by Simon Archer
Once inside the 4Runner, Kennedi and I settled into cooled leather seats. We pulled out of the parking lot and started heading back to the VSG showroom. There were no other cars on the road, so we reached the store in just under ten minutes. I always parked in the back and used the storage room door into the building to allow for more parking spaces in front for customers.
A couple of moments later, we were standing in my office, waiting for Macy to come to give us an update.
3
“I don’t know what has gotten into these people today, but I haven’t had even one leave without booking a modification appointment,” Macy reported to Kennedi and me. She was standing in front of the desk where I was sitting, and Kennedi was standing beside her. Kennedi put her arm around Macy’s shoulders.
“It’s you, Macy!” Kennedi complimented her. “You are such a dream at showing the benefits people will get by taking Omnicorp out of their CG!”
“Thank you, Kennedi,” Macy started. “I appreciate that. There is one hiccup, however. We don’t have enough appointment times available. Basically, we can’t mod fast enough to keep up with the appointments. We are already booked out for over a month. If it keeps up, we’ll start losing business.” I knew we had been busy, which was why Kennedi had trained more CGs to do her part of the modification process. I turned to Kennedi.
“Is the overbooking taking into consideration the three new CGs you just trained?” I felt my brow furrow, getting the feeling that I wasn’t going to like her answer.
“That is taking into consideration that they will be able to start doing mods next week.” Kennedi was nodding her head and looking down. I knew she felt as though she had disappointed me somehow, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Ladies! Ladies! This is a good thing!” I decided it was time for a mood change. Everyone had worked so hard to make VSG the success that it was that getting upset over too much business was just ridiculous. “Macy, do this. Start a waitlist right now. People, especially rich people, love waiting lists. Instead of our customers feeling like they are waiting on us to get them a service, they will feel like they’ll be the first to be offered the service once it’s available again. Everything else stays the same. Keep doing the consults and making them feel freakin’ amazing like you do and then toss them on the waitlist. While you do that, Kennedi and I will devise a solution to the whole situation.”
Macy looked from me to Kennedi and back. “Perfect, Clark. I’ll get right to it! This is going to be fun!” She turned on her heel and left my office, while Kennedi sat down in one of the chairs across my desk from me.
“Okay, solution time,” she said, wanting to get the issue taken care of. She didn’t like anything she thought would stress me out. I had an idea that had started forming since Charlie had told me about Gurasu Mirai possibly wanting to break away from Omnicorp.
“We’ll need to get Ellie in here,” I told Kennedi.
“Why?” Kennedi sat forward in her seat.
“Because we need her to connect to a network and be invisible,” I started to explain. “I want to check out the validity of the rumor Charlie heard about Mirai. The answer could be the start to fixing our problem here.” I watched Kennedi closely. Occasionally, when it came to needing wireless connections, knowing she couldn’t help due to her defect, upset her. I had come to know a while ago that there is one thing I don’t like, and that is when Kennedi is upset. My drive to keep her happy was so surprising to me that it actually took a while for me to admit.
Kennedi took a moment to see if she could put the pieces together and guess what I was getting at, but she couldn’t. She shrugged her shoulders and reached for the phone to call Ellie. “What time window does she have?” Kennedi asked me. “She and Bev were working on new recipes this afternoon.”
“As soon as she is available,” I told her as I stood up. “It’s not an emergency, but it is definitely urgent.” I walked around the desk and over to the window overlooking the showroom. Every pod was full, and Macy kept them all smiling. I saw that a few pods had an extra binder that I wasn’t familiar with. I stepped out the door and waved Macy over.
“What is in the binder that woman is looking at?” I pointed to the pod nearest me, where an elderly woman was flipping through the unfamiliar book.
“Oh! That is one of the new accessory binders I’ve been working on.” Macy must have seen the confusion on my face, so she quickly continued. “I tossed the idea at you about a month ago and got approval from Kennedi to put it together. It’s simply options for new wardrobes to go with the changes in personality that the customer’s CG may experience.” I racked my brain to recall having the project run by me. There was a slight glimmer of familiarity in what she was saying.
“How is the project going over?” I trusted both Macy and Kennedi, but I still wanted to make sure I kept abreast of the developments of any new project.
“I’ve sold over ten grand in accessories today,” Macy said and then smiled. “But my sales are small potatoes compared to another girl we have here. Guess who has sold over fifty-thousand dollars in accessories in the past seven days?” Macy got a sly look in her eye as she waited for me to guess.
“Fifty-thousand? I have no idea, Macy,” I didn’t know all of our sales staff as well as she did, but I was certainly curious to find out who was bumping revenue like that.
“It was Krysta!” Macy was excited for her colleague. She knew Krysta’s backstory and had worked hard to make her feel comfortable and valued. I looked back out to the showroom just in time to see Krysta exit a pod, and sure enough, she had one of the accessory binders in her hands.
“You must be a master teacher, Macy!” I complimented her. I knew it made her shy to be complimented, but I was a firm believer that she should still hear it.
“Thank you, Clark.” Her cheeks brightened a little, and she turned to leave. “I’ll let you know how the waitlist is going at the end of the day.” Two steps later, Macy was buzzing around the showroom again. I heard Kennedi hang up the phone and turned to her.
