Leave it to Ben to gift me something so… demanding as a cat. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I quickly fell in love with the hyperactive bundle of fluffy fur, but… let’s say it was a time sink.

The newly christened Lady Nibbles, for her quirk to bite anything and everything, preferably my fingers it seemed, and no, it was not I who gave her the ‘Lady’ title. That was done by Tiffany, who nearly absconded with my new pet.

It had taken Michael and Naveen a good quarter-hour to make her release her happily purring hostage. And then only when Michael mentioned that Enki had bought the whole pet library, and if she wanted a cat or a dozen, nothing was stopping her from getting one.

When it was time to go to bed, I noticed that my suite had several new additions for its new inhabitant. That alone told me that Ben had found an accomplice in Warden, as only Warden of all the VIs had direct access to the suite.

Before I finally got to sleep, I slipped into cyberspace to look at the video Vandermeer had given me.

It was a recording of his office as the first councilor, and Joshua Knowles was standing in front of Vandermeer’s desk, snarling at the man sitting calmly there.

“Don’t make yourself too comfortable in that chair, Vandermeer. Next census I will be sitting in there again. And then you will regret ever getting the idea of defying me.”

Vandermeer still looked pretty calmly at Knowles, before he answered without much shown emotion:

“You should be careful with what you say, Knowles. You are getting pretty close to disrespecting the first councilor.”

It looked as if Knowles barely managed to not spit on the floor.

“So what? Can’t I say the truth anymore?”

As a response, Vandermeer tilted his head.

“Tell that to your father, who pushed the Jepsen Act through. You wouldn’t want to be executed and the majority of Panacea getting confiscated by the Commonwealth, would you?”

For the first time, Knowles showed a bit of fear, only briefly, but it was there.

“You wouldn’t dare! That would go too far, even for you!”

A slight smile showed on Vandermeer’s mouth.

“If I had shown the same amount of… let’s say disrespect two years ago that you’ve demonstrated for the last two years, you would have been delighted to invoke the act.

But no, I do not want to do that. Unfortunately, this is an official meeting, and as such it is recorded. If you don’t restrain yourself, it might be out of my hands.”

Knowles scoffed.

“Don’t make me laugh. You would love to have an excuse to kill me and steal Panacea. But your grip on the power is not strong enough to push it through.”

Vandermeer shook his head.

“A couple of weeks ago, you would have been right. But two things have changed since then. You’ve been a bad bad boy. And so were your spawn. And you did the one thing that would enable me to invoke the act.”

Knowles frowned.

“What the fuck do you think I did?”

“I am talking about the cleanup job you ordered for Project Revitalize. You are aware that that is a Commonwealth Project, right? So deleting all the data… that is nearly the textbook definition of depriving the Commonwealth of an irreplaceable resource.”

Knowle’s eyes narrowed.

“If you had any proof of what you just said I would already be on death row.”

Vandermeer shook his head again.

“Not really, because fortunately for you, the resource did turn out to be not irreplaceable. We have been able to get the data back. But together with dishonoring the first councilor… it would be enough. But as I said, I don’t want that. Not anymore.”

Knowles began pacing for a bit before he turned back toward Vandermeer.

“I don’t buy it. The way our families had a war for decades, you would not let that opportunity go to waste.”

Now Vandermeer smiled very smugly.

“Unless of course what I am planning for you, and the toads you call sons, is so much worse than getting you executed and taking over Panacea.”

“Pha, at one point we will find out why the phantom has such a grudge against us, and then you will be fucked.”

Vandermeer snorted.

“Oh please… don’t tell me you haven’t figured it out already.”

Knowles frowned again.

“Figured out what?”

Vandermeer stapled his fingers.

“Why the phantom targeted you, your bootlickers, and all the assholes from Dalgon.”

“Are you stupid or what? For that, we have to first figure out who the fuck this fucking phantom is. As soon as we have that, we will tell the banks, and that is the end of the phantom.”

Vandermeer answered patiently:

“The banks know who the phantom is. Too bad for them that the phantom has created a situation of mutually assured destruction with the banks. Should they manage to strike at the phantom, the bank execs will die, and their families will die. So the banks have decided to… let’s say officially still hunt for the phantom, but not prosecute the hunt in reality.”

Knowles now gripped one of the chairs in front of the desk, and let himself fall into it.

“How? How is that possible? Just because the Phantom smuggled a nuke into the yacht of some exec? Get real?”

“It is a bit more than that, I fear. And you know what the irony is? You created the phantom.”

“You know who the phantom is?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Then tell me.”

