I was not particularly surprised when I received a chat request from Michael not quite half an hour later. I had given him and Ben a Q-link to my original cluster in Seattle quite some time ago, to serve as an untraceable, unjammable, and completely clandestine option to communicate.

And Michael had now obviously decided to take me to the negotiations that way. It was the first time that he had done so, but it was also the very first triple-A he was negotiating with.

Shrugging, I accepted the request and was rewarded with looking out of Michael's eyes, while still being in the process of landing on the roof of some big building.

He was accompanied by two of our lawyers. Melissa Anderson, a mid-thirties caucasian woman, with an efficient short bob of brown hair and brown eyes, with an eternally pinched face and an annoyed expression, as well as Rafael Bacque, who was a lively end-twenty, early-thirty guy of Latin American ancestry, who could only be described as lively. Only maybe 10cm taller than me, and twice my weight, at least, he could not keep his hands idle, and talking to him often resembled a badly choreographed martial arts fight scene.

But unlike Melissa, he actually had humor and was generally a rather nice fellow. To be fair, I should not harp on Melissa, but seriously, when Michael brought the two of them to the fortress for a meeting and I invited them to lunch, she had the gall and turn up her nose about the ‘primitive’ food, and if we did not have any ‘real food’.

I mean, come on, what she called ‘real food’ was barely deserving that name, much less merited this sort of reaction. Sure, it was not my day to cook. But it was Kate's, and she had become an astoundingly good cook over the last few months. So, how could I trust the opinion of somebody with such bad taste?

It took Michael a few days to convince me that, even if she was an imbecile about food, she was a rather good lawyer.

He had also one of our accountants with him. A mid-twenties African-American man that I had not met yet.

Those three were the ones that sat opposite Michael, so they were who I could see.

When I talked to Michael, only he could hear me, of course.

“Is there a reason why you want me to look over your shoulder?”

He snorted amused, and the three I could see through his eyes looked at him surprised.

“I am on the com with Ms. DuClare.” Rafael and the accountant nodded in understanding, while Melissa was visibly taken aback, and muttered: “Must be nice to have an implanted com.”

Oh please, we already offered them the cyberware at cost.  Sorry if the $1300 it did cost us to make an ultra-jack and the cranial board was too much for her. I knew for sure that we paid her around $9k each month for her services, so she should be able to afford it. Heck, Rafael was already on the list for when the first production models came off the line.

And yes, I am aware that my animosity towards Melissa made me a tad over-critical toward her, but somehow this woman triggered many of my problem points. It did not help that even I could discern clearly that she considered herself my superior.

To get back to the situation, Michael answered me via the implant:

“Why, could it be that I think I might need our CTO on call? Or the majority owner of the corporation?”

I scoffed at that:

“You just want to share the misery. Let’s be real, Enertech is a straightforward thing. They simply ignore us, and for that, we give them back the market that they already lost.”

“The market they lost because of you.”

“They don’t know that. And let’s be honest, there is nothing that prevents them from producing the open-source nanobots themselves. They have to have immense bot factories. No private nano-fab manufactured from the plans I released could compete with them on price, considering the economies of scale. Heck, they could always build the 6^th gen nano-fab from the open-source plans if their current fabs don’t hack it.”

He chuckled softly at that:

“You just don’t like them, be honest.”

“Of course not. This con-job of them and Ralcon did cost how many lives? The blood-substitute nano-bots alone save around 12k people in Nowhere every year. The US has roughly 2/3 of the population of Nowhere. That means that they are responsible for around 8k deaths each year for that reason alone.

Then the things like soft tissue repair, or bone knitting… that is an immense amount of suffering that they are responsible for. Not to mention all the other applications for nanobots. And you know how cheap it is to actually produce nanobots. They take something that costs them a couple of bucks to make and sell it for $500k, just because they had the influence to make it illegal to compete with them.”

“I still think that was mostly Ralcon, and they were just not powerful enough to exclude Enertech as well. It is just not Enertech’s style. They simply usually go for the cheap mass-market where ever they tread.”

I sighed. Of course, he was right in that, in a way.

“They still profited from it. Sure, it was only around four percent of their revenue, but they could have undercut Ralcon at any time.”

“Don’t be so sure. We don’t know what Ralcon and Enertech had in contracts and agreements in that matter. And what concessions they made to keep things peaceful. What I know is that it is never pretty when two triple-As are fighting. Especially if they are based in the same county.”

Reluctantly I agreed with him on that:

“You are right. But I still can’t help myself but hold them somewhat responsible.”

