"Well, the budget, ma'am," said Eager with a wan smile, holding up a hand to forestall the disconnection. "This kind of blue sky research, there's no upper limit to how money we can burn on it. The official paperwork says that we've been running on 20MC but we've been getting that again in laundered money from elsewhere in the corporation. Sometimes more, when your predecessor has found room for it. We've been eating well in R&D, but I think if you start looking around you're going to find that the corporation has been cutting a lot of corners to make this happen. I can keep the lab going for a year theory-only on 20MC and things'll be fine, but longer than that and we'll need serious capital injections to fund the next generation of infrastructure. If we don't get that we'll start hemorrhaging the most ambitious and brilliant staff.

"Put it frankly, past few years I've been the golden boy, top priority cost is no object kind of thing, and I've built a gold-plated R&D section to match. There's nothing on earth like what I have going here - not since they shuttered NASA. And, I think, that's very specifically the idea. Good night, Ms. Kade."

*

The VI glimmered as it processed future requests. "High priority items actioned. Medium priority items as follows:
- Economic Modernization with Finance Director Angus. Key concepts: Outdated infrastructure, declining brands, deferred maintenance.
- Corporate Justice with Interior Director Trajan. Key concepts: Low morale, court backlog, organized criminal infiltration.
- Reputation Management with Ambassador Lights. Key concepts: State Nationalization agendas, misinformation compliance, environmental impact.

Note: Any of these meetings can be delegated. Simply assign the division head a budget and they will prioritize according to their own agenda."

"Schedule Interior Director Trajan for a face to face meeting in my office at eight thirty tomorrow morning." Andrea instructed the VI. "Inform the others in a nicely worded message about trust in their abilities, and get them to send me credit requests instead. Let's see how much they think they're worth."

Low morale. Court backlog. Criminal infiltration.

Of the three briefings, only one sounded like a problem that might already be inside the walls. And after a day spent learning how much of Lhotse's structure depended on hidden arrangements, Andrea found she was developing a strong preference for identifying those before they identified her. Besides, she already knew enough about the by-laws of environmental footprints of mega-corps as well as how to invest money in the right shareholders, didn't she?

Didn't she?

She sighed and brought up the VI again. It wouldn't do to be caught out by something basic.

"On second thought, make sure they send me information packets as well as their credit requests. Call it a... touchstone analysis of their departments. I just need to make sure I know what they'd want me to know, or the short version anyway."

"It is very important to realize," said Interor Director Trajan, "that justice is a consumer good."

She was a sleek, corporate creature. Company woman to the bone, the first of those you'd spoken to. Lhotse lapel pin on her suit-dress thing. Gleaming golden cybernetic arm. Orange tie, striped with black - no, wait, was that a pattern on her clothes? In all, a more expensive evolution of internal company styles.

"When the State went into remission over the Red Decades, it fell to us to provide justice for the employees and stakeholders under our protection," said Trajan. "But justice is a low-margin commodity and the marketplace is crowded. The customer base pays in loyalty - and they're discerning shoppers. If they don't like what we're offering, they'll go somewhere else. Previously, that was the State. Nowadays, it's criminal elements - though the difference between a Mega and a crime family is honestly a political distinction rather than an organizational one. There are multiple small players, along with Crown&Slate's tendrils."

She tapped the table. "Added to that, we have the resurgent State resurrecting its legal system. This is a calculated and ruthless step: Claiming and enforcing justice is a prelude to reasserting a monopoly of force, an essential step from transforming employees into citizens. If the situation continues we'll see leaks, defections, whistleblowers, organizational inertia, feet dragging and destabilize our entire internal recruiting pool. This area was almost entirely neglected by your predecessor and the situation has become acute."

She pursed her lips. "The ideal situation amongst the employees is one of a quiet, professional patriotism. A widespread feeling of moral righteousness and stability that does not need to be advertised. Given how much you've spent on corporate warfare already, a realistic solution is to create a success cult. This will naturally accelerate an existing split between wild-eyed fanatics willing to give everything to the company and demoralized second-tier dead-enders. There will be widespread negative consequences for doing this, and it won't be pretty, but it's the only way to re-establish some semblance of corporate loyalty for 20MC. That's already the ugly bandaid cheap version of my plan, so I will leave it to your imagination what a lower investment will create."

Andrea sat back in her chair and allowed the silence to linger for a few moments after Trajan finished speaking. The woman had delivered her recommendation with the confidence of somebody who had been staring at the same departmental and institutional problem for a very long time. Andrea suspected she had fallen in love with her own solution of creating a success cult, judging by the finality of her presentation. But wasn't the only gifted mind that had a say in what direction her department went. Andrea's eyes lingered on the woman while her implants quietly fed supplementary information into the corner of her vision. Tiny changes in skin temperature. Eye movement. Breathing patterns. Nothing dramatic. Nothing a human observer would call a lie. Just the familiar signs of someone discussing a topic they cared about personally. So what if Trajan believed in this pitch? That did not mean she was right to do so.