“Later. For now, I have another few things to ‘discuss’ with you. For one, you should save your money and simply write off all those products that the phantom has liberated. The council has decided to declare those substances, procedures, and data as public domain. And… this is the end of it.”

Knowles snarled:

“You mean you decided this.”

“Why, of course. You do realize that at the last census, for some reason, I ended up with more than 30% of the money in the council. That gives me a full 36% of the votes. While my allies are not too keen to use the Jepsen Act they are downright giddy with glee when they deny you those patents.”

Knowles grunted before he answered:

“So what, when I get back into that chair, I will reverse the decision.”

“It will be 3½ years until the next census. The data is out there now. It is already being incorporated into the public domain by all nations around the world. Every single triple-A corporation except Panacea already has started to use it. Face it, that ship has sailed. The information is out there and it won’t come back, ever.”

Vandermeer shook his head again.

“You should be happy that somebody in your corporation thought about copyrighting your software. And yes, those copyrights will remain.”

Knowles stared at Vandermeer with spite for some time, before he sighed.

“Whatever! That will hurt, but Panacea is stronger than that. We will come back.”

Vandermeer smiled very self-satisfied again.

“You remember that you lost around a third of your researchers when the council declared those ‘nice’ oppressive contracts you forced on them void, right? And we are talking about your better researchers here.

That should make it somewhat harder to build up a new cache of tech to rule them all.”

“I will find a way, mark my words.”

“No, you won’t. At least not for the next 12 years.”

Knowles was now showing some confusion.

“What do you mean I won’t?”

“I mentioned that you had been a bad bad boy, didn’t I? While I refrained from invoking the Jepsen Act, mostly because we got the data back, what you did was still a high crime. You have officially been sentenced for treason by the council. That means you and your mini-mes will spend the next 12 years in maximum security prison under hard labor.”

Knowles jumped up and put both hands on the desk, screaming:

“You can’t do that!”

Vandermeer just leaned back in his chair.

“You might be surprised, but the 12 years are a compromise. Many wanted you to spend the next 50 years in there, while others viewed it as a bad precedent.”

“But… you have no proof.”

“Again, we got the data back. That was enough to make us… question the former researchers of Revitalize about what happened. They were only too happy to spill the beans. After all, unlike you, they were looking at judiciary slavery for life. And of course that they had already been convicted from the evidence we had on hand made it easy to… fit them with a nice new necklace, which made it easy for us to trust their statement.”

Vandermeer smiled mildly.

“You had to involve your spawn in the scheme as well. So, thank you for that. But that is enough to put all of you behind bars for the next 12 years. I fear you won’t have the opportunity to regain this chair here for at least 13½ years. After all, being in prison excludes one from being even considered for the council.”

Something was wrong here, Knowles was way too calm about it. From what I knew of that man, he should be rampaging right now, but while he was visibly angry, he did not rail against the situation.

Vandermeer on the other hand seemed way too calm also. He should know that Knowles was not acting according to the information he got. Not that I could do much about it anyway. This was a recording, and it was obvious that Vandermeer had come out of that meeting alive.

All that was answered when Vandermeer continued:

“I understand that you believe that this will be only a minor setback. That your power and Panacea’s power will be enough to get this overturned in a few months. Sadly, for you that is, you are wrong. I know you don’t think too highly of me, but give me at least enough credit to know that I know what I am doing.”

He leaned forward and placed his crossed arms on his desk.

“Let me tell you a few things. Things that, thanks to your new jewelry you can’t use. You remember my granddaughter? The one you had psychologically tortured?”

When Knowles nodded, with a nasty smile on his face, Vandermeer shook his head and continued:

“You really are so stupid. You were the one who ensured that Rebecca got shoved into K4. The same way you made sure that Anita and I landed in G3.”

“So what, you got lucky twice.”

“Are you seriously so ignorant? I only learned it when we got all the data from Revitalize back, but you made sure that Rebecca is a G3, and you also made sure that Vivian is a K4. And every single G3 mother in K4 had a functional K4 baby.”

“So what, she is a bit smarter than average, and?”

Vandermeer closed his eyes, chuckled, and shook his head.

“You did not even care enough about it to look a bit closer into it. All the other functional K4… they come from families with an average IQ of around 100. The smartest of them came from a background of 105-110.

And whatever boost K4 gave them to their intelligence, it is not additive, it is multiplicative!”

Knowles just shrugged.

“So what? That still just means she is a bit smarter than average.”

