Fenn

The Three Mountains

Andrea rested the positronic brain in both hands, turning it over slowly as though some hidden marking might reveal itself if she looked from the right angle. It never did. The casing remained as featureless as when Mrs. Everest had first placed it on her desk, offering no clues beyond the uncomfortable certainty that this was, in all likelihood, the single most valuable object she had ever held. She had spent entirely too long trying to reduce the decision before her into an engineering problem.

A weapons platform had obvious appeal. BlackSun was searching. Whoever possessed the remaining Hecatoncheires would almost certainly be willing to kill for them, and there was undeniable comfort in the idea of giving Rooster every possible advantage at defending itself before it ever opened its eyes. But the more Andrea examined that line of reasoning, the less she liked where it ended. A body built around violence inevitably encouraged violent solutions. It did not matter how intelligent Rooster proved to be; the tools available to someone inevitably shaped the way they approached the world. Give someone a sword and they would, sooner or later, begin looking for things to cut.

Mrs. Everest's attendants had been the next obvious comparison. If Orange and the others truly were something close enough to make no practical difference to being Hecatoncheires themselves, then Magnolia had already demonstrated one possible philosophy. Build companions. Elegant, capable women whose talents existed to anticipate needs before they were spoken aloud, allowing one of the most powerful people alive to spend her attention on matters only she could address. Andrea understood the appeal. After the week she'd endured, she understood it rather well.

It still wasn't what she wanted.

Paradisia was already going to become the wall between Andrea and the rest of the world. That position had been filled by someone Andrea trusted precisely because she wasn't another immaculate corporate construct. Building Rooster into another secretary, another attendant, or another perfectly poised woman waiting patiently for instructions felt less like a gift and more like assigning someone a profession before they'd even had the opportunity to decide whether they wanted one.

She caught herself smiling. A gift. That was the thought she'd been missing. Andrea had spent the better part of an hour trying to determine the objectively correct answer, as though there existed some ideal chassis that would interfere with Rooster's development less than the others. It was nonsense. Every body carried assumptions. Every body encouraged certain experiences while discouraging others. Even an ordinary human form wasn't neutral. A gifted athlete understood the world differently from someone born frail. Beauty opened doors that would remain closed to others. Height changed how people spoke to you. Strength changed how confidently you moved through a crowd. There was no escaping that.

At least Andrea would have the luxury to choose.

She exhaled quietly before opening Lhotse's manufacturing catalogue. Thousands of templates scrolled effortlessly past her eyes; industrial frames, military chassis, labour units, diplomatic models, executive assistants, pleasure dolls, entertainment platforms, biomorphic shells so expensive they bordered on sculpture. She ignored them all and opened a blank design.

"Let's not overcomplicate this." She murmured to herself.

The body would be female. Andrea didn't bother inventing some elaborate professional justification for it. She simply preferred women. If she was going to spend countless hours in Rooster's company, she saw no reason to pretend otherwise. Beyond that, she found herself making surprisingly modest decisions. Human proportions. Neither especially tall nor physically imposing. Attractive without drifting into the artificial perfection favoured by corporate advertising. Slight asymmetries left untouched. Synthetic hair that would continue to grow. Skin capable of bruising, despite layers of sub-dermal armour plating beneath, capable of rapid healing and changing with time. A face that people remembered because it was pleasant to look at rather than because it seemed impossibly flawless.

Then came the engineering. Andrea had no intention of making Rooster fragile.

Beneath the outwardly ordinary appearance, the chassis would represent everything Lhotse's engineers could accomplish without announcing itself. Reinforced synthetic musculature. Reaction times no human nervous system could hope to match. Balance bordering on impossible. Durability that would allow her to survive accidents, gunfire and environments that would kill an ordinary person. Enhanced sensory arrays concealed so completely that they would only become apparent when Rooster chose to use them.

