Chapter 17: Chapter 17

Jim's PoV

Jim felt mentally exhausted. He felt like his mind was hit by multiple nuclear bombs over the past two days of research. Just when he thought he reached his final understanding, the rabbit hole went deeper.

His research kept yelling at him saying "You haven't even seen my final form!"

If he told a shrink what he learned, he had no doubt he would be in a little room with white padded walls. He could easily see how the dialog between himself and a psychiatrist would play out.

"So, you have millions of people living in your head?"

"Yup! And when I close my eyes, I can interact and talk with them too!"

The man would tap his pen on his clipboard and say, "Interesting. Very interesting. You said if you died in your 'dream world', then all these people would die as well?"

"It's not a dream world! It's real! And yes, all those people would die!"

The man would lean forward and say "I think we can help you. We have some medication that will stop you from dreaming, I'd like you to give it a try."

"It's not a dream! And I could make millions more people too! Maybe even billions or trillions! Do you want people living in your head doctor? I can give them to you if you want."

The psychiatrist would smile and say, "Those people are not real Jim. It's just a dream. I think there's something wrong with you, and we can help."

"No! Nothing is real! We are cosmic fodder! Just a simulation inside a computer!"

The psychiatrist would gesture at the burly men in the corner and say, "I think that's quite enough Jim. Let's give you some quiet time. My assistants will take you back to your room."

Then Jim would pull out a massive sword from his inventory and say, "I'm not going back to the white padded room! You won't take me alive."

Mr. White Coat would panic and say "What the, where the hell did you get a sword! Hurry! Call the police!"

Then Jim would be running half naked in the street with a sharp anime sword in his hand. Yeah, he would sound kind of nuts till the point where he started materializing stuff out of nowhere. No one would call him nuts if he started magicing items out of thin air. But if the government found out he could magic stuff from another world, it would probably make the white padded room sound like a gracious hotel.

But responsible Jim was in the back of his mind saying, "Stop thinking about useless stuff! You've been whining, hoping for money for the past two days and now it's fallen in your lap! Do something, idiot!"

Responsible Jim was a prick. It was hard to believe this all started just four days ago. Finally getting out of his mental funk he started looking at the prices for gold. Then he thought about something interesting.

Was gold really 100 times more than silver? Doing a bit of online research, he started looking at the prices of gold and compared them to silver. It seemed that silver was worth a decent bit more if he had 100 times more of it. Go new age coin system!

Pulling out one gold and one silver coin, the silver one seemed slightly heavier. He didn't have a scale, but if the silver coin was heavier than the gold coin by even just a little, it would make a massive difference when he started minting them.

Before he did that he realized he was getting ahead of himself. What if the coins weren't pure gold or silver? With his trusty phone he searched for appraisal. To his annoyance the only thing that showed up was a long list of real estate people.

Sighing Jim punched in 'pawn shop'. Hopefully he could get a straight answer there. The one that was closest to him had already shut down for the day. Checking the time it was getting close to midnight. Shrugging he figured it could wait till the morning. But there was one thing he could do before sleeping.

***

Charlotte's PoV

It was almost midnight and she couldn't sleep. There were only four days left in the deadline. She was still at a complete loss for what to do. Even if they found something new the presentation would probably just get shot down. And then her phone rang. Who would call at this hour?

Reading the caller she had named "Oblivious" she could not help but roll her eyes. Why was he calling? Was he just going to play that stupid song again and hang up?

Picking up the phone she asked tiredly "What do you want Jim? It's almost midnight and you haven't been at work for the past three days. And I swear to god if you play that song, I'll never answer your phone number again."

Jim replied "How much do you think it would cost to buy the project away from 3D Tech?"

Excitedly she asked "Did you find another investor? It would only take a couple million to keep the project going. If we could keep it alive only a few months longer we should have better results."

"No. I mean to buy all of the intellectual property as well as all the prototypes. And maybe the contracts for the staff. How much would that cost?"

She couldn't speak for a few seconds. Had he convinced some other corporation to buy them out using the helmet he stole as a sample? Charlotte felt sick. Had he already sold their research to some loser? What would happen if it became known that their research had been leaked?

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Bitterly she said "Probably around 40 million. That's really only a fraction of what it is truly worth but the money dried up somewhere. They are desperate. Why? Do you have that much in your back pocket after you sold us out?"

