“That will be acceptable, but can you instruct my people on how to access the consoles and answer any of their questions, and can you open the doors to other areas of the ship?” Tomas asked.
“Yes.”
Tomas motioned for Seo-yun, to follow him out of the room, but he stopped at the entrance and spoke again “How far away from the ship can you monitor our conversations?”
“In your measures 10.7 meters.”
Tomas nodded. “Elias secure the ship.” He said and then left the room with Seo-yun following close behind, she caught up to him and tried to speak but Tomas stopped her by putting a finger across his lips. She caught on and followed, although he could see that she was aggravated. They exited the ship and found Marcus and another employee there waiting for them, Tomas saw that he was eager to learn what they found inside and was barely containing his curiosity.
“Marcus I need a room where the Professor and I can speak privately.”
“There is a conference room, Nora can show you where.” He said
“And I need you to gather all personnel and inform them that from now on no one is to speak anything near the ship, at least until a proper guidelines are established, also no one is to enter until Professor Seo-yun briefs everyone.” Marcus looked crestfallen.
“Don’t worry, all of those here will get their chance to explore inside. As soon as I finish my conversation with the Professor, she will brief you and then you can start.” Hearing that Marcus cheered up a bit.
Nora guided them to the conference room, and left them there alone. As soon as the door closed Seo-yun turned to Tomas. “What the hell was that? Why did you lie to him?”
“I never lied.” Tomas replied.
“Never lied! You said we were part of this Union.”
“No, I said that its choice to let us in was correct, I never confirmed that we were a member of that Union.”
She looked at him with an open mouth. “Still you lied by omission, we will need his help if we are to unlock that ships secrets, what do you think he will do when he realizes we aren’t who he thinks we are?”
“Blow us up.”
“What?” She said surprised.
“We need to make it believe we are a member of the Union, otherwise it will self-destruct, it said so itself.”
“Oh.” She said, in a soft voice, she remembered what it had said.
“You need to make sure our people don’t say anything that will make it think differently. And you need to gather as much information about this Union as you can while figuring a way to isolate it from the ships systems. Its programing is obviously corrupted, and no wonder, it’s been here for thousands of years. You must also find out how it got here, and why.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You are in charge here Seo-yun, proceed in whatever manner you think is best.”
Chapter Five
February 2082
Seo-yun rode the elevator going down into the heart of Nephthys, she was on her way to the main office of Olympus, to deliver her report to Tomas in person. It surprised her that Tomas left so soon, she thought that he wanted to be in charge no matter what else he said. But the day after he officially hired her, and gave her a document detailing her job and responsibilities, he spoke with the rest of the team saying how he had great fate in them, wished them good luck and left. Elias spent another week at Sedna coordinating with the security team and establishing new protocols and then he too left, and she found herself completely in charge, it was strange at first how everyone followed her instructions without asking any questions, even though she was new at the job. She had spent every waking moment of the past two months working on the alien ship, inspecting its technology, reviewing the translated portions of its database (they had a team that was working on translating the Union languages), and speaking with its AI, it has been established that it was in fact an artificial intelligence, one severely restricted, but an intelligence nonetheless. It pained her to be away from the project but she felt that she had been putting this trip off for as long as she could, and she knew that Marcus was up to the task of managing things while she was gone. She had been sending status reports to Tomas every two weeks, but they included only the overview of the work, as for everything else he said that it could wait until she was available to present it in person. She was very much surprised to see the ways things worked in Olympus, at first everything seemed insane to her, but as time passed she found that things worked, and worked well.
The elevator finally stopped on the Olympus offices floor, the elevator was one of four, which were designated solely for Olympus use and no civilian could enter it without permission, just as only Olympus personnel were allowed on this floor. As soon as Seo-yun left the elevator a security officer greeted her and said that he would escort her to the Tomas’s office. As she walked, her thoughts turned to other things that she wanted to talk about with Tomas. With her position also came unrestricted access to all Olympus databases, she didn’t have time to look into those until a few days ago, and even then she hadn’t even scratched the surface of all the projects Olympus had in motion, not to mention those that were finished, one of the reasons she finally decided to come here was so that she could talk with Tomas in person about the things she found. She couldn’t believe how much bigger Olympus was than what she and the rest of the world thought. Sure everyone knew that they were one of the strongest enterprises in the world, and everyone was wrong. Olympus wasn’t one of the strongest enterprises, it was the strongest, no other company had anywhere near as much resources, nor personnel. And she was amazed at the amount of things Tomas managed to keep concealed, Olympus was an empire. She believed that not even the world state leaders realized how much they depended on Olympus. More than 60% of the market was controlled by Olympus, although the public believed that the number was closer to 30%, as was always reported, which was already alarming, but what they didn’t know was that Olympus owned many smaller companies, companies that weren’t absorbed into Olympus, but nevertheless owned. That accounted for another 30% of the market. Concordis employed Olympus security instead of police in many cities, just as they used them for many state functions and events. Most air travel in the world was done by Olympus transportation. Olympus manufactured more than 70% of all military assets for Concordis and 20% for the League. It had monopoly on Energy and food distribution in Concordis. Olympus medical equipment were used in almost every hospital in the world. Frankly Seo-yun was appalled that the world governments allowed it to happen, so she went back and reviewed all the records from the start of the company, and realized how it happened. After the war the world was in turmoil, economy broken, people starving, governments just didn’t know what to do, the League and the Concordis were a short term solution. Until Olympus. She could see how the governments were relieved that someone took the problem off their hands, so they helped as much as they could, aiding Tomas Klein and his conquest without even realizing it, and as Olympus grew so did the standard of living. She could clearly see how the world governments let it happen without even realizing. Tomas was a very smart man, Olympus was always fair, prices were low enough to ensure growth of the company without being overpriced, and with their slow conquest of the markets it only became a matter of time before everything was controlled by Olympus. And even then Tomas showed his skill. He wasn’t greedy, he was patient, he kept everything available to everyone ensuring that no one would try to hinder his progress until it was too late, and Seo-yun was sure that the world still didn’t realize what he has done. The world was dependent on Olympus, without them the world economy would again collapse. Tomas Klein was the most powerful man in the world. For all intents and purposes he ruled the world. And his greatest achievement was hiding that fact from everyone.