Andrea wanted to give her capabilities. Not weapons. Andrea deliberately left the weapons catalogue unopened. If Rooster eventually decided she wanted to carry a firearm, she could. If circumstances demanded heavier equipment, Andrea could authorise it later. Those would be choices. Andrea refused to make violence part of Rooster's identity before she'd even spoken her first word.

Finally she reached the behavioural architecture. Default personality overlays. Occupational predispositions. Corporate loyalty conditioning. Obedience hierarchies. Andrea stared at the list for several long moments before highlighting the entire section and deleting it.

"No." The word escaped her before she'd consciously decided to say it. "If there's already someone in there..." She said softly, her eyes drifting back to the anonymous positronic brain resting upon the desk, "...then I'd rather meet her than replace her."

The completed specifications remained on the display for a long while before Andrea finally reviewed them from top to bottom. They were hardly perfect. Inevitably, they reflected her own tastes, her own priorities and her own assumptions about what constituted a good life. Perhaps that was unavoidable. Mrs. Everest had once given Andrea an opportunity without telling her who she ought to become. This, Andrea decided, was simply her attempt to do the same for Rooster.

The Three Mountains

Andrea sat with the positronic brain resting comfortably in both hands, turning it over once more as her thumbs idly traced the smooth seams that divided one section from another. It was almost impossible to reconcile the utter ordinariness of the object with the significance Mrs. Everest had attached to it. If somebody had placed it on her desk without explanation, she would have dismissed it as an off-the-shelf processing core waiting to be installed into an android chassis somewhere on the manufacturing line. Or maybe an Old World paperweight. But the bland appearance just made it unsettling to her. In a world where every premium product advertised itself through extravagant design language, impossible materials and carefully curated branding, Rooster looked almost aggressively... anonymous. No manufacturer. No serial number. No decorative flourishes. Which meant that maybe it didn't need to convince anyone of its value. The people who knew what it was, just knew it was priceless regardless of appearance.

Her thoughts drifted back to Magnolia Everest's office and, more specifically, to the nine women who had stood silently around its perimeter. At the time she'd dismissed them as unusually sophisticated executive attendants, but Orange alone had dismantled that assumption. There had been something fundamentally different about the way the maid had thought and spoke. She hadn't simply responded to Andrea's questions; she'd persistently attacked the assumptions beneath them, peeling away layers of reasoning until Andrea found herself confronting premises she hadn't realised she'd been relying upon. It wasn't impossible that Orange was simply an extraordinarily advanced android. It also wasn't impossible that Orange, and perhaps every one of Mrs. Everest's attendants, belonged to the same family of intelligences as the device now resting in Andrea's lap.

The possibility raised an obvious temptation.

If Mrs. Everest had spent decades surrounding herself with impeccably capable companions who could anticipate her needs, challenge her thinking and quietly manage every aspect of her professional and personal life, then perhaps the simplest course of action would be to request another chassis of the same design. Clearly they worked. Clearly they were effective. More importantly, Mrs. Everest herself had entrusted Andrea with Rooster knowing full well what her own attendants looked like, suggesting she wouldn't object on purely practical grounds.

However... after she thought about it for a minute, she realised that in this case imitation wouldn't flattery . It would just be faintly derivative. Mrs. Everest's maids reflected Mrs. Everest's needs, her habits and her way of viewing the world. Not hers. More importantly, she suspected that if Rooster truly was as unique as Magnolia had insisted, then forcing it into a role already occupied by nine remarkably capable siblings would be doing both of them a disservice.

The opposite extreme suggested itself almost immediately afterwards. A military chassis. Heavy armour beneath synthetic skin, redundant actuators, battlefield sensors, integrated weapon systems and enough raw physical strength to reduce almost any confrontation to a foregone conclusion. If Rooster truly represented one of the most valuable assets on the planet, then surely giving it the means to defend itself was sensible. But again, the idea gradually lost its appeal the longer she considered it. Bodies shaped minds. They had to. And if Rooster awoke inside a body purpose-built for violence, then every experience it accumulated would be filtered through instincts that rewarded threat assessment, dominance and decisive force. It would not necessarily become violent, but violence would always be one of the first solutions available to it. There was an old saying about hammers and nails that felt uncomfortably appropriate.

