ic Reaching Red (IC)

[Ari]

GM

 

February 12th, Friday, 2016

Summit Transnational building, meeting room 5, floor 10, Wading Way, Freedom City

 

As far as company reps went, the people sent by ailing power and research firm Redshift Energy of Washington weren't much to inspire confidence. Mostly either noticeably young new blood still uncomfortable in their stiff shirts, or old company men who had the tired, rumpled look of somebody going through the motions until retirement, they filled the meeting room with a nervous atmosphere.

 

Meanwhile, quite at his ease, a African-American man in his late twenties had already taken his seat and was quickly reading over a briefcase full of papers crammed with atomic formulae. One of his associates had to quickly nudge him in the shoulder to alert him the entrance of their host at Summit Transnational, Amir ibn Jafar ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Misri. With a hurried, apologetic and distracted smile, the man stood up and joined the other reps.

 

An older man stepped up, offering his pale, soft hand to the imposing philanthropist. "Er, Michael Monday, Mr. Misri, of Redshift Energy. Glad you could meet us, it's a wonderful opportunity for both of our companies." All the Redshift people tried to look like they agreed, the young man with the briefcase looking entirely, naturally confident in contrast.

 

Outside, the city was frosted with snow and clinging ice, but in the conference room the pale sunlight mingled with the warm florescents to cast a strangely tranquil TV-like colour over the walls and long table.

 

Very thoughtfully, someone had put coffee and pastries around, so everyone could be even more jittery than they already were.

[TheAbsurdist]

Amir was anything but jittery.  He might be calculatedly less than observant seeming, but he was never jittery.  People liked confidence, and tended to feed off of it, to latch, to find succor in it.  More importantly, he came in alone.  There was no support, no need for such.

 

"Nice to meet you Michael, call me Amir, it makes things easier, we can be formal when we get to the signing of paperwork."  That easy al-Misri smile was flashed at him and everyone else in the room.  "Can I make acquaintances with everyone else here, as well?"  Letting his head turn and sweeping over the faces of everyone else, noting the one person from Redshift looking less than fidgety.

[Ari]

GM

 

"Oh, of course Mr. M...Amir" Monday quickly turned and introduced his compatriots, most of whom managed smiles that didn't look nearly as edgy as the rest of them.

 

When it came to the younger man with the briefcase, he eagerly shook Amir's hand as Monday intoned "...and this is our most recent addition to the family, Dr. Lavernius Fielder, who is also the creator of the prototype energy convertor we mentioned in the brief. Doctor?"

 

Lavernius' eyes shone as he began "It is without a doubt one of the finds of this century. A way to harness the expansion and decay of matter and energy, recycling the death of our universe into-!"

 

Monday coughed "Er, yes, doctor, perhaps the presentation might be more informative, and less prosey?" Lavernius paused, a little bashed, but quickly began setting up for the demonstration, including a narrow red metal belt that he carefully donned before proceeding.

 

Standing before the blank screen of the conference room, the shades tilted to obscure the outside and the lights dimmed, the physicist began crisply, addressing their host exclusively.

 

"Redshift, Amir, is the principle that as energy slows it expands, to be very broad and a little inaccurate. The diffusion of heat, the expansion of materiels in changing temperatures, is the most obvious example."

 

He clicked the remote, and projected behind him stood a massive armored giant, in some sort of high-tech cradle in some Redshift-branded facility.

 

"I have found a way to make that principle of very real and practical benefit. That suit of armor" he tapped the belt around his waist "is contained in this. Shall I demonstrate?" 

[TheAbsurdist]

 

Amir blinked a bit, and he arched a brow as they turned off the lights.  This was his building, his demesne, and they pulled that?  Oh... interesting.  Interesting.  The retort was not immediate as he found his way to a seat and then took it.  Sipping at the coffee in his had.  The arch remained as he looked at the doctor, Lavernius, and nodded in assent to the question.

 

This wasn't going to end well, he knew it, and his free hand idly tapped out a message to Ana, illuminating her on the likelihood that something was going to go wrong.  While firmly thinking that he would stick to telecoms for the next couple quarters, less potential issues.  Unlike people playing with fundamental principles of physics.

[Ari]

GM

 

Lavernius grinned at the faint sign of assent "You won't regret that, Amir." He tapped the ovular mark(button or buckle just didn't seem right) on the front of the belt in a vaguely Morse-like sequence, and suddenly the physicist began to glow red. Faintly, at first, so the dimmed lights helped make the process a little less abrupt. The air shivered, and as if unfolding the rest of a suit of armor began expanding from the belt, covering Lavernius from head to toe in moments.

 

His body began to grow, filling out like a close-up on camera. His head and shoulders and feet were past the floor almost before the armor had covered them, and soon his torso alone was in view, filling most of the meeting room.

