Tunnel Rat Chapter 370 (Patreon)

This, and the last few chapters have been a bit raw. I'll be editing them again before they go up on RR. They are difficult chapters to write, so if the words are flowing, I just keep going. Lots of different things to take into account. Many loose threads are getting tied up. (And a few more dropped for later.)
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Preparations had been made and remade over the last few weeks. Every time they thought they had time, something bad happened somewhere in the world that needed an inventive solution from the helpful people at Rhebus.

Seventy thousand people in Russia were having the same dream every night where they were chased by dinosaurs and eaten again and again. The cause was a videogame, released unknowingly with subliminal images added by a group of disgruntled ex-employees who demand a billion dollars for ransom. The perpetrators were caught but even they didn't know how to reverse the problem and keeping track of seventy thousand sleep-deprived people who needed to be on suicide watch was straining the city of Moscow. Rhebus had already developed a computer simulation of a human brain. Bork had done it as a side project one summer when he got interested in neural pathways and found older research on a concept called an Overmind.

It came in useful when they took on the project of eradicating dream dinosaurs. Bork worked with Nina to upgrade his model to include random factors and societal differences so it was more accurate in different parts of the world. Using the new simulation, they created a hundred test cases, added the subliminal effects, and then used the simulations to develop a way to erase the changes in the user's brains. As usual, there were side effects: Bork became interested in the unaffected population, and Nina got obsessed with the Overmind concept.

Of the 100 simulations, 89 were affected by the subliminal stimuli and 11 ignored them. Wanting to find out how some people had a natural resistance, Bork looked for data on the users of the game who hadn't been affected. 94% of the unaffected were people who loved dinosaurs a little too much, 5% had a natural resistance to subliminal messages, and the other 1% turned out to be psychopaths. Investigating the 1%, Bork solved 14 single murder cases and was able to point the authorities at 2 serial murderers. After that, he went back to studying the people who were immune to this malicious technology. Algernon and Zander spent some time discussing the morality of trying to identify and tag possible psychopaths in a population of people. Onyx found himself being sought out by Nina for his thoughts on her Overmind project and how it might relate to their negative experiences in the Genesis game.

Not all of the emergencies Rhebus took on required innovative solutions, although those were the ones they lived for. Most were run-of-the-mill disasters that involved coordinating relief efforts with other groups, providing the needed medical, food, and housing for survivors, and mitigating more damage. Volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and tornadoes couldn't be stopped, but they could be predicted and steps taken to move the most vulnerable from their path.

'Falling Sky' was the latest of this type of disaster. There were simply too many objects in space and not enough was being done to keep them there. Twice in the last year, objects large enough to cause damage had fallen to earth. One was an older model space station whose orbit rapidly decayed and the military junta now controlling the country that had launched it took no responsibility. It fell into the Pacific Ocean, missing Hawaii by ten miles. The second was an asteroid brought from the further out to be mined for its iron content for near-space construction. The remaining rock should have been pushed out of Earth's orbit, but the mining corporation claimed they'd only bought the iron in it, and the owners of the space tug claimed they'd sold it and it wasn't their problem. Before the legal battle could be solved it was hit by a century-old communication satellite and nudged earthward.

Half of the rocky, iron-rich asteroid was burned up during reentry. The remainder hit dead center on the small Austrian village of Hallstatt. Only a few hours of warning was given, and experts argued that the meteor would land in the nearby lake, mitigating damage except for homes near the water's edge. Half of the 900 residents left the area and most of the tourists. When the meteor hit the town it killed over 3000 people, some of whom had come to film the impact in the lake from the surrounding hills. Hallstatt disappeared.

The alphabet first learned of the meteor while flying home from Moscow. Zander hacked into numerous observatories and Rhebus was given access to more. They correctly calculated the trajectory, notified authorities, and then watched as people argued about their findings and presented their own. The alphabet had seen this happen before. They staged a fleet of relief helicopters outside the impact zone and began coordinating the search for survivors. Zander started a 'grassroots' campaign to urge new laws about near-space objects, asteroid mining, and the registry of satellites. It was an old problem, but one that was getting worse.