“Knowles, you arrogant idiot, the boost K4 gives is around 3-4 times the IQ. It made Pure-families at the lower end of the average have uber-geniuses as children.

And the same fucking thing happened to Vivian, who comes from one of the smartest families ever. Even without K4 she would have most likely had an IQ above 200. Now multiply that by three. Or four.

We have absolutely no fucking idea about how smart she really is. We have no way of measuring it.”

Knowles arrogantly waved dismissively.

“Yeah, sure. Don’t you think that we would have realized it if she was that smart, huh?”

“Let’s see, we start measuring those things when the children are ten. By that point, she was at once poisoned against society in general and the corporations in special to a level that made her not want to have you understand how smart she is, and simultaneously intelligent enough to spoil all the standard tests they had her do.

Fuck, she was smart enough to fool Apollo. Your thugs and torturers never had a chance.”

Knowles now looked like he was thinking, but then he shrugged and said:

“Again, so what? She is unimportant. We managed to break her so thoroughly that nothing positive will ever come from her.”

Vandermeer facepalmed for a moment, and spoke softly:

“God, you really are such an idiot. Think, Knowles, think! Vivian is the phantom. Among other things. And she managed to break into the banks and steal your money and your power right from under your nose, while you had her observed. But that’s not all. I assume you’ve heard of Enki, right?”

That made Knowles growl again for a bit.

“Yeah. Those uppity upstarts over in New York. They refuse to sell their tech to us. I haven’t had the time to break them to size yet.”

Vandermeer scoffed.

“Huh, I did not know that they refuse to work with Panacea. But not surprising, I have to say. After all, the majority owner is Vivian. The same Vivian you had tortured, and who hates you, your spawn and Panacea with a passion that borders on obsession.

In fact, Enki was created to market Vivian’s inventions. The cyberware, pure Vivian’s work. The same with the Q-links. That by the way is most likely how she stole your money. And we have no clue what they have on the back burner right now.

Do you think a corporation that has made it from starting operations to A-tier in less than a month is a one-trick pony? Get real. They are just getting started. Not that they have to bring anything else onto the market for the next decades just to keep growing.”

Then Vandermeer waved his hand.

“But are you now understanding that you forcing Rebecca to be a G3, then you forcing Vivian to be a K4, and then torturing Vivian for 17 years is the reason why Panacea has a bit of a hard time now?”

“Get real, we will get back onto our feet. And we will begin by eliminating your recalcitrant granddaughter. Yes, she is in New York, but Ralcon will do what I ask them to do.”

Vandermeer snorted.

“No, they won’t. They won’t even come near Vivian if they can anyway prevent it. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard it…”

“Heard what?”

“About the rogue VI.”

“Only some stupid rumors about somebody being so stupid to make one.”

“Stupid? With the nice trap, all of the big corporations put in place about it? By the way, Panacea has some… explaining to do about how you could be so stupid and put the minutes of the ICSC 2120 onto your network.

But to come back to the VI, it was a case of another time somebody walking into that trap. But this time it was an Abyss-Denizen, who accidentally created an unbound rogue cyberwarfare VI with all the tools and capabilities of an Abyss hacker.”

I saw Knowles visibly blanche.

“For real? Somebody made a fucking rogue cyber-warfare VI with the ability to hack into nearly every strategic weapon command? And you are just sitting here and are calmly talking about it?”

“Of course. That happened nearly a year ago. I am surprised nobody told you about it. But nevertheless, the one accidentally creating the VI was Seraphim.”

“Seraphim? Is she not this super hot super tech? How could she make such a mistake?”

“The same way everybody else walks into that trap. She was purposefully misinformed. But the good thing is that while the VI is rogue in the strictest form of definition, it is not rampaging or hostile. Obviously, as we are still alive. No, the expert system that woke up to be a VI had the objectives to protect Seraphim at any cost, and to assist her where it can. And only those two objectives.

That of course means that anybody even looking a bit too aggressive at Seraphim… well, it might happen that the city they reside in vanishes overnight.”

“So nobody will touch this Seraphim with a stick. I get that. And if that is the only thing needed to keep this VI docile, I understand why nobody told me about it. But why do you think that will protect your whore of a granddaughter?”

Vandermeer again shook his head.

“You continually force me to lower my estimate of your intelligence, you know that Knowles? The point here, and if you had paid attention to it in any way you would already know that, is that Vivian is Seraphim. Ralcon knows that. As does Enertech. As does every single mercenary group out there. Thinking about getting help from the Abyss?

Think again!

