Interlude Forty-Seven: Gideon Troy (Patreon)

Gideon Troy had worked dozens of conventions over the course of his career.

An accountant couldn’t hope to become CEO without a stint in Sales. Consequently, he’d spent two thoroughly demanding years schmoozing with Swedish, German and Polish generals as part of the Eurofighter XII program.

As his ultrahuman colleague might put it, he’d developed the skills of enhanced alcohol tolerance, vapid smiling, and meaningless flattery to a fine art as a result. All valuable skills in assessing exhibits in a convention, whether of defence parts or superhuman abilities.

“Do we have to be here?” murmured Dr. Palmer. “I could be shopping for Christmas.”

“Think of it as scoping out the competition,” Gideon replied. “And who knows, maybe one of the other inventors will have something that helps you crack the problem with the furnaces.”

Sarah made a face. “Belessar’s stuff at least follows somewhat logical rules. Other inventech gives the middle finger to most of physics, chemistry and sanity. There’s no way it should work.”

“And our colleague magically willing his inventions to come into being makes more sense?”

“Perhaps it does. Scientists - real scientists, not inventors - have been trying to figure out why inventech works for years. I’ve been thinking that maybe what Belessar does isn’t … unusual.”

“How so?”

“Think about it. What if every ultrahuman actually has a reservoir of Mental Energy, one that can alter the rules of physics? And that recharges at a specific rate, like Belessar’s does?”

“Wouldn’t some of them have mentioned it?”

“Maybe Belessar’s power is special not in that he has Mental Energy Points, but in that he can actually measure them.”

“It would explain a lot of things about inventech, for sure. But why stop at inventors? What if it applies to every type of ultrahuman?”

“That’s certainly possible. I asked Belessar about what happens if he runs down his MP to zero.”

“And?”

“And, he says it leaves him feeling exhausted and drained, until it bounces back. Which usually happens in seconds. When you look at the interviews of other ultrahumans, they speak of fighting till they’re tired or worn out…”

“You might be onto something with this.”

“Maybe. It wouldn’t be the first time a theory was proposed about ultrahuman powers. And proven wrong later.”

“Thought you scientists enjoyed that.”

Sarah smiled. “Only when it’s not our theory.”

The familiar figure of an eight-foot tall battlesuit came into view. “There’s our friend.”

Belessar seemed to be deep in conversation with a young girl and an older, bearded man. As they drew closer, the hero seemed to take notice.

“Gideon,” Belessar waved him over. “This is Mr. Drake and his daughter Anne. Folks, this is Mr. Gideon Troy, CEO of BAE-Dragonfly.”

The girl, who he guessed was around fifteen, grinned widely. “I’m so excited! It’s not often you get to see Belessar for real!”

“The Drakes are from Tanisport,” Belessar added. “They ran into me here at the convention. Can you imagine, they came all the way across the Atlantic?”

“We’re huge fans,” the senior Drake said tonelessly.

“Unfortunately, the demands of my schedule make public appearances in Tanisport close to impossible, so it’s really a stroke of luck that you met me here.”

“Yeah, it’s awesome!” chirped the girl. “Thanks for the autograph!”

The girl got Belessar to give her an autograph? That was quite an achievement. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Drake, Miss Drake.” Then again, perhaps the ultra was a bit homesick…

“A pleasure to meet you, too,” said Mr. Drake. “I wonder if I could trouble you with a few questions?”

“Mr. Troy is an expert,” Belessar jumped in before Gideon could politely decline. “I’m sure he’ll be able to answer any questions you have.”

“Thanks. I understand that you’ve an almost fully automated facility. How do you deal with your local hiring obligations?”

“Er… we’ve only four employees right now, we don’t have local hiring obligations.”

“You plan to expand, right? That means you’ll have to hire more people. How do you balance the requirements for security with standard union contracts?”

Gideon wracked his brain for the regulations. “Um… I’ll have to check…”

“We don’t have a policy on this yet,” Belessar said helpfully. “In fact, we have very little in terms of human resource policies altogether.”

“That’s a very serious problem as you scale,” replied Mr. Drake. “In fact…”

Drake let loose with a blisteringly fast summary of union regulations, labour law, and international trade obligations that Gideon gave up trying to follow after the third case law reference.

Somehow, Belessar seemed to follow most of it, nodding along as the man spoke.

“So in summary,” Drake finished, ten minutes later, “you really need to create a human resources department.”

“That is very good advice,” Belessar acknowledged. “Gideon, did you know that Paul here was an office-bearer in the Tanisport Construction Workers Association?”

A union leader, thought Gideon; that certainly explained the vast array of rules the man had recited from memory. “I must say the Association is privileged to have someone of your stature, Mr. Drake.”

“Retired, now,” chuckled the man. “My term ended a while ago, and I’ve decided not to run for re-election. A family break seemed in order.”

“I can understand that. You are enjoying the convention, I hope?”

“Indeed we are. Come on, Anne, I think we should check out the other exhibits too. Belessar, Mr. Troy, thank you for your time.” Drake smiled.

“It’s a pleasure, Paul. All the best.”

As the father-daughter duo strolled off, Belessar turned to them. “What do you think?”

“Of what?”

“Paul Drake, of course. Impressive, isn’t he?”

“I’m sure he is,” Sarah said weakly. “I lost track of that speech around the time he started on hiring offsets....”