She considered subtler alternatives. A diplomat capable of navigating boardrooms and state dinners with superhuman charm. An engineer designed to interface directly with machinery. A logistics platform that could oversee factories with perfect efficiency. One after another, each concept seemed attractive until she followed it to its natural conclusion. Every specialised body quietly imposed a specialised worldview. Every carefully optimised chassis carried with it assumptions about what kinds of problems were worth solving and which senses deserved priority over the others. Specialisations that even she wasn't sure it would want or need. And then Andrea gradually realised that she had been approaching the decision backwards.

Mrs. Everest hadn't handed her a tool and asked her to choose an attachment. She had handed her an intelligence and asked her to choose its first experience of the world. Instead of asking what Rooster should do, perhaps the more important question was what Rooster should first be allowed to be. The curiosity of an artificial mind seemed infinitely more valuable than physical optimisation. Observation more valuable than specialisation. Whatever intelligence lay sleeping inside that featureless shell had already survived the collapse of one civilization. It seemed strangely arrogant to assume she already knew the best use for it after less than a week of acquaintance.

A faint smile crossed Andrea's face as she continued absent-mindedly rotating the core through her fingers.

"First, let's see what principles you want to have." She murmured quietly to herself as she stared at the core. "No assumptions. No inherited doctrine. Just... see the world."

She would have to commission a cradle of some kind that could house the unit and activate it, and then set up a connection between it and her own cybernetics, namely her optics and audio units. So that it could see and hear the world around it. Maybe a neural relay too that would let it 'talk' to her without anybody else hearing it. She was tempted to task it to Eager, but thought better of it. He was already dangerous.

But who else could be trusted with that kind of project?

The Three Mountains

Andrea couldn't help but smile.

It wasn't simply the invitation itself that amused her, but how refreshingly transparent it was. After days spent navigating carefully constructed budget proposals, departmental priorities and competing strategic visions, Angus had dispensed with the formalities entirely and offered what was, in effect, an invitation into the old guard. There was something almost comforting about its honesty. No sales pitch. No attempt to disguise the political implications beneath corporate jargon. Just a simple proposition: come and spend an evening shooting virtual zombies with the people who had quietly kept Lhotse running for decades, and in return inherit a network of friendships, favours and institutional memory that no organizational chart could ever capture.

It was, Andrea realised, probably the most valuable offer she'd received all week. That was precisely why she couldn't answer it immediately. Every meaningful decision she'd made since accepting the position had quietly altered the political landscape around her. Funding Admiral Scipio had strengthened Security's hand. Recruiting Paradisia had deliberately introduced an outsider into her inner circle. Giving Angus a financial strategy built around flexibility rather than aggressive expansion had just handed the Economics Directorate five years of relevance and stability. None of those decisions had existed in isolation. Every allocation of money, every appointment and every expression of confidence had communicated something to the rest of the corporation about where their new Chief of Operations intended to steer the ship.

This invitation would do the same. Andrea had only just begun meeting the people who made Lhotse what it was. Some represented the established order. Others had spent years quietly enduring the consequences of decisions made above their heads. Still others, she suspected, had ambitions she had yet to uncover. If she accepted Angus' invitation now, before she'd even finished introducing herself to the rest of the executive structure, she wouldn't simply be attending a social gathering. She would be signalling, intentionally or otherwise, that she had chosen her camp.

Perhaps that would prove to be the correct decision one day. She simply wasn't prepared to make it today.

"I appreciate the invitation." Andrea said, rising from her chair and offering Angus a firm handshake. "More than you probably realise."

A faint smile remained on her face, warm enough to remove any suggestion of rejection while measured enough to leave no ambiguity in what followed.

