Must Be Proud

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

There was no rest for the wicked as they said.

Whilst Cassandra recouped from the stress and weight of her addiction, Itash still had a job to do himself. Part of the agreement between GenPals and Didact -- sealed together with the organization of Antigone as they often did -- was that the private security contractor would vet the locations and set-up the digital infrastructure on which the application platform would be based. Part of that included vetting new places where they could establish locations similar to the Junction 01 set-up that Didact had installed on Orron III.

Cassandra and Itash had agreed on a meeting a bit later today, where he'd present her with some of the findings Didact had made.

Such it was that about four hours after her initial entrance into the GenPals HQ that they found themselves in one of the conference rooms of the building. Itash was settled lazily in one of the recliner seats, a glass of amber swirling between his fingers while his other hand switched through the various slides Didact had prepared for Cassandra for a quick overview.

"...as you can see Jaminere will be the next site- 02, as they say, it will primarily focus on the Tionese market, but with some creativity we will be able to have it support at least half of the Tingel Arm." Tash supplied alongside with the slides, taking a sip from his glass a moment later. "OSI will remain focused on the Corporate Sector, I am loath to mix those two business dimensions together."

"But Didact has been working on its successor..."

 

[Cassandra Paige]

"Just the Tingel arm?"

Clearly Cass was unimpressed.

She was settled with her hip against the desk, arms crossed over her chest. It was a rare moment today of stillness. There was a barely restrained, almost feral energy about her- the side effects of excess ability and capacity that were not currently in use and that she didn't have a proper outlet for anyway yet. That was a problem that would need addressing. With the Staff and the Apple she had been able to do certain things with the sensitivity. Here though?

Where she had felt hollow before, now she felt too full. Like she couldn't fully contain all of it. Oh, it was good, she had no complaints about the way she felt. Just that she knew she could do with this. It was acceptable, as a temporary thing.

But if you give a Nezumi a cookie.... they will probably want a glass of blue milk to go with it.

And Cass now, had her cookie.

"How many locations would be necessary to roll this project out *beyond* that?"

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

Clearly.

Itash didn't let himself be concerned about the hunger behind her tone and the desire for more.

Where would they be, if they didn't let themselves be led by their hunger every now and again? Didact wouldn't have been satisfied with just the Tingel Arm either, of course, but they had to start somewhere. Where better than the base of their power? It was the safest place to run the tests and make sure their experiments were up to snuff for a more galactic roll-out.

"Ten in total, spread across the Galaxy in important junctions to maximize coverage." The way Tash said that implied that Didact had already been looking into their options for it and that he simply hadn't gotten tot it yet.

"The facilities will be run by OSI's successors."

Successors.

Ten in total, copies of one another, that would work in unison to handle the needs of the digital infrastructure they were crafting here. Of course, the other thing they were doing would be mining the data they were receiving. Finding connections, potential profit, it was strange how so few organizations seemed to be interested in big data, when it had so much profit attached to it.

"How do you feel?" His nail ran softly across the inside of her wrist, leaving a blind white line.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

Ten was more than she'd hoped but less than she'd feared.

"Would that include some overlap in case of outages?"

She had pushed back off of the desk, not pacing per say but moving. Too much energy, too much need for something. Difficult to contain but oh so good for all of that.

His question brought her attention to him- not the problem they were grappling with, which was where her attention had been, but to him. His hand around her wrist, his nail against her skin drawing her still again.

At least for the moment.

"Like a million credits."

The smile curled slow and smug across her lips.

Moving over, she leaned in, her eyes on his the entire time as she pressed a kiss against his mouth.

She knew it was temporary. That they would have to repeat the ritual regularly until they found a permanent solution. She found it bearable, that wait now, because there was something to hold her over. It was not the level she knew was possible but it was still good.

"No regrets?" She teased softly. It wasn't an easy thing on him, after all. And might echo the first time she had taken the Force from him. This was not the same, but she wondered how similar it felt to him.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

Tash nodded.

"If we simply kept it to full coverage without back-up we could presumably cut it down to seven, maybe six depending on how much we could boost the signals." Itash wasn't an expert on engineering. In truth, he knew the bare minimum so he could make business decisions, but let the engineers from Didact and Corondex do the actual heavy thinking and lifting. There were things like prioritization and delegation. Why attempt to control every single fiber, when that wasn't the optimal course of action?