As they were landing, Onxy scanned for local news reports and came upon something interesting. "Look at this. Claw Master is upsetting the status quo in the energy distribution systems on the East Coast of the US."

Bork looked up from his screen, "Will it lower our energy costs in the habitat? Our costs are skyrocketing the more we build, and even with the auxiliary power from solar and wind, we are almost at the limit of what we can be supplied with. It's frustrating."

Nina looked over Onyx's shoulders, reading articles at breakneck speed along with him. "We are sure that Claw Master is Milo, and if so, Milo shares your frustration. He's been on a rampage today. Stock prices are up and down and he's been buying up companies, splitting them, and putting up parts of them for sale at cheap prices."

Zander yelled out, "Details. Give us the juicy details."

Onyx yelled back, "It starts out juicy. From what I can tell, there was a scheme to short the stock of Providence Systems which supplies power to part of our habitat. Milo came in when stock prices hit bottom, bought up all the cheap shares, and kept buying as the stock started shooting back up. Looks like he hit a lot of the Providence subsidiaries all at once."

Anything with Milo was interesting to the Alphabet. Arguments over his sanity were a regular event now. Often, his actions were like those of subatomic particles, only detectable by what changed around him. The humorous turn of events that landed Victor Seimovich permanently in jail was just one such escapade.

"He's shredding the companies. He only seems interested in certain parts, mostly their contracts with the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York habitats."

"Stock prices are going up and down. People were dumping until he started buying, and now others are buying, but the biggest corporations are still dumping. They don't have faith in what he's putting together. They're buying up all the cast-off companies that are profitable. He's burned through nearly a billion dollars acquiring unprofitable companies and contracts."

"Technodyne is behind the whole thing, I'm curious to see their reaction. They don't take kindly to anyone poaching their illegal deals."

===

Indeed, an emergency meeting of Technodyne Energy Suppliers was discussing just that subject. When someone interfered with their buyout of the Providence family of companies, it triggered alarms. Other corporations who had gone along with the plan and dumped stock were now furious with Technodyne. Not that they acted that way. TES was the biggest energy dealer in the country and if you wanted to stay in business, you stayed on their good side and stayed polite. The fact that a new corporation was coming out of nowhere and doing neither of those things only made their losses worse.

TES didn't care much about their losses, but they were interested in the newcomer. Whether to ignore, buy, or crush was always an interesting decision. Especially when they were behaving like this one was. "Any idea what they are up to?"

"Not really. At first, it seemed like an investment to ensure their own energy needs, but they've gone beyond that. Someone tipped them off to the stock deal. And when I say 'tipped' I mean 'all the information they needed to steal the deal'. They are close to having a majority of the voting stock of Providence Systems, and if they get that, they essentially own the company and its subsidiaries."

"How much do we own?"

"TES owns 17% and we own another 6% through smaller corporations we control. Claw Master owns 42%. We could start buying up the outstanding shares and keep control."

"Do we want that? Seems like a lot of work and expense. We'd need to spin a new group to run them, and they are barely profitable overall at this point. The highest the stock has ever been for PS was 174.25 and that was a decade ago. In recent years it's hovered around 40. It hit a low of 4.50 after we crashed half the subsidiaries and started the bankruptcy rumors. It's back to 17 a share now, and I project the highest it could get this year with a good dividend is 30 a share. The non-voting stock is far worse."

"What about this? Instead of trying to fight over the scraps, let's see how hungry Claw Master is. We could make them an offer to sell our voting and nonvoting stock and clear the books on this one."

"Hmm, depending on the price, it wouldn't look bad to our shareholders. But it leaves a lot of people angry. They followed the tune we set."

"Don't care. We're Technodyne. They can be as angry as they like and it doesn't affect us. If we can get Claw Master anywhere near 30 a share for voting and 10 for nonvoting, I say we sell. Make them an initial offer of 40 voting and 15 nonvoting and we let the lawyers dicker over the price for a week." The vote was taken and the process started. Emails zipped back and forth between accountants and lawyers and then an offer was made to Claw Master three hours later.

The response from Claw Master was immediate: "35 Voting, 12.5 nonvoting. Take it or leave it. We're busy today."

When this message was presented at the afternoon session of the Board of TES, there were exclamations and anger from the low end of the table. At the high end were blank or curious expressions, shading up to smiles from the two vice presidents. The chairman mulled the counteroffer over and then laughed. "Interesting. I wonder how busy? Have they managed to buy up any more stock?"

"Yessir. They now own 46% of the voting stock for TES.

"Hell, let them have it then. They've got money from somewhere and don't mind spending it. That price makes us a profit. Like they said, It's a busy day and we have other irons in the fire."

The Alphabet was home in the habitat and arguing final details for Silent Ninja Day. An attempt to revive the rules for the Dreaded Pink Ninja was rejected, but it was a near thing. The discussion was slow since they were still watching what Zander called 'Milo Ripples'.

"Stock prices for two dozen energy companies are crashing. Technodyne is selling their shares and control to someone. Has to be Milo.
Without TES in charge, energy prices are going to go down from unregulated competition and profits will follow."

"Good for consumers."

"Only if the price is backed up by supply."

"Where do we stand as Rhebus in the habitat?"

"Oh, no worries there. Claw Master owns all the transmission rights and supply contracts to this habitat. They just renegotiated a deal with the government. Strangely, the committee that oversees such things had the contracts ready to go and just had to lower the numbers of what they'll pay to Claw Master for taking care of the habitats in three states."

"But where is he getting the energy?"

"Complex, and I don't have the time to do the research. Could take a full month. He's buying and selling energy futures on the open market like a madman. He's also dealing with Pollution Tax Credits and other pseudo-currencies that corporations use to confuse their trades. I've yet to find a pattern to his system, and can't figure out how he plans to make money."

Bork let out a loud hiss and began typing furiously. Then he looked up at the others with narrowed eyes. "Milo just bought the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant outside of Philadelphia, along with all other facilities attached to it, and their transmission rights and contracts. Of note, I shouldn't have to remind any of you that includes the barely function Limerick Fusion Generator located two miles away and the non-functional computing facilities attached to it"

"He bought a Quantum Fortress?!"

"It seems so. I hacked the government end. I'm forwarding you the details and the proposal. The nuclear plant has been losing millions a year, forever. It was mostly shut down when the Fusion Generator became operational. Without an AI running it, the Fusion Generator can only run at 2% efficiency and is also losing money. Milo just paid 20 Billion dollars for the whole thing and pledged 10 billion more for repairs and upgrades. Dammit! I want all that wasted computing power if we could get those Quantum Cores functional and link to them through a datanet connection, do you know what we could do?!!"

Zander laughed. "Get caught?"

"Well, besides that."

"Put in cages so they could study us?"

Bork scowled at them. "But it's just sitting there, wasted, like all the other Fortresses! I want one!"

Nina did too, as did they all. "Can we build one?"

Zander shook his head. "Need power. Not enough in the hab. Maybe we should start working on Cold Fusion again?"

Onyx was sitting back, an odd look on his face. "We missed something. Where did he get the money? Who in the world has that much."

Algernon snapped his fingers, "Belinda Seimovich turned 18. How much was she supposed to get? Three billion?"

"Three TRILLION."

Algernon shrugged, "Only missed it by three orders of magnitude. And, I see that Manpower's stock is going up after the announcement of her taking over as president and her father retiring. Hmm, let me check this, my system found something...wow. I want three trillion dollars now."

"What did she do?"

"Bought the whole habitat, all the parts not owned by us, Genesis, or Milo. The whole thing. And Milo is providing the power. This needs to be investigated. I smell a conspiracy and worse...I wasn't invited!

Zander stood up on his chair. "Sadly, I must be the adult in the room. A role I detest. We will schedule a full day devoted to this subject. Hell, a week if needed. But tomorrow is Silent Ninja Day, and we still have to decide the protocol for challenges, the games list, and the snacks."

The other four nodded their heads in agreement.