The black sedan hummed softly as it climbed out of West City proper, away from the towers and neons, up into the hills where the buildings thinned out into trees and expensive silence. The secretary, Kyou, sat opposite to him, folder on her knees, watching the scenery with the air of someone who had done this route a dozen of times in her head.
« Your lab budget was approved in advance as part of this decade's mid-term expected expenditure. »
« How generous are they feeling? » Asked Gero.
« Very, » she said matter-of-factly. « You opened up a way to get a monopoly of the energy market, and contrary to a satellite program, there is significant guarantee of profit. »
They turned past a checkpoint that looked like a tasteful stone gate. Up close, he caught the outlines of armoured shutters, recessed cameras, the telltale bulge of buried sensors. The guard gave Kyou a crisp salute and glanced at Gero's face, then pressed a button. The gates swung inward. The road wound up one last rise, and then the trees fell away. The estate sat on a shoulder of the hill overlooking the city like it owned it. The mansion was three stories of pale stone and glass and broad balconies were catching the light. It was a luxurious villa, but Gero knew he won't spend much time in it, as knowing his very imminent schedule, he may haunt the lab and never leave it.
Kyou observed his uninterested expression. «On the plans,» she said, «this is a Ferbold executive residence and private retreat. The board expects to host a few parties here, shake hands, show people that their energy genius is well cared for.»
« I'll pass, go to the main point please. »
« Let's start our visit then. »
The house had a huge professional kitchen, a dozen of fridges and a freezing room. The dining hall was immense, and there was an unnecessary large number of rooms, each with their own bathrooms, toilets, and bedrooms and offices. Twenty on the ground floor, of lesser quality, and seventeen on the third floor, for the elite and guests. Gero's room was the biggest one with the view on the forest that expands under the hill. Then they returned back to the ground floor, and after pushing a button, carefully masked as an ornament on the huge mirror that covered an entire wall, made this one flip and reveal an imposing elevator.
« We didn't assign any personnel and you are the only one who'll be working down here, at least until you request helpers. Guards will keep out of the house but remain stationed for obvious reasons. We don't want our lead scientist get eaten by a T-Rex, do we? » She winked playfully at Gero.
Then Kyou took a small metal card out of her folder and slid it into a horizontal slot beneath the panel. With a faint click the panel brightened and the unmarked buttons changed to B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6.
« Your card. » She said, handing him an identical one. « Full access, there's a personal identification code you can set up later, but the time of the visit the card will do. You also have free reign to change security as you please. »
He slipped it into his pocket, it had a metallic texture and had some weight. They started from B1. The first level had hospital white lights and was made of steel. Lights flicked on and off automatically as they advanced. The rooms in the first level were designed to draw diagrams, make calculations and small scale experiments, and was stacked with basic lab materials, oscilloscopes, power supplies, analysers and computers. Then they went on to B2. The floor level was divided into a materials room with sealed cabinets, a small furnace area behind thick glass, a machining nook with lathes and cutters. In addition to one person operable tools, there were also versions for heavier tasks, with production chains, and cranes.
As Gero checked the furnace controls, he was satisfied, as the maximum temperature and atmosphere options were much over what he could get in his original world. Dragon Ball's technology was strangely futuristic and also backward in a very fascinating way. Then it was time to go to B3. It was a series of larger rooms branching off a wider hall: one lined with modular test rigs and another set up as an instrumentation suite. The third one was empty except for power rails in the floor and ceiling. It was obviously for assemblies and long tests. Then risk and hazard floor, B4. The corridor was narrower and the walls were thicker. Heavy doors with mechanical wheels lined either side. Each had a small and thick window set in it and bolted-on sign that designed each room by number. As for B5, was just a very elaborate and advanced storage, with shielded vaults, cranes, and sliding platforms. From there he had also an industrial elevator to transport materials and products from floor too floor, that could be connected to the one he took with the secretary. A necessary step for it's activation. Finally they arrived to B6. It was one vast room broken by support columns, lit only by a handful of bare work lights. The walls were lined with conduit and capped pipes. The floor walls were lined with conduit and capped pipes. Power junction boxes sat empty, the floor was smooth but unsealed, a pale grey concrete expense asking to get pimped.