“He made a good point, though. A lot of good points.”

Gideon frowned. “Belessar, we don’t need to hire more people right now.”

“Can someone explain to me what an offset is, please?” Sarah asked. “I thought it was a voltage fluctuation.”

“Sarah, once we’ve finished the Ministry of Defence contract, what happens next?”

“I assume we adapt the technology for other applications…. Or get another contract, maybe.”

“We’ll definitely get another contract. With the U.S. Army, I’d guess.”

“What makes you so sure?” Gideon asked, puzzled.

“The U.S. takes pride in being the world leader in advanced military technology; they can’t be shown up by Europe. The MoD may take the first lot of suits for themselves, but unless I miss my guess, there’s substantial diplomatic pressure being brought to bear to have BAE-Dragonfly sell the next batch to the Americans.”

Gideon had to admit that made sense. “So what if we have to sell to the Americans? We can make and ship them from here.”

“You mean spend money on transatlantic freight? Or reveal the fact that we have a stable, customs-and-passport-control exempt, back door to ship goods across national boundaries.”

“Okay, you have a point. We’ll have to set up a U.S. subsidiary.”

“And you’ll need a local contact person.” Belessar gestured a thumb in the direction of the departing Mr. Drake. “Him.”

“What… Belessar, we have American employees at BAE!”

“Tanisporters? People who know my home town? Who won’t asked awkward questions about the travel times?”

“You’re not seriously proposing we hire Mr. Drake. We have no idea of his qualifications.”

“I think he did a pretty good job of explaining American labour laws just now. And European ones, too. And he did point out our complete lack of an HR department.” Belessar shrugged. “Seems a good choice to me.”

Gideon could feel a headache coming on. “We have procedures for hiring, Belessar. And we need a position that has to be filled, first…”

“Head of HR. We definitely need one, right?”

“Our HR is looked after by the BAE headquarters team….”

“... who have visited Farnborough for a grand total of five minutes in the last three months. And who wouldn’t know an offset if it bit them on the backside.”

“Scientist here. Still not sure what an offset is.”

“If the Americans give us a contract to sell stuff to the U.S. Army, they’ll expect us to plough back a certain percentage of the contract value into the local economy. Either through investment, local hiring or local sourcing. That’s called an offset, and it’s usually between ten and thirty percent of the value of a contract.”
“We can negotiate our way out of offsets,” Gideon said. “I’ve done it before.”

“Why would you want to? We can hire a bunch of Americans and charge their cost to the U.S. Department of Defense. That’s what an offset is, right?”

“That could compromise our trade secrets…”

“Unless Sarah figures out a way to make the furnaces run without MP, that won’t happen.”

Gideon found himself thinking.

Theoretically, if they committed to a thirty per cent offset, they could charge that entire amount as a markup… and if they didn’t, the Americans would pay based on cost of production.

Which would be awkward, because excluding the cost of Belessar’s time, the suits cost about two hundred pounds each to make….

“I can work with this,” he found himself saying. “Assuming we get the contract, of course.”

“Splendid,” Belessar seemed pleased. “We’ll send Mr. Drake the job offer once we get back to Farnborough.”

“Hold on, Belessar. Let’s wait until we finish the current contract. After all, there’s no point hiring him a year and a half in advance.”

“But he’ll need at least a month or two to get familiar with the way we work, right?”

“Sure, we can hire a head of HR a month beforehand.” And hopefully by then Belessar would have gotten over his fascination with his fellow townsman….

“Then we’re agreed. Come on, let’s check out the rest of the exhibition.” Belessar walked off with a spring in his step.

Sarah was staring at him in dismay. “Please tell me you didn’t just agree to hire the American union leader.”

“I had to buy time. He’s right about us needing an HR head, though. In a couple of months we can probably find a better candidate.”

“Gideon.” Sarah massaged her temples. “We don’t have a couple of months. You agreed to a month before we finish this contract.”

“What do you mean, we don’t have a couple of months?”

“Did you go through the calculations on production rates?”

“I may have skimmed them briefly. The contract still has twenty months to go.”

“Then you might have noticed that for each suit, ninety-eight per cent of the MP cost is in making the materials. The weave and the power pack.”

Gideon frowned. “Sure.”

“And once we get the furnace going, that cost will drop like a stone.”

“We’ll still need time to make the materials, right?”

“Gideon. If my calculations are correct, the furnace will be pumping out finished weave at sixty-five square metres per second. That means we can put together the entire batch of weave needed for the contract in twenty-one hours. Not months. Hours.”

“... That fast?”

“Yes, that fast. And then he needs to assemble the suits from the weave, which will take, by my estimate, thirty seconds per suit. Which means another forty-five hours. In short, from the day the furnace starts running and stabilizes, the contract will take eight days to finish.”

“You have to run the furnace for a while first, right?” Gideon protested weakly. “Test it properly?”

“With normal equipment, sure. If you remember what Belessar told us about his previous inventions, though … they seem to work perfectly from day one. So as soon as Belessar gets his brain matter, we have a week to complete the contract.”

“The brain matter will take time to gather,” protested Gideon weakly.

Sarah pointed at the ultrahuman, who was walking with a spring in his step. “Look at him. Do you still think we have months to go?”
“No,” sighed Gideon. “He’s too confident for that.”