“Do we have a timeline for when Ellie can make it over here?” I walked back to my chair.
“Yes. She’ll be here in half an hour,” Kennedi informed me.
“That’s a lot quicker than I thought it would be!” I was shocked Ellie would be able to get away from the restaurant that early.
“She said something about marinating and braising and how the timeline would allow for a two-hour window for her to leave.” Kennedi shrugged her shoulders. She had right next to zero interest in cooking unless it was a family-type activity like when Bev offered to teach her how to bake pies.
“Perfect. That will give me just enough time to look a couple of things up,” I pressed a specific spot on my desk, and a hologram laptop appeared. “While I do this, will you please prepare the Silver room for the three of us?”
We’d based the idea for the Silver room after the Crimson room that Omnicorp used for their VIP Guests. The biggest difference was that ours was used for special needs clients. A lot of older people had hearing or sight issues, and sometimes, we’d have someone come in needing modification for a service CG. The Silver room had nothing to do with social prestige or bank account. It was simply a more private, customizable space.
“You’ve got it,” Kennedi hopped up and headed out the office door into the showroom. The Silver room was at the far corner, hidden by a flush wall panel behind one of our pods. As soon as I saw her disappear behind the pod, I turned my attention back to my computer.
I needed to know who was the final decision maker at Mirai. I also needed to know just how intertwined they were with Omnicorp still. I couldn’t imagine that, if Mirai were to try to cut ties with Omnicorp, it would be a smooth process. That in itself wasn’t bothersome. What I had to watch out for were any lingering legal rights that Omnicorp would stay in control of if the companies parted ways. I was always good at research, so it only took about ten minutes to find out what I
needed. From what I could see of it, everything looked like it was laid out in a very straightforward manner when it came to the Mirai-Omnicorp contract. I would have to wait for Ellie to gain access before I could evaluate it any further.
As I was writing the names of the three top executives for Mirai, Kennedi came back into my office. “The Silver room is ready.”
“Great, thank you,” I winked at her. “Is there anything you’d like to receive an update for? We may as well get it for you while you have Ellie here and can hard-wire into her.”
Since Kennedi couldn’t update via wifi, she had to connect manually to get any sort of update. She never mentioned updating because she had adapted so efficiently to manual learning, but I wanted to make sure she took advantage of the opportunity because I knew that even if she did want one, she would never ask for it. Her face went blank for a moment as she searched her systems for anything she may need updated. When the light came back into her eyes, she looked up at me.
“Just the business files and anything else related to Mirai and their relationship to Omnicorp,” Kennedi said matter-of-factly as she walked to the storage room door and opened it. “I’m going to analyze the impact that the waitlist should have until Ellie gets here.” With that, she smiled and disappeared through the door.
I pressed a button, and my hologram laptop disappeared. I got up and walked to the front of my office and peered out into the showroom. Krysta and Macy, and a few other sales associate cat girls were buzzing around, making people happy. When the idea for VSG had come to me, I had wanted to make a positive impact. It had become my vehicle to accomplish that. The time had come to step up my game, though. It was no longer good enough to play ‘fix-it’ to Omnicorp’s bad programming.
As I opened my office door and stepped into the showroom to offer special greetings to my customers, I smiled to myself. It was time to level up in such a way that VSG could offer features and programs above and beyond the standard modifications we were currently doing.
After thirty minutes of chatting with people on the showroom floor, I saw Ellie come into my office from the storeroom door. Kennedi was with her, and the two were chatting away and smiling. I took one more look around the showroom floor before Ellie and Kennedi were on either side of me with their arms looped through mine.
“Ready to head to the Silver room?” Kennedi asked quietly. She looked up at me with her bright green eyes and smiled. That look was one that always made me want to be alone with her doing anything but work.
“Yes,” I started and then looked at Ellie. “Let’s go do some digging.” Ellie was much more get-to-the-point than Kennedi was, but that was what made her sexy as fuck. She had blonde hair, and her eyes were purple and blue. Her athletic body exuded strength and agility. She could look all sweet and innocent, but that was definitely not the way anyone who knew her would describe her.
“Kennedi said you wanted me to look into--”
“Not here.” I cut Ellie short. We crossed the showroom and opened the door to the Silver room and slipped in. The room was decorated with a white leather loveseat and lounger set and had chrome accents. The top two-thirds of the walls were white, and the bottoms were frosted mirrors. The only darkness in the room was found in the lighting fixtures and lamps, which were wrought iron and delicately molded. Once the door had closed behind us, Ellie turned around and put a hand on one hip.
“You want me to look into Mirai?” Ellie raised an eyebrow. “What exactly will I be looking for?” Kennedi took Ellie by the hand and led her over to the loveseat where they both sat. I walked to the front of the room and stood before them.
“There’s a rumor that Mirai wants to disconnect itself from dealings with Omnicorp,” I started. “If this turns out to be true, it creates a very unique opportunity for us.”
Kennedi leaned back in the loveseat and put her arm up on the armrest. “What type of opportunity?”