"Let's assume your diagnosis is correct." Andrea said at last. "That the State is recovering. That criminal organisations are offering competing structures of loyalty and belonging. That employees increasingly see themselves as 'individuals with options' rather than members of an institution. Fine. I'm willing to grant all of that for the sake of argument." She folded her hands together. "What I'm less willing to grant is that a success cult is the first solution that comes to mind."

Her gaze drifted briefly toward the data displays hovering above the conference table.

"Whenever someone proposes creating fanatics, my instinct is to ask what happened to all the other less dangerous options."

Because that was what bothered her. Success cults were powerful, but they were also utterly blunt instruments. They distorted information flows. They encouraged people to only report what their leadership wanted to hear. Worst of all, it rewarded plain enthusiasm over any actual semblance of expertise or accuracy. In the short term, yes, they would create momentum. But in the long term, after a few years worth of middle-management shifting and promotions and layoffs, they could create entire management layers almost entirely incapable of distinguishing reality from fantasy. And if there was one thing Andrea had learned while inheriting her predecessor's office and their prioritisation of the R&D sector, it was that reality eventually collected its debts.

"You've described a loyalty problem, that's clear." She continued. "But loyalty is an output, not an input. If employees are drifting toward the State, I want to know why. If they're turning to criminal organisations, I want to know why. If morale is collapsing, I want to know why. Not because I'm opposed to your solution. Rather, I want to understand the alternatives you've dismissed before we start engineering ideological movements inside the workforce." Her expression remained calm. "Give me options, Director. Not one option. Options." The corner of her mouth twitched upward slightly. "You're the Interior Director of one of the largest organisations on Earth. But if your answer to every staff enthusiasm problem costs me twenty MacroCredits and ends with a corporate religion, then either we're in much deeper shit than I thought, or you're taking me for a fool."

"I am a graduate of Lhotse Polytechnic University," said Trajan quietly. "One of the last. The Company used to offer full secondary education for all employee children. It was not a place of preaching and indoctrination, but it was a beautiful campus with reasonably priced food, comfortable places to sit, and inspirational teachers. Nowadays it's an online course."

"And that's just one of thousands of cuts we've been making over the past decade," she flicked a set of images and graphs onto the screen. "So, what are our options? Improve the pay? Lhotse employees are already receiving 60% of their pay in company scrip, locking them into our substandard network of consumer goods. Convert the scrip into State-backed money? Then we'll create an internal economic crisis as multiple uncompetitive factories are forced to shutter. Foreign consumer goods will flood our markets. If we lose control over electronic industries then we create surfaces for digital infiltration. Invest in a multi-year task to modernize our consumer good industries and corporate benefits to bring them up to competitive standards? More than 20MC. Ask the managers to smile more?" she smiled, Authentically(tm). "That's cult shit, ma'am. You can pay money for the gold plated solution, triage - which is what the success cult does, creating a base of indoctrinated loyalists we can use to occupy key positions while letting morale among the rank and file collapse - or let it play out and hope that the treason is manageable."

That quiet, confident loyalty she spoke about before - you can see it in her. This is someone who is a true believer in the Company. A patriot. She'll happily eat bitterness for years if it's for the Company's long term good. She will manage her own division's decline and collapse if it's for the greater good. There aren't a lot like her these days.

Dangerous in its own way, though. If she thinks you're leading the Company poorly she'll be the first to organize a coup.

"We're in deeper shit than you thought. Our budget has been embezzeled for years to fund R&D. Before all this we could do business as usual on an annual budget of 15MC. Now it'd take 50 just to get us back to that point, and you've already -" she caught herself. "Made other commitments. So there's only one other option for full funcion: merger. We completely turn over our internal security, either to the State or to one of the criminal families. Give them a stake in the company. Have them inside pissing out rather than outside pissing in. God knows what'll come of that."

Andrea remained silent for several seconds after Trajan finished speaking, her eyes moving slowly across the graphs and historical projections suspended above the table. What struck her weren't the budget numbers themselves. Large organizations were always full of alarming numbers. Cost overruns, deferred maintenance buildup, budget deficits, staffing shortages and pay concerns. If somebody graphed any sufficiently complicated institution for long enough, eventually it would begin to resemble a slow-motion disaster.

No, the numbers were fine. What struck her was the pattern.