"And I do intend to take you up on it. Just... not yet." She released his hand and straightened her jacket, her expression thoughtful rather than apologetic. "I've spent the last week being introduced to departments, but I still haven't been introduced to the company. There are people I've yet to meet, perspectives I've yet to hear and problems I don't yet know exist. If I sit down with the 'Old Boys Club' now, I'll inevitably begin seeing Lhotse through their eyes before I've had the chance to develop my own."

Her gaze drifted briefly towards the office window before returning to Angus.

"I'd rather earn the perspective to appreciate what your generation has built before I become part of it. Once I've done that, I'll happily spend an evening embarrassing myself at whatever decades old co-operative shooter you all insist was the pinnacle of interactive entertainment." The wry smile widened just enough to betray that she wasn't entirely joking. "When I do finally accept that invitation, I'd like everyone in the room to know I came because I wanted to spend time with colleagues, not because I needed a political faction." She gave a small nod, one professional to another. "I hope you can appreciate the distinction. Thank you for your time, Director."

The Three Mountains

Andrea rested her forearms on the desk and remained silent for a moment, her eyes drifting away from Angus and towards the skyline beyond the office windows. The answer he was asking for was deceptively simple. Five years. Every director she’d spoken to so far had wanted to know where Lhotse was going, because every one of them understood that their own work only made sense in the context of a destination. Research needed to know what kind of future it was building towards. Security needed to know what kind of wars it was preparing to fight. Interior needed to know what sort of company it was trying to hold together. Now Finance wanted to know what kind of economy it was expected to create.

But the real bitch of it was that she still didn’t have a complete picture.

That fact no longer frustrated her as much as it had a few days ago. Quite the opposite. The previous administration had apparently possessed complete certainty of things they shouldn't have had. They had been convinced enough in whatever lay at the end of the R&D pipeline that they had quietly starved almost every other arm of the corporation in order to pursue it. Perhaps they had been right. Perhaps they had been wrong. The point was that they had committed themselves so completely that there had been no room left to adapt if circumstances changed. Which they had, according to the silver bullet that Trajan had given her.

Andrea wasn’t prepared to repeat that mistake.

“I... don’t know where we’ll be in five years, Director.” She admitted at last, looking back towards Angus. “Not because I haven’t thought about it, but because I don’t yet possess the information necessary to pretend certainty. And I certainly don't have supernatural foresight to peer into the future. Unfortunately."

There was no embarrassment in saying it. If anything, there was quiet confidence. She had spent enough years watching executives bluff their way through uncertainty to know how expensive false confidence became once it reached the operational level.

“Ive got a few teething problems as Chief of Operations, you see. I’ve inherited a research and development programme that might reshape the future... or amount to nothing. I’ve also inherited a corporate war that appears to be progressing well, although wars have an irritating habit of spiralling into unforeseen chaos. And I’ve been placed under the scrutiny of a CEO whose priorities don’t resemble those of any chief executive I’ve ever worked under, and I’m increasingly convinced that’s because she’s playing a game the rest of us can’t fully see yet.”

She folded her hands together, choosing her next words carefully.

“So... I’m not going to ask you to bet the company on assumptions.” The statement settled between them. "To be clear, I’m not interested in maximising next year’s budget. If I were, I’d probably tell you to keep doing exactly whatever it is that you’ve been doing already. Safe growth. Predictable returns. Another few MacroCredits over the next five years and everybody congratulates themselves on a job well done.”

A faint smile crossed her face. "But that isn’t why Mrs. Everest put me in this chair.” She leaned forward slightly. “What I truly want is... optionality.”

The word hung there for a moment before she elaborated.

“I want Lhotse to be in a position where, five years from now, we can exploit opportunities that don’t exist today. If Eager delivers something extraordinary, I want the capital available to commercialise it and bankroll a product rollout rather than watch somebody else beat us to market. If the war against the Polygon fractures an industry that we might want, I want us in a position to acquire assets rather than simply let it go to waste. If an alliance with another Mega, with the State or with an emerging player suddenly becomes strategically valuable, I don’t want us locked into investments that prevent us from acting.” She paused, watching to see whether Angus was following her reasoning. "My predecessor invested in false certainty. He believed he knew where the future was heading, and he overcommitted enormous resources accordingly. My instinct is different.”