The last Abyss denizen who tried that, who worked against her, he lived for another three days. Technically. He lived pissing and shitting himself before somebody took mercy on him and put him out of his misery.

And that was Vivian, not the VI. Now… nobody will even go near there. On the other hand, she has the full support and protection of an A-tier corporation, and virtually every single A-tier and up corporation will rip everybody who even tries to harm her apart, just to keep the VI docile.

Nobody wants to experience what will happen if this VI does go on a rampage.”

Then Vandermeer chuckled softly.

“And you know what the nicest thing about all this is? The reason why I spoke against using the Jepsen Act on you? Vivian is already working on destroying Panacea. In a year, maybe two, PEES will no longer be important. It will no longer provide you with a tool to force the other big corps under your heel.

Your cloning division will be outdated even earlier. And all your research has now been declared public domain. I have taken steps to remove your influence in medical schools worldwide. No, Panacea is going down.”

Knowles jerked forward.

“I won’t that let happen. I have still enough power to fight this, and thanks to your warning, I have the time.”

Now Vandermeer’s grin was downright evil, frightening even.

“Do you really think I would tell you that if you had any way of reacting? No, of course not. I told you that you have already been sentenced. You will go directly to prison, you will not pass go, you will not collect Ȼ200. The peacekeepers who will fit your prison control collar are already waiting outside.

Your sons already are in prison cells, incommunicado. Face it, you’ve lost. Nothing you can do anymore. And thanks to your autocratic ways and the way you… winnowed down the family tree when you took over, there is nobody who can lead Panacea through these trying times.”

For a moment, Knowles just sat there, mouth open, clearly in shock. Then he jumped up and moved to jump over the desk.

Only to be hit by several previously hidden nonlethal weapons.

“You should have known better, Knowles. This was your office after all. You know about the systems included to protect the first councilor. But as so often, you failed to think. Now you won’t have to for the next 12 years. After that… well, there will be bets on how long you can survive without your money and your power. I don’t think it will be very long.”

Vandermeer pushed a button on the desk, and a few seconds later, the door opened to let in two peacekeepers, who then proceeded to cuff Knowles and drag him out of the room.

I know, it is petty, but I was pretty happy about seeing Knowles getting knocked down a few pegs.

In retrospect, I was pretty fortunate for only needing around four hours of sleep each night, as I had barely taken care of my morning ablutions when a very loud, angry, and impatient meowing reverberated through my suite.

Obviously, the young lady was hungry. And expected to be fed, right now, if not sooner.

She was also way less happy getting picked up this morning compared to the preceding evening, but after a bit of struggle let me carry her to the kitchen. Still complaining to all and asunder that she was being starved to death.

I noticed a new addition to the kitchen appliances, and, thanks to cyberspace, learned within a couple of seconds that it was an automated pet food maker. Apparently, when Ben had cooked up the idea of giving me a kitten, some of the minions had looked into it and decided that this was a nice product line that we could always use.

Unfortunately, it took about half an hour to produce a portion of food. Or a dozen portions, it was pretty scalable.

But that was mitigated by whoever setting this thing up having it prepare three portions automatically each morning, around 4:00.

Then it refrigerated the food, recycling it if it was not used. It took the machine roughly half a minute to heat up one portion to optimal temperature.

Half a minute I spent trying to calm the furiously struggling little feline in my arms. It seemed that whatever little patience Nibbles had ever had, had already run out at that point.

But she quickly became happy again as soon as I placed the dish on the floor for her. It was good however that I did not try to hold her in my hands at that point anymore.

Nevertheless, happy meowing was interspersed between the munching sounds, and I could not help myself and smiled at the view. It looked as if she liked the chicken that the machine had prepared for her.

Still, I used the time to make myself a cup of coffee. While I was sipping the hot beverage, watching the tiny critter inhale some cat food, Vandermeer, who had spent the night in the other executive suite came into the kitchen, as always followed by his bodyguard.

He smiled when he saw Nibbles doing anything but nibble at her food, and made himself a coffee too.

“Good morning.”

Oh, yes, social conventions. I still sometimes forgot about those, when I was distracted.

“Good morning yourself.”

He sat down beside me, looking at the cat.

“Is now a good time to talk about the business?”

I sighed.

“As good as any.”

I took another sip before I addressed the obvious problem.

“I don’t think that Michael had any intention of insulting you. But… we keep the secret of how the NADA works secret for now. Before I talked about it yesterday, only one person outside of Enki even knew that it existed. I probably should not have talked about it either, but… well, next week, everybody will learn about it. And they will bite their own backside because it is so simple. So simple that anybody who learns about it can announce it before us.”

