(Preview) Elements of Power 3 by PT Brainum

She looked away, then looked back. A sure sign that Val was looking that up. Val had been promoted to VP of HR, and publicly had to leave my side as my personal assistant. The result had been one of my recently resurrected identities being used to create my new assistant, Tiffany. I was under strict orders not to get the company in trouble by sleeping with this, or any other employee that wasn't one of my fiances already.

Adele had cackled through the entire HR special training that Val had run for all the senior executives on workplace ethics, appropriate office behavior, and fraternization. The CFO Arden Williams, had stifled his laughter, considering his identity as Frederick's twin meant he knew much more about my background than he should have as Arden. Tho, I must admit, the sexual harassment demonstration using my other Fiances, Nora and Em, as actors had everybody laughing.

"Two 1km rolls over the past month," Tiffany said, bringing me back to reality.

"Standard 10% discount for a roll then, nothing extra. Be sure to put that on our website. Investigate and, if they are not simply reselling, offer them an additional 5% discount on their next full roll."

A full roll was 100km long, and five meters wide. It weighed 385 grams. The initial price before the first factory was 2000 CHF per sq meter, pricing a full roll at 1 billion. The first factory producing 1 100km roll per day, halved that price. The second factory halved it again. The third factory halved the price again. Each factory now was outputting nine 1km rolls per day, and one 100km roll every ten days. The additional factories were planned, with the expectation that the price would halve again.

She made a note, and went into the next item of business, "Tommy has completed a new design for the supercapacitor factory, and would like to review it with you."

Thomas Detwiller had gone from my assistant to head of operations. He handled the management of all our separate factories, as well as designing the hidden mechanisms that delivered the products that our 'automated' production process created. As VP of operations he had his own office and staff on the floor below. He also had a group of engineers working under his other identity, his twin Big T, they were examining graphene based products made by our customers, looking for new potential uses, all designed to accelerate the use of graphene.

"Can he come up?" I asked.

"I have him on the schedule for just after lunch."

"Excellent. What's next?"

"Pilatus wants you to come look at the plane. I believe it's complete, and they hope to surprise you."

My power flicked out, and I reached out and examined the Pilatus factory 55km to the south. My airplane wasn't there. I stretched out with my power. When I learned to replicate myself, back in February, two things about my power improved. My ability to conjure and absorb was not limited anymore to half the distance of my ability to sense, and manipulate matter, but extended its full distance, and the growth of my ability to extend my power grew twice as fast.

It was another two months before I figured out that the radius of my reach was growing at the rate the surface area of a sphere surrounding me at the full extent of my power doubled every 30 days. On February 3rd, 2020 my reach was 1582 kilometres in every direction. February 18th it was 2237km, a 70.71% increase, but the surface area of the sphere surrounding me, where I absorbed all cosmic radiation to fuel my power, increased from 31,450,157 sq km to 62,900,314 sq km.

In May my radius was larger than Earth's diameter, and there was no spot on planet Earth that I couldn't reach with my power from any other spot. Today I had to make due with the 122,200km I had available on this Friday, August 7th, 2020. I was looking forward to the day at the end of September when I could reach the moon from the surface of the Earth, without needing a pearl.

As my power swept out looking for my custom Pilatus PC-24, made with a graphene body valued around 1.5 billion just for the raw graphene, when I delivered it. I focused on the shape, and materials letting my power do the search.

I focused in on it as soon as my power pinged the location, it was in flight, over France, and headed in from the Atlantic at 45,000 feet. I conjured a pearl into a small space in the tail, so I couldn't ever lose it. I didn't recognize the four people aboard, but, that didn't really mean anything, I'd only ever met a handful of the people at Pilatus.

My power measured the airspeed, at a very, very satisfactory 560 knots. I focused for a moment on the cockpit, looking at the controls. It looked like the engines were almost at 50% power. I had a very good idea why they wanted a meeting with me.

"I just saw it in flight with my power, so it's definitely finished. Did they say what day?"

"They were hoping you could come down this weekend, they are offering to pick you up and fly you down."

It was a 2 hour drive if traffic was good, but our office was next door to the Zurich heliport. "See if you can book the H155 for a flight tomorrow. I'd rather have my own transportation there and back."

She looked off into the distance, "There is one free tomorrow, shall I book it?"

"What time did they want me?"

"The message said, at your convenience."

"Ok, make it 10 am, it'll be about 15 minutes each way, but book the helicopter for the whole day, if whatever they want to discuss takes extra time we have it, if not, we can take a sightseeing tour."

"That sounds lovely, bringing the girls?" she asked.

"If they want to go. They do love flying."

"One final item, the house property has been approved for a multifamily dwelling."

"That's great, what height did they approve?"

"60 meters."

"That's fantastic! That will solve our company housing problems," I told her. A number of company positions were filled with twins of my core group, identities taken from the recently deceased throughout Europe from the coronavirus, they were now the recently resurrected. Monitoring the hospitals I was looking for people with no family or friends to miss them, and in crowded busy hospitals, where one or two people might slip thru the cracks with a bit of help from my power. The result had been many new identities to hire, but not enough housing in the area for them.

With the completion of our headquarters, we needed the workers, especially in sensitive departments. Security was fully staffed with twins of Christian working under head of security Ben, his first twinned identity. Paul, a new twin of Karl, now handled the shipping and receiving department along with a crew of untwinned hires, using his experience with our automated order system to train and manage his staff.

I had a few twins working at offsite facilities, a couple ladies at the antivirus production labs, a guy who worked the line at the solar panel factory in Thurn, among them. When David learned he could get twins of healthy young guys, and I could even boost them in strength and dexterity, he begged for a dozen. His construction business was booming, not only working for me building factories, but also because the European economy was gathering steam again. The extra man power meant he had a job and shift supervisor who he could trust to do things right, and his way. He spent most of his time now either in his office as president of the company, or with me on the golf course. We had a tee time at 2pm today.

I glanced out the window from my fourth floor office. The entire top floor was mine, not only as office space, but also as the public laboratory for me in the company where I designed and built new machines. The actual work was dependant on the underground lab where a small army of my people worked with me creating not only new graphene based technology, but also the tech we were developing for the space colonies I was building around the solar system.

From the window I could see the warm summer day, but my eyes slid across to the wall lined with framed posters from JPL, advertising vacation spots around the solar system. They were hanging there to remind me that no problem was too terrible to overcome.