« No fixed equipment as you can see, you can use this floor for anything you like. We just installed power, cooling and some structural support. The only pre-installed monitoring is environmental. The temperature, pressure, structural stress and nothing else. »
He maintained a pokerface but inside his soul, a glint of joy and something more shone. This was perfect! After a very comfortable night of rest, Gero headed to B1. He organised his plans and schematics, and started working on the auto-recharging core. He knew that at one point he will bleed the company's budget to a breaking point, and before the board could see red, he should be able to present some piece of candy to calm them down. What he considered a prototype, was treated as a finite product by Ferbolg, and if they reacted that way to that piece of what he considered trash, one could only imagine how they will react to something he considered barely usable.
He crafted the schematics with very clear indications for the core itself under two hours, and then designed a production line using the devices he knew where the top of the crop in the industry right now. Then he strolled leisurely to B5 to get the required materials then transported them to B2. He mixed powders according to the rations he had determined after a rapid calculus, designed the ceramic, dopants and precise parts. He also selected the binding agents. He pressed the different finished products into pellets and loaded them into the furnace after setting up the desired settings. He repeated the process multiple times, each time adjusting the components.
The first batch came out slightly warped, the second cracked slightly, the third one went much more better though. He cut each pellet into test tiles and polished their surfaces. Then he went to B3 for testing. With repeated tests he finally managed to produce a batch he judged usable, and called it x-17-07. If you could compare it to x-17A, x-17-07 would be like a plane compared to a bee. He started over it production until he had two hundred of a fully functional and optimised power sources for his personal uses. Then set aside the failed x-17 formulas that he will use during the next sixty years to justify his roach-like existence. Unlimited money glitch? Achieved! Who said one had to starve like master Roshi, strong but penniless?
After three weeks of work he earned the right to take a shower and finally rest in his king size bed. He named the new battery: The Cycle-Core, and a dozen of them could power West City for years without showing a sign of consumption. It's product name was CYC-1, and the other stuff was named T1 to T5, t standing for trash. But he'll tell to Furbolg guys that it means Turbo, for obvious reasons. He hummed joyously while writing Kyou a thirty page document filled with astronomical quantities of premium regents, alloys, metals, extracts, and rare metals. He had plainly left, but one should know: plenty is never enough.
But now Gero had to deal with a major bottleneck. Materials were not a problem, the contact with Furbolg made anything he ordered come true and delivered quickly, and after a ridiculously costly sixtieth order it didn't slow down and he didn't heat a thing looking like a complaint. He abused it so much he had to start to use a part of the B6th floor for storage. And not once another living being passed the lab's doors: the parcels were just charged into the elevator and everything else was done via machinery.
What he needed now was computing power. He could wait for the technology to develop but that would be a huge waste of time. And he had already a solution: build the super computer. The same one Gero used to birth Cell, but better. After successfully modifying the EUV photolithography machines, etchers, deposition systems, ion Implanters, and inspection tools until they reached the required hight performance and standards, Gero cursed this world and thanked the previous owner of this body for taking all the necessary classes he needed to gain enough knowledge to allow him build his own stuff. They had laser guns but produced hardware as in early eighties. A true tech nightmare. A blasphemous heresy! He wanted to go on but he could not continue anymore, he was totally burnt out, as it took him a whole year to complete the monumental task. He got rid of millimetres, he reached the picometer! One hundred time tinier than a nanometer polymer! But at what cost.
Just as he opened the door to reach the so much needed grass, that he had to touch at all cost, he discovered a panicked Kyou about to ring the bell, and already dealing what should be his lab phone number at the same time.
«On the desk from the thirteenth room, left drawer, the device is under the table.» Did Gero say before passing by and flopping on the bed of flowers in the garden.
Kyou was ready for anything but this, but kept any remarks to herself. She quickly found the power-core and a note in the left drawer, directing her to the room five on the ground floor. When she reached and opened that door she nearly fell over, the whole room was filled with overfilled binders! And after recovering from the surprise, she called Ms. Anzu to give the good news and ask for a truck with the greatly needed work force, in addition to armed escort. Then she called the legal team, the CFO, and finally the CEO. When she saw Gero making an angel while ruining the flowers, she knew it: she can already say goodbye to her planned vacation, all the administrative work that man will refuse to do will fall upon her!