Chapter 115: Chapter 115

Warm, gold beams of the afternoon sun rippled through the tall, glass windows, pooling on the floor of the office. A few metres away, and out of the sun’s rays, sat Arthur Penn. His desk was clear but for a single, purple crystal that hovered in the centre of it just a few centimetres above the glass. He reached out a hand and plucked the crystal out of the air and rolled it in his hand.

It was warm, warmer than the sun, warmer than a fire. It was power, pure power.

A smile curled at the corner of his mouth as he closed his hand around the crystal. Years, so many years of planning and plotting and working and toiling, and here he was, exactly where he wanted to be, where he deserved to be. At the apex, in the seat of power, dominant.

As with most things, the beginning had been slow, progress measured in milimetres, but he’d held on, continued forward, stayed the course, and, steadily, he’d climbed that mountain. There was also the contribution of the ’tipping point’ of two years prior when The Unity had finally emerged from its chrysalis and made its mark on the world. Things had sped up then, oh yes, especially once that pesky seal had been broken on the Nameless Beast.

It had been a monumental effort to complete the Camelot Ordinance but the way it was able to leverage the Nameless Beast’s power for The Unity while stagnating all energy elsewhere was both necessary and incredibly powerful. The perfect trump card.

Arthur sighed and set the crystal back into its spot above the table.

Or at least it would have been perfect if not for...

There came a knock at the door.

The door opened and in came Artemis and Morgan, the former with a clipboard, the latter with his usual flippant attitude. Some things didn’t change, but then again, The Unity had internally faced many difficulties in the last two years.

The loss of Ling’s mind and the sting of Zhan’s betrayal were both still fresh in Arthur’s mind as some of the largest and he, perhaps, did not even realise just how much those events now affected his behaviour, how it made him both try to keep his followers close while also fixing them with a paranoid eye.

"What have you found?" asked Arthur.

Morgan took a seat opposite him while Artemis remained standing, looking to his clipboard.

"Sir, we have completed the review of the situation," he said. "The Unity’s share of all new private spell is holding strong at ninety-eight percent while public spells we’re at about eighty."

"Hm, so we’re really at eighty and seventy," mused Arthur. "Do we know who is competing with us?"

"There are a number of projects. There’s Intelis from across the Atlantic and Morn from Europe, but the rest are all open source projects, mostly from universities."

"Mostly? Is there one that isn’t?"

"Kunpeng. It just left closed-beta and is showing quite a bit of promise."

"Kunpeng..." Arthur rolled the foreign word in his mouth. "Does it mean anything?"

"It’s from Chinese mythology. It refers to a flying whale."

"That’s a misconception," cut in Morgan, clearly bored. "A kun is a mythological whale and a peng is a bird. A kunpeng is a creature who can freely morph between the two forms."

"Is that right?" said Arthur. "Fascinating." He only sounded mildly fascinated.

"Sir, should I get our lawyers to send them a letter to stop operations?" asked Artemis.

"Why?" said Morgan with a laugh. "And make ourselves look like a bully? Nah, we should be inviting them to give a presentation at the start-up pitch session."

"Where are we at with the start-up pitches?" asked Arthur. "Haven’t submissions closed?"

"Submissions-" began Morgan.

"I don’t think that’s a good idea," said Artemis firmly. "We still haven’t determined who is building Kunpeng. It could be anyone. What if-"

"You think Whale Toes is still around?" asked Morgan.

Artemis bit his tongue but it was clear that that was exactly what he thought.

"Whale Toes?" scoffed Arthur. "What can they do? Rise from the dead? Two years ago I crushed them into the ground. True, there were a few survivors here and there, but it’ll take at least a decade before Whale Toes proper is able to even crawl." Arthur waved a hand. "No, I am not worried about subterfuge. What I am concerned about is how we are going to fuel our growth moving forward while not alienating the public too much. That’s what you should be concerned about. Send this Kunpeng an invitation."

Artemis swallowed and kept his mouth shut.

"Submissions," continued Morgan, "have closed for pitches but the server is having some issues with collating all the materials."

"Do we have a shortlist?"

"I’ve started working on one, but it will likely take some time to go through them all and assess them."

Arthur nodded. "Alright. Once that list is done, I want a copy sent to me, and I want the order of the presentations to follow the sequence as well. I don’t want to be wasting more time than we need to."

"Right, will do." Follow current novels on novel✶fire.net

After Artemis and Morgan left to do their tasks, Arthur rose and went to the window. High above he could just make out the outline of the buildings floating among the clouds.

No one could challenge him. No one.

It was summer and everyone in the city felt it and when it rained, everyone felt that too.

A sudden storm shower had just finished dumping its buckets and the birds were already sticking their heads out of holes and singing to the new born world.

Amethyst ruffled her feathers and turned so that she didn’t have to look at such frivolity, such low class behaviour. It was fine to sing, and it was fine to appreciate sunlight after rain, but to treat the whole situation so lightly was beyond belief.

Amethyst craned her avian head and tilted her head to properly watch as the little girl pushed off at the top of the slide and zoomed down to the bottom. When her little feet had hit the floor, Amethyst fluttered down to the ground to make sure the girl was okay, crooning the question.

The little girl, Cheung Hiu Fa, smiled and made a peace-sign with her little hands.

The bird gave her a light nip in response then fluttered up to the top of the slide again, knowing full well exactly what the little girl wanted. Hiu Fa beamed and quickly scaled the playset again.

Amethyst was in a good mood. She felt different. The feeling hard started about a week ago and slowly grown till the point where she could finally put words to it: she was feeling whole.

After losing the ability to turn into a human, the guhuoniao had felt utterly destroyed, like a bowl that had been shattered on the ground, and she’d feared that would be the end of it.

Now, however, if this building power continued, she had a strong feeling that things might just be turning around.

A few metres away on the benches sat her grandfather reading his newspaper, a stern expression on his face.

He always had a stern expression, but this one was especially stern.

"Ruffians the lot of them... Someone needs to..." he muttered, turning the page. The paper was not one of the mainstream ones and was, rather, an independent one secretly distributed throughout the city in direct opposition to The Unity and its stranglehold over all sectors.

There was no one else in the play park and why would there be? It was just a small mess of degrading metal, soon to become a health hazard. No one else let their children play there, partly because of the danger and partly because there was hardly anyone left.

In the two years since their rise to power, The Unity had not only created a new industry of ’physical computing’ that that dominated, but had also taken over everything else. If they’d come in and provided a better service or a cheaper price, no one would have complained, but a mere month after gaining their monopoly, they’d cranked up the prices for their services.

They’d been sneaky about opening up rival business chains and so when non-Unity businesses shut down after not being able to pay their fees to the company, they’d shrugged and taken more market share. And upped the prices.

Hiu Fa’s grandfather shook his head and muttered more under his breath. If his son didn’t send more money that week, he might have to take up that offer and try their luck on that island...

A sudden motion in the corner of the old man’s eye caught his attention and he looked up to find a group of youngsters walking towards the playpark. Had they been a group of parents with children or even a few normal looking young people, the old man wouldn’t have worried. But they were and he was.

They all wore black with hoods and hats pulled low and masks to further hide who they were. In their hands, they all held phones. The old man quickly set his newspaper aside and rose.

"Hiu Fa," he called in a low but commanding voice.

The little girl looked up then saw the group of ne’er-do-wells and flinched. It was not her first time seeing such people.