Until this moment she had been viewing each department in isolation. Security wanted resources to contain the Polygon. Research wanted resources to continue pursuing whatever grand project had consumed the attention of the previous administration. Finance was warning about aging infrastructure. Interior was warning about collapsing morale. Each department head had arrived with their own concerns, their own priorities, their own explanation for why their corner of the organization deserved immediate attention. But this was the first time someone had successfully connected the dots. The schools had not deteriorated because nobody cared about education. The courts had not fallen behind because nobody cared about justice. The benefits packages had not been hollowed out because somebody had run a spreadsheet incorrectly.

The damage was intentional. Not malicious, perhaps. Not even necessarily wrong. But intentional. Somewhere over the past decade a decision had been made that all of those things could afford to become slightly worse if it meant feeding resources elsewhere. Then that decision had been made again. And again. And again. Thousands of cuts, each individually defensible, accumulating into something much larger than any one budgetary adjustment. For the first time, Andrea felt as though she could see her predecessor clearly. Not as an administrator. As a man pursuing a strategic objective. The realization was strangely unsettling.

Because she didn't know why he'd been hemoragghing money into the R&D furnace, although every idea she came up with gave her the shivers. What was so important that they'd been shoving it all over there to the detriment and clear annoyance of every other department in Lhotse. Andrea resisted the urge to frown, not wanting to give anything away to Trajan. It was easier to inherit a corporation from a fool than from a visionary. A fool left behind mistakes. A visionary left behind consequences. Her gaze drifted back toward Trajan.

The woman had stopped trying to persuade her. That was what made this conversation different from the others. Eager still wanted to protect his laboratories. Scipio wanted to prosecute her cold war against the Polygon. Every director she'd met so far had arrived carrying an agenda. Trajan had arrived just... carrying a cheque. And, from the look of things, she'd been waiting years for someone to finally pay it.

"You know," Andrea said quietly, "when I first sat down with Dr. Eager, I thought I was looking at an unusually expensive research division. Now I'm beginning to suspect that what I was actually looking at was the most expensive research division in human history." The corner of her mouth twitched very slightly, though there was little humour in it. "Because it wasn't just consuming its own budget. It was consuming everyone else's. So if I understand you correctly, then the success cult isn't really a solution to the problem. It's a method of preserving organizational cohesion while the problem continues." Her tone remained thoughtful rather than accusatory. "Like you said before; a triage measure. A way of ensuring that enough of the institution remains loyal and functional to survive until either circumstances improve or somebody finally decides whether all these sacrifices were worth making."

For the first time since the meeting began, she allowed herself a small sigh. "What concerns me isn't that you've arrived at unpleasant options, Director." She glanced toward the reports one final time. "What concerns me is that every conversation I've had since taking this office seems to end at the same destination."

She could have said anything, and in her head she saw all the information go by. Research needs money. Security needs money. Infrastructure needs money. Interior needs money. And somewhere in the middle of all that, her predecessor found a way to convince every department to accept being hollowed out in pursuit of something no one can fully explain. God damn, she needed Paradisia and that stupid device Everest gave her yesterday to start working...

"Money. And that's fine, I get it; it makes the world turn after all. But that means before I decide whether to approve a success cult, I need you to answer a much more fundamental question." Andrea's eyes narrowed slightly. "Can you guarantee results from the success cult? And who exactly would be spearheading this movement as its public face? Are we going to be exemplifying Lhotse itself, Mrs. Everest... you?"

"Well, the good news is that we've actually got a lot of flexibility for the cult's aesthetics. Really depends on what virtues you want to instil in the workforce: quiet fatalism, loud risk-taking, manic anti-intellectualism, elitist snobbery..."

"The mechanism will be the same, deep down, old multi-level marketing techniques, internal competition, self hypnosis. Well researched techniques. Not widely used for a reason, outside of Slam! *click* - part of the budget will be headhunting some of their experts. It'll buy you another five years of operational agility on cheapskate internal affairs departments before you get new and interesting problems. That's about the point where the true believers start filtering into leadership positions and it stops being a thing you can turn off."

She picked out a black folder, paper hardcopy, a red tab indicating this was shocklight paper. Once that folder was opened the ink would start a chemical reaction with the air until the whole thing dissolved into unreadable muck.

"But, while I'm giving you options, here's the domestics black ops budget summary. It's been run down a lot but I've done my best to preserve certain capabilities. In particular, I've kept the Jade Chamber operational - an internal investigative and audit branch. They're currently on an organizational stability and law enforcement assignment, but they can be assigned to investigate and prosecute a specific individual or branch if you think there's something rotten. Just - use with discretion, ma'am, they're doing vital work where they are. I'll take my leave now, and I look forwards to your decisions."