 

But the ceiling didn't buckle and the floor was intact. The red shell of Lavernius' armor was immense but hazy, passing through Amir in a faint wave of heat. 

 

"As you can guess, Amir," the physicist's voice rang metallically through the meeting room's sound system "I did not want to grow so large I came through the building, but also not so little that I had to walk through a wall to show something had happened. But that's just the first part! Not only can I disperse my mass using this technology, I can choose where and how much! To make this a proper demonstration, I would like to invite you and my colleagues to the roof, where there is no risk of-" the scientist's voice changed sharply "Hold on, something's going on outside, people carrying signs and shouting around the building."

 

A casual glance quickly showed that was the case. A remarkably large gathering of Freedonians from a broad swath of the city was outside, many of them carrying signs and effigies, most of them bundled up, and all of them looking very angry. Inside the building their chants were just a dull roar, almost unnoticeable unless you really tried to listen for them.

 

Amir easily caught Monday and one of his associates looking fleetingly at each other, some unspoken, terrified question and ambiguous, unhelpful answer passing between them in just a horrified second. Unaware of this, Lavernius went on blithely.

 

"Let's see, magnification and focusing lenses are working as intended, let's see those signs..."Better DEADshift than REDshift", I don't understand that one, "No More T-Gates", ditto...ah! Got one! "Mad Science Costs Lives: Stop Terminus Experiments" which is just ridiculous. Nobody is doing anything of the sort, they know how dangerous that is!"

[TheAbsurdist]

To his credit Amir did not look scared, his express blase, almost, as he continued to finish his coffee, and then set it down on the table, and he slowly stood up, casually pitching the empty paper cup into the nearby waste bin.  "Excuse me, Dr. Lavernius?  Would you mind terribly turning off the suit now?"  Said softly, but clearly, enough for the man to hear, as he glanced over to Monday and the rest of the idiots with Redshift.

 

They had helpfully moved themselves over to that category.  How considerate!  Now Amir didn't have to pretend to like them.

[Ari]

GM

 

With probably another sequential tap of the belt's...heart, Lavernius quickly collapsed back into full view, beaming at Amir and his fellow Redshift employees. Evidently his glee at the success of his tech was pushing small matters like the crowd of protestors outside to the bottom of his priorities list.

 

Turning proudly to the papa of Summit Transnational, the scientist asked blithely "So, what was it you wanted me shrunk down for, Amir? Oh! Do you want to see the inversion principle at work? Maybe-!"

 

"He wants to know about the power source." Monday broke in wearily, running a hand through his thinning hair "Mr. al-Misri, I promise you and can readily demonstrate those people outside are mistaken. Our work has nothing to do with the Terminus, that's all a smear campaign orchestrated by the ECHO Group down in Silicon Valley. They might even have arranged this protest, you know how unscrupulous they can be!"

 

The ECHO Group was, admittedly, not exactly known for strict adherence to ethical integrity. Unless those ethics involved the phrase "screw you got mine". Their work in the super-technology field was (grudgingly) praised as being at least in the realm of the public output of super-geniuses like Archetech's boss Miss Americana, but riddled with unnumerable violations of the spirit of the law and labour standards.

 

But an East Coast giant like ECHO trying to slander floundering Redshift Energy about a secret pet project by one of its sparse wunderkind? Even one involving a mass-shifting suit? That excuse just raised further questions.

[TheAbsurdist]

 

Amir grabbed the bridge of his nose and squeezed, rubbing in a slow circle as it happened., he sighed a little bit at this.  They were acting like amateurs, no wonder they were in such dire straits.  "Oh, let me count the ways..  FIrst, this was a presentation, not a demonstration.  I was expecting metrics and data, a fancy presentation deck, maybe even some videos with middling to excellent production values.  Not a demonstration of advanced, largely untested tech in my damned headquarters which is in the middle of a metropolitan area and should something go wrong I will be held accountable for a screw up that causes massive property damages and harms people!"

 

It was rare Amir looked angry, but her did now.  His eyebrows knitted together as he resembled a storm cloud, and perhaps reminded people that even without his powers he was a fairly good sized man.  "So let's not try and shift or assign any potential blame to an outside party.  Right now you are dealing with me, so you are dealing with me to secure the needed backing to continue this project."

 

He let his hand fall away, only to lift it back up to smooth back hair that was already impeccable, even in a ruffled state.  "Do you have that presentation?"

[Ari]

GM

 

Monday opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at Dr. Fielder for salvation. Luckily the physicist was still in high spirits and quickly resumed where he'd left off.

 

The rest of the presentation and meeting was fairly conventional, besides the subject matter. There were videos showing the practical applications of redshift devices in cases from industrial safety gear to preventing fatal train collisions and personal flight. There was an entire five minutes of film showing Fielder and some of his colleagues slowing photons emanating from a desk lamp into a hard sphere of solid light. 