“Well, you can congratulate yourself on breaking up that little situation at least. Even if nobody knows it was you. But for now, I have to concentrate a bit on the real world.”

The skimmer had landed by now and the people were getting out. I noticed that Michael was accompanied by two bodyguards from his father's men. A mid-30s redhead called Conall Henly, who was more the wiry, agile build. And of course a tank of a dark-haired guy with the name of Ruben McHale. And despite several offers from me to equip Ben’s men with some well-fitted suits made from carbon weave, the black suits they wore simply said cheap and off the rack.

Worse, I knew that they were made from simply synthetic fibers, and had the armor quality of wet tissue. Michael had meanwhile accepted my offer and was wearing a self-cooling tailored anthracite-colored carbon weave suite with some non-newtonian pouches in graphene layers. In other words, he was comfortable in the summer heat and it would take an armor-piercing round to harm him.

Well, each of his own. If they wanted to look cheap, that’s their problem.

I continued designing the chipsets for the motherboards while Michael walked along some corridor toward some conference room. My understanding was that the size and furnishings of the conference room were an indication of the regard the other side held you in.

If that was the case here, then Enertech could barely care less for us. Cheap plastic chairs, together with cheap particleboard tables, a synthetic ugly brown carpet… I was surprised that a corp as big as Enertech even had such low-grade conference rooms. These were the furnishings of a 6^th-rate hotel in Bumfuck, Ohio. And even there the hotel would be embarrassed by them.

But ok, we were just starting out and did not even officially sell anything. The negotiation team from Enertech similarly looked third-rate.

In one corner there was a single-cup coffee machine, with some paper plastic cups standing beside it.

The Enertech negotiation team was, well the closest I could call them was unprofessional. Crumbled, cheap suits, crooked neckties, and one of them had stimstick between his lips. Of the three of them, one was pretty young, so young in fact that I was no longer sure that they would have laughed about my inclusion, while the other two were in their late fifties. Not one of them had shaved the last two or three days as it looked.

All in all, we could tell that Enertech did not give a damn about us. They would learn in time, of course, but right now, there was no point in crying about it. If they wanted to send their F-team, so be it. We would still give our A game.

Not that we had even a B-team, much less a refuse team like those.

After some short greeting verbiage, Michael and his group sat down, and one of the older men, Mr. George Howard, opened up:

“Ok, here we are. You wanted a meeting, so what can we do for you?” He spoke in a very bored and dismissive tone, as even this group of barely keeping their job workers was above us. Again, they would learn in time.

Michael took all of that in stride.

“Basically, we want to ensure that Enertech will not move against us when we begin operations.”

I was somewhat surprised that he was so direct, but he was the one who had experience with people and business.

The second older man, Mr. Lee Barton, shrugged. “And for that, you asked for a meeting? Seriously? You could just have sent a message to our public relations department.”

Michael leaned forward.

“Ah, but that would have not ensured your neutrality. No, we want something along a contract.”

Howard scoffed at that, and waved his hand around:

“A contract? For real? Who do you think you are? Some little upstart with delusions of grandeur? Get real man. If we want to squish your little mom-and-pop shop, we will. Nothing you can do about it.”

I heard Melissa's voice from the side:

“That might a bit harder than you believe.”

Barton snorted.

“No, not really. Unless you have Ralcon already supporting you, if we want you gone, you’re gone.”

Michael answered:

“Melissa, please, no confrontation. And about Enertech, well, we don’t expect you to do anything for the good of your hearts. Let’s be honest, Enertech is a cutthroat outfit that runs over anybody whenever it thinks it can get an advantage.

No, we are willing to pay you for your neutrality.”

The young guy, Stanley Powell, now leaned forward, onto his elbows.

“Pay? In what? You are a startup without any income yet.”

Barton slapped Powell on the back of the head.

“Shut up Stan. Nobody’s talking to you.”

Then he turned back to Michael.

“But he is right. You don’t have the money to make it worthwhile for us to look the other way.”

I saw Michael tilting his head, and assumed that he showed his typical grin.

“You might be surprised about that. But no, we don’t want to pay you with money.”

He looked on the table where he placed a thumb drive.

“What we are offering are the schematics for a real 8^th gen nano-fab series that is scalable from small shop applications to industrial production, and a group of 12^th gen nanobots.”

Howard now looked somewhat interested, while Barton waved dismissively again.

“Yeah sure. As if a nonentity like you could get genuine 8^th-gen nano-fab designs. Not to mention 12^th-gen bots.”

Michael’s answer was equally dismissive.

