I stared at the board, as if that could change the facts. Under the fluorescent lights of the assembly room it looked innocuous, which was exactly the problem. The out of band controller was as dead as disco.
It hadn't started that way. The controller came up clean—banner, the half-broken POST, the prompt that took its three commands. Then Nowak slotted a test blade in beside it and told the controller to bring it up.
Nothing.
The blade sat there, a green LED on its edge saying it had standby power and not one thing more. Grissom leaned in. "Tell it again." Nowak did. The console acknowledged the command, reported the blade powered, happy as you please. The blade stayed dark.
"It thinks it turned it on," Nowak said slowly.
Grissom was already reaching for the schematic. They went back and forth over my head for ten minutes before Grissom straightened up.
"Enable line isn't doing what the firmware thinks it's doing. Board problem, not a code problem." He looked at me. "We rev the controller."
My stomach did the thing it had learned to do around the word rev. A respin would run five figures and a chunk of weeks, and it would eat that much further into a runway I kept shorter in my head than I let anyone see.
"It happens, Nate." Grissom shrugged, not unkindly. "You software guys are used to instant iteration."
The respin came back three weeks later and, on the second try, worked. Mostly. Nowak had a fix soldered across two pads before he'd finished celebrating, a thin bodge wire I'd learned not to flinch at. The enable line behaved. The console said powered, and this time the blade beside it woke up and started talking back.
"We'll need two," I said, watching the terminal scroll. "One to keep iterating on. One clean enough to put in front of investors."
Grissom raised an eyebrow. "Doubles the build. Populated boards, assembly, bench time."
"I know." I did. Two prototypes at this density, this early, meant fab and parts and fully-paid team-weeks twice over, and my Swiss account had gotten thin enough that I'd started doing the math at night. I'd scrimped where I could. It wasn't going to be enough.
Month 6 — 2 months runway
I applied for business loans. It probably wasn't going to work, but it was best to try the easiest option first. That went about as well as I expected it to go. The nicest thing I could say was that I wasn't sure if it was because I was a black founder or because the original capital I poured into the company was sketchy. The loan officers weren't buying "technological consulting and a international sale", which was technically the truth, if one looked at it through a certain lens.
I'd need another option. Talk to the program traders directly and see what interest I could drum up on that front.
I needed to leverage my network. I didn't know many people, but someone, possibly Harrison Snow, had to have a in. I had his number from our monthly get-togethers, and I was sure he could direct me to SOMEONE in the program trading scene. He was a Harvard type, they all tended to flock together
I packed up the phone off my desk and dialed his number.
After a few rings, Harrison picked up.
"Afternoon Nathan. What's up?"
"Hey Harrison. I need a favor."
A week later I sat in the SFO departure lounge, idly cataloguing the differences. Airport security was a fraction of what I was used to. A guard waved me through with my carry-on and barely looked up.
Snow had given me two names that might be interested. A New York program-trading outfit called Ironbridge and an international investor called Selat Capital . I'd landed the NYC outfit for tomorrow and a meeting the international investor next week. I'd be racking up a lot of airfare,(and I'd be absurdly jetlagged) but I needed investment.
In return for the two introductions he wanted to have first look at some hardware once I had more units to spare, plus right of first refusal on the initial production run. A cheap enough price for doors I couldn't have opened myself.
I turned it over a while longer. The thought wore itself out the way idle ones do, going thinner and thinner until it wasn't there at all, and I was just looking at the airliners on the ramp.
A sudden pang of grief caught me off guard. Flying with my family, in my old life—it arrived unbidden, the way those things did now. The grief had dulled over my months here, but it still surfaced in the small stuff, ambushed me from odd angles when I wasn't braced for it.
I shook my head. My flight was boarding.
Five hours later we touched down at JFK. I took a cab in rather than fight the trains with my luggage(only a roll-away and the hardcase but still) and checked into a midtown hotel as the light was going.
I was only in New York for a bit, so I should be fine. Inferno had happened a few months ago,but I should be clear, I'd talk to the program traders, and (presumably) nothing untowards would happen.
The next day, I woke up bright and early, ready for my 10 AM appointment. I tossed on my button-up shirt, a sport coat and some loafers. I grabbed the hardcase with the blade prototype from my bag and began to make my way a few blocks over to the trading building.
The sun was out, unlike my rather overcast arrival on the previous evening. I chose to take that as a good sign. I stepped out the front door of my hotel, pelican case containing the prototype blade in hand.
