And if you are unable to come to an agreement with the Samurai infringing on your product line, make it so they cannot possibly resist you by threatening the populace at large.

  They already have an image of corporations of being evil and greedy. All you need to do is lean on it.

  -Transcript of Samurai and You: Cooperation in the private sector Premium

  So, good news first. After a lengthy discussion, we figured out that we did not need to launch a portal to another planet to mine it for resources right now. We could instead install portals in two different areas. The first and most dangerous would be the middle of the ocean, a few feet below the surface.

  After doing some math, with a small port, it would take decades of personal portal use before the ocean would shrink in any noticeable amounts. The risky parts would be making sure the portal is not affected or destroyed by oceanic weather conditions, or being destroyed or infiltrated by antithesis, which is a genuine concern.

  The second option which is far less dangerous but has a high chance of being fucked with is the sewers below. It's all a bunch of matter that no one was using. Would it be gross, yes. Was there a chance that a corp would hire someone to try and steal the tech? Also yes.

  Unfortunately, the bad news came as we were mapping out the sewers using public blueprints. Synaptic informed us that Bud the Worker was already doing this, as this is where his supplies came from. This threw a wrench into a more local plan. The other bad news was that I was two tokens short of getting portal tech operational.

  We finished our meal, of which I did not question why they joined me in eating, simply enjoying the company.

  “We need the portal tech as soon as possible.” I say with a level of exasperation in my voice. “But I am not willing to go fight hives right now.”

  “We will go, General.” Rogal said, standing. “With permission, I will use your swarms and head south of the city, heading near Tucson. The Family has marked a few possible hive locations. We will return with those two tokens.”

  “He's right, General.” Morrigan chimed in, “You made us to act as your extended agents. While Rogal hunts for you, Baba Yaga and I will make as many vehicles as we can with the dead antithesis l, then collect their assets to use.”

  Baba Yaga scoffs playfully, "Sending an old woman out into the heat of this desert. How cruel you are, General. You are lucky I like you, else I would turn to other parts of my namesake, yes?” She cackles to herself.

  “Alright. Go on. I won't stop you. Just stay safe, alright?”

  “Of course, General. However, may I ask for a small favor? Could you provide two AI seeds for us? I promise they will be of great help to us. “Morrigan asked in her special way.

  “Is this related to your personal project? The one that was fully censored?”

  “Yeesssss…”

  I sigh. Once you are back, I fully expect you to come clear with everything, including the ship project.”

  “Of course! Absolutely! Everything at once!” She was actually vibrating in excitement.

  “Synaptic, if you please,”

  Purchased War Swarm Class II AI personality Seed 2x

  Points reduced to 23870

  Two boxes landed in Morrigan's hands as she rushed out the door, calling out thanks. Rogal shakes his head and follows with Baba Yaga.

  I am, once again, left alone in the hotel room. I glance at the clock. Eight eleven am. Less than twelve hours before they wake up.

  Well, now that I had a plan for the building, I needed to figure out how to sell the stuff from the hydroponics. First thing I do is actually read what a Class I Hydroponics facility can do.

  Fruits, vegetables, and Stem Meats, which shocks me, then I see that it's cause I have the Class I Genetics and Biology Catalogs, and that Morrigan has been tweaking the design. That was really good actually.

  Then, I saw that the seven million number was if I grew the food at the highest quality possible. If I compromised on quality, I could feed closer to ten million. That was a new dilemma. I spent the next hour, in accelerated time, moving through different nutritional guides, recipes, malnourishment census, food availability maps, and quality audits. Many of those things I had to make up myself from extrapolating various public data streams, forms, and social media feeds.

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Once I was done, I came to the conclusion that I could not compromise on quality. While I may be able to feed more people, they would not be as filled, nor would they be able to recover properly from the various vitamin deficiencies.

  Next problem, distribution. The Family had forced corporations to maintain the power and sewer systems, as those were the things that were actively failing years ago, yet food production and distribution was never in danger of failing, so all they did was provide guards or turrets for the tower farming operations around the state.

  I knew Heracles ran several charities, so maybe he had a line I could tap. I sent him a message, having gotten his contact info last we met. I explained what I was planning, and how large the operation could become, and asked him for advice.

  Not even five minutes later he called me.

  “Good Morning, War Games! And what a fine morning it is.”

  “Good morning Heracles, how are you doing today?”

  I am doing wonderfully! Thank you so much for asking. And you, my young friend? It seems as though you have been extremely busy in the short time since we parted.”