“I know that you can’t get them done. But I thought it was common knowledge that we have Seraphim working for us.”

Of course, Michael did not use my handle without us having talked about it long and exhaustive some time ago. Clearly, everybody knew that I as Seraphim had developed the CRS-free cyberware. It would take any competent negotiation team only a few minutes of research to uncover my involvement in Enki anyway. So we decided to simply be open about it.

Not that this helped much with these clown school rejects. Yes, Powell seemed to try to understand the significance of that name, but the other two did not look in any way impressed.

Barton rolled his eyes, while Howard just scowled.

“Oh yeah. Seraphim is working for you. We should have realized that earlier. Sure.”

Barton’s tone was so dripping with sarcasm that I was surprised he did not hurt himself.

“Anybody else on your team? Mother Theresa? Jesus? The pope? Oh, I know. The President of the United States. Am I right?”

While Powell began to frantically look up something on his com, I heard Rafael laugh out loud.

“Oh man, you three are so in over your head in this. Come on, you have to have done at least some preparation.”

Howard sneered at him:

“For what? It is bad enough that you come in here and expect a negotiation. Wake up, you are an insignificant little start-up without anything worthwhile to offer. You will be gone in a year.”

The answer came from Melissa:

“I assume that you are recording this? Probably have some VI observing? If so, it would suggest that you sent somebody competent to take over the negotiations.”

Barton and Howard broke out in laughter for a moment, before Howard began to talk:

“You think you are important enough to warrant as much as a VI supervising us? Woman, you are in the cellar league. So how about you run away with your tail between your legs and we forget about this?”

Michael’s calm and collected:

“I think we will wait for a bit. And if you think that Enertech does not monitor every room in every one of their businesses with some VI, you should wake up. And said VI will be programmed with the good of the company as an objective.”

He waited a moment for effect before he continued.

“And unlike you said VI will look up what the name Seraphim means.”

Barton began to stand up menacingly, leaning a bit over the table.

“Listen here you little…” He was stopped by Powell grabbing his suit jacket and pulling, which in turn made Barton turn towards his colleague.

“What the fuck? I told you to shut up, maggot. Bad enough that you were put on our team, but you could at least have the decency to not be so annoying.”

Saying that he balled a fist and pulled it back for a punch when the door was opened.

A sharp female voice bellowed: “Barton, sit down and be silent! You fucked up enough for now.”

When Michael looked at the door, he saw a woman of indeterminate age with light brown hair in a bun and in a clean power suit standing there.

Barton relaxed his fist and looked at the newcomer.

“Ally, what are you doing here? This is our negotiation. There are no brownie points to steal here anyway so fuck off.”

The woman marched toward the trio.

“I said sit down and be silent! So fucking do it! I am here because you and Howard the fuck have fucked up by the numbers. God, whoever got the glorious idea of assigning you two brain-dead idiots to this deserves to get shot.

Now, let’s make a few things clear:

First, I am not Ally to you. I am not even Alice for you. I am Ms. Manning for the likes of you. I am your superior. So keep your foul mouth in check.

Second, not every corporation that comes to us is something we should or even could squish. So, the next time, if there is a next time for you, do your fucking research! I know for a fact that Seraphim was mentioned in the briefing. Along with her significance. Your whole fucking objective during this negotiation was to try to get her to work for us. Unlikely as that was.”

By now she had reached the trio, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

“Why are you still standing? I said sit down!”

With clear reluctance, Barton slowly sat back down, and Ms. Manning continued:

“And even if you could not get Seraphim to work for us, it is clearly known that she is one of three, again three, nanoengineers not already working for Burgmeister, Dalgon, or Xiao Ping that is capable of building 8^th gen nanofabs and 12^th gen nanobots.

Along with quite a few additional feats. So if the company that has Seraphim working for it offers designs for 8^th gen fabs and 12^th gen bots, it is fucking legit!

But all of this has one good thing. I bet this is the last time you and Howard the fuck had a brainfart in service of Enertech. So, will you stay silent and let the grownups negotiate, or do I have to call security?”

Barton and Howard now looked decidedly unhappy, while Powell seemed to wish he could crawl into the ground. But all three of them stayed silent. And so, Ms. Manning turned her attention to Michael.

“Now, with that out of the way, I have to say we of Enertech are sorry about the display here, Mr. Walker. I would be happy to start from the beginning if you would be so inclined.”

“Of course, Ms. Manning. I was a bit put out by the clown troupe there, but I understand how something like this can happen.

Now, I understand you correctly that you have been informed about our offer?”