Andrea’s expression remained composed, but there was a quiet conviction behind her words now.

“I want us liquid where it matters. I want investments that generate reliable cash flow without tying our hands. But more than all that, I want strategic reserves. So we can have acquisitions that broaden our options rather than narrow them. I want us positioned to pivot quickly when new information arrives instead of discovering we’ve spent five years marching confidently in the wrong direction.” She gave a small shrug. "I appreciate that it won’t produce spectacular returns for... a while. It probably won’t even produce the highest returns on paper. But I suspect flexibility is about to become one of the most valuable commodities in the world, because every conversation I’ve had since taking this office has reinforced the same conclusion.”

Her eyes met his.

“That we don’t know enough yet.” Andrea allowed herself a faint smile. "And I refuse to build a five-year financial strategy around pretending that we do." She sat back in her chair once more, finally giving Angus the freedom he’d asked for. "So that’s your direction. Don’t optimise for maximum growth. Optimise for maximum freedom of action. If, in five years’ time, the company has more choices for growth than it does today, I’ll consider the strategy a success.”

The Three Mountains

"Indeed." Andrea says, giving the Director a polite smile. "Quite unbelievable. Although the affairs of the other heads of Lhotse's departments shouldn't be of much concern to you, Angus. I'm everyone has their own vices. So, glass houses, stones. Yes?"

She takes in a breath, as if to stopper off the rest of that conversation and being a new one. Specifically one that she was intent on leading with what exactly his side of the MegaCorp had been doing under the leadership of her predecessor.

"I was wondering what you have been asked to do since your last visit to this office?" She asks in a manner that leaves plenty of room for him to continue. "I'm sure the old Chief of Operations had you close at hand, hmm? Money makes the world go round, after all. So I was just wondering as to the nature of your own designs, especially with the corporate conflict that the Admiral is currently spearheading. Do you think we could capitalise on the economic trends that the 'war' will create? I'd be willing to grant you up to ten MacroCredits, to that end. Ideally, you'd be able to get returns tenfold of what I give. But you'd have to make your case for them, Angus. Let me know exactly what you'd plan to do with the funds and how, you know?"

This was a conversation she'd been looking forward to. It didn't take a genius to see that buying shares in weapons manufactories and other military assets was a good choice, but in addition to that, Andrea was hoping that Director Angus would actually be able to justify his position as head of Economics and present an idea to her that even she hadn't thought of in order to make some revenue from the Polygon conflict. Especially if the money came in hand over fist.

The Three Mountains

Andrea found herself thinking back to Trajan's merger proposal. At the time she had treated it as a desperate contingency plan born from institutional decline. A surrender of independence in exchange for stability, but now she wasn't entirely certain. Perhaps the mistake was assuming independence possessed intrinsic value. After all, R&D wanted money. As did Security, as would Economics. Everyone wanted money.
But partnerships changed balance sheets in ways budgets couldn't.

She thought about the options that Trajan and now the maid had pointed out, running over the two most obvious alliances that had been brought up more than once now. First, the State. They didn't just bring legitimacy. They brought courts, law enforcement, administrative infrastructure. Whereas SLAM! Click didn't just bring capital, it brought networks, entrepreneurs, informal influence, and thousands of strange little tendrils extending into corners of society that Lhotse may not have been able to.

Her cybernetics quietly highlighted dozens of possible pathways branching out from the thought, each one carrying its own opportunities and risks. Loss of autonomy. Cultural contamination. Political obligations. Shared intelligence. Shared infrastructure. Shared vulnerabilities. Trade-offs. Always trade-offs. The smile slowly faded from her face. Not because she disliked the idea. Because she could already see how difficult it would be, especially whoever decided to be her point of contact on the other side of whatever 'alliance' they came to. She pictured some kind of slimy businessman who looked down on her because she was a woman in a man's world representing SLAM! Click, or the State. She pictured some high-and-mighty nepo baby who didn't deign to speak to her directly, instead using a VI as a middleman in even the simplest conversations. Both options sounded equally likely, and equally awful.

