“Kid, I think you might be onto something here. Have you been speaking to anyone else about this?” I asked.
“No, the only person that knows about the project is my friend. Well, and you too, now,” he replied.
“Okay, you have given me something to think about. Give me some time to digest all this information, and we will let you know whether we will be investing in this. I take it that’s why you have shown me this—you need someone to put the funding behind the project?” I asked.
“That’s right, Mr. Dominguez, we have to fine-tune things with the robotics and coding parts of the project to be able to do this. As you’ve probably guessed, I will be responsible for writing the code. My friend Justin will be responsible for building the nanites. So far, I’ve been able to develop a considerable amount of the code. Justin’s nanites, on the other hand, require expensive materials and high-end equipment. Up to this point, we’ve been working out of my parents’ garage. We are going to need a decent secured facility to deliver the project properly. We will eventually need to involve other people, experts in the pharmaceutical field,” he said.
“Okay, not to worry, we will come back to you with an answer soon. You will get the five hundred thousand credits that Alex offered for your services today. I will approve an extra one million credits to split with your friend as a retainer for Project Neon. For now, don’t tell your friend where the funds came from until we’ve given you the go-ahead. Just tell him that you have someone who wishes to remain a silent investor for now. This means neither of you speaks a word about the project to anyone. And oh, I’m sure that I don’t need to emphasise that you were never here today,” I said.
“Oh absolutely Mr. Dominguez, I would never jeopardize your trust in any way,” he replied.
“Good, we’ll be in touch. What’s your name, kid?” I asked.
“It’s Matt sir, Matthew Harrington. Thank you, sir, thanks a lot!”
This was probably the best meeting I’d had in a while—this kid was definitely onto something big. If everything panned out with this project, Edom Group would make trillions. I didn’t know much about nanites, but from what Matt explained, I could think of many ways to monetize this. We wouldn’t need to look far to find people who would offer their expertise for Project Neon. Edom Pharmaceuticals has several qualified people who would be perfect for the project. I wasn’t only interested in the end product; I wanted the patent.
“Goodness, Alex, where did you find this kid?” I said, trying to contain my excitement.
“Ha-ha. We’ve used his resources in the past. Believe it or not, I found him on social media where he advertised himself as a freelance data analyst. At the time, we were just looking for someone to analyse some of our data against our competitors, only to discover he had other talents. I was able to get him to hack into a number of databases to retrieve information we didn’t have access to at the time,” Alex explained.
“Well, we need to spend a lot more time on social media to see if there are other people like him. This kid is amazing. I think we can get our guys from pharmaceuticals in on this. My only question is, can we trust him?” I asked.
“I’ve never had a problem with him, none of the stuff that he’s done for us has ever leaked. You know what’s funny though, until today he didn’t even know I was connected to Edom Group. Now that he does, I’ll make sure I reiterate the importance of confidentiality. If you decide you want to bring him into the fold, it would be a straightforward affair, as we’ve already run checks on him. His friend, however, is a whole other matter. We would have to put him through the vetting process. Matt's track record with us as a hacker works out perfectly—it means he will bend the rules whenever he is required to,” Alex said.
“Boy, is he lucky. I was going to ask you to get rid of him. However, I think he’ll be of good use to us. Run further checks on him, check out his friend as well. If everything pans out, take them through the checking process. Make sure he gets the 1.5 million credits today,” I said.
“Sure thing, Dom. So, Joe mentioned that you asked about worst-case scenarios and you wanted to know about our contacts in the prisons. We have most of the wardens in the major prisons in our pockets. We also have incarcerated high-ranking gang members on retainer. We pay a set number of credits onto their books every month for situations like this. This gesture ensures that our people are protected if they ever have to do time,” Alex said.
“That sounds great,” I said.
The trial was going to cost Edom Group a significant amount of money, and Project Neon was the way to not only recover, but it would propel the company to greater heights. We needed to figure out ways to keep generating revenue in the meantime. This was the focus of the discussion between me and the CSOs this afternoon. In the current market, there was no better place to invest than in the AU. The AU was still one of the best places to source raw materials. Erratanite had become one of the most sought-after commodities, and mining it was becoming rampant in the AU. This meant market prices had declined slightly,