Ms. Manning nodded.

“I have. It is a rather generous offer for simply neutrality. But with the patent expired, we are considering leaving the nanotech market completely.”

Michael took a few seconds to answer:

“I can understand that, somewhat. But only somewhat. Even if all you had was the open-source fab and bot designs coursing through the web, you have the market penetration here in the US, as well as the economy of scale on your side. I would be surprised if you could not undercut all the small shops and still make a substantial profit.”

Ms. Manning stapled her hands.

“You are right, but we are now in a situation where we will have to compete with Burgmeister, Dalgon, and Xiao Ping. We have nothing that can compare with the 12^th gen nanobots that three sell.”

“Yes, I understand. But that is exactly where we come into play. As I said earlier, we are offering you the design for an easily scalable 8^th-gen fab. The 8^th generation is only what, six months old? Yes, the other three corps already have the fabs up and running, but until quite recently what they had was solely directed to the markets outside of the US.

That means that yes, you will have to play a bit of catch-up, but not to an insurmountable amount.

The same with the 12^th gen bot schematics. You should be able to get them into production within a week.

And of course, with those designs, you would be able to compete globally.”

Ms. Manning nodded slowly.

“Yes, that is something we have to think about it. But why do you exclude Enki from the equation? If you have Seraphim working for you, you could compete in the market as well.”

It was a bit disorienting when Michael nodded, but nothing I was not used to.

“You are right, we could. But we would have to start from scratch. Competing not just against you, if you take the designs, but also against the other three triple-A corporations. So, while we have the technical expertise, it is not a market where we can get a meaningful market share.

We have, on the other hand, a monopoly on CRS-free neural cyberware. Sure, it will not quite get to the market size of nanobots, but we don’t have to share it with anybody.

We also have some other technologies that we are preparing to bring to market. Technologies where we are the singular supplier as well.

So why fight for scraps in an, admittedly lucrative market, competing with at least four triple-As, when we have barely the capacity for our other markets where we have no competition and step on no toes?”

Ms. Mannign nodded again.

“I understand. And that is a very mature attitude. Sadly, most upstarts see a market where they could, theoretically at least, compete, and go for it, without thinking about the consequences.

But back to our negotiation, does that mean that you would be willing to sign a contract that you will sell no nanofabs and nanobots?”

“Sadly, no. Some of the products we are developing are working with very specialized nanobots, and have an integrated nanofab for just these nanobots. But we are willing to sign a contract that we will not sell general-purpose nanobots and nanofabs. Just the highly specialized versions.”

Ms. Manning and Powell scowled at that, and Ms. Manning tilted her head a bit.

“That is, not quite what we expected. And you won’t consider having the customer buy the nanobots from other providers?”

That was my cue here now, and so I gave Michael my answer:

“That is not feasible. The efficiencies would drop dramatically and the costs would be prohibitive. The best we can do is make sure that the specialized nanofabs and nanobots can not be used for anything else.”

Michael repeated what I had said to the others.

“Well, then we will have to accept that. Not that we have all that much revenue in nano-bots anyway."

Michael answered in his typical amused tone:

“That might be because your prices were prohibitive. Seriously, if our research is right, the black market providers for nano-bots made around 1000 times the sales that you did. And they still take an average of $10k for a batch of bots, compared to your $500k. If you offer 12^th gen bots at reasonable prices I think you will see quite some increase in sales.”

“You might be right. Well, Ralcon will have to accept reality anyway. But back to business, all we have to do to get the designs from you is assure you of our neutrality? No preferred business, or support?”

“No, we are of the opinion that if you and Ralcon are not actively working against us, we will have a good enough product that nobody else will want to work against us. Well, not anybody with enough influence in the US.”

“And what will convince you that we will keep our word? Let’s face it if we decide to take the designs and then move against you anyway, there is nothing you could do.”

Michael chuckled at that.

“Well, we have Seraphim. And no, there is no way you could hire her away from us. She is the majority owner after all. The point is, at some point in the future you will want new nanobot designs.

Where will you go to get them? Burgmeister, Dalgon, or Xiao Ping? Or maybe go to the dark web and find the other two independent nano engineers who can do it? No, of course not, you will come to us and buy them from us. Just because we don’t want to compete in the nanobot market does not mean that Seraphim will suddenly no longer be one of the best nanoengineers alive.

And depending on how you treat us, we will even offer you a discount. The same with our cyberware. We could offer you the basic jacks for $350.”

Ms. Manning’s eyes narrowed.