  “Yeah, something like that. I didn't intend to do this, my friend just got very enthused in her work and, well, this was the result.”

  “I see that. Seven million meals worth of food a day, with an upward cap at seventy million. I won't lie, my friend, that is a daunting task for any singular logistics company. I do have some charities that act as soup kitchens and food banks, but they would only have the capacity to take maybe seventy thousand meals. And yet if we tried to sell it to grocery stores or other corps, they would simply pocket the profit, or even destroy whatever crop you provide. The other option would be to open your own grocer and franchise out, but that is not something you could do in a short time. Hmm. This really is a pickle.”

  I breathe out heavily. “So, the only viable option besides the soup kitchens is to take a gamble on corpos?”

  “Yeah, and even that isn't a great option for another reason. You would be undercutting the civilian food producers. Do you know why, when Bub, Blizzard, and Doma initially took over the infrastructure of New Phoenix they left the food producers alone? The official story is that they were doing well enough, and The Family was overreaching, trying to keep a stranglehold monopoly on all the critical infrastructure, so they were forced to back off. What actually happened was that trying to overhaul the food producers was actually far worse than the other problems, a problem that is still too much of a tangled mess that we just stay away from.”

  “There are four main food producers in Arizona. GreenTowers, ICantBeliveItsNotMeat, Agriworld, and BeanTech. Each one maintains a strict separation of territory and product, in order not to step on each other's toes and keep profits stable. They are tied together by a series of treaties and pacts and mutually assured destruction failsafes that if we tried to brute force our way in, there would be no food for all of Arizona, not just New Phoenix. Yet even then, if we were to secretly scale up our own production and push them out, two problems occur. The first is that there would be hundreds of thousands of people suddenly without jobs. The second is Bestlé. They are the final M.A.D. failsafe that would actually doom everyone.”

  “But don't they own the water systems here? You guys forced them to cooperate before, why not again?”

  “Cause we didn't force them to do anything. They are a true Multinational Corporation, they were ready to simply pull out if we tried to come at them aggressively. So, Doma was forced to compromise. They would agree to pay a token fee, basically only their employees salaries, but we had to supply the maintenance materials at our own cost. Bub makes sure that the parts are actually needed to be used, and not just sent off to be sold by Bestlé somewhere else or deconstructed for their materials.”

  “Is there nothing we can do?”

  He signed heavily,”We do have a project in the works, and if you could get the hydroponics up to maximum capacity, that would be a massive help, but the problem is water. We contemplated trying to turn the sewage below into usable materials, but it became clear it wouldn't work for two reasons. The first is that there wouldn't be enough to change to be usable. The second, bigger problem was an optics issue. It would be discovered eventually, and there would be too many people distrusting and disgusted by such a source, no matter how clean we make it, no matter what PR we tried. We would lose all trust by the people. From there, we thought to use ocean water somehow, to purify it, but a pipeline would just be wrecked and abused by the antithesis, by nomads, and other corps. No one here has teleportation tech, and even if we wanted to invest in it, protecting them became a huge hassle. No matter what we do, we cannot guarantee a constant, safe flow of water without antithesis or human interference. The last option, simply taking control of the Bestlé offices In Arizona, wouldn't be enough. They have booby trapped every well to be contaminated the moment they detect such overt hostile actions. Fleming is working on a solution to that, but it would still take time to enact. Time normal people wouldn't have.”

  This was the worst I have ever seen from Heracles. His public image was the brave, confident, ready to push through all the bullshit to do the right thing. And now I could hear his anguish and frustration at this situation which, hilariously, was the same situation I was dealing with, just on a personal scale.

  “What if I told you that I was working through something similar, that I am actively working towards portal tech for more or less the same reasons. And that, after listening to you now, the only way I could see us overcoming this situation is to get multiple portals onto the moon.”

  There was silence for a bit, with only the sounds of breathing passing through the call.

  “The moon?”

  “The moon. It's big, plenty of mass to mine and convert, and out of the reach of a majority of humans. Even the colony up there would be easily blocked with simple defences. Only issue would be getting the portal up there.”

  “No. No, that's not an issue.” His voice regains some life, shedding his hesitation. “The moon! Ha ha ha! Yes! You will be at the HQ tomorrow, right? Good! We have a lot to go over. See you soon!” The call ended.

  “Why do I get the feeling that I made a mistake?”

  I wouldn't say a mistake, per se. But trouble? Definitely.