Underground I was having a similar thought as I discussed with the members of my group the continued failure to find life in our solar system. Tyr, the name for the collective including Thomas Detwiller, Big T, and Mike, had been busy designing and building the electronics for an interstellar probe, the reason for the current meeting.

"It looks good, Tyr. I like the design of the double nose," I told him, looking at the dart like shape. Previous probes had been sent around the solar system at 10 million kph, just under 1% of the speed of light. Even with my ability to speed the passage of time, the new probes were going to have to have a higher intrinsic velocity to make interstellar travel reasonable.

The design was as narrow as possible, so that there would be minimal impact with interstellar gas. The shape would help push aside the shockwave, while internal electromagnets would repel the ionized gases away from the craft as the sharp tip of diamondillium ablated at cruising speed of 500 million kph. We had built three probes, and flown one out past the oort cloud. Interstellar Probe 1, IP1, was currently on its way to Proxima Centauri at the cruise speed of just under 50% of the speed of light.

IP2 was sitting on the table in front of us. 20m long, with a maximum diameter of 15cm at the center, it was double tipped with a needle point. Designed to flip 180 degrees if the forward pointing tip became too degraded, and continuing to fly with the fresh tip pointed forward. After a week interstellar friction had already slowed IP1 by 8000kph, so instead of spending an hour boosting its speed back with the 25,000g's of acceleration it was designed to take, I conjured IP2 into its place at the cruise speed, and placed IP1 on the table in its place.

I had already warned everyone not to touch it, as parts of it were very cold, and other parts very hot. My power had already examined it enough to determine that it was holding up very well so far. The trip to the oort cloud had been made at 25% light speed, from Neptune's orbit. I had sped up the passage of time by a factor of 100, so instead of 2300 days to the outer edge, it only took 23.

Now with IP2 581 light days into its 4.22 light year journey, I concentrated my power on increasing the speed of time around the craft. I was comfortably able to keep it, and the space in front of it, at 1000 times normal speed, its apparent velocity jumped from 500 million to 500 billion kph. 463 times light speed. A convenient number, turning each day into approximately 1.25 light years traveled, and arriving in the system in 2 days.

IP3 was currently moving at 500 million kph slightly northward from the oort cloud point, compared to the very southward direction to Proxima, where I had delivered a pearl along the solar equator when IP1 exited the oort cloud into clear interstellar space. It was pointed at Barnard's star. Once it was out for a full week, and looking as good as IP1 had, I'd boost it to interstellar speeds for the 5.9 light year distant system.

"Are you going to refurbish IP1, or do you want to keep it as a souvenir?" Tyr asked.

"I'll refurbish, I want to set up five more pearls at the outer edge of the oort cloud. One opposite the current pearl, two at the north and south pole of the solar system, and two between them, halfway around the system elliptic. We will use the IP1 to deliver them. I think the design can handle 500 million kph inside the system, so we will test it."

"Electronics check out, no need to replace anything, just needs the surface forged back into shape," he said pointing at the blunted tip.

My power flicked out, forging the material back into the needle sharp tip of highly compressed and dense carbon of diamondillium. All of the planets were gathered on one side of the solar system at the moment, so I conjured the refurbished IP1 at Mercury, with it pointed straight up from the elliptic. I could have conjured more, and placed all five at once, but I was looking to get wear and lifespan data from the vehicle body, and internal hardware.

From Mercury the distance of 100,000 au was 12.4 days at 500 million kph, if I time accelerated at 100x. I found it a bit difficult to concentrate accelerating two items at once, but I conjured a few more Mes, and soon had enough that it became second thought, instead of serious concentration.

My third target for exploration was in the direction of the Virgo constellation, Mercury would be on the correct side of the sun to launch IP1 towards that location in 13 days, on August 20th, after placing the north pole conjure pearl 1.5 light years from the sun. If things were going well, IP4 would launch from there towards Luhman 16.

Chapter 2

"It's beautiful." I said sitting in one of the six installed leather seats of my new airplane.

"Herr Barkley, this craft has exceeded all our expectations. The cruise range has tripled, rate of climb has quadrupled, cargo capacity has increased by ten times. It even went supersonic while climbing to altitude, using our existing engines," the chief engineer in the project explained.

"Please, Nicholas, call me Adam. I'm happy it has turned out so well. Is there a market for a Barkley Paper airframe?"

"Yes, even with an increased pricetag, there is a market for this aircraft."

"I can replicate this airframe for 450 million, on demand. How many do you want this year?"

"I don't know, we have been wondering what the charge would be. We believe that the plane will not sell until the total price is under 50 million, we believe at that price a vehicle with this power, range, and capacity would have orders in the dozens per year."

Our current target for graphene is 10 per sq meter. We expect to reach that target after completing our eighth graphene factory. That's a graphene cost of 15 million. So the question is, do you design a new airframe for supersonic cruise using graphene, or stay with what you have."

The engineer paused, and glanced at his partner who was sitting in the other seat facing backwards, towards me. "We are interested in a supersonic version, a PC-48," he said at a small nod from his partner.

I glanced at Val who had joined me inside the plane, while Nora and Em enjoyed refreshments outside. The helicopter had induced a bit of nausea in five month pregnant Nora, and they were enjoying the sunshine and breeze under a shade tree, it was almost 80 out there. Val reached into her bag and removed two things, a book, and a model the size and shape of a football.

"Have you read the science fiction story 'The Supersonic Zeppelin?'" I asked as the football popped into the air, coming to rest against the ceiling.

"Is that a dirigible?"

"Yes, made of Barkley Paper, and has the interior evacuated. No lifting gas, just vacuum."

He stood, and pulled it down from the ceiling. "What is this ring?" He asked, pointing at the structure wrapping the cigar shaped model.

"That's a Buseman ring wing. It works to cancel the supersonic shockwave, but provides no lift. The vehicle is lighter than air, and you can adjust buoyancy by increasing and decreasing the vacuum in the lift chamber. A 9.5 meter radius sphere has around 3500kg of lift at altitude. String three together, insert passenger seating, add a couple engines, and you have a supersonic vtol passenger aircraft. No fire danger, no ground boom, and speed is limited only by thrust and drag."

"This is a crazy idea," he said.

"Yes absolutely insane, and probably not practical. The point is that Barkley Paper and graphene give you the ability to think so far outside the box that you'll be reminiscing about the good old days when there were corners. The question is, do you want to do what everyone else is doing, or do something uniquely Pilatus?" I finished tossing pictures onto the table between us of the current crop of advertised prototype and mock ups of small supersonic craft.