“Ah yes, the cyberware… that was another topic that the fuckups were instructed to bring up. As I understand it, you also have the technology to make muscular cyberware CRS-free. Is that right?”

Michael nodded again.

“Yes, we have the technology.”

“We would be interested in licensing it.”

That surprised me. What had Enertech to do with cyberware? Apparently, Michael was the same.

“Sorry, but why would you want it?”

She sighed.

“It is not commonly known, but we own Dworak. We would need the tech to compete.”

Urgh, these were indeed unfortunate news. Sure, Dworak was the absolute bottom rung, but still, we now had direct competition to Enertech. Fortunately, they did not have any neural cyberware in their lineup.

As it was, I whispered to Michael:

“That is not feasible. We have to sell the bio-reactor to the implant surgeons. It can’t be adapted in the factory. And they need to buy CRS-free neuronect from us.”

Fortunately, Michael and I already had decided to market the neuronect directly, at $12 per bundle of 100 connectors.

Michael sighed and took a moment to answer.

“It would do you no good to license the technology. Each piece of cyberware has to be adapted by the surgeon specifically to the patient. There is no way doing that factory side would work.

No, we intend to sell the bio-reactor that does the adaptation to the implant surgeons. That by the way is one of the specialized nanofabs.

For the bio-reactor, and hence the implant surgeon, it is irrelevant where the cyberware comes from.”

He made a short pause.

“But to make your cyberware completely CRS-free you will need to use the neuronect we produce. Which we will not license out to anybody. But we plan to sell it at the same prices as you can buy neuronect now from your industrial suppliers.”

Ms. Manning scratched the side of her head for a moment.

“So, you are saying that it would useless to license this, what did you call it, bio-reactor?”

“Indeed. Especially as we see the market-share of myosynth cyberware mostly vanishing in the future. The only reason why myosynth has not vanished during or shortly after world war three was that it was the cyberware that used the least neuronect, and had the lowest risk of neural CRS.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment.

“That is… not quite what we expected. So you think that myosynth will mostly vanish? To be replaced with what?”

Michael chuckled as an answer:

“I, personally, have no clue. I would have to ask Seraphim for that. But from what she told me, several technologies were used during the war. All significantly more efficient and/or powerful than myosynth. I would guess Enertech uses quite a few of them in your cyber zombies.”

She recoiled when he said that.

“What are you thinking? Enertech does not use something as abhorrent as cyber zombies. Whoever told you that was defaming us.”

For several moments there was silence before Michael answered:

“Ms. Manning, we are all adults here. And we are not trying to defame you in any way. But let’s be honest, Enertech is a triple-A corporation. Any triple-A that does not have cyber zombies does not stay a triple-A for long. I mean, even Falconer had cyber zombies. And they owed their triple-A status solely to their position in the AFS.

So, just to keep it among us adults here, everybody who has even a modicum of information about the shadow wars knows that Enertech indeed has cyber zombies.

And with that, Enertech has the technology for alternative cyberware that is not depending on myosynth. With enough CRS-free neuronect, you can offer this cyberware on the open market without killing your customers.”

Her face now got a very ugly expression.

“And you are the one who will sell us this neuronect, right?”

“As I said, we will sell it for the standard price that is now paid in the industry. Is it really important if you buy it from let’s say Cybertronic or us?”

She sighed.

“You are right. Of course, if we ask the people of Cybertronic or Deltatech they will probably tell us that it is important.”

I took the opportunity to give Michael another idea, which he immediately conveyed as well.

“Another thing. We’ve noticed that you don’t offer neural cyberware. The designs for the basic jack are in the public domain by now. Nothing is preventing you from buying the neuronect from us and offering your own jacks.”

“You are right. We could do that. And now that you gave us the idea, we probably will. And that is another business where we will depend on you.”

By now she sounded a bit jaded.

“Would that be so bad? Let’s be honest, it will be good if the customer has some choice. At least in the low-market segment. And even if you want to get a piece of the high-end market, nothing prevents you from developing your own high- or ultra-bandwidth jacks. It would not be Enertech’s style, but nothing would prevent you.

And we won’t care if we get our money from the neuronect or the cyberware.”

She sighed again.

“Fine. I am sure your market segment up there is perfectly safe from us. As you said, it is not our style. But let’s come to the nuts and bolts for the contract. I have been signaled that we will accept your offer.”

“Perfect.” Michael leaned forward, and simultaneously send me a message that I could now log out.

It felt a tiny bit like being dismissed, but I knew that Michael knew I would just be bored to tears by the negotiations that would follow.

As such, I closed the connection.