"I’m pleased to have all of you here and look forward to the great things you will accomplish in the future," said Jack. "Now, let’s get down to business. Heidy, I know you have lots of fun news to share, but I’m going to save you for last. So, let’s start with Helga."
Turning to Helga, Jack said, "Helga? Anything noteworthy to share?"
"We completed all the risk assessments for the Radius data centers and have transitioned to keeping an eye on economic and political risks. We haven’t identified anything new that wasn’t already called out in our previous report."
"Thank you, Helga," said Jack. "Phineas?"
"Using mock parts, we have the preliminary assembly line modifications complete and are just waiting on real parts to proceed. And we have made progress on the training material for our sales and tech support people. Lars has more on the fabrication status."
"We’ve received the first batch of parts for one of each of the fabricators and are in the process of completing the on-site assembly. We anticipate completion in the next two physical-world days. Then we’ll be ready for you to install the special components."
"Great news, Lars," said Jack. "Pauline? I understand the Genesis Institute construction is nearing completion?"
"Yes, Jack," said Pauling, smiling. "Nora has done an excellent job of staying on top of everything and has made the handoff of responsibilities much easier than I had anticipated. Besides the modifications needed to install a giga-cube, I and Nora have discussed a few other modifications we believe will be beneficial in the long term."
"Will these modifications delay when the building can be occupied?" asked Jack.
"No, Jack," replied Pauline. "They will delay completion of some of the labs, but the offices will be ready on schedule."
"Great. Thanks, Pauline," said Jack. "Do any of you Genesis directors have any questions?"
"Yes, sir," said Craig Kung. "Since you have the ability to host whatever kind of lab you want here in your soul space, why bother setting up a lab in the physical world?"
"For two reasons," said Jack. "One, so that we can validate experimental results in the physical world, and two, so that we have concrete proof that our results didn’t just magically appear in our hands."
"But why do we care?" asked Craig.
"Because if we don’t have a rational explanation for how we obtained our results, for how we created our advanced tech, the world will wonder, and we will garner the wrong kind of attention. We’ll get lots of attention anyway, but I would like to avoid the government taking too much interest in us too soon."
"Ah. So we need to look like a legitimate research institute instead of a magical tech factory, at least for now," said Craig.
"Yep. Our rate of advancement will be hard enough to believe as it is. Any other questions?"
"Yes," said Amanda. "Most of the space in the building is already allocated to various labs, and what’s left isn’t suitable for robot fabrication. Can we add an extension? We really don’t want to have third-parties making our robot parts."
"I agree," said Jack. "Pauline? Are there any issues with Amanda’s request?"
"There isn’t enough money left in the budget to fund additional construction," said Pauline.
"Ah, that’s easily fixed," said Jack, smiling. "Figure out how much you need, and I’ll transfer the funds to you."
"He’s a billionaire, Pauline," said Nora. "A couple million for a building extension is pocket change for him."
"Oh. Um, just how much money can I request?" asked Pauline.
"Why? Were you hoping to build a particle accelerator?" teased Jack.
"I mean..." she said.
"You don’t need a random atom smasher. With Subatomic-level snapshots and simulations, you can design and run highly detailed and specific experiments. Instead of needing billions of collisions before you see a useful result, one sim will be all you need."
"He’s right, Pauline," said Craig. "Samantha showed me what she’s been doing with simulations, and it completely obviates the need for a partial accelerator."
"Oh, wow. Okay. So no accelerator," said Pauline.
"If you have anything else on your wish list, be sure to send it to me and we’ll see what we can do," said Jack. "Plus, you need to remember we can do all the hard science here in my soul space, so what we build in the physical world is only needed for replicating results." This content belongs to novel·fire.net
"Right, this is all just so new and amazing, it takes time to wrap my head around it."
"I think that’s true for all of us," said Jack.
Then he turned to Heidy. "So, that interview on Business Today was fun to watch. How have things progressed since?"
"Since that interview, we’ve seen a 160% increase in account lottery registrations, and a 500% increase in requests for corporate accounts. So far, BallSoft and Yoctoly have accommodated our capacity increase requests, likely because the drop in usage by AI-n-Stein and other AI companies is freeing up resources."
"However," she continued, "we are seeing longer and longer delays before each new capacity increase request is granted. When you initially said we should complete the data centers as fast as possible, I didn’t see the need. But now I believe your decision was the correct one."
"Yes, I never did like the idea of being reliant on third-party cloud providers," said Jack. "Work with Rina and get the non-core components of the giga-cube servers manufactured as soon as possible."
"Yes, Jack. We’ve already started that effort. We think we can have a few completed in the next month."
"Great. Let’s hope we can get that done before the clouds start throttling our growth. Speaking of growth, what are the numbers looking like right now?"
"We have one point five million personal accounts and thirty-seven hundred corporate accounts. We are on target to earn north of one hundred and fifty million credits by the end of the month. At the rate things are going, we anticipate at least fifteen million personal accounts, and thirty thousand corporate accounts by the end of next month."
"Damn," said Jack, surprised by the numbers. "That means you’ll be pulling a profit even after accounting for all the data center buildouts."
"Yes, and once we transition to our own data centers, our profits will increase ten-fold," said Heidy.
"When that happens, let’s drop our prices," said Jack. "Instead of 20 credits a month, let’s drop the price to 5 credits a month."
"Um, Jack?" said Cindy.
"We need to wait until we have at least five data centers in the Union and three in the Asian alliance before we can drop our dependence on the other cloud providers."
"Alright, I know I said earlier to hold out on building data centers outside the Federation, but get started on that now. Helga’s team completed the risk assessments, so let’s expand into the Union and Asian alliance as soon as possible."