They looked at the pictures, and saw the prospective dates all hoping to fly the first vehicle by 2022, with production sometime after 2025. I set a supercapacitor onto the table, and asked, "Have you ever considered an all electric aircraft?"

"The range would be measured in meters not kilometers," was his response.

"Imagine a vehicle we might call the PC-12E with a nose propfan instead of a propeller. Its graphene body has an electric motor. It has an emergency generator with 20 liters of fuel, and 2 megawatt hours of electric storage in each wing. With a recharge time of around 30 minutes, what kind of market would that kind of craft have at 25 million?"

"It would change the small aircraft, and on demand air taxi business permanently," the associate said.

"With a 25 sq meters of wing plus a 10 meters across the roof, there is room for a 26kw hour solar panel system, to either recharge or power the vehicle while parked."

"I thought your solar panels were more efficient than that." the engineer said.

"The panels that get 850 watts a sq meter have to be pointed at the sun, and track it. We've developed a non tracking lightweight version, suitable for aircraft, that produces 750 watts per sq meter."

He did a quick calculation, "That's a 19 day recharge from empty on eight hours of sun."

"Add 100 of our 850w panels, and that becomes less than a week, they only take up 5 cubic meters of storage, and weigh 98kg. With a foldable rack you could recharge in 4 and a half days anywhere with 8 hours of sun. Or make it 500 panels and do it in a day.

"I'm mainly thinking about Doctors Without Borders in Africa for this example. But the 4 megawatt battery is sized to provide the same range at the same horsepower engine. That's a calculation using a craft the same weight as the PC-12, I didn't calculate any energy efficiency benefit from the lighter weight of a Barkley Paper airframe. A much lighter craft will likely need less battery storage for the same range, reducing price and recharge time.

"That's also just a rough calculation of equal energy density of fuel used at 30% efficiency compared to a high efficiency electric motor. A simple back of the envelope calculation, I'm not an engineer, I don't know what kind of speed, power, and rpm efficiencies you'd get out of an aircraft with a super light weight."

They were both silent, but I could feel their hearts beating in excitement, and see that they were trying hard not grin. "Perhaps we could discuss these figures and opportunities with management on Monday."

"That would be fine. As I said, you guys are the engineers, I'm just the guy who would like to see my products used as widely as possible. The more I produce to meet the demand, the cheaper it gets. The graphene cost today for the aircraft we are sitting in is about 75% cheaper than the day you came to view it."

"The numbers you provided of 450 million for future airframes includes this discount?"

"Yes, the laser bonding and welding of Barkley Paper from raw graphene is expensive if I do it on demand as a one off production. But if you had orders of at least 4 per month then an automated factory could produce them at around 10 million over the cost of materials. At 15 to 20 airframes per month, the estimated capacity of a single airframe plant, that would bring the price down to just 2 million over the cost of graphene, which is currently 370 million, and it's only going to keep falling."

"The PC-24 is only slighting larger than the PC-12, so would its cost be correspondingly less?" the partner asked.

"Most likely, I haven't tried to recreate the PC-12 in Barkley Paper yet, so I can't confirm that."

They stood, and we shook hands, as Val and I stood as well. They thanked us again, and we left carrying the documentation on performance that the test airframe had generated. I had left them in return the lighter than air model, the photos of the supersonic competition, the supercapacitor with weight and energy storage data sheet, the book 'Laugh Lines' by Ben Bova with the corresponding story bookmarked, and a sample of BP2, BP3, and BP8a & BP8b, each a different variation of Barkley Paper with different structural strengths, behaviors, and flexibility.

I wanted the engineers to get used to the materials so they could start optimizing. The BP number was a reference to the number of layers of graphene in the material, so they could cost estimate as well. BP8a had a ninety degree curve radius of 2 millimeters, while BP8b had a corresponding curve radius of 2.9 meters, as it was much, much stiffer, but the same number of layers so the material could seamlessly transition between those two states. I thought it was ideal wing material.

The weekend factory tour was interesting, and I could see ZZ Manufacturing adding a permanent automated airframe factory here sometime soon. With the factory able to transition between multiple airframes with no retooling, and able to complete an airframe in 2 days or less, it would be a small mint for both companies.

I looked back at my plane, they had promised to turn it over in a special ceremony at the end of September. The big ZZ logo on the tail looked great, and I already had rented a hanger at the Zurich airport, so it had a future home. I was negotiating to purchase hanger because it had room for three aircraft, and I expected to need the room someday.

My power soothed Nora's nausea as we took the long way home, flying around Pilatus Mountain, then south to catch a valley that would take us over Interlaken, and north to Thun where we saw our solar panel factory from the air, its big solar panel covered roof made it easy to spot. We set down for dinner in Bern. After watching the sunset we headed back to Zurich and home.

Monday morning I had a call from two of the investors who owned Pilatus, they wanted to come for a visit to talk about future production. Obviously the discussion with management had happened over the weekend instead of on Monday as predicted. I invited them to join me after lunch.

Four arrived, two members of the ownership committee, the engineer I had spoken to previously, and a member of the Schweizer Luftwaffe.

I shook hands with the Brigadier, the two owners, and the engineer. "Gentleman welcome to my headquarters, this is the CEO, Adele Hess, and my assistant Tiffany Wilder.

"Can I offer you any drinks or snacks?"

"No, thank you Herr Barkley, my engineer tells me that you are a man who likes to get down to business."

"Very much so. Please feel free to skip the formalities as well, and call me Adam."

"And call me Adele," my loyal CEO added.

"Then I'm Bernhoff, and this is Johann, and you already know Nicholas," he paused, unwilling to thrust informality on the Brigadier.

The Brigadier simply smiled, and said, "Call me Warner, but I'm not here for this first discussion, I'm hoping to talk to you afterwards, depending on how this discussion goes."

"If you wish that conversation to be without these gentleman, then I'd suggest that perhaps, they might like to have this conversation without you?" I suggested.

Bernhoff spoke up, "It's not publicized, but the Swiss Air Force is a minority partner in Pilatus. He's here at our request."

"Then, we welcome everyone's presence," Adele smoothly interjected.

I nodded in agreement, "Then let's begin," I directed.

"We are interested in acquiring exclusive airframe production rights in Barkley Paper."

"For how long?" Adele asked, interrupting.

"As long as you are willing," he replied.

"Please continue," I added.

