific Raclon or Enertech nanobots that can be used to make the seed stock?” He chuckled.
“Yes, that might be a big fuck you for the two corps. You don’t seem to like them very much.”
“If I understand the situation correctly they are responsible for several thousand deaths each year, just to pad their profit margin beyond the obscene and well into the ludicrous. And if the open-source nano fabs and schematics lift off, it will be hard for them to maintain the lie.
I would love to really hurt them, but that is beyond my abilities. Also if shops are springing up that can build 6th gen nano fabs all over the US then they might miss the small number of 8th gen that spring up in New York. Naturally, I will register the patent for the nano fab under an assumed name in the commonwealth first, so they can’t claim it as their patent.”
“That might actually be a good idea. But back to business, don’t bring up the nano fab you gave the hospital. It is too late to keep your nano fab a secret, and it might bite you in the ass later but the plan you proposed might help you there.”
The room had meanwhile filled with people, and gradually the important persons drifted towards the conference table. Walker steered us to one group of seats, and he actually pulled back a chair for me. I began to feel a bit suspicious of his behavior.
Oh, I could understand him being friendly and supportive.
After all, I had so far been courteous and helpful to him and I would be an extremely valuable ally in the not too distant future, but this courteous behavior I simply could not assess, and that was slowly driving me to insanity.
To distract myself I inspected the other participants in the meeting. They all were placed in groups of four to 5, around 40 or so groups and while the majority of them were men, I was not the sole woman in attendance. Even a couple of the bosses seemed to be women. Talk about progressive. When everybody was seated, Vince called the meeting to order.
