Jacob signed the agreements with the nations of Earth before anyone realized they failed to ask a very important question. Technically, he could renege on the deal, since he had already gotten what he came for, but he wasn’t that big of an asshole.
The president still hid his feelings behind a fake smile.
Jacob was glad he never had any interest in politics growing up. The thought of putting on a fake mask day in and day out just sounded exhausting. Much better to not have a face at all. He wondered if other national leaders would feel the same way that the president did when they learned about the other people he had talked into coming to the station. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be soon, because he had deliberately targeted people from the public sector who wouldn’t be missed to minimize any disruption on Earth. Even so, those sorts of people brought their own challenges.
“What about monetization?” Min-Jun asked in slightly accented English.
They were aboard the ship, in a large meeting room, and Jacob had gathered all of the “leaders” that he had enticed to join him, so they could sign the agreements and hammer out any last-minute concerns before the ship departed.
The South Korean native could have easily conversed in his own language; Jacob spoke it fluently. Hell, he was now fluent in every single language taught in the phone app, but Min-Jun wasn’t speaking English for his benefit. He was speaking to the other eleven individuals present.
“I think you’re jumping the gun a bit,” Jacob admitted to the microchip designer. “It’s going to take you time to understand all the alien systems, and even more to develop your own designs from that.”
“I don’t think he is,” Oliver Mercer added, his posh British accent, salt and pepper hair, and immaculate dress giving the man the appearance of someone from high society.
It was a complete farce. The man’s entire image had been deliberately cultivated to make him appear far more aristocratic than his upbringing actually was. Despite that, the man was a genius.
He had started a robotics company at the age of nineteen. It had grown slowly but steadily over the years until, a decade later, one of his engineers sold all of their designs to a much larger competitor. After years of legal back and forth, Oliver ran out of money to fight the IP theft in court and was forced to settle for essentially nothing. His company went bankrupt shortly after that since they were out of money, and he was barred from using his own designs.
Of course, nobody knew about Oliver’s past other than Jacob. Not only had the man done an excellent job of reinventing himself after that catastrophe. Including changing his appearance and name, but he had hidden his past failures so well that Jacob had to double-check after the AI search flagged him as a possible recruit. A high-end tailor didn’t exactly fit the criteria Jacob had been looking for.
After a quick perusal of the data, Jacob realized the man had never given up his passion. He kept his engineering work private and sold his parts through shell companies to avoid any more liability. He had been so successful with hiding his involvement that the company that stole his IP and sued him had over a hundred ongoing litigations with companies that only existed on paper, yet they hadn’t managed to slow down his efforts in the slightest. It was costing them more money to file those lawsuits than they were making from the decades-old designs they stole.
It was Oliver’s spite and persistence, despite being railroaded, that really tickled Jacob’s fancy and made him approach the man.
“Look, I’m not going to stop you from monetizing your designs, but they have to be your designs. The station has a sort of patent system. It’s not connected to anything other than the station, however, but if it greenlights your design as something unique, you will be allowed to register it with the Astryx.”
“What about Earth?” Mercer asked.
“Feel free,” Jacob added. “Although communication with Earth won’t be possible right away. I thought about leaving a drone on the surface to act as an FTL comm relay, but quickly realized its range was limited to about Jupiter, so without the ship being present to boost that signal, we won’t have a connection until I get another relay in the system.”
Revealing the existence of FTL communications derailed the discussions for a few minutes as the group collectively nerded out over such a technology. Jacob eventually got the discussions back on track with the businessmen and women and hammered out some loose details.
Half of the time, they would be helping him and the station improve their systems, while the other half, they were free to establish their own businesses and sell to whomever they wished, barring weapons, unless authorized by Jacob.
On the other side of the aisle were the military personnel he had recruited. Unlike the business people, who were from all over the world, Jacob had decided to focus his military recruitment efforts on former US personnel. Mostly because General Roberts would be in command of them, and the transition efforts would take far less time if he narrowed his focus to only a single branch.
A dozen retired special forces people were in the cargo hold, getting a briefing from the General while Jacob watched on in his good drone.
Unlike the civilians, Jacob had asked General Roberts to pick suitable military personnel for recruitment. Once he had a list, he verified they weren’t sketchy or possible threats, then he made them an offer.
Most had been skeptical, considering their ages ranged anywhere from thirty-five to fifty, but only two of the fourteen he had initially targeted had refused the offer. Hell, most still looked skeptical, but they waited silently as the general laid out their mission.
“You will all be tasked with patrolling this.” The general pointed to a projection of the station. “I know this seems like a waste of your skills as special forces, and it is. Most of your job will simply be policing civilians. Eventually, our roles will transition to ship defense. That change won’t happen for quite a while, however. This will give you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the new equipment. Any questions?”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
One of the older gentlemen raised their hand. “Sir, can I be blunt?”
“Go ahead,” the general replied.
“How the fuck are our old asses supposed to secure this structure? While I’ve done my best to maintain my body, I’m forty-eight. My knees, hip, and joints are all shot.”
The general gestured over to him. “I’ll let Jacob explain that.”
Feeling the soldiers’ gazes lock onto him made Jacob feel like he was being measured up by a group of predators. He pushed away the feeling and changed the projection to show a small triangular device.
“I’m working on some treatments that will help alleviate the issues that come with old age. Don’t expect a cure-all or anything like that. That being said, this device will make it so those remaining aches and pains don’t matter. It creates an image of your mind, which will allow you to control something like this.” Jacob walked over and slapped the combat drone, “with nothing but a thought.”