"We would like to have you establish a factory to produce Barkley Paper airframes. We would want the ability to schedule the production of both PC-12 and PC-24 airframes, as well as a future supersonic PC-28. We believe that we can commit to 4 airframes per month, and hope to exceed that as rapidly as the market demands. We find the proposed 2 day build time incredible, and if you can perform that, then we will likely be building all our airframes with your factory, using our manufacturing plant for the installation of all the other equipment, provided you can hit the 10 CHF per sq meter target."

"If you provide wiring diagrams and harnesses I can add that into the airframe build. I think that would increase your production capacity significantly."

"That would improve speed of production, but what we are most excited about is an all electric variant of the PC-12. Our engineers are very excited by the supercapacitor you shared with us. Will you be manufacturing that yourselves?"

"We think we can automate the production to build them faster and cheaper than the lab that created them. We are currently finishing the purchase of the exclusive production rights for the capacitors. My engineers also think that our production method will provide even better performance."

"The production of 240 per year all electric PC-12 variants is unlikely to meet world wide demand. There is no comparable aircraft, and our maintenance engineers believe that the actual cost per mile will be as much as 95% less than a standard PC-12, after considering fueling and maintenance costs."

"Especially if we include a solar charging and storage option to allow for the rapid charge of the capacitor system. The high speed recharge takes either a massive power flow, or a similarly sized capacitor bank fully charged and set up to quick charge the aircraft," I told them.

The discussion continued for some time, but nothing was finalized. We finally reached an agreement to work on a prototype PC-12 airframe, and to continue working towards future cooperative agreements. The discussion with the Brigadier continued after they left.

I was very excited to have someone I could discuss weapons technology with.

Chapter 3

"Brigadier Eppley, how may we help you?" Adele asked after I served drinks and snacks.

"I wanted to pass on some information. The Swiss Air Force also serves as the intelligence branch of the Swiss government," he said, which got my immediate attention.

"It has been decided that we will not be prosecuting the antivirus thieves in court, diplomatic arrangements are being made for their release."

"Why is that?" Adele asked.

"Certain threats and promises have been made by members of NATO and the Russians regarding the quiet sweeping under the rug of the attempted thefts."

"How do you intend to purchase our cooperation in this regard?" Adele asked brilliantly.

"Mr Barkley will be receiving his Swiss citizenship in the next two weeks, the Tschingelspitz solar project will be approved, and every military facility in Switzerland will be ordering rooftop solar, and when available, a two week power backup and storage system using supercapacitors."

"That's very nice, but I can tell you want more from us." Adele continued.

"You are correct Frau Hess, we would like you to purchase Piaggio Aerospace."

"What's that?" I asked.

"A bankrupt airplane company in Italy that's wholly owned by the Emirates," Adele explained, to the Brigadier's surprise.

"Saudis?" I asked.

"It's owned by the Abu Dhabi State via one of their investment firms. They've been trying to sell it for two years. The company has orders, but no one is willing to loan them money to complete them because they just can't seem to pay their old debts. No one is eager to buy because most of the current orders are from the Italian government, orders made to make the company look better on paper," Adele explained.

"Won't that interfere with any deal we made with Pilatus? We can't offer exclusivity if we are also using our tech in a wholly owned competitor," I asked.

"Exclusivity was never really on the table Adam, it was only in opening negotiation. What is Switzerland getting out of this deal?" she said, as she turned to the Brigadier.

"The Italian government is interested in having some of your factories located in their country. In return for Switzerland encouraging your expansion in their direction, there are certain transport and tunnel funding agreements the Italian government is in turn willing to participate in cooperation with Switzerland."

"What kind of deal will they approve?" Adele asked.

"They are interested in you trying to bring Piaggio back to profitability, but if that doesn't happen you are welcome to the land and facilities for producing things your company does find profitable. They're sure any loss of jobs will be replaced by the jobs created by other products your company produces," he explained.

I pulled up the company on my tablet, they primarily made one plane with a couple variations, and a UAV, an interesting but odd looking thing. I could see that it would be a relatively easy conversion to electric propulsion for both aircraft. I didn't comment, we weren't making a decision today. He handed a piece of paper to Adele that made her eyebrows raise.

"This is the offer we have to beat, or the price we are being offered?" she asked.

"Italy also wants to express it's thanks for the antivirus, and will assure the acquisition at that price. The Emirates will clear the outstanding debts, and all they ask for in return is a quiet donation of antivirus for their top officials."

She showed me the page which listed every asset being offered, in addition to buildings and equipment, an airport was included as were some properties outside Italy. The price was 350 million euros. The number didn't mean anything to me, but Adele was experiencing psychological reactions that were unmistakable to my power. She was very interested. Salivatingly interested.

Instead I addressed something else, "Any medication shipped to the Emirates would have to be at the highest levels of discretion and deniability."

"Of course. A private meeting with an attache to the Ambassador at a time and place of your choosing. They are only requesting a kilo of antivirus powder in payment."

"We will take that into consideration, of course. There is an additional subject I'd like to discuss. With Switzerland at the center of the graphene technology boom, I'd like to discuss national security."

His back straightened "Is there a threat?" he asked.

"Not that we are aware of, but there is a newly developed technology. As discussed previously we use a combination of laser and other techniques to bond layers of graphene in a very precise manner. While I have been purchasing industrial lasers for the BSB, that's my Big Structure Building, where I created the PC-24 airframe, I've also been working on a very obscure theory from a now deceased Russian mathematician on chemically powered solid state lasers."

His eyebrows twisted as he tried to conceptualize a chemically powered solid state laser. An oxymoron if there ever was one.

"What application do you see for these lasers?"

"Everything from anti-tank to anti-aircraft."

"What power output have you achieved?"

"Gigawatt to terawatt range output for durations of over a second."

He laughed. I was worried for a moment, until he finally calmed down. "Her Barkley that is the funniest thing I've heard all year."

I pulled a weapon from a holster, and set it on the table. Adele was startled by its sudden presence. I had whispered to her that I intended to talk to the Brigadier about laser weaponry but she hadn't known I was wearing a working model.

The pistol shaped device was made of gleaming chromed steel, and a bit of black rubber for the grip. It looked impossibly small and deadly. He leaned over to look, but didn't reach for it.

"This is a three shot pistol. Each shot produces a not quite 25 gigawatt pulse of coherent light, for 1 thousandth of a second.

"Whatever you do, don't test it indoors," I told him, sliding it towards him.