Subtext: This is a weapon. It can be used to attack and destroy political rivals. The Jade Chamber is Lhotse's equivalent of the FBI of old - a cross-agency investigative force. Few people can stand up to scrutiny that intense, even if they are a rare soul with nothing to hide.

Also important is what's not there. Internal tools for assassination, propaganda, brainwashing, cybernetic backdoors, and various other secret police functions have either not been built or been allowed to atrophy. Your tool for internal repression is an eye and not a knife.

Additional subtext: This is the branch that would have overseen your background check before your name went up for the top job. There's a note on it under 'previous operations'. No investigation into the death of your predecessor listed though. There's a lot you could read into that if you had a supicious mind.

Alone again, Andrea put two fingers to the bridge of her nose and rubbed gently as she tried to will away an oncoming headache. She was starting to regret giving away so much of the annual budget to the Admiral. Divvying up the remaining half between the other four heads who all had good reasons to each take a good chunk of it? That was starting to prove itself as her crux. Well, Eager had assured her that his R&D sector needed forty to run as they had been until now, but that was off the table entirely. He'd have to make do with twenty, and use the leftovers he'd received from previous years in addition. Whilst she didn't know what they were researching and developing for, she guessed that Everest did. And if she hadn't shut it down yet, then Andrea didn't need to either. But yes, they'd need to make do with the stockpiles of financial 'fat' they'd been afforded from her predecessor whilst she figured out a way to cut back on their slice of the pie next year too...

The Admiral had made a great case for the fifty, and as far as Andrea was aware, all of it was being put to extremely good - and more importantly tangible - use. The Corporate War being fought was apparently going very well for Lhotse's part in it. But the titanic cost of the winning efforts meant that they wouldn't be able to capitalise on the full effect of the fallout of such a conflict. Wars made money hand over fist, as they had for hundreds upon hundreds of years prior. And of course, she couldn't forget about the two macros she'd tied to Paradisia's name, for her to do with as she pleased. But at least Andrea had stuck to her friends plan about making some big buys and making a lot of noise on the financial side of Lhotse. One big smokescreen for a smooth entrance on Paradisia's part, she hoped.

That left twenty-eight macro credits left to her dispensary this year in the budget. She hadn't even recieved the summaries from the remaining two department heads, but she didn't have to be a psychic to know what they were going to say...

"Hey there, boss! Here's this excellent argument I've been perfecting for the past who-knows-how-long that makes a foolproof case for why I should get the lion's share of that remaining money in your pocket! Don't worry, I don't blame you for the bloated R&D fund of your predecessor, but I will blame you if my needs aren't met! I'll just leave it on your desk and keep my fingers crossed that more money will just drop into your lap. Okay, bye!"

It would have been funny to Andrea if it wasn't her they were petitioning.

She took the Jade Chamber in her hands, and thought long and hard about whether or not she wanted to open yet another can of worms this week that would split her attention into another splinter. After a few seconds of consideration, she put the folder into a drawer of her desk beneath a false bottom, and locked the drawer itself with her DNA register. Never paid to be too careful where shocklight paper was involved. Now, back to the problem at hand. Twenty-eight macros, three department heads.

Shit.

Andrea didn't want to lean on Everest for an extra helping of funds just yet, but it was important to get the ball rolling across all departments. And besides, the sooner Andrea was free of managing the department heads, the sooner she'd be able to devote proper time to Rooster and the Hecatoncheires task. In the end, she decided there was nothing for it but to dial up her one and only superior and make her case for an extra twenty to thirty macros. She knew Everest would have it somewhere, she walked around with hyper-advanced robo-maids for God's sake, she just didn't know how tight-fisted she was going to be. Then again, she might agree with Andrea's assessment entirely. There must've been a reason she was promoted to Chief of Operations in the first place. Maybe Everest saw a younger version of herself in Andrea. Who could say?

Andrea cleared her throat, smoothed back her hair, then pressed the dial button on a video-call comm unit built into her desk. In an instant, it popped up her list of contacts, and Andrea selected the one she was after without much ceremony. Now, all there was to do was wait to see if Everest was in a good mood or not. She watched the screen intently as the pop-up took to the hologram.

'Dialling: Magnolia Everest, Chief Executive Officer...'

You were answered by one of the robot maids. The orange one.

There was an entirely different energy here now. This was not a diligent, demure, submissive doll even though she was still dressed like one. She was awake and aware, eyes sharp, smile sharper. It took a double take to register that she was still in the uniform because it felt like you were up against a shark in a suit - but no, she'd just undone her top button and her cufflinks. Somehow those little breaks filled her with a sense of presence.

"Good evening, Ms. Kade," said the orange one. "I am fully authorized to act on Mrs. Everest's behalf. This conversation cannot be escalated. Do you have an update on the Hecatoncheires already?"