I had missed New York City a bit. The bustle and hustle, the hubbub. Downtown San Jose was much quieter, and less walkable.
My route brought me past the Daily Bugle. I stopped for a moment. It was surreal to see it in the flesh. The Bugle building was much the same as it was on panel. The signage on top spelling out Daily Bugle, the building itself. Even when I thought I was used to my new universe, some things still struck me.
Shaking my head, I continued on my way. After a few more minutes of walking through the sunlight of a New York City morning, I found my address.
The building was the anonymous kind: a street number over the doors, a revolving door, and a directory board in the lobby I had to scan twice to find them—Ironbridge Program Trading, 30—tucked between a law firm and a capital group. The lobby was all beige marble and fluorescent light, a security desk manned by a bored guard and a bank of elevators behind him. I signed the visitor log, traded my name for a stick-on badge, and was told to take a seat.
I waited the better part of twenty minutes on a hard little bench, the Pelican case balanced on my knees, watching people in better suits than mine cross the lobby like they had somewhere real to be. Eventually the guard's phone buzzed. He glanced at me. "Thirtieth floor. They're ready for you."
After a brief elevator ride, I turned right into a rather bland hallway, past a glass door with IRONBRIDGE in vinyl letters, and found the conference room.
Two men were at the table. Both white, one bigger and older, the other younger, late twenties or early thirties. White button-down shirts, dress pants,sport coats(notably pricier than my coat) the uniform of your Wall Street types. The older man had a loud paisley tie loosened at the collar.
Mike turned out to be the heavier-set of the two, somewhere in his forties, with a slightly frazzled air about him. The other introduced himself as Dale, younger, quieter. We did the usual dance. Weather, my flight in, whether I'd found the place all right. I mentioned I'd walked over from my hotel and passed the Daily Bugle on the way, that it was something to see in person.
Mike snorted. " Used to be Jameson's circus, top to bottom."
He waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the window, in the direction of the Bugle a few blocks north.
"New money now. Fireheart Enterprises bought him out two weeks back. Some holding company from out west."
"Guess the holding companies come for us all, eventually" muttered Dale.
I set the Pelican case on the table, flipped it open and walked them through my pitch. The desks they were running now, were fine until they weren't, and when one went down mid-session they ate the downtime in real money. My pitch was density and redundancy in the same breath: more independent boards in the same footprint of floor space, each one its own machine, so a single failure didn't drag the rest down with it. Pull the dead one, slot a new one, the desk never stops.
Dale leaned in at that, the way I'd hoped he would. "So why not just buy Tandem?" he said, not unkindly, and I'd opened my mouth to give him the answer about cost per board and floor density when something moved in the window behind his head.
I stopped. Mid-word, mid-breath. Out past the glass, a few blocks north, the Daily Bugle building was rising into the air. The whole forty-six-story slab lifted clean off its foundations and listing gently to one side as it went, the thirty-foot letters on the roof tilting against the sky.
For one long, stupid second my brain simply refused the image, filed it under can't be, and I just stood there with my pitch dying in my throat and my hand still half-raised. Dale, watching my face, turned around.
"Should...should we be evacuating?" I said, very quietly.
I'd seen strange things since I landed on Earth-616. Werewolves. A building turned to gold. Sentinels. But this one had my heart going, because I couldn't tell when the thing was coming down, or where it would land when it did.
Mike was already moving. He crossed to the wall and hauled the fire alarm, and as it started to scream he pointed us at the door. "Stairs. Now. Move."
I swept up my pelican case in my arms,glad I hadn't taken the server blade out and made my way to the staircase.
The fire door was already jammed with bodies when we reached it. Not a stampede. There weren't enough of us on thirty for that, but the second we funneled into the stairwell we merged with everyone above, and that was the crush. Floor thirty-one, thirty-two, all of them emptying at once into a concrete shaft built for maybe half this many, and the whole mass moved at the pace of its slowest link. Shoulder to shoulder, one hand on the rail, a half-step and a wait, a half-step and a wait. Somebody's briefcase kept cracking into the back of my knee.
My mind drifted. This was an Acts of Vengeance issue, I couldn't remember the exact number. Main Spider-Man title. The good news was Graviton wasn't going to use the Bugle building as a kinetic impactor at least....
After an indeterminately sweaty hustle, I hit the ground floor, spilled through the lobby with the rest of the crowd, and emerged into the sun with the rest of the tower.
Outside, the street noise had tapered off. Most people were looking north, watching the Bugle hang there against the sky where no building had any business being. Mike caught his wind, looked at me, then at the case in my arms.
