AN: This chapter came after prayer and some hard work, and I'm pleased to give you the results. Here you are, ladies and gentlemen, a new chapter. I hope you all enjoy it. Read and review, and I'll see you next chapter.

Pagliacci-11

Chapter 7

Max was sitting quietly in the library listening to the audiotape from Terry's conversation with Dana the evening before. As she listened, she was more than impressed by his improvisational skills. Terry was able to weave a narrative blending truth with falsehood and kept it all within a more than believable context, even to the informed mind. Despite how many had dismissed earlier in his academic career, Max knew that he was great when it came to adapting new material and committing it to memory when the need suited him.

As she continued to listen, she felt a gentle tap on her shoulder. Flinching just ever so slightly, she turned and saw the face of a young long-haired blonde in old-fashioned spectacles.

Smiling, she said, "Emile! How are you? It's been some time since I've seen you."

He smiled as he sat across the table from her, "I've been doing a lot of online classes as of late. It's more convenient with ma and all."

Max nodded, taking off her headphones, "How is she? Any better?"

"It's one of those things, Max. There is no getting better—well, there would be if she just stuck to her regimen, you know? But. you can't blame her, though; those chemo pills are hell for her."

Max closed her laptop to give Emile her full attention. She knew it had been hard for him. He was an extremely diligent student; however, his usual enthusiasm had understandably waned with his mother's cancer diagnosis and treatment.

"Is she being stubborn again?" Max asked.

"No, it's not that she's stubborn—exactly. Chemo is wrecking her body, and you can see the effect it has on her. Chemo-brain is what they call it, and she's just not herself anymore, you know? I mean, sure, it staves off progress, but she can only take so much abuse in her old age, it's just—hard."

"What about your family?" Max asked, "Can't they—"

Emile smirked and chuckled with a hint of scorn, "Please, don't—" he checked himself, his rage slowly building, and then he exhaled. He continued, "Don't be silly, Max. My family doesn't give a genuine fuck about her in all reality. Her spoiled as hell daughters are bad enough with their patronizing sycophancy." He grimaced as if he'd swallowed something revolting, "No, Dad's coming back to help with the situation, and much as mom always said, 'He'll be the only one to do so.' So, I'm just waiting until he comes back."

Max looked at Emile, and she could see he looked more than haggard. He hadn't had too much sleep lately, but not wanting to press, she asked, "So, I mean, given your situation, Emile, what's going to happen with you?"

"It's been more or less taken care of. Mom left me a bulk of the life insurance to help pay for the house that we live in. There's also the major issue of Ma's credit-card debt, and then there's the usual stuff that we have to tend to, transferring over of utilities and all that stuff. But it's one of those things where I've begun to understand what they say, 'one day at a time.'"

Max nodded and replied, "It's a good thing, you know?"

Emile nodded, "Yeah, I know. It just—doesn't make it easier. Nothing can prepare you for what comes. It comes as it comes."

Max more than understood Emile's state of mind, far more than most. Even though her mother was largely distant in her and her sister's lives to provide for them, she could not deny the connection she had to her mother. With Emile, she knew it was a bit more than that. His mother was really his grandmother who had taken him in when his mother was a drug-addled mess or, as Emile would sometimes tastelessly term her, "A drug whore." And his father was in prison at the time.

His mother had primarily helped to nurture and grow him. Under her care, he grew to be quite intelligent, more than studious. However, the years of high school were not free of grief for Emile as his mother constantly rode him for perfection over essentially everything, and there were many things aside that Emile never talked about. Still, many in Hamilton High knew almost by second nature. However, now, for all the good and bad, he was faced with his mother's very mortality and the fact he was living the day and night of it seeing the old woman slowly pass, it was wrecking him and indeed demoralizing him over time.

However, Max knew in her heart that she couldn't explain how, but she knew that he was so pragmatic in Emile's deepest recesses that he was so pragmatic because of what he was being faced with. This was an avenue of cold hard reality, and the best way to confront or at least negate its pangs was to just accept it. To accept was one thing, to be at peace with it, entirely another, and Max knew that Emile had yet to come to grips with the acceptance of his circumstances anyway. However, Max knew he was not completely alone. Despite appearances, Emile had a great friend in the likes of Brent Frasier, one of the main players of the Hamilton Hill league, and she knew the two were practically inseparable.

Emile spoke up after a moment of contemplation, "How's classes going for you?"

"Oh, they're doing much better these days. Tedious if anything," Max replied, "I've got my new book published with Chels's help, and it's raking in a smaller profit, but it's manageable."

Emile perked up a bit, "I'm glad to hear it's going good for you. Criminal psychology has always been your kind of thing."

"It's your kind of thing too, Emile." Max said with a chuckle, "How many times did you check out the Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, Murderers, and Organizations?"

Emile chuckled, "More than I can count. What can I say? They fascinated me then and still do." He chuckled a bit more, "I remember I checked it out one too many times and gave old Mrs. Preweitt the librarian cause for concern."

Max was surprised at this, "Yeah? What happened?"

"Oh, she said, 'Are you doing alright, Emile? Feeling okay?' I replied, 'I'm fine.' But to most adults, I was—eh—different."

"To put it mildly," Max said with a chuckle. She noticed that recollection and reminiscing were a favorite element of Emile. It helped him get away from the pain of his present and as far as she was concerned, if she could lessen his pain, let them reminisce until the cows came home, as Emile was so fond of saying.

Max then asked, "So, what are you doing these days, you know, apart from—"

Emile nodded, "Oh, a couple things. Going to finish up my degree and then go with Brent to Colorado to check it out if I pass. It's my reward, he says, for completing it. To me, it's gonna be awesome. I've always wanted to see the mountains."

"It's good to see he cares for you."

"Ah, he's my best friend. He comes from as messed up a home as I do, but as with a lot of us guys, we don't talk about that shit."

Max chuckled, "After Colorado, what next?"

"Um, personally, I was thinking of getting a job at Sion Robotics. It's a great program to help me better understand the new AI androids in public circulation nowadays. I personally would love to make my own variant one day, but you know, baby steps. What about though, Max, what's up in your life? Your downtime, I mean?"

"Oh, it's not so much. I have a part-time job working for Wayne Industries. It's not at all a bad thing and some of the tech I've seen is absolutely phenomenal. I'm working there with Terry McGuinness, remember him?"

"Oh, yeah, I remember him. Good guy, a bit distant, but a good guy. So, what do you do at Wayne Industries?"

"It's mostly handling the semi-automation at the company. The company will never go fully auto, but what computer systems they do have function more like the Byzantine Bureaucracy of Ms. Meyers's class."

"Sheesh, yeah, the mathematic ice queen." Emile said with a chuckle, "I've stayed in contact with her a bit, she's not doing too bad. Anyway, I'm glad Wayne Industries is working out for you. How big is the server room?"

"As I said, it's not fully automated, so a good deal smaller than what most would expect, but what we have in lack of size we more than make up for in power. The computation speeds are truly astronomical."

Emile looked more than interested and he said, "Good, splendid." He took out his phone, a flip phone burner that Max thought would have died ages ago but by some bizarre miracle was still alive as a niche market.

"Geez, Emile, what's with the dinosaur?"

"Hey, it's a phone on a plan that works for me because it's cheap. Besides, it doesn't have a lot of modern distractions, you know?"

"I know, but—come on!"

"Hey, when your new phones don't come with all manner of corporate spyware in there with printing technology, then maybe I'll consider it. For right now, let me stick with my cellular and my landline, thank you."

"You do realize not all corporations are out to get you, right?" Max said with a smile.

Emile chuckled and replied, "Or is that what they want you to think?"

"Now you sound like that nut, Mad Stan."

"Hey, the guy isn't wrong all the time—just portions of it and usually for self-interest does he do anything remotely dangerous, as does anyone. What was the loon's last declaration of destruction under the suppression? No more Jury duty?"

He and Max both laughed and were eventually shushed by a patron, to which Emile replied, "Ah, shush yourself! You friggin fairy who still used the newspaper stick! Read it like a normal person!" He looked back at Max and said, "I'm glad we've had this chat. I feel a bit better, to be honest."

Max smiled and replied, "Hey, it's half of what I'm here for, to help people. Oh, how's that young protégé you have? Ana, was it?"

"Ah, she's good. Thanks for asking. A bit rowdy as all teens are, but she means well. She drinks like a fish, but that's neither here nor there."

"Isn't she a bit young for drinking?" Max asked.

Emile looked at her and burst out laughing, to which Max could only chuckle, "Look," Emile continued, "I'd rather have her in the bar drowning sorrows than be mixed up with her friends doing their shit, you know?"

"It's nice having a protégé but you'll have to give way to reality eventually, you know that, right?"

Emile shrugged, "What else is new? It's a respect for choices at the end of the day. Do I always agree with Ana's choices? No. however, she'll make them regardless of my say-so. It's kinda' like having a kid, especially a teen kid. You know, going into this, that fifty percent goes out the other ear. If you're lucky, thirty percent of what you say will be retained for consideration. Apart from that, only ten percent of what you advise will stick."

"So, you're fine with Ana doing whatever, then?"

"No, and you know that. However, if she's going to pursue something with all her gusto, well, I can't stop her. It's like a suicidal person. You can get through to them, but it takes doing as only temporarily effective at minimum. But if one is determined to go through with it, they're bound to find the opportunity sooner or later. The universe has a bizarre sense of aligning when it comes to that shit. Kinda' like a dickweed challenging you to a fight saying, 'Oh, you're suicidal? Let's see how suicidal you are.'"

Emile checked his phone, "I gotta' get going. Hey, if you're working with Terry, would you like to hang out at Rhino's to hang out for a bite to eat?"

Max smiled and said, "I'll have to check with Terry, but if he can't, I'll sure try and make it. You still have the same number? 4252?"

"Hasn't changed in sixteen years, Max."

"Great. Well, I'll see you later."

As Emile left, Max opened her laptop back up, and considering the major meeting Terry was to have in a day or two, she decided to look into Wayne Industries' competitors for biofuel. She accessed the menu for the Family protocol and reviewed all active assets. Terry was right, two members for every major city in which Wayne Industries had a holding. Max streamlined her search for biofuel competitors and found that China and Russia were the predominant forces in competition. They would be the representative of their portion of the sphere to the world.

Russia had cultivated major oil aspects in the North Sea several years prior. Still, with the chosen evolution of some nations toward biofuels for a more stable fuel source, both Russia and China were endeavoring through a genuine competition to see which country could produce more crops. China had more than made major headway in converting many of its slums into biofuel-oriented factories. With the verticality of their building efforts from the past ten years, they had pioneered many aspects of perfecting the growth-rates of the plants. Unfortunately, despite besting the Russians in the maturation of biofuel crops, the Russians led the edge in the raw product of the plant. Through hormone enhancements to various plants, the Russians could produce more oil byproducts for the biofuel itself. It was no different than when many nations around the world opted for hormonal boosting in chickens to get more value. The resulting uber chickens, as they were called in the vernacular, were malformed monstrosities, and yet, the populace agreed were so breathtakingly succulent.

As Max reviewed the numerous buyers, the name of James Tong became far more prevalent than what Bruce's brief profile would have suggested. James owned a substantial portion of New Eden, a processor, and refiner of a majority of China's biofuel for both native use and exports abroad. New Eden also had refineries in Taiwan, which China had subdued just a few years ago. Taiwan was the primary refinery location for most biofuels for the Eastern Region, second only to Tokyo itself. In this regard, the benefit of Taiwan was that many of the refineries were controlled by either New Eden or Hauser Technologies, a German firm headed by Klaus Tauber, a well-known German philanthropist with ties to revitalizing China's agrarian sector by aiding in the overthrow of Taiwan. Subsequently, all biofuel in Taiwan was in-house, and the factories were largely semi-automated, keeping up with their Russian competitors.

Max continued to delve into James Tong and New Eden, and as she dug, she found that the majority of New Eden's staff were humans, but twenty-five percent of the total workforce was dedicated to androids. The androids were of the Shoreman class and thusly were dedicated to lifting heavy loads of processed biofuel onto trucks for transit as well as continually laboring by ceaselessly loading the biofuel crops into the refiners for processing. James Tong himself was also seemingly quite philanthropic as he had taken in a large majority of the natural-born retarded and had placed them onto a conveyor line shucking corn and maintaining the rotations of the greenhouses for their crops.

The greenhouses were entirely grand affairs centralized in the main tower that was New Eden's headquarters. The tower consisted of sixty-six floors, and forty-five of these were dedicated to biofuel growth and nurturing alone. The rest of the floors were dedicated to security and personnel. The output of an entire month of biofuel from New Eden's tower alone was one-thousand tons, and with biofuel from New Eden priced at ten thousand credits for every two hundred tons, New Eden was more than making its capital for both its ventures and the State.

"So that's why Bruce is so interested in James." Max thought, "If Bruce takes out New Eden, he takes out a major competitor for Wayne Industries and he helps to give the Russians a definite edge if not win the game entirely. That's why he's so interested to have boots on the ground in the middle of these talks. But it's too early to call the shot just yet. I'll have to wait and see what comes of it."

Max investigated further into James and found that in addition to New Eden, there was a major investment on his part in the role of an orbital mining company named Morales. As she delved into Morales, she found that the company specialized in mining the reaches of the asteroid belt and a few other systems that had been enabled with the help of extraterrestrial ambassadors such as Kori, Dick's Wife, with her home-planet of Tamaran a few other ventures with other races. As Max delved into the data of Morales, she found that James had invested in the metals that had been mined for the production of more and more android units that, through his business partners at Takashiro Cybernetics, he was able to make a massive profit.

James' portions of stock in Takashiro emphasized the private sector. Many models of androids were marketed as personal assistants, additional heavy labor for construction crews worldwide. Max continued her research and found some units being designed as a merger between the assistant and the heavier models for security android personnel. Regardless of their function, these units sold for a substantial sum, the base model being available for five thousand credits on the open market. It seemed steep to Max but then, it was more than understandable as the androids that she'd seen from Takashiro on the streets had an almost infinite lifespan, provided the customer took proper care of them in terms of repairs. With Takashiro's warehouses and customer service elements worldwide, such a task was easy as tying shoes.

Max knew, however, that much of the android model was oriented from the great employment crisis of the early twenties when she was just a child. Because the upcoming youth of that decade had just recovered from a pandemic and some in the more recent years from the aftershock, many nations faced an employment deficit. However, Emile and his family knew the truth of that situation quite well. It wasn't so much that the youth of that decade were lazy, although that accounted for a portion of the emphasis in the android's production. Employers had up to the year 2020, been experimenting with diversifying the work field in the integration of robotics.

However, the pandemic helped employers streamline and eventually forced employers to come more face to face with how much humanity could actively be replaced by machines. The people of Max's mother's generation hated the idea; many warned against the company's steadfast progress of automation. However, the employers saw it as a simple cost ratio. They could work the machines fifty-times as hard as any human and pay nothing for the returns on profit. It was largely ideal, and the pandemic workload left over by a generation that was half unwilling to work the other poorly incentivized. Employers opted more for automation because why wouldn't they, when faced with what they saw as a lazy workforce?

Max knew the reality, as Emile had told her when they first met at college, "It's the employer's fault in all reality. They don't have the guts to fire the lazy because it looks bad on a manager's report if a business flounders. It looks especially bad for corporate regarding investors if they have a massive leaving within the ranks. The dedicated and effective workers are piled on more and more the responsibilities of those who won't work. The dedicated and effective aren't paid more for their excess, and even managers are given corporate standards that no human could conceivably finish."

These were in the early years of Max's college years, and it was certainly before the rise of tech magnate Arsenio Jaroussky. Max thought a moment of Arsenio and knowing his admittedly chatty niece, Teresa, from her work on criminal psychology. Max wondered if she could interview him and a question which was creeping into her mind.

Max took her phone and dialed; after a few rings, she said, "Hey Teresa. It's Max. I was wondering do you think your father would have time to entertain a few questions for me on how he rose to be at the forefront of Gotham's tech boom?"

"Of course. Daddy's usually free most days when he's not at board meeting. I have an idea. How's about you come and join us for dinner? How about Wednesday night? We can talk about it there."

"Great, I appreciate it. I'll see you then."

Mas ended the call, and staring at one of the library's androids shelving books; she thought, "I know the reasonings why some employers brought these guys on. I know the common reasoning, at least. But, I don't think that's all there is to it."

Suddenly, the android she looked at turned and faced her and walked forward, "May I help you, Ms. Gibson?"

Her eyes went wide, "Uh, no, thanks."

The android turned and began to head back when Max said, "Excuse me."

The android turned back and asked, "Yes?"

"How did you know that I was looking at you?"

The machine looked at her and replied, "A simple correlation from our CCTV footage. I saw that you were watching me, and I figured you would need my assistance. Any other questions?"

Max thought a moment, "Are you all linked to this network?"

"Yes, Ms. Gibson. It is how we prioritize service and effective communication between the establishment and its patrons."

Max was surprised and asked a final question, "Is the library fully autonomous?"

"No, Ms. Gibson. I am but one of three patron relation units. There are two custodial and maintenance androids, but we all answer to human overseers at our front desk. Perhaps, if it pleases you, you would like to speak with them? Not many are comfortable with the presence of androids—that is understandable."

Max began to put her computer into her bag, "No, thank you—" she looked at the machine's uniform, "Eric, I'm just fine."

"As you wish, Ms. Gibson." The machine made his manufactured bow and departed.

As Max left the library, she thought, "Integration into the building as a whole—if they can do that just for our public building, what could they do in the wrong hands at the government level?" She shook her head, "Nah, Nah, that's all too much. Been watching too much Void File."