He sat back, trying to get as far away from it as he could. "Herr Barkley, I believe you might be serious, but there is no way that a chemical reaction is going to make that kind of power, from something that small. This is a nuclear weapon level of energy release."

I smiled, and shrugged, "I would expect most military men to get excited at a laser pistol. You are correct, the description is entirely inadequate."

"Based on its size, I'd have to guess antimatter."

"You are very well educated, Brigadier. It is a mass to energy conversion, 1 gram bullets to be exact, nearly 100% efficiency."

"Something like this could get you thrown into a deep dark hole where you could never expect to escape, if not outright killed. The shift in the balance of power this would cause! Is it technically difficult to produce?"

"Harder than sustained fusion power," I assured him.

"I don't believe you wish to start an arms race, or trigger a preemptive strike against us for possessing this technology."

"No, most definitely not. But I also see a country surrounded by a United Europe. I applaud Swiss neutrality, but if the country is secure then I can feel comfortable developing vehicles using a mass to energy reaction to propel themselves into space.

"Without security, such technology would belong to the first country to cross the border with an army."

He shook his head, "Herr Barkley, please bury this technology, destroy any examples, and erase it from history."

"Even if I could use it to power a fighter jet with unlimited loiter and gigawatt level line of sight energy weaponry? Capable of dominating the sky in every direction to the horizon, and shooting down every craft or missile launched against it?"

He took a deep breath. Then he shook his head, "Yes. Even then."

"Then perhaps an arrangement where I place certain equipment on certain mountain tops that you direct me to. Then in the event of an invasion, you press a button and it activates a system that guards the sky from all threats, including ballistic missiles.

"Can you imagine a world where neutral Switzerland hands out tickets to the stars? Right now Elon Musk is contemplating a complete and total dominance over Mars with his Spaceship project in Texas. No nation has the technology, the funds, or the drive to beat him there. Does the world really want America exported into space? Do you think that they won't take it over just as soon as he succeeds?"

"That's a decade away," he said.

"Actually I think he's under three years away from landing on Mars. He might put Americans on Mars before their next presidential election, provided the country doesn't descend into civil war and anarchy before then."

"An unstable America worries the world," he acknowledged.

Adele interrupted, "Brigadier, I was unaware of the power available in the lasers Adam has created. I agree with you that such power is beyond the scope of mankind to handle safely at this time."

"Et Tu? What about for energy production? The same tech could be used to power the entirety of Switzerland."

"Switzerland would be better served by hydro, wind, and solar, especially now that a viable storage system is available," she responded.

I sighed, and slid the gun back into my pocket. "You win, but if things change, and you wish to have this discussion again, please take my private number. I can be reached 24/7," I told him, handing him a black Barkley Paper business card embossed with the double Z logo on one side, and my private number on the other in gold.

Adele stood, and asked if he would wait outside for a moment. As he shut the door, she turned on me, furious, "Adam! Don't do that again! I'm your CEO, if you have a technology breakthrough, come to me first. If you do something like this again, I'm done, I'll walk away and instead of playing in your lab creating ridiculous things, you'll have to run this company yourself!"

"I apologize. I intended to speak with you about this in the next week or two, but I seized the opportunity to talk to a high ranking member of the Swiss armed forces, they could be an excellent customer."

"Not again, Adam. Never, again!"

I sighed, "Yes, Adele. Now what about this Paginini thing?"

"Oh, we do it, and we split it 50/50 with Pilatus. They know how to run an airplane company, and we know Barkley Paper. I'm sure if I brought them in right now and offered them 50% in partnership with us for 400 million they would jump on it immediately."

"We would earn 50 million, minus the vaccine?" I asked, dumbfounded at the idea.

"They would be fools not to pay that price, it's being offered to us for about 20% of what its worth today, much less than what it will be worth once out of receivership with Pilatus running it. And try to remember, it's called Piaggio Aerospace.

"But, there is one part of the sale that I think we should keep for ourselves, and not share," she finished.

"What was that?" I asked.

"The foreign property included in the sale is an office building in Masdar, and two villas in Sustainable City, and an estate on Palm Jumeirah. I don't think any of this was previously part of Piaggio, I think they were added to bring you personally to Abu Dhabi."

"I've heard of Masdar, and Palm Jumeirah, what's Sustainable City?" I asked her, as I tried looking it up online with another self.

"Think gated community for the ultra rich eco bragging family set. It has its environmental gee whiz factor, but it was never built for anything as mundane as the upper middle class."

"They are giving away two villas?"

"Yes, one for you, and one for your friends I guess."

"So do we invite everyone back in?" I asked.

"Sure. Just let me do the talking."

Everyone came back into the conference room, and I again served refreshments, as Adele stepped out for a bit. When she returned, she began the meeting all over.

"Gentlemen, the Brigadier dropped a bit of news on us that seriously affects the previous discussion. Piaggio Aerospace is being offered exclusively to Zukunft Zuerst. Were you aware of this?"

"No, we were not," the two gentleman said, looking askance at the putative partner.

"I did not share that with them, nor any of the details of the offer," Brigadier Eppley insisted.

Adele nodded, "We know nothing about running an aircraft company. Pilatus clearly does," she handed them the sheets she had prepared, "We would like to offer 50% of Piaggio Aerospace to Pilatus, in full partnership with Zukunft Zuerst. While we think adding an airframe production facility for Pilatus in Stans is a positive benefit for both our companies, we see Piaggio as being an excellent test bed for technologies, that once perfected could be then incorporated into Pilatus."

"This is an incredible offer. I recognize that you understand that this is quite a steep discount you are passing along to us as potential partners."

"If Pilatus should need loans to secure 50% equity of Piaggio, the Swiss government has a certain interest in seeing this company owned by Swiss citizens, I believe that funding will be readily available." the Brigadier interjected.

"We would also be interested in exchanging a minority stake in Pilatus for 50% of the assets listed," Adele said.

I knew we could fund the purchase out of available cash, but I glanced down at my copy of what was being offered. It was everything in Italy itself, none of the international properties were mentioned. The part of the offer that puzzled me was the inclusion of the Riviera Airport. Wikipedia said it was in private ownership, and it wasn't Piaggio that owned it.

The two owners in the group looked at each other, and then nodding, they looked back. "We see no reason not to join you in this enterprise, we will need to speak with the other owners and the board."

"Excellent, then we have an agreement to begin crafting an agreement," Adele stated. There were handshakes all around, as we both saw the way to move forward working together quite clearly.