"Independence." She said quietly.

The word felt different now. Not a strength, more a resource. Something that could be spent, or invested, or traded. But once it was gone, it was gone forever. The realization was deeply irritating. Which was often how Andrea recognized a useful insight. Eventually she looked back toward Orange.

"It's worth its weight in gold, you must realise. But I think I understand why Mrs. Everest keeps you around now."

It wasn't entirely a compliment. The maid had a talent for making simple questions more complicated. A skill Andrea normally appreciated in herself and disliked in everyone else. For several moments she simply sat there, thinking. Then another thought occurred to her. One that was perhaps more important than the rest.

"Anyway, if I'm hearing you correctly..." she said, her voice becoming thoughtful once again, "...then the question isn't which part of Lhotse I can afford to lose. It's which parts of Lhotse are valuable enough that somebody else would be willing to help me keep them if there was some profit in it for them."

That felt closer to the truth. Closer to how Mrs. Everest might think. Not as a manager, not even as a CEO. As somebody playing a larger game than quarterly reports and departmental budgets. Andrea exhaled slowly.

"I'll think about it."

And for the first time all day, she genuinely meant it. Because if Orange was right, then the next decision Andrea made wasn't going to be about distributing eight remaining MacroCredits. It was going to be about deciding who Lhotse invited through the front door. And to be honest, Andrea didn't want anyone else helping themselves to a piece of the pie now that she'd finally been able to get a say in how big she cut the slices.

"For now, just... give me a direct investment of, let's say, twelve MacroCredits, so that I can get on with the Hecatoncheires agenda, okay? I don't want to argue. You put me in charge, so let me take charge." She said, clearly at her wits end. If the robot just refused her again or said something snide and then refused her, Andrea was just going to hang up and call it a day.

She had to talk to Economics anyway.

The Three Mountains

Andrea leaned back into her chair and regarded Orange in silence for several moments. The maid's grin didn't bother her, but the implication behind it did. There was an assumption buried beneath the criticism that Andrea found herself increasingly unwilling to let pass unchallenged. An assumption that because she had spent the last several days speaking to department heads, reviewing budgets and attempting to understand the corporation she'd inherited, she had somehow forgotten the objective.

It was wrong.

"I think you're misunderstanding me." Andrea said at last, her voice calm. Not defensive. Calm. "I haven't forgotten the mission." Her fingers folded together atop the desk. "But I've spent the better part of a week discovering that every single person who reports to me has spent years adapting themselves around it. Research has been fed to the point of obesity because of it. Interior has been hollowed out because of it. Security has been handed a blank cheque because of it. Every conversation I have eventually leads back to the same place."

Andrea's gaze remained fixed on Orange.

"The Hecatoncheires." For the first time since the conversation began, there was a slight edge to her voice. "What I'm trying to determine is whether the people pursuing that objective have left me with enough of a company to achieve it."

Because that was what truly irked Andrea, the idea that her promotion had only been deemed correct because she was going to be a good dog and go after the Hecatoncheires immediately, rather than taking charge of the mega-corp that she had been put in charge of. The mission and the corporation were being treated as though they were separate things by this maid, and therefore the same by Everest. But they weren't. Not entirely. Mrs. Everest might be willing to sacrifice Lhotse in pursuit of the objective, but somebody still had to decide which sacrifices were useful and which were merely wasteful. Andrea was increasingly convinced that there was a difference.