"I recommend sticking to ten though."

With the sheer scale they were working they could use every little piece of buffer they had. If only one of them failed (if they suck to six) it could bring down a large portion of their regional activity.

That would put immense pressure on the maintenance teams to solve the problem, because for every minute that it was offline? It meant that people were losing interest and moving away from their product. It was retainment that would keep their profit margins large.

Eye met eye and Tash held it even as his arms wrapped around her waist, slowly pulling her in and onto his lap, deepening the kiss without closing his eyes. No weakness here, no moment of trust, the nights were for abandonment, but the light was for truth. As the kiss broke Tash hummed, thinking about her question. It was a tease, yes, but both of them knew the truth behind it. The process and ritual to give her this temporary sensitivity put pressure on him.

Why then.... did Itash like it?

"None," Kiss turning hard and possessive at the same time as his fingers dug into her hips firmly. "You?"

 

[Cassandra Paige]

This was acceptable- the details about the relays- and she nodded.

"We'll have the engineers map out approximate locations where they will need to be for maximum effect," she murmured, forehead tilting against his, a slight hiss between her teeth as he pulled her harder.

"Not a one."

Access to the Force was worth the very small price on her end. His was the burden in this affair, but that seemed oddly equitable to Cass. In a round about way, this was all his fault, after all. Oh there was no blame (she had made each choice herself), but there was a certain balance, cosmically, that amused her.

She leaned in, kissing him deeply, the business meeting over.

*****

Over the next week, plans solidified, coding spun into existence beneath the hands of the programmers. The building on Jaminere was purchased (though mostly legal means). The project moved forward at a rapid pace, fed by their joint efforts. As the week went on, however, it became clear just how often it would be required that they renew Cass's sensitivity. A week could be done. Too much more than that and she grew pale. A tremor in her hands. Exhaustion and irritability creeping in.

Itash fed that addiction gladly.

And he wasn't done yet.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

There were plans in motion.

The longer they circled the further Itash pulled Cassandra into his world.

Not the corporate kind, no, the kind of murder and shadows and corruption running black through their veins. Where souls were traded as easily as a child's tear, where a phoenix could be real if you believed in them hard enough and where credits only mattered when the knife's edge grew dull. It was a world that he had explored royally right after his exile and it was a world that kept tugging at him.

Just underneath the skin.

"How do your people get the real thing into virtual reality?" Itash asked softly, while studying the shapes the fire were making. Glass in hand, blood-red wine, enjoying the shadowplay and the soft tune of the music in the background.

The project was going well, but there was something that Mecetti was curious about.

Just how to angle this to further her path.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

Cass lounged on the chaise. Her own glass in hand, her attention was mostly on the data she kept pulling up from the holoprojector in her arm. Scrolling line after scrolling line of requests and inter-departmental notes. Once the initial roll out occurred, she had no intention of being this involved in the process. But as with each new offering from GenPals, the redhead was deeply and intrinsically entwined.

"Mostly brain scans," she answered absently, paying far more attention to her work in that moment than him.

"Put them through a series of motor actions and reactions. Do it on a scale large enough and often enough and we get a good baseline to work into the way the programs should behave in a given set of circumstances. We've been using the rejects from the main lines- the ones that are behaviorally sound but inappropriate for sale."

The could be from anything to an lazy eye, a snaggled tooth, to projected sales of a certain fur colour not panning out. There was nothing wrong with the animals themselves, they were simply not fit for sale.

"They aren't useful for much else by the time we're done with them, so rather than euthanize them before the creation process is complete," in that case, as soon as the trouble had been noticed, "we're finishing them out. It's not significantly more expensive and we're getting far better results than from humans trying to imagine how the creatures will react. Makes them feel far less wasted."

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

Hm.

That sounded unethical and Itash filed that away for later. Of course, he didn't care about it himself, that would have been the joke of a lifetime- but some things could be used to his advantage regardless of his personal opinions (or lack thereof). Maybe this would be nothing, but that's why research was required here. "How has OSI-01 been operating?" Didact had delivered a prototype and successor to OSI-00 to GenPals only two days ago, but Tash was interested in how it was operating.