Chapter 4

It took Adele three weeks to finalize the purchase and sale of Piaggio. I handled my part, checking into a hotel room then passing through a connected door to the neighboring room a 1kg package of shelf stable powdered vaccine. It was enough to dose 55,000 people.

Tyr did the swap using a copy of my body just in case it was a trap of some kind. We had even gamed a scenario where he got arrested as me, then pulled off a latex mask mission impossible style to reveal a different anonymous identity. Nothing happened, he did the delivery, and the escrow closed on the company. The escrow revealed the hidden surprises as a small portion of the money we paid went to the previous airport owners, as well as the creditors of Piaggio, and a tiny portion to Mubadala Development Company.

The Pilatus investment went just as easy, as we received 15% ownership of the Pilatus in return for 49.9% of Piaggio Aerospace. The Italian government has insisted that we retain the majority ownership. Then the Pilatus engineers were let loose in the Piaggio High Technology center, bringing with them the data sheets on BP2, BP3, BP8A & BP8B, the supercapacitor, which we had finally come to acquire with a combination of purchase and royalty, and a new dirigible model.

Using the BSB I started production of a supercapacitor factory and a graphene factory. The supercapacitor factory would be an actual factory, while I could use my power to duplicate inventory if required, this one would use actual graphene to produce actual items for sale. Each capacitor had a 4kwh storage capacity, used 2 sq meters of graphene, wound tight with a non conductive layer between, and a special dopant. They were 18mm wide and 54mm long, and we were already getting orders from BMW, Audi, Volvo, and Nissan. They all wanted a vehicle that could outrange a Tesla. The capacitor factory was getting shipped to join the solar factory at the Thurn site, as Rümlang was running out of space.

I turned out the structures for Thurn in two days, then started on two double sized graphene factories, two solar panel factories, and two airframe factories. Half for Stans Switzerland, and half for Villanova d'Albenga, Italy. I started reviewing the Pilatus PC-12 airframe and the Piaggio P-180. I wasn't bothering with the Hammerhead UAV, I'd instructed them to not take additional orders for it, but to redesign it as a semi lighter than air electric powered vehicle. It would be a significantly larger vehicle, but with the ability to pump out the air from the internal tanks it could reduce its weight to lighter than air, for nearly unlimited high altitude loiter and integrated solar recharging.

David arranged the pieces onto a truck for transport. Once the structure was complete I would bring in the equipment to finish the job, but under twinned identities, who would stay on to operate the factories. Val was finding housing for the three new automation operation managers, as we were calling the position. They wouldn't manage the plant, just production on the automated side of the buildings.

Since the automation was just me using my power, I was on hand to run the equipment that was being purchased and brought in to stage the construction. The two airframe plants, which I called the Flight Structure Buildings, or FSB, would have enough room to build modest sized airframes that fit in the 50 x 50 x 50 meter build bay, in the 100 x 50 meter building. I had originally thought to put an apartment on each building for my twins, but then people would expect to visit so they could watch one being built.

IP2 arrived at a disappointing Proxima Centauri B during all of this. It was disappointing because the planet, while near Earth gravity was tidally locked. The star's output was too radiation heavy on the sun side, and temperatures were too cold behind the horizon on the night side. What atmosphere there was, was frozen on the dark side of the planet, where it was in eternal darkness.

I had hoped that some sort of orbiting mirror would provide light and heat on the dark side, as the radiation of the star, and how close it was to the tiny red dwarf, eliminated even modestly deep sunside underground options. The planetary magnetic field was insufficient, even though it was actually stronger than Earth's, simply due to proximity.

I did install a Mars style 8 lobed station at the Proxima B L2 point. In permanent shadow it was safe from the occasional flares of power that Proxima was known for. I dedicated a power transfer pearl and infrared tuned solar panels to the sunside surface of Proxima B to power the station. Unlike the Mars station, this one didn't have any plants growing, because I didn't expect it to be inhabited for any particular reason any time soon.

With the personal survey of Proxima B, C, & D a bust for life or habitability, the bright neighbor in the sky was the next target. Toliman, also known as Alpha Centauri B, was the closer of the two stars that Proxima orbited. I conjured a massive optical telescope and attached it to the station, I pointed it at the Toliman as IP2 headed off at 500 million kph with a 100x time multiplier. I locked it into position, and set it to take pictures at the same spot every 11.2 days of the Proxima B's orbit around the star. I was hoping it could pick up differences between images that could identify any planets that a closer inspection might miss. A day and a half to reach Toliman, then to conjure another telescope to look for planetary bodies orbiting either Toliman or Rigel Kentaurus aka Alpha Centauri A.

With two IP's moving at 100x, I felt comfortable enough trying to add a third at 1000x. IP3, pointed at Bernard's star, leapt to speed. I was getting better at speeding up time, the energy used was less than I had expected, but I was absorbing all the incoming radiation from several spots around the Sol system and now the Proxima system also, so I was still net positive. In addition to absorbing where I was, I tasked duplicates of myself to absorb power in interstellar space operating thru the probes. It was just under 4 days to reach Bernard's star.

IP1 was still scooting around Sol, dropping pearls as exit points at the outer edge of the solar system 1.58 lightyears out. I conjured IP4 and launched from Proxima towards Luhman 16AB. Further research had shown it was much closer from there. There wasn't much chance of finding human habitable planets there, but a double brown dwarf was an interesting astronomical target, but not likely to have life or be livable. I could feel a significant strain trying to move 2 different probes at 1000x normal time, so dropped IP4 back to a comfortable 100x. It was a 27 day trip at that speed. No rush to see that out of the way system.

Eight hours into the 36 hour trip to Toliman IP2 hit something and exploded. I dropped the time warps on everything. I had made a mistake, as all the probes were using the same pearl network for my control and time warping. It made duplication easier, but the energy release of an impact at not quite 1% speed of light is significant. 22 gigatons of tnt significant.

Fortunately I was using a relay on the back side of the moon, as I recognized the pearls would be transmitting energy and radiation back through them, so keeping them on Earth was a bad idea. Unfortunately the portion of the energy release that entered the control pearl propagated equally between IP1 through IP4, as well as my control pearl. The result was a new crater where a small Barkley Paper subsurface moon lab used to be.

The power/communication pearl junction they shared was in a different moon lab, which survived the explosion, but would require extensive repair. I conjured Val, Tyr, and Set to join me in the exploration control center under the company headquarters. I had to explain to them the problem.

