Succession
A.D. Corps Chapter 2
“I’ve seen the end of the game.”
Douglas was quite accustomed to having Anton sugar-coat, hyperbolize, and distort reality, but there was a wild sincerity in his business-partner’s tone this time. After having untold years of his life stolen, and almost certainly exploited, ruining however many years he had left, Doug wanted to just believe without question, and together they could start moving their furniture into this sparkling, rainbow-dappled place that Anton had found for them. If he began to let his doubts interfere, however, he suspected that the rainbows would shatter, and the furniture would be crushed under the feet of thousands of automaton soldiers bearing the logos and trade-names of his enemies.
Doug took in a long breath, shut his eyes, and let it out slowly. “All right, Anton. What have we got.”
Anton rubbed his hands together. “That’s just the thing, Dub[1]. The key is what we haven’t got. We were making a play against Kray-Poore, PKI, Union[2] — all these larger outfits — by their own rules. What I’m saying is, now we’re outside of that. Do you see what I mean?”
Anton smiled. “Let’s get back to the office, so I can put it on the board.”
While pulling away from the curb, the car shuddered to a stop. Anton put it back in park and attempted the ignition. Snowflakes touched on the windshield and melted. A streetlamp clinkered to life. Doug did a thousand-frames-per-second facepalm.
“Do you know where Mashing and Fowlerton is?… Yep, by Rafferty’s Pub.” Anton was on his phone.
“Are you getting a tow?” Doug asked, but Anton shook his head no, and indicated that he was calling a taxi company. He did this by doing the universal sign for ‘cab driver’, which is to pantomime driving, and then turn to look in the back seat with growing horror.
“Okay thanks.” Anton ended the call and put his phone away. He turned to Doug, “It’s quicker to walk.”
QUICKER THAN WHAT EXACTLY
“We aren’t really dressed for this,” Doug fretted, pulling his collar up, “Are you going to abandon your car there?”
Anton scoffed. “Fuck that piece of shit. We’re billionaires now.”
PUTTIN’ IT ON THE BOARD
“…So where before, if we were lucky, we would get maybe a dozen of your units sold…” Anton’s arithmetic was off the mark, but Doug could do it in his head, and so far the discrepancy wasn’t enough to make the reasoning unsound. “That would keep us going for another five to seven months, until we had to land a new contract, and during that time, the other agencies will be reverse engineering us.”
“We accounted for that,” Doug interrupted.
“But what if we got a bigger contract?” Anton drew a big circle on the lightboard. It was becoming evident to Doug that Anton’s visuals weren’t much help to anyone, and this presentation could have easily been done during the walk over. But then Anton then crossed out the names of the other agencies, and suddenly Doug understood. “The… only contract?”
“Yes!” Anton jumped up and down, then spiked the lightboard pen to the ground in victory. He jogged over and grabbed his ElectroTablet and opened the article he’d been reading earlier, then handed it to Doug. “We’re the only operation nimble enough… and with the licenses…”
WORLD CONGRESS INSTATES COMMITTEE TO AWARD GLOBAL DEFENCE CONTRACT TO PRIVATE SECTOR
The lede was enough. Doug looked up from the tablet, agape, “We can undercut everyone?”
“YES, DUB, YES,” Anton shouted.
“And if they use my designs, their pitch will come in even higher?”
“It’s like we leaked the designs on purpose?”
“YESSSS AHAHAHA” Anton cackled. He was going out of his mind. He went to the lightboard again but the pen was missing. Oh yeah, he had chucked it at the floor, and it was totally broken. “GODDAMN IT!” he added, then cackled again.
Doug tried to remain dispassionate. “We’ll have two months tops, to put together a believable offer. We’ll need people. Consultants…” Anton was staring, waiting for him to put together the pieces. “… Your connection at the Academy.”
Anton grabbed Doug by the arms and shook him around gleefully. Then he dry-humped the lightboard.
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