He shrugged. "We'll get back to you."
"Thanks." I meant it, for whatever it was worth.
Another opportunity fucked by things out of my control. Graviton was definitely on my shit list. Fucking sliding timescale.
Approximately a week later I shook myself as my alarm clock went off, dragging myself out of my comfy,comfy bed at 4 AM. I was going to Madripoor! It wasn't under the best of circumstances, to be sure, but it was still something. Madripoor didn't exist in my world, and it'd be interesting to see it. Good thing I'd sprung for the passport on a whim a few months back; it had cleared without a hitch, which said something reassuring about the airtightness of my identity.
After checking my van into short-term parking at SFO and going through airport security (I was still quietly tickled by the pre-9/11 state of things) I sat down at my gate. I suppressed a brief twinge of sentiment. I had flown several times internationally with my family, and in my first time in an international terminal on this planet,the feelings were coming back. After a ten minute power nap at my gate, I made it onto the outbound 747, routing through Hong Kong. This was going to be a long haul.
The HK leg passed easily enough, mostly spent with my nose in a book. Change came on the HK to Madripoor leg. I'd barely settled into my seat on my next flight when the man next to me struck up a conversation, the particular kind of unprompted friendliness that some people apparently came factory imaged with.
"First time going to Madripoor?" He had a thick Australian accent, and taking advantage of my disorientation he was already extending a hand. "Angus Barry. International trade."
I hated chatty seatmates.
I shook his hand. "Nathan Smith. Looking for investment. First time, yeah."
Angus grinned like I'd told a joke he appreciated. "Aren't we all, mate. Aren't we all." He settled back into his seat like we'd be here a while. "You'll want your wits about you. Madripoor's a good sort of place if you know which way's up."
He talked the rest of the way. He was impressively good at filling space without giving too much away — half an hour in I knew he'd been through here more times than he'd say and not one thing about what he actually did. I stayed monosyllabic. Sadly, he didn't take the hint.
Finally, over the PA, the pilot announced we were on final approach. I peered out the window for my look. The strait was a golden blue in the afternoon light, filled with ships. From up here they looked motionless, scattered across the water like a child's building blocks.
Even on Earth-616, this was a busy stretch of ocean.
The plane banked upwards, denying me a full look at Madripoor's skyline.
After our touchdown I peered out the window for my first look at Madripoor from the ground.
The field resolved into detail, and none of it matched the gleaming terminal I'd glimpsed waiting up ahead. The runway was very long. Off at its edges, half-swallowed by the encroaching green, sat a scattering of blast pens, slowly being overgrown.
Probably an ex-military airfield.
My uncertainty didn't last long. Angus wasn't done talking.
"Ex-RAF airfield, this one," he said, leaning across me to get a look out my window, which I tactfully ignored.
Deciding to get some planespotting in, I looked out over the ramp. Three freighters sat at the cargo terminal: an MD-11 in a livery so nondescript it circled back around to conspicuous, a sun-faded 707 wearing a flag I didn't recognize on a tail that had obviously worn a different name once, and a Soviet-built Il-76 riding a registration I couldn't place. The passenger terminal was quieter: a 727 in the livery of what I guessed was an Australian carrier, and past it, twenty or thirty private jets scattered near a row of hangars.
After making my way through the terminal, I was hit with a wall of tropical humidity the second I stepped outside. I'd worn a short-sleeve polo shirt for the trip, and I was still sweating my ass off.
I hailed a cab, roll-away in one hand and the pelican case in the other, and gave the driver the name of the hotel.
The Sovereign was out of my budget, so I'd booked an anonymous, downmarket businessmen's place in Madripoor's commercial core. Check-in was a bored clerk, my passport photocopied without comment, and a key on a plastic fob worn smooth by other hands. The room was small and smelled of the last guest's cigarettes, the air conditioner rattling through cycles it lost more often than won. It did the job.
I woke early the next day, grabbed the pelican case, and stepped out onto the sidewalk to flag a cab.
The cab left me at the wrong end of the waterfront, which at least gave me something to look at while I got my bearings. This was a very pretty stretch. Buccaneer Bay, I assumed, perusing the tourist map I had grabbed from the hotel lobby.
It was a crescent of calm turquoise water behind a stone breakwater, crowded with yachts. Somebody's helicopter sat on the stern deck of a truly absurd mega-yacht. It could have been Monaco, if Monaco was sweatier.