"Alright, I screwed up," I admitted, "We just lost IP1 thru IP4."

"How did that happen?"

"They were all linked to the same control pearl. When IP2 hit something on its way to Toliman from Proxima, the energy moved thru the pearl and out the other probes. It was enough to destroy moon lab 4, and damage moon lab 2."

"I'll need to check the solar panels on Mercury to see if the explosion propagated back thru them," Tyr said.

"Are there pictures or video?" Val asked.

"The Interstellar Probes don't have cameras, they just have accelerometers, gyroscopes, and high accuracy clocks so we can monitor if there are outside forces acting upon them. I do have the stellar cartography telescope attached to Proxima Station. I've pointed it at the location where it should have been when it hit, but it happened 15 light days from Proxima, so I can't record it anytime soon."

"We have a space station at Proxima Centauri?" Set asked.

"I copied the Mars station, without the greenhouse plants. It's got air, water, the same central microG cylinder, the same eight habitation spheres, but it's spinning to provide 1G. It's in the L2 point of Proxima B so it stays in the shadow of the planet. Because it has an 11 day year, I put a big telescope on it, for stellar cartography."

"Where did you get a telescope?" Set asked.

"I forged it, but it's basically the Hubble but 4 times bigger. I copied the hardware and sensors from there."

"Will Proxima Station be in the right part of its orbit to see the impact explosion?"

I had to check my calculations, "Yes, and it will be enough of an offset that it won't be pointed right at Toliman either."

"So I guess I'm here to help design the new control and communication building for the interstellar probe program?" Set said.

"I'm thinking something we put in Jupiter's L2," I told him.

"Can you recover any of the IP's so we can examine them? Any chance of any of them being recovered?" Tyr asked.

"I want to work in stellar cartography! Send me to Proxima!" Val demanded.

I conjured Val directly into Proxima Station. A few moments later Odin came charging into the room. "I'm station commander on Mars Station. I should be commander on Proxima Station too," she demanded.

I conjured an Amy to the station as she was the Odin twin who acted as commander on Mars Station. My exploration command center had three simultaneous connections via video calls from Tammuz, Ishtar, and Thor.

I put them all in a group video conference, calling them by their physical identities, "Ben, Dee, Frederick, I assume you want to go to Proxima Station too?"

"Yes!" they all shouted.

"Me too, boss," Set and Tyr added.

I sighed, and conjured a Ben, Dee, Frederick, Alex, Big T, and a Fred, the age regressed version of Frederick, he liked looking 25 instead of nearly 40. Soon they were all gathered at the microG command cabin on Proxima Station, connected in a video call to me at exploration command.

"So, you guys will need to get the greenhouses running, and have your selves gather up what clothing and supplies you want for me to duplicate for you on Proxima. Email me the location and which habitation bubble you are in, I'll drop the stuff in the living room. If there is anything urgent, call, otherwise email me here, I've always got a Me on duty."

I clicked off, and turned to Set and Tyr, "What are you thinking for the IP control center?"

"A central hub, unmanned, with kilometer long spars. Each spar will contain a single end of a pair of pearls. The central hub will contain the power link to the Mercury generating station, and then smaller pearls, will connect to the spars, where a second set of pairs will carry the power to the equipment."

He showed us a sketch, and it looked like a big sea urchin. "Why is it black?" Tyr asked.

"Make it harder to see," he said.

"Proxima Station is pretty cool, but we are having a hard time with the telescope," Amy said from the seat she had taken at the exploration command table.

I glanced at her, and conjured a Me into an open space on Proxima Station.

"What's the problem?" I asked on arrival.

"I'm trying to program the tracking system, but it thinks it's orbiting Earth. The tracking algorithms are off, and it's trying to use it's gyroscopes to turn to keep tracking a single object, and the clamp system attaching it to the station is vibrating while it fights the movement. We are just getting blurry pictures."

My power reached out, and stabilized the station, the vibration had begun to affect its spin. I reached into the big Hubble and removed the gyroscopes. I had just quickly bolted it on thinking it would be a useful thing to do. Now, I gave it more thought, examining the mount I had copied from the observatory at Mauna Kea. "It's going to take some significant reprogramming for automated station keeping, but you should be able to point it by hand now."

"Why didn't you copy something like the big telescope in the Canary Islands?" Tyr asked.

"They aren't rated for space," was my answer.

I concentrated more intently on the telescope, reforging the connection with the mount, adjusting it so it was attached to a part of the station that did not rotate. The rate of rotation was easy to adjust for, using three electric motors that spun the new telescope attachment bay in the opposite direction of station rotation. To reduce complexity, I set up a wireless connection to the telescope itself, transmitting data from the sensors, and receiving control commands.

I added a second camera for manual pointing, and brought up the feed on a tablet, handing it to Dee. "Use this to eyeball the direction it's pointing at, for now." I tapped on the screen, "That's Proxima C, try to get an image of it."

I helped them adjust the station to its new role as a stellar cartography station, moving a copy of myself permanently onto the station with Val. It ended up being pretty fascinating, the stars that were out of position compared to Earth, were only those nearest in space. Everyone agreed that we needed an actual astrophysicist, so we started looking for one.

Back on Earth I was busy working on constructing 'The Urchin.' The Jupiter orbiting communication station for Interstellar Probes.

Chapter 5

We only lost a week of exploration time, I was able to recover the pearls to reuse their position in space once the new probes were complete. Except for the three pearls from IP2, they were just gone. That gave me good data on what could destroy them. I knew I could convert them to energy, erasing them, without having to use another pearl to work through, or have it within my range, I had the same ability to transfer a Me into a slot or absorb back to energy without having to work thru a secondary connection. That was why I was willing to risk sending pearls that connected back to Earth into space, I could remotely close the door on them. The earlier worry of storing someone and their pearl was mostly unfounded anxiety.

IP5 resumed its predecessor's journey to Toliman. IP6 headed out to Bernard's Star from Earth, IP7 became the new durability tester, running around the Sol system, dropping pearls outside the oort cloud. IP8 returned to its slow boat trip to Luhman 16 from Proxima. The energy distribution pearl system itself needed repair, inside the pocket dimension, but the ejection of hot copper out the portal interface didn't damage anything on Mercury. The power supply was a critical feature of our probes, as time sped up for the probe its external power requirements increased to meet the higher usage.

We had power to spare, and I was even selling some of it. I had bought a small natural gas powered generation plant that needed upgrades and repairs. Robert was the new CEO of ZZ America, a holding company that had purchased the shuttered facility, arranged for new paint on the exterior, and repairing the fencing. Then we connected up a power pearl, and started feeding power into the grid.