 

"Really hurt when Amy threw it at my head!" Lavernius added cheerfully before turning to a dizzying array of test results and the finer points of what worked and to what extent.   Thankfully Lavernius was one of those engineers who knew how to explain things in ways non-technically-oriented people could understand. Even more luckily, he didn't appear to know that pop-culture existed, and opportunities for amazingly bad jokes slid by in a blissful fog.

 

The part explaining that suits like what he wore were a prototype for rescue workers to explore collapsed or damaged buildings to locate survivors of disaster was greatly overshadowed by the sheer potential of the new energy source.

 

At last the brisk yet thorough presentation came to a close, Dr. Fielder clicked off the projector and turned to Amir hopefully.

 

"In conclusion, what this technology does best is make the fast, dangerous pace of modern life less risky. With sufficient backing we could all but eliminate car crashes as a cause of death, prevent deadly falls, slow the spread of fires, extend the time people have to reach medical care, almost every danger imaginable can be alleviated with this discovery. That's just the beginning. Just the obvious stuff for current technology and current science.

 

"What do you think?"

[TheAbsurdist]

 

Amir settled down and watched the presentation, irritated, but he had dealt with blissfully unaware tech types before.  Especially on days ending in 'y'.  He saw the possibilities, and a possible explanation for what he did, though he got that it was a fundamental difference, what with his ability to literally metabolize the energy he interacted with.

 

"I think large scale deployment and design for functionality are the biggest challenges, but prototypes being what they are that's to be expected.  So what happens in case of failure?  Even on a theoretical level."  This was the big one, for him.  He wasn't a physicist, which some people thanked, they thanked very hard, but he wasn't an idiot, and he knew that this could snowball out of control quickly.  Especially playing with stuff beyond the bleeding edge, like they were.

[Ari]

GM

 

"Oh, any number of things, Mr. al-Misri!" Lavernius assured the financial mogul, taking out his ArcheType A3 smartphone and quickly swiping to a video stored on the device, which he handed to Amir "But this is the most dangerous result of a malfunction."

 

The video was surveillance footage, showing a redshifter device being attached to an electric teakettle. It was switched on, and at first all seemed well, until the kettle and shifter simply vanished.

 

"Total atomic dispersal. The bonds between the molecules simply disintegrating all at once."

 

The physicist took the phone back, looking quite imperturbed. "But so far that has happened in less than one percent of all trials. And only by intentionally introducing flaws into the construction process. Redshift has learned from that...unfortunate accident with the truck. Ensuring people won't just freeze in place, or turn into ghosts, or come home to no home, will be all our responsibility. Especially mine."

[TheAbsurdist]

 

"Okay, so across how many trials?"  He frowned as he looked at the that phone and he shook his head.  "Okay, so you don't know entirely, what happens when it fails?  I mean... I have plenty of experimental tech, but this stuff seems a bit past the edge of what I normally take on.  Except when I am punching supervillains in the face.  This seems to be something a supervillain has.  Do you have supervillains on your buyer list?"

 

He settled back a bit, and he pursed his lips.  "Right, so what is the cost for a unit?  Currently."  Because theoretical stuff was always ugly, and he was familia to how those balance sheets didn't pan out.

[Ari]

GM

 

"Well...eighty-three trials with our Stage 7 prototypes. I wanted to do a full hundred, but Mr. Trafford, the CEO, he said we could if we didn't mind cutting our salary to make room in the budget. The test vehicles and other special gear wasn't cheap. Most supervillains don't really know what "budget limits" or "safety regulations" mean, and nobody walked or did anything crazy, so maybe we're alright?" The younger man shifted awkwardly "We don't get many super people in the Emeralds."

 

"The field that most people will actually find useful is pretty small, so the price could be well under a thousand dollars. Maybe as little as a third or so, but I don't know what Mr. Trafford or Mr. Mars will be able to swing vis a vis marketing, that's not really my area. I just know what the component cost was for us. It wasn't much, part of why we were able to get this far."

 

Lavernius shrugged apologetically and glanced at Monday, who cleared his throat and offered "Cost of manufacture will be offset by partnership with an automated factory in China, overseen by safety officials and our own technicians. So long as we get the initial funding, that is. And the economy being what it is, people will want to protect what they've got as much as possible. This is still the land of the automobile after all, Mr. al-Misri."

[TheAbsurdist]

 

"This isn't a lab.  This is a place of business.  So until you have a thousand trials without incidents I'd rather you didn't use beyond bleeding edge tech in my building.  Especially before market close."  Still rubbing at the bridge of his nose, and he sighed a little bit.

 

"So let's review, you've hit the edge of your funding, and one would argue that you've yet to start testing practical applications in the fields you intend to release them.  But you already have some measure of pricing and logistics worked out, while admitting that it will be a niche product, and expect that to lower the price point?"

 

Taking his hand from his face, his eyes closed he gestured to their presentation.  "How much were you asking for?"