AN: Edited by Gremlin Jack, perfect_shade and Nla Eid

1950, January 15th, in Hambruck:

Visha was busy working on her autobiography while I was looking through the letters I received from a few universities that invited me for a speaking tour while the TV broadcasted today's news in the background.

The Diet is scheduled to vote on the Defense Restructure Act, following a narrow passing of the Malagasy referendum bill.

Looking through the requests, the universities were requesting speaking tours on all sorts of topics. Economics, technology, the future of energy, social topics, and so on. The stuff that my "The Future Struggles" book will cover. They all had generous payment offers.

A leaked letter revealed that a significant number of the senior military officers were opposed to the Defense Restructure Act.

I wonder if I should translate my book for Akitsushima Dominion? It wouldn't hurt to introduce chibi and manga concepts to them a few decades ahead of time.

The Diet is also scheduled to vote on the OZEV integration treaty. President Paul had been previously vocal about his dislike of the treaty, arguing that it would take away Germania's sovereignty. Political pundits claim that he may have struck a deal with Chancellor Adenaue for him to not interfere with the treaty voting.

Visha walked over to look at the news on the TV when it switched to covering the topic of the Diet voting on the OZEV integration treaty and commented, "It's strange how the President had abandoned his opposition to the Malagasy referendum and further integration of OZEV practically overnight."

"He probably made a deal with the Chancellor to allow those and in return have the Chancellor's support for the military budget reallocation to nuclear weapons and the backing of Caucasia's President." I shrugged.

The phone rang and I picked it up. Visha went back to working on her autobiography.

"Good morning Tanya von Degurechaff, this is Ernst Cramer-Klett. We are making good progress on seeking partnerships with other publishing firms located in other countries as we're struggling to meet the demand in Germania itself. In the Unified States, a few publishing companies are in a bidding war to secure the right to print and sell your books."

"That's good to hear."

"We did run into a bit of an obstacle. The Francois Republic and the Allied Kingdom are currently blocking your book from entering their market, citing 'pending reviews'. I would not be surprised if one or both bans your work. I do know those two countries' governments did not appreciate your comment about allowing colonies to vote for independence."

Ah, of course. I should have expected them to do something like that. Reminds me of the internet phenomenon back in my previous life, something about the harder someone tries to ban or censor something, the more other people will try to seek it.

Wait…

A smile crept to my face as an idea formed in my head.

"Print the books for those two countries anyways. Have bookstores next to the Francois Republic, such as those in Lothiern, stock them."

"I'm not sure what you mean by that."

"People from the Francois Republic and the Allied Kingdom will flock to those stores to get their hands on the books even if those countries banned them."

"Ah, I see."

"Any progress with the South Bharat