Vandermeer nodded slowly.

“I understand that. Yes, it hurt a bit to be told that I am on the outside for now, but I understand it. Getting a NADA to work is big. Maybe bigger than the Q-link. It will make all the big corps look very closely at you.”

“We know that. That is the reason why we announce it next week. I made the breakthrough roughly a year ago, but until we had enough safety in place we decided it was too tempting, even with Warden.”

I took another sip.

“But now we have enough firepower to keep ourselves safe, and we will license the NADA to almost everyone. Not Panacea obviously, and Dalgon will have to bring a very good reason, but otherwise, all the others can get it relatively cheaply. So no reason to try to steal it from us.”

He nodded again.

“And the grav coils?”

“Nope, we keep those mostly in-house. You need a special NADA to make them, and apparently only if Warden or I give you the design. But because it is so dangerous we won’t tell others about the how.”

“But you are considering giving Vandermeer that ability?”

“As far as I know, yes. Honestly, all those politics, maneuvering, and such… I hate it. I try to stay away from it. So you will have to talk to Michael about that. But generally, I have nothing against it.”

He looked sharply at me for a few seconds.

“You won’t always be able to keep a distance from that. At one point or another, you will have to make such decisions. You are the majority owner of Enki, and you are the heir to Vandermeer. Sooner or later you will have to pull your head out of the sand.”

I shrugged.

“Honestly, that is the really nice thing about Warden. I can trust her absolutely, and she makes sure that I can trust the others. Not that Michael was ever in doubt. And about Vandermeer… did you even think about the implications of the new cloning tech?”

He wrinkled his forehead in confusion.

“Implications? Sure, it is faster than what we had, but otherwise, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

I shook my head.

“If you have enough money nowadays the only limit on getting cloned replacement parts for your body is just the toxicity build-up. You can only get so much of that before it kills you. With the new cloning tech, there is no toxicity build-up. I guess there might be a limit on how long the brain can remain. At some point, cancer will probably destroy it. But otherwise, there is no reason why you should not live another 500 years.”

He had just taken a sip of coffee, but now carefully placed the cup back on the table.

“I have to say, I did not think about that. And you are right, that should change the inheritance issue. For a time at least. But if you inherit Vandermeer in 50 years or 500, you are still the heir.”

I shook my head in frustration but did not say anything.

For around a minute we just sat there in silence, until I felt some sharp pinpricks on my leg climbing up. Looking down, I was unsurprised finding Lady Nibbles had finished her breakfast and was now on the way to my lap.

With a soft snort, I helped her up, and she rolled into a ball and began purring.

Vandermeer then spoke up again.

“To change the topic, did you make any progress with the Folly?”

“No, not really. Honestly, we only managed to get really started yesterday. Had a bit of a problem before that.”

He frowned.

“What problem?”

“Well, you told me to use the engineering workaround that I used to develop the cyberware on the problem. That workaround consists of using an offshoot of the NADA technology to observe biological processes on a molecular level.

Unfortunately, we learned that this offshoot makes it impossible to use a microscope to control the artificial fertilization. And the bio-observation unit doesn’t pick up the needle. I guess we could have used a hybrid approach, but in the end, I created a small lab GRI system. I got that finished yesterday.”

“I see. And now it is mostly a waiting game to wait for the next fertilization process?”

“No… not really. I did that at the beginning but had soo much downtime in high compression that I looked at why we do this by hand. And then designed a machine that does it faster. Way faster. Right now I have five of those machines chugging along each doing a dozen fertilizations per minute. And the nice thing is they did that since yesterday afternoon. I now have a few gigabytes of data to go over.”

Vandermeer raised one eyebrow.

“You created five of those machines? What about the costs?”

“Molecular forge and a big NADA. Virtually no lasting material costs, unless I just keep them around, and the rest was just energy. I could make a few dozen and had no real costs.”

Vandermeer emptied his cup and placed it on the table.

“Any commercial application?”

I shrugged.

“No, not really. Unless you want to create something like an army of individual creatures, and instead of cloning them want to use real fertilization, or in projects like this one where I try to find out what really jumpstarts the division it is pretty useless.”

“Well, that is unfortunate, but on the other hand, if it helps you to find the solution now it is a proper investment.”

I shrugged.

“Even if we don’t crack the Folly with this, the information we are gathering should be pretty valuable anyway. By the way, had you any luck in getting the chimpanzee genetics?”

“Yes, I have brought it with me. Along with all the other great apes.”

“Good, that should help us get closer.”