It could potentially do the work of at least five score professional scientists, analyzing, ordering, coaxing out the smallest detail and making it work perfectly.

01 was mostly designed for information control and data mining, but by the sound of it what GP was doing with the defect animals? They were basically data mining them as is. In this regard 01 would presumably cut down on the time necessary.

That was the hope anyway.

"Her sisters, 02 to 10 are coming along nicely. They are currently moving towards sentience." A shrug before he sipped from his glass again, closing his eyes for a moment and letting the wine overwhelm his taste buds for a brief moment. It was always glorious, especially with the music pushing against his ears and every other sense occupied by the bouquet of the wine. "My engineers believe that we can activate the Jaminere site in the next two weeks for stress testing."

Itash didn't try to guess at a timeframe himself.

That much had not been a lie, when he had framed himself as the gun to Cassandra's brains. Oh, there was plenty that Tash understand, but engineering and computing? No, that was simply beyond him.

He was okay with that.

One could not be a master of everything... and one did not need to be.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

As far as Cass was concerned it was fine. They were well within their legal bounds to euthanize 'undesirable' animals- in fact, it was considered a mercy. The laws were very flexible in what a company that specialized in cloning could define as undesirable, at least in the Corporate Sector. Oh, she certainly didn't want it advertised. It didn't fit with GenPals happy, cozy veneer. But it was a necessary aspect of this sort of company.

Of course, using them further before euthanizing them, well.

Cass considered is simply thrifty. But also recognized such a thing would be viewed poorly by the public. It was why that particular part of the ground work was taking place at Junction 01. Those were the scientists she already knew were on board for some of the more questionable aspects of what might be necessary. Of course, not all of the work could be done there, it was too big of an undertaking. But she had vetted the other scientists working on the problem at their other labs very thoroughly.

"Mmm just fine," she murmured, finally looking up with a smug sort of smile. "Everything you promised. As always."

At mention of Jamiere, she simply nodded. That had been something of a mess. Nothing they could have foreseen however.

"Oh, we're working on a smaller, portable version- too expensive to be in every module, but something I can use to show the prototype even if there isn't a hub within range. It's too large to be viable, beyond price, for open sales, but should do nicely when we introduce it to Maena. If that goes well, we'll want to consider a hub there possibly? Or will there be one close enough for coverage do you think?"

[member="Itash Mecetti"]

 

[Itash Mecetti]

[member="Cassandra Paige"]

In his own mind Maena, while having proposed the initial idea, was a lesser priority in the grander scheme of things.

Simply because it was a costly investment to make with a lack of developed worlds around it.

A hub on Maena would only really serve Maena and a sparing few worlds around it. It wasn't like Coruscant, where they could set-up a location and immediately have coverage over hundreds upon hundreds of developed, rich worlds that were just waiting to be exploited. There was a reason why the Unknown Regions were still called unknown, after all.

Not much was happening there in the grander scheme of things.

In terms of capitalistic exploitation anyway. "Maena would work the best for our purposes." It would mean perfect coverage on-site and would still leave enough room to receive space on Bakura, for instance. "We are looking into splitting the hubs into smaller portions for the Unknown Regions though. Rather than invest into a state-of-the-art facility, we can spread it into smaller, cheaper nodes spread through the regional trade worlds of the region."

The few it had.

"What do you think?" Fifty percent of this project was hers, after all.

 

[Cassandra Paige]

Cass got up from the chaise, stretching languidly before sauntering over. The fire bathed the room in warm light, but her attention was on him. Setting her glass on the side table, she met his eye, then took his glass as well. Slowly she sunk into his lap, arms going around his neck as she did.

"It all sounds fabulous," she purred, kissing him deeply for a moment.

"Now," she murmured, cocking her head slightly to the side.

"Are we quite finished with business for tonight? Or are there still details that simply cannot wait?"

It was closing in on a week. While the faint beginnings of the hunger had only just started, Cass was not a fan of the deeper symptoms that went along with it. Yes, she could go another few days if she simply had to. But the exhaustion, the head aches, the irritability. The sheer empty need.

It was all entirely unpleasant. And if she could avoid all of that, why shouldn't she?

Her fingers traced his wrists, feather light as she kissed him again.

[member="Itash Mecetti"]