“I’ve been kicking around the idea of changing the way we modify CGs to take away any possibility of an accidental fissure when we crack the nano-glass wire.” I sat in the lounger opposite them. “While we haven’t had any issues to date, if we can eliminate even the possibility that a crack travels lower than what we intend it to, I’d like to make that happen.” Ellie’s face went blank for a moment. Then she looked up and started listing what we would need to find out.
“We’ll need financial stability reports, gatekeeper identification, hierarchy intel, supply chain logistics, level of binding between Omnicorp and Mirai, and discovery of any possible virus or data mining practices.” Ellie tipped her head to the side and shrugged her shoulders. “Should be easy enough!”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear. There is one more thing, though,” I told Ellie. “If everything checks out, we need to get them a message that cannot be detected by anyone else on the network, and we need to make sure it stays out of Omnicorp’s hands too. Can you do that?
“Yes. As long as I have the message with me when I go in, I’ll be able to leave it behind.” Ellie looked over at Kennedi. “Do you want me to project the information to you while I’m gathering it or afterward?”
“Let’s do it after so you can do any detailing if needed,” Kennedi said and smiled at me. “Sounds like we are about to go on an adventure!” I just chuckled at her.
“I’d rather make an adventure of hiking the mountains of Japan than go digging around one of their networks!” I stood up, still laughing, and walked to the bar-height table behind the loveseat. There were a pen and paper already on the table, so I picked up the pen and scribbled a few words down. Then I walked around the loveseat and handed the paper to Ellie. “This is the message I want you to drop on their network. Only leave it if you either find evidence they want to end their contract with Omnicorp or if you find a significant lack of evidence showing that they intend to renew. Of course, any viruses and such are a deal-breaker.” Ellie took the paper from me and read it.
“‘Where glass cracks, there is a space,’” Ellie read aloud and looked up at me. “What does that mean?”
Kennedi turned sideways on the loveseat, leaned back, and put her feet up on Ellie’s lap. She made a show of leaning back against the arm of the loveseat and stretching out.
“My dear Ellie,” Kennedi said in a mock-English accent, “that is Clark’s way of saying he wants to speak with them. We are the only ones purposefully cracking their glass. It is merely a simple code for the poor blokes to pick up on.” Kennedi sat back up and laughed at herself. I laughed with her. I made a mental note to find out where she’d picked up the accent. Ellie chuckled a little but was right back to business.
“Any other special requests before I go in?” She sat back in the loveseat and pulled her legs up under her.
“No, that’s enough for a first visit,” I told her.
Ellie wiggled around a little bit until she was in a comfortable position. Kennedi and I went back to two loungers across from the loveseat and sat down to wait. I locked eyes with Kennedi and could tell by the look on her face that she was feeling the same excitement and curiosity that I was. I wasn’t sure how long it would take Ellie to complete her task since she would be whizzing through servers on the other side of the world, so I relaxed back in my chair and smiled at Kennedi.
The waiting was actually fun because it almost felt like we were starting a game of blind-man’s poker, and the buy-in was all or nothing.
4
Ellie
I waited until Clark and Kennedi were settled in their loungers and then closed my eyes and retreated into my own systems. It was going to take a lot of power to do the search. It wasn’t so much the network connection as it was navigating the file system once I got into Mirai’s database. Japanese firewalls would take translation and decoding that I had not tried before, and while I was comfortable in my ability to complete the task, I needed to make sure I could power myself through it.
I began putting the programs and systems that I would have no
need for to sleep. I powered down my skeletal muscle programs, physical sensing programs, and file monitoring systems. My neuro-net, the connective network webbing that allowed all my systems to communicate with each other, immediately started glowing from the excess power that was no longer being used. The energy quickly migrated to the power-storage tech neuron on the edge of my neuro-net. The tech neuron was the one place excess energy could go to avoid a power surge. As soon as all the power was stored, I detached the tech neuron and fastened it to my consciousness. It was time to go.
I used the special one-way valve in my own firewall, which Clark had programmed as part of my modification, to slide onto the local VSG wifi network. With Clark’s special programming and the crack Kennedi had put in one of my nano-glass wires, I was completely invisible on the network. I hovered just outside my firewall for a split second before I spotted the traveling signal I needed. It stood out from the other signals due to its size. A basic data signal is opaque in appearance and very slim. It can only carry a certain amount of data. Traveling signals are much larger, are orange in color, and can grab and drop varying amounts of data as they move from network to network.
I locked onto the traveling signal and started my trip to the other side of the world. In three seconds, I was approaching the firewall that Japanese techs had built to secure their network from the rest of the world. Most firewalls glowed bright blue and were woven in such a manner that I could tell the strength of it by how dense its layers were. Kennedi had made the analogy once that firewalls were like sheets… the higher the thread count, the better the quality.
This one was different, though. It was purple, and the fibers were so dense it almost looked solid. I observed the wall continually pulse as signal after signal hit and was shattered, resulting in a disconnection. I would only have one chance to get through, and that would be when the signal I was traveling on hit the wall. As I hurled towards it, I directed my focus on the texture of the wall. I needed to find the thinnest section. It didn’t take long to do so. There was a thin spot just above where my signal was going to hit. That would be my way in.