Chapter 270 - 251: Shocking Meeting

The instigator behind the war, Bill, was even more greedy than he had appeared, and his methods were actually more insidious than those of Hydra.

Hydra was a fanatic organization with a crude grip on business control and understanding, focusing more on exerting clandestine political influence and creating terror.

Now, someone was simultaneously targeting other civilian sector businesses and companies.

Based on the macro data collected so far, Lille estimated this would greatly squeeze the civilian production capacity, pushing some businesses that were already struggling under the financial crisis to the brink of bankruptcy.

Once these businesses went bankrupt, market shares would become vacant, and by then, some company would return with a significant amount of money provided by armament groups...

It was entirely possible, and this might just be the tip of the strategy iceberg.

As far as Lille knew, Hydra preferred to govern directly through terror; they didn’t care what the world looked like post-war, as long as it was under their terror reign.

So, it was very likely that there was another formidable manipulator involved.

This manipulator seemed to have a fondness for economic monopolies, a perfect match for Hydra—at least temporarily.

However, since he had chosen to confront the issues openly, Lille had to face this challenge.

Having financial power certainly meant you could do as you pleased; a huge factory could disappear just like that, which was an extremely aggressive approach.

This made Lille reconsider the supply chain; the chips would have to be produced in-house as well.

"USA Manufacturing Repatriation Plan—that was one of the President’s slogans, but the repatriated capacity was all allocated to the military industry."

At Hammond Laboratory, Lille tapped on the whiteboard: "Overall, our main direction remains economic revitalization, and we can also apply for the related funds and subsidies.

With allies and methods to apply, our goal is to develop the pharmaceutical industry with policy support.

Of course, now there’s an additional issue, we also need to build a chip supply chain ourselves."

Dr. Tumus, just recovered from his injuries and still in a wheelchair, raised his hand to signal:

"I..cough cough, I’m very familiar with this and know some friends; if you’re willing to offer them similar treatment, I can help you convince them."

If Dr. Tumus were to take off his villain’s vulture hat, he was actually a world-renowned engineer.

Lille nodded gladly, "They can have as much as they want; now is not the time to be frugal."

"They don’t need too much money to be persuaded... if you could explain in more detail what kind of chip it is and what you intend to do, that would be great."

"That’s also one of the topics of this meeting."

Lille displayed a chip design on the big screen; yes, it was the sex doll chip.

Cloud Peak had gotten their hands on 78 sex doll chips, generally high-end commodities.

What are high-end commodities?

Through the received programs, sex doll chips can control all the actions and sensory nerves of a sex doll, turning it into a perceptionless mannequin, embodying the customer’s desired personality and actions from their dreams.

This indicated how efficient such chips were in brain-computer interfacing, serving as the ultimate production goal, bringing a wealth of inspiration to the team.

Lille put the structure of the sex doll chip on the whiteboard: "This is my idea, to use it as a central control chip for collecting cyber prosthetic information, it should have good adaptability in related works."

Dr. Otto beside Tumus showed a puzzled expression, raising his hand: "This looks... different from any chip architecture we know of.

Did you come up with this yourself? How can you be sure it... is suitable?"

"Simple." Lille started playing the practical operation model, "Look at these potentials..."

Under the puzzled looks of Otto and Tumus, Lille began to explain the required states of the sex doll chip during operation.

Honestly, this wasn’t Lille’s forte; he mostly just pointed at the chips, describing the actual situations in which these chips were used.

Then... the two experts in the field started exclaiming, marveling, awestruck, voluntarily helping Lille complete the "design concept."

"...so this entire area will be coupled with nerve potential pickup electrodes..."

Dr. Otto exclaimed: "I get it! Neural network architecture!"

"...and then this area, when operational, the data stream will flow through all layers, having such characteristics, and..."

Tumus exclaimed: "Three-dimensional integrated circuits!"

Conners, amid the exclamations, showed the joy of a bountiful harvest until Lille began to explain the chip’s weird structures at the end.

"...finally, over here, it requires a biological semiconductor; we already have the means to manufacture this material.

The current and voltage specifications of the biological semiconductor should be like this, then identify the corresponding biochemical substances..."

Conners furrowed his brows, finally exclaiming: "Biological integrated circuits!"

The bewildered looks of the tech replacement team members, Skye and Peter, were conspicuous.

Skye pointed at the three stunned geniuses, each muttering to themselves, then looked at Lille: "Boss, did you drug them?"

"No worries, now let’s discuss the machine room issue, how many machines were burned last week?"

At this, Skye displayed a haunted expression: "Boss, be honest, what exactly did you use those machines for?"

"Just ran some AI, don’t make a fuss."

"I’m making a fuss?!" Skye pointed at herself, with an exaggerated expression, "I live right next to the machine room! Try sleeping and suddenly smelling smoke from next door and see how it feels!

This time it’s good we have Christopher as a neighbor now! Otherwise, do you think I, a fragile girl, could handle it?"

"Alright, alright, we’re going to change locations soon—how do you feel about that young man?"

"He’s... pretty normal," Skye considered carefully, "likes to read history books, knows nothing about technology, but he’s quite enthusiastic. The first time something smoked up, the poor guy even hugged a burning chassis.

Luckily, he remembered what I told him about not using water to extinguish fires, oh, and he said he wanted to go home."

Lille stroked his chin: "Well, that’s good, I’ll communicate with him later. The new server room is in the feast homeless shelter, and you’ll live over there from now on."

"Are you trying to get rid of me? Sending me to a homeless shelter?" Skye suddenly said pitifully, "Boss, I’ve been so diligent..."

"Come on, once you get there, you’ll understand. Martin plans to renovate the district, and right next to the homeless shelter is our own security company, and your office location is right there."

"Oh, so there’s a new office building—well, can I still come back here to eat? Auntie’s cooking is really good."

"Whatever." Lille didn’t refuse Skye, "As long as you keep up the good work at the information company, that’s fine. Have you encountered any difficulties?"

"Yes." Skye nodded, "There are too many leading the charge online."

"How is that a trouble?"

"Of course, it’s a trouble. While clashing with them online, I got too curious about who they really are in real life, so I quietly visited some of their homes—

in the physical sense of a home visit."

Lille raised an eyebrow: "Then what?"

"Then... I began to understand some of their ideas, I mean, understand, not agree," Skye paused, then turned the laptop facing him to show Lille:

"But these, these are purely electronic ghosts, the addresses found don’t match up at all—and they’re not your ordinary electronic ghosts.

If I hadn’t conducted field inspections, I wouldn’t have realized they are not human."

Skye traced the sources through IP addresses but found many uninhabited residences and places unlikely to be inhabited.

Even seemingly unused houses were using a certain IP to post online messages.

These messages were highly incendiary, and they varied greatly in angle, even targeting specific demographics with information bombardments.

This was very similar to the big data manipulation Lille had mentioned.

Lille stroked his chin, although this technology was still quite advanced in this world within that year, it was not for him.

Advanced networking technology made political agitation more efficient. At this juncture, the only entity that could counter this technology was Bloom Company.

This matter needed their intervention.

"Hmm... we could create our own AI to deal with this problem, I’ll tell you how to do it later."

"Okay."

Then Lille looked to Peter: "How are the things with your sentence now?"

"Reduced a lot, just half a year left. Matt, the lawyer, told me if I behave well, I might not actually need to serve time."

"Not bad... I have some medical product designs here, take a look, and finalize the production plan."

Lille referred to designs for medical consumables like Pneumatic Injectors, generally not too difficult, entrusting them to Peter should be a piece of cake.

Peter nodded.

The last was Hammond, this manager looked at Lille, waiting expectantly for Lille to assign him a task—

Lille thought for a moment and said: "You... don’t really have anything extra to do, just like I said earlier, skim as much subsidy as you can, but be wary of contract terms, don’t get tricked."

"How could that happen, I’d be tricking them!"

"...That’s not necessary."

After discussing these matters, Martin pushed open the conference room door, interrupting the meeting.

"The Governor of California has been brought in, the surgery must be performed immediately."

Lille withdrew his gaze, looking at the people here, feeling somewhat emotional.

Professor Connor, Dr. Otto, Dr. Tums, Peter, Skye, Hammond, Martin...

Here were scientists who could have become villains, interns who could have been superheroes, agents who might have joined the Shield Bureau, and even ordinary people.

Stripping off those titles and hats, now they needed to use their own names and identities to prevent the brewing frenzy.

Unlike the prolonged wartime scenario in Cyberpunk World, here, Lille was more focused on preventing the situation from worsening.

Looking at them, Lille slowly said, "Arranging an accident for those with opposing views is the most direct method.

If we are powerless, it would become a useful approach—but we have the means, technology is our weapon, a weapon to dampen our opponent’s spirits.

This is a surgery to save politicians with similar philosophies and also a chance to showcase our technology. Dazzling technology will provide us the opportunity to spread our principles.

Starting from here, we want to convey a message to the outer world: we can help those who wish for peace without waging war.

The way out of trouble is definitely not to create a bigger trouble elsewhere.

Prepare for the surgery."