“What’s the catch?” another soldier asked.
“The catch is that not everyone is compatible with the merging technology. There are also significant downsides according to alien medical records. You will all have to go through training during the trip back. I will provide you with tablets detailing what you have to do. The exercises in there are important to strengthen your mind. Getting familiar with those will significantly reduce the risk of any sort of psychosis.”
“And what if that doesn’t work?” a third soldier asked.
“Well, the Concord Imperium’s solution involved removing that person’s access. We can do that as well, but I’ve come across a pharmaceutical option that will help restore a person’s mind.”
The soldiers seemed less than thrilled by that answer, but none voiced any complaint.
Jacob wasn’t actually sure whether the drugs he was using on Bob would work for that application, but his friend was essentially suffering from a form of psychosis, and he was seeing improvement in his friend’s condition, even if it was slow. At least that’s what the doctor he recruited was telling him.
It hadn’t taken Jacob long to realize he was out of his depth when it came to treating Bob’s condition, so Dr. Tanaka was the first person he had recruited after finding Bob.
The Japanese-born man’s specialty was neuroscience, and he worked mainly with experimental treatments. When Jacob had approached him with an offer to study alien medical sciences, the man had practically jumped at the opportunity. Considering how qualified the man was, Jacob was surprised to learn Tanaka was only twenty-nine. With only a few years separating them in age, it made Jacob’s own technical degree feel extremely lacking.
There were other positions that Jacob needed to fill out, but he would require multiple trips to Earth to complete. He also wasn’t sure he wanted an entirely human crew, so he might look around for other species to fill those roles.
There was one last thing he needed to do before leaving, and that was to disclose his lack of knowledge to Earth’s scientists. They weren’t going to be happy.
***
Jacob hooked up one of Franky’s data cubes that Redline’s people had erased. It now held all his knowledge about the information he agreed to share.
Alana Brown flipped through the data, her face going from a stern expression to a full-on frown. “This is all maintenance information. Where is the scientific data?”
“Or the engineering diagrams,” Nathaniel Stern asked in confusion.
“Well, you see, that’s the thing. I have no idea how any of this stuff functions. I only know how to maintain it. As for the designs, I wasn’t able to pull any of the Concord Imperium designs from their databases, because they were protected. I was able to provide you with one design, however.”
That wasn’t entirely true. He had access to every design on Melody and the station, but they took up a considerable amount of space and were impossible to transfer directly from the station’s database. He had to manually recreate each one and transfer it to Melody before he could send it through the relay, then onto the storage cube.
Even with his AI processing capabilities, it was a ridiculous amount of work that he decided wasn’t worth the effort. Humanity had managed to reverse engineer the other crashed alien ship; they could do the same with his repair diagrams. He did give them one design, however.
Jacob mentally flipped the database to the ship design. It wasn’t the representatives, nor was it the original transport. He had taken the time to redesign the vessel to something a bit smaller and easier to produce. A sort of first step for humanity.
Even then, that redesign incorporated a lot of things from Chalto’s ship, including the upgraded reactor as well as the shield generator. Jacob had included the redundant phase coil design from the transport, even though it was designed to use the improved coils from Chalto’s ship, which were even better than the ones he stole from the eiraxin shuttle. It would give humanity a vast leap forward, despite being such a basic design.
Jacob chose to go with a basic design because his ability to design was awful. The first bipedal drones he built were proof of that. Barry’s improvements based on nothing other than what was already in the Concord parts’ catalog proved that.
He made sure the vessel would hold air, and everything was functional, but he didn’t spend any time making it look pretty or optimizing its systems. It flew in the simulations he ran, and that’s all that mattered to him.
The vessel had room for five people, and cargo space to fit enough food for those people to survive for about a week, maybe two if they pushed their rations. Jacob could have made the vessel larger pretty easily, but he designed it with limited space on purpose. He wanted to keep humanity from venturing outside of the dead zone and getting itself into trouble. They would have to make their own design if they wanted to do that.
Jacob doubted humanity would venture too far from their home planet anytime soon, at least not until they developed weapons capable of taking down shields. He had warned them about what was out there.
Alana Brown stormed away from the computer in disgust. “Useless. This will take us decades to reverse engineer.”
The others watched the incensed woman leave. Once the door finally slammed closed, Nathaniel turned toward Jacob. “She’s not wrong. Isn’t there more you could provide?”
“Afraid not,” he said. Then he tapped on his metal head. “Everything I know was given to me for the express purpose of repairing a vessel. The AI responsible didn’t see the need for me to have knowledge of how the underlying principles work, and I’m glad it didn’t.”
“Right,” the man said apologetically. “The whole erasing your memories thing.”
Jacob bobbed the drone up and down in a nod.
Nathaniel scratched his face. “Well, I’m sure we can figure it out. If you do come across any more information, would you be willing to forward it along?”
Jacob thought about that. He didn’t really plan on digging into the technology because of how much time and effort that would take, but maybe he should. It would be good to have a basic understanding of how everything functions.
“I’ll look into it,” he replied.
The remaining members of the research team thanked him. Once the data was copied over to the local server, Jacob picked up the cube and left the room. The data from the cube was already propagating to every server and all the research groups tasked with taking on the challenge.
Jacob had toyed with the idea of just releasing all the information to the entire internet, but quickly realized how bad an idea that was. Besides, he wasn’t that altruistic.