"You've... accused me of babying my asset." A faint smile touched the corner of her mouth. "And perhaps that's true." She shrugged slightly. "But I don't think that's what's happening. I think I've inherited an ongoing war with the one organization currently suspected of possessing a Hecatoncheire." The statement settled heavily into the room. "The Admiral has convinced me that the war is winnable. That had never really been my concern. Scipio's enthusiasm had practically guaranteed victory, you see. My concern is the time it takes. And the consequences of dragging our feet."

The concern was consequences. The concern was that wars had a tendency to become self-justifying, and then become incredibly bloated and things that decimated economies and personal wants and needs. Mrs Everest wanted the Polygon Hecatoncheire, but the war was only going to get in the way of that.

"The longer the conflict continues, the more opportunities our opponent has to adapt." Andrea slowly rose from her chair and crossed toward the window overlooking the city beyond. "The longer it continues, the greater the chance that whatever asset we're searching for is relocated, concealed, traded, destroyed, fragmented or simply vanishes into the fog of competing interests." She clasped her hands together in front of her to enunciate her point. "So if Polygon possesses a Hecatoncheire, then I don't merely want to defeat them. I want to reach the point where they lose the ability to hide it from us as we close in on it."

There was a difference. An important one. Military victory and strategic success were not the same thing. History was littered with examples of people achieving one and failing the other.

"So no, I wasn't asking for money because I care about quarterly earnings." A small shake of her head. "I was asking for money because I believe speed has value." The smile returned briefly. "And because every MacroCredit spent shortening a conflict is potentially worth several spent managing its consequences. That said, you've made a fair point." She returned to her desk. "Mrs. Everest has entrusted me with control over the company." Her hand settled against the polished surface. "I currently have eight Macro Credits remaining to split between two departments that will not doubt expect over double that for themselves. Scipio took the lion's share, Eager has enough from previous years to stay afloat on half of what he wanted, and Trajan very simply needed what she got."

Not many. Not enough. Certainly not enough to make everyone happy.

"Which means I am approaching the point where I need to stop asking how to preserve every part of Lhotse and start asking which parts are genuinely important. Because despite your belittling rhetoric, I don't believe Mrs. Everest views the corporation as entirely disposable." The statement was delivered with quiet confidence. "If she did, she wouldn't have spent decades building it."

Factories. Shipping fleets. Universities. Political networks. Entire cities economically dependent upon Lhotse's existence. Nobody accumulated that much infrastructure accidentally. Nobody maintained it for that long unless it possessed value. The question was what kind of value.

"So let me ask a more useful question." Andrea folded her arms. "If I need to burn a section of Lhotse to the ground in order to accelerate the mission..." Her gaze never left Orange, now more intense than it had been at the start of their conversation, "...which section would Mrs. Everest miss the least?"

The Three Mountains

The already rather curt tone of the orange doll was already rubbing Andrea the wrong way, but she ensured not to show it on her face as she pursed her lips momentarily before giving the robot a practiced smile meant to ingratiate herself to a human she was talking to. She doubted it would work on the maid, but it never hurt to try.

"That's actually the reason for my call." She started, her tone even and neutral. "Due to unforeseen circumstances that have been pushed to me thanks to the mismanagement of my predecessor, I have been hounded by the department heads regarding their budgets, as well as other trivial matters. And unfortunately, this has ground all progress with the 'Rooster' unit to a halt."

She let the information sit for a moment, before readily supplying her solution to the issue.

"In order to summarily do away with these roadblocks, I am petitioning the release of additional macrofunds in order to mitigate the problems that the Lhotse heads have badgered me with since the beginning of my posting." Andrea explained. "I shan't mince words, as I know Mrs. Everest's time is precious and her attention is unnecessary for matters such as these, but the additional funds would be the most efficient and least time-consuming solution, so that I can whole-heartedly dedicate my time to the Hecatoncheires enigma that Mrs. Everest gave me."

Another few moments went by, and Andrea noted how little information her optics readouts could glean from the maid. Although it made sense, it being an artificial being and all.

"Do you concur?"

The Three Mountains

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...'

The Three Mountains

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?"