The local utility company was pleased to have the 100 megawatt OCGT power plant back online, and didn't ask any questions provided it passed pollution monitoring, and kept providing power to the local grid at the same price as before. I used my power to reforge the two 50MW turbines back into top shape just in case we ever had to run them, but it wasn't in the plan. The facility had been built for remote operation, so we didn't even have to hire staff for onsite work.

If we got inspected, we simply showed them the capacitor bank, and explained that we were currently running on stored battery power. Then we would show off all the installed solar power, covering the entire property, and brag about how we produced less carbon than previously, while also providing faster response time to even out the grid. Much of the local generation was wind, so occasional dips in generation had to be made up for, and we could do so faster than anyone else. No one ever asked why we always ran so quiet. Unnoticed is rarely remarked upon.

I, as Robert, now had a small office in the Bronx, near his apartment, where he and his secretary looked for similar sites around the country to replicate the success of the first acquisition.

IP5 arrived safely in Toliman to discover a wide asteroid belt, but no planets. Considering the distance between the A & B it had been considered unlikely that planets could form. There were three distinct belts, one thick one around each star, starting at about 2au and extending out for about 5au, and a third belt that circled both stars that was thinner, but was 15au wide. The outer belt had significant ice deposits, while the inner belts, which passed between the stars, had few volatiles remaining.

The two stars of Alpha and Beta Centauri, officially Rigil Kentaurus and Toliman, had little going for them, other than being Sol type stars. Proxima had the advantage of being a tiny dwarf star that would live for a few trillion years, and a planet to land on. I could see the development of a space based civilization around these three stars, using A and B to provide raw materials to construct the space habitats around them.

At Proxima Station Tyr came up with an idea for ground based telescopes on the nearly airless night side of Proxima B, to increase the observable universe. His design showed a ring of telescopes stationed 1000km darkward from the fixed day/night line on the surface. On the night side there was minimal frozen gases on the surface which was mostly bare rock. The circumference of the ring was 30,000km, and he had 30 telescopes equally spaced 1000km apart around that line.

"The super Hubble attached to the station is very good, but for a true stellar investigation a linked array of telescopes would be much better. The structures could be kept warm enough, if necessary, for the equipment by using deep geothermal wells, and with the abundant power on the day side, night side can become a single massive distributed telescope."

"I applaud the idea, but what about the other kinds of telescopes?" I told him.

He looked around at everyone gathered at the conference table. We had designated habitat orb 1 as the new stellar cartography command center as the microG cylinder was only useful for working on equipment that ran the increasingly sophisticated super Hubble, including the increasingly sophisticated image processing hardware.

The result was that even though we all had our own living quarters with home offices, we tended to meet together here at the 'Office' everyday. It was so popular, that I had moved the entire exploration control center there. Without a greenhouse, habitation sphere #1 had the room. The move had also meant the relocation of the urchin to an L2 orbit around the massive Proxima D, with the Proxima B solar installation running the whole operation instead of Mercury.

Tyr smiled at my question, and went to the next slide of his power point presentation. 28 giant radio dishes made a circle a further 1000km inward, also spread 1000km from each other. They were the stationary kind, like at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

"The cold actually improves the sensitivity of the electronics. But the positioning means that they can cover 90% of the sky every 11.2 days."

His next slide made everyone gasp. "But once we have one telescope planet, why stop there?"

The screen showed an animation of three planets in orbit around Proxima, they were marked as B1, B2, B3. They were in some strange harmonic resonance, and all orbiting on a different plane. It reminded me of illustrations of electrons orbiting a nucleus.

"That won't work," Odin said.

"Sure it will, the boss will use the outer two planets as raw material to conjure duplicates of B. The harmonic movement means that the orbits are no longer in strictly defined planes, which means that no part of the sky is ever uncovered for more than a couple days. It's the ultimate telescopic super project!"

"Very nice presentation Tyr, now we need to see about getting your meds checked," Ishtar teased.

He didn't even blush, just stuck his chin out defiantly. I looked around at the grins of the others. "So, what does this megaproject need?"

"A dozen astrophysicist's"

"A larger Proxima Station."

"More processing power."

"A light shield between the station and the ground observatory."

"A design firm."

"A new member of the brotherhood who's an astrophysicist."

They seemed to wind down, so I stepped in, "Good. I'm emailing you this list, if you think of something else, add it and forward it to the group. Val, you are our people person, find me a prospective member to join the brotherhood who's an astrophysicist. Look for someone passionate, and perhaps retired, but not a media or tv personality.

"Set, find me a design firm that's willing to take our money to design a 100 meter telescope for near vacuum, and sub zero conditions. The lack of atmosphere makes the optics more effective, but the cold is going to affect how the structure turns and moves to track the target."

"Tyr, figure out what kind of processing power you need to link thirty 100 meter telescopes so that their combined input can produce useable images. If I remember there was a similar networked telescope program on Earth that used FedEx to transport the data to a central processing location as it would have taken years to transmit it over the internet, but they were only combining one night's data.

"Ishtar, investigate that as well, what kind of data network is required, we already have gigabit speeds, will we need to upgrade that to terabit?

"Tammuz, figure out how to recruit astrophysicist's, consider a paid brainstorming session for newly graduated engineer and astronomy students. We can hold a week long brainstorming think tank as many times as it takes to get some of the feasibility questions answered. If there are standouts, we can recruit them. Consider security, what do we need to restrict access to on Proxima Station if we bring strangers aboard.

"Thor, what funds do we have for this project? ZZ Erwerbung had been depositing the 'purchase' costs of the diamond and Chinese chip procurement into a separate fund. Additionally the company 'supplying' the raw materials for the vaccine and solar panel manufacturing is mine. That's my black budget for special projects, tap that for the funds on this, don't go crazy, but you can create a new company if required Maybe make it a non profit, since it's just spending money, not making any.

"Everyone, if you need to spend money on this, go through Thor, I'm putting him in charge of the finances."

"Odin, you are in charge of reviewing everything. Be the bullshit detector. If they can't explain it to you, or show you documentation that something is actually feasible even if difficult, it's your job to cry bullshit, and make the person rethink the approach.

Elements of Power 3

PT Brainum

Table of Contents

That was a preview of Elements of Power 3. To read the rest purchase the book.

Add «Elements of Power 3» to Cart