Jim laughed and said "I haven't shared my research with anyone boss, but I might just have a chance to get together that kind of money."

There was a pause on the other end of the line when the man asked "Sooo, boss. Did you uhh.. ever report that equipment missing by any chance?"

Her voice became icey when she asked "Oh, you know of some equipment that has been stolen from 3D Tech? Why, how nice of you to tell us, just give me a second so I can start recording your confession."

Jim cleared his throat on the other end of the line and said "Why no! No equipment missing at all."

There was a short pause when he finally asked "Why?"

And then the ice was gone. Sighing she said "I had a deadline of a week Jim. I don't have the time. An extra helmet won't make a difference for our capabilities in the next week. It's a paperwork game. Whoever can convince the higher ups that their research is able to turn a profit now are going to be the winners, and the rest will get shut down."

After a short pause she continued "And after we get shut down the bean counters are going to come in Jim. They are going to find out rather quickly that our asset column isn't adding up right. So whether I report it or not it's going to get found out. There's no point burning time that I could use to try to dig the project out of the hole."

After that there was a short silence. Then Jim hesitantly asked "Why did you fire me?"

Charlotte had a headache. She said "Jim, your people skills suck. If you would have talked to anyone in the past two weeks instead of locking yourself in your office, you would have known I fired a third of the staff. Seventeen people Jim. Seriously, you need to work on talking to people more to figure out what way the wind is blowing."

***

Jim's PoV

A third of his coworkers got fired when he did? How did he miss that? Actually he knew exactly how he missed it. The last two weeks of work he had made a whirlwind of breakthroughs and he became obsessed. He was still kind of happy that she called it a helmet instead of a NISARD though. Go Team Helmet!

Then Jim asked "Why a third?"

The woman on the other end of the line sounded defeated when she said "Because I knew what way the wind was blowing. I was hoping if I could cut costs enough the project could continue. But then we still got ambushed even after the layoffs. I needed people that could help me slay the dragons that were coming up in the next few weeks, not in the next year, Jim."

"Do you really think you can come up with that kind of money?"

Jim had no idea how to convert metals into money so he hesitantly said "It's possible. No guarantees but I'll give it a try."

There was laughter on the other end of the line.

"Jim, I hope you can. This work is going to change the world, even if we are not the ones to do it. I have a long day tomorrow of sending optimistic reports that will just get thrown in the trash. Goodnight Jim."

After saying goodnight he hung up the phone. Maybe he should have talked to her more? Now that she wasn't his boss she seemed to mellow out some. Still he had totally missed that she was under that kind of pressure.

Should he have done things differently? Nah. If he hadn't spent those last two weeks the way he did who knows what would have happened. He would just be in the same bucket as everyone else. What was the point of working if it wasn't interesting? It's a philosophy that hasn't steered him wrong yet. Well, not too wrong anyway.

Looking through his right eye he could see the billion gil that was waiting for him there. Why was it so hard to use his ill gotten gains? Money problems were boring. What would criminals do? Didn't they launder it or something? Can you do that with gold and silver? What is money laundering anyway?

Looking up the definition of money laundering on his phone the definition was "the concealment of the origins of illegally obtained money, typically by means of transfers involving foreign banks or legitimate businesses."

What the hell does that even mean? And why did he get flashes of a group of three office workers beating the crap out of a printer? Jim figured it could wait for tomorrow. He would head to the pawn shop and make sure that the coins that he had were really what they seemed to be, so he wouldn't make a fool out of himself. Karma was always waiting to ambush him.

With his luck they would be gold and silver plated coins with chocolate in the middle. He could just imagine going to prison for fraud. Battle scarred prisoners would tell stories of how they ended up in jail. One man would say that he stole a car.

The next would one up him and say he robbed a bank. Then 'Big Bill' with serpent tattoos all over his face would say that he killed a man for looking at him wrong. And they would all turn to him with scowls on their faces and ask, "Well what about you? What are you in for?"

"I sold silver plated chocolate coins."

They would all blink in unison and one would ask "You sold those Easter and Christmas chocolate coins? How's that a crime?"

Jim would nervously pull at his collar and say "No, I tried to sell plated coins as real coins. They uh, just happened to be filled with chocolate."

Pushing the vision away Jim laid down and went to sleep. Pawn shop tomorrow.

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