I started walking, keeping the water on my right, and the character of the harbor changed as I went.
Past a low headland the yachts gave way to working boats. I saw a fishing boat,then a raft of small wooden sampans lashed gunwale to gunwale. The smell of fish filled my nose.
Then the water turned brown. I came up against a fence line, razor wire and a faded MADRIPOOR PORT AUTHORITY sign, and beyond it the real business of the harbor: container cranes stalking along their rails, a rust-streaked bulk carrier riding high and empty, gantries swinging boxes off its deck. Two more ships sat further down the wharf, also being unloaded, and past the breakwater a dozen more sat at anchor, waiting their turn at port.
I turned my back on it and walked inland, and within two blocks the harbor might as well have not existed. The glass and the shipping money gave way to a duller grade of commerce, four- and five-storey buildings with brass plaques by the door, trading firms and freight agents and offices that didn't advertise what they traded or forwarded. Selat Capital was located in one of these buildings.
Selat's office sat on the fourth floor of an unremarkable commercial building a few blocks back from the harbor, the kind of address that gave away nothing about what actually moved through it. The receptionist who'd let me up hadn't asked about my business, which was interesting in itself.
I knocked at the door. A muffled "Enter" emanated from inside.
The man in the office himself was relatively nondescript. Around forty, Asian. Slim, around 5'10. He wore an untucked linen shirt and long khakis, much more casual than my last business meeting. He didn't get up when I came in, just gestured at the chair across from his desk.
"Marcus Tan." He didn't offer a hand, just the name, like it was enough. "Mr. Snow speaks well of you. That buys you a meeting."
He had a slight accent. Probably Singaporean.
I sat. "Fair enough."
He tapped the prospectus I had mailed ahead. "Your pitch seems fine. I had someone technical look at this, and the verdict was that it's a clever idea. Which is more than I can say for some others."
He let that sit for exactly as long as it took me to feel good about it. "It's also not for me."
"You haven't heard the—"
"I don't need the numbers. You want patient money. Years of it, poured into fabrication and salaries, with nothing coming back until the far end. That's a fine thing to want. It's simply the opposite of what the interests I represent do. We want liquidity. Leverage." He spread his hands. "Hardware takes time. No."
There wasn't anything to argue. He was right. The problem wasn't me. The problem was that I'd flown eighteen hours(and would be flying 18 hours back, after spending MONEY on airfare) for nothing.
"Then why take the meeting at all?" I asked. Not bitter. Just tired. Some sarcasm slipped through despite me. "I assume you don't need me in the room to tell me any of this."
Something that was almost a snicker escaped him. "No. But if someone is referred to me, I like to see them in person." He studied me for a moment.
Whatever ledger he kept seemed to settle in my favor.
He drew a fountain pen from his shirt pocket and wrote something on the sheet clipped to my prospectus.
"I don't fund longer-term concerns. But the fact that I won't doesn't mean it's a bad bet, only that it's the wrong bet for the interests I represent." He capped the pen. "I know money that thinks in longer horizons. I'll pass your name along."
Something must have come through my face.
"That costs me nothing, so don't look so suspicious."
Back in my hotel room, I did the math. I had a bit more runway left, but things would start to get tight very soon. The airfare hadn't helped on that front. My mind turned to the other asset I had. The Iron Monger suit would fetch something from the right buyer, but I had no idea where I'd even start moving it. The contacts I'd had as Slate weren't well connected enough to move something like that. It would also mean more outings as Slate, which had its own risks.
I thought back to the warehouse and suppressed a shudder.
The flight back was eighteen hours of restless sleep interspersed with watching the Pacific crawl past under the wing. Tan's favour was better than nothing, which was most of what I had, but somewhere over the ocean I made myself stop leaning on it. I'd believe him when a phone rang, and not before.
I re-entered my office on Monday, back on the ground in San Francisco, and settled into the grind. The days went by. I looked at the balance sheet more than was good for me, watched the runway number sit there refusing to improve, and heard nothing. No call. By Friday I'd quietly filed Tan's word away. He'd forgotten to call in his marker, or never meant to. Fine. I had bigger problems than an investor's short memory.
I was staring at the spreadsheet, somewhat aimlessly again, when the phone rang. A number I didn't recognize.
"Nathan Smith? Good afternoon. This is James with Ophrah Capital, the direct-investment arm of Ophrah Industries. Mr. Tan spoke quite highly of what you're building at Falcis Systems, and thought we should connect." An easy, unhurried pause. "Do you have time for a more in-depth call this week?"