Chapter 279: Risk Assessment
Turning back to Heidy, Jack said, "Great suggestion, Heidy. Don’t hold back if you have any more ideas. Now, what about phase two? Where are we on datacenters?"
Heidy turned to look at Cindy.
"Since our data centers consume so little power compared to even small cloud data centers, I’ve had more flexibility when selecting locations. I’ve identified primary, secondary, and tertiary options for all the regions in the Federation, the Union, and the Asian Alliance. But Serica, Novarossiya, and Sarmatia are problematic."
"I understand why Novarossiya and Sarmatia would be problematic, what with the war and all, but what’s the problem with Serica? It’s a stable country."
"Corruption," said Cindy bluntly. "It’s nearly impossible for outsiders to do business there unless they are willing to grease a lot of palms. The government has cracked down heavily on internal graft, but still turns a blind eye to the fleecing of outsiders."
"Okay, let’s forget Serica for now. We can wait until they beg us to build data centers there," said Jack. "Let’s focus on data centers in the Federation to start with. Once we have those built out, we can think about expanding into the Union and Asian Alliance."
"Okay, that makes things much easier," said Cindy.
Turning to Helga, Jack asked, "How goes the risk assessment?"
"We are still reviewing the choices Cindy made for data centers. Besides the usual real estate legal reviews, we are also looking at utilities reliability, local infrastructure stability, local and regional politics, and the potential for unwanted underworld attention."
"Castle Group really knows their stuff," chimed in Cindy. "I thought Yoctoly had a solid risk assessment process for new data centers, but Castle Group spotted some issues that I think even Yoctoly would have missed."
Helga smiled at Cindy’s praise, then continued.
"We also completed a review of your pending privatization of Horizon VR and subsequent purchase of Jensen Manufacturing. Your choice of Summit Groups was wise, and we found nothing of note with regard to the deal they have structured."
"No problems with the Horizon board members?" asked Jack. "Phineas thought some of them might try to block the sale."
"No. From our interrogation of their copies, we determined that they will accept the offer. Reluctantly, but they’ll accept."
"Great. Anything else of note? Do I need to be concerned about Warren Westlock or Morton Richland?"
Jack wasn’t in the room when Darrel Westlock died, but he’d been at the party, so he wanted to know if was on Darrel’s father’s radar. And he’d crushed Kayden Richland’s balls, so he knew he was on Morton’s radar.
"No," said Helga. "You are not on Warren Westlock’s radar. As for Morton Richland, he still harbors some dislike for you. Not because you disfigured his son, or because that led to his son’s apparent suicide, but because he sees it as a slight against his family, against him."
"However," she continued, "Orin Blake’s warning has caused him to abandon any plans he might have had towards you."
"And the Wallingfords? Any concerns there?" The Castle Group people knew better than him what questions to ask, so he’d had them interrogate the Wallingfords instead of doing it himself.
"We concur with your suspicion. Walter Wallingford is succumbing to age-related dementia. And your assessment of Lily’s emotional development was, to put it bluntly, charitable. The girl has some deep-seated psychological issues and has formed an unhealthy obsession with you."
"Great, just great," muttered Jack. "Recommendations? I really don’t want to soul bond her unless it’s absolutely necessary. Will she even honor the ’stay away until she’s eighteen’ agreement we made?"
"Yes, she’ll honor that agreement. But our current assessment is that she will not relinquish her obsession with you and will respond very poorly if you fail to attend her eighteenth birthday party."
Worst case, he’d have to soul bond her and impose his will on her, like he had with Isabella. He’d already dealt with one obsessed girl, Madison, so he felt confident he could deal with another one if he had to.
"Thank you, Helga," he said. "That concludes our planned business for this meeting. Does anyone have anything else they’d like to discuss?"
"If I may?" asked Orin.
"Go ahead, Orin," said Jack.
"The ability to engage in live-fire training exercises and life-and-death sparring matches inside your soul space is valuable beyond measure. Would it be possible for you to soul bond more of my employees?"
"Life-and-death sparring?" asked Heidy.
"Yes," said Orin. "Normally during a sparring match both combatants need to hold back to avoid causing permanent injury to their opponent, or themselves. But here in Jack’s soul space, they can fight to the death, again and again."
He continued, "West and Maldonado, our two engineers, were always the weakest when it came to hand-to-hand combat, but with life-and-death sparring they’ve made huge improvements. It’s like watching puppies become savage wolves."
"I don’t need mercenaries, Orin," said Jack. "The only reason I saved your team was because Katie asked me to. She knew those men and would have been hurt if I had knowingly let them die."
"But you might need them in the future," said Orin.
Jack had no interest in getting involved in the war in Sarmatia or engaging in black-bag operations elsewhere in the world, so he really didn’t see the need to obtain even more highly trained mercs.
"Maybe, but we can cross that bridge if we ever encounter it. For now, I have no plans to get into the mercenary business."
"Understood," said Orin. He was disappointed with Jack’s answer, but knew not to press the matter.
"I have a question," said Heidy.
"Go ahead," said Jack.
"I know you talked about initially offering a 3D video upload service and VR teleconferencing, but have you considered VR-based education?"
"Do you mean expanding the teleconferencing to VR classrooms, or something else?" he asked.
"No, I’m thinking about the idea of a VR game that incorporates basic education into it. Something that gamifies the entire education process."
"No, I hadn’t thought about that," he said. "The only education-related service I’ve been thinking about offering was virtual laboratories. Something where anyone can design and run experiments in VR. Some of the most fun I’ve ever had in class was doing experiments. So if that was free to students of all ages, then we might see a surge in interest in STEM fields."
"What if we combined that idea with a VR game, or maybe a virtual world with game-like elements?" asked Rina.
"What about AI teachers combined with immersive education?" asked Cindy. "Where students are taken on a guided tour through history and can watch actual battles or dramas instead of just reading boring descriptions."
"What about a world of knowledge kind of place, where people can go just to have fun, but can also earn badges if they take and pass tests?" asked Madison.
He really liked that idea and had visions of students delving dungeons that required them to use the knowledge they gained in classes in order to complete levels and receive rewards.
He was about to ask Madison if she would be able to create AI teachers, but then had a thought. He was concerned about AI displacing jobs, and wanted to use VR to create jobs, so why would he want to use AI teachers in an educational VR world?
Instead, they could gamify teaching as well. Once someone passed a certain set of classes, they would qualify to become a teacher. Then, as teachers, they would get paid to teach classes in the VR world. They’d have to structure the rewards so that the teachers didn’t teach to the test, but he figured that was a solvable problem.
"That’s an excellent idea, Madison. And I think we can extend that so that people who have earned enough of the right badges can take on teaching jobs and get paid. This way as students move into the VR education system, teachers can follow and still make a living."
"We could call it the ’World of Wonder’," said Phineas.
"I like it. Let’s do it," said Jack. "Heidy, Rina, Madison, can you make it happen?"
All three nodded enthusiastically.
"Great. Let’s try to have something ready for the release of the first-gen VR headset. It doesn’t have to be complete, but I want something that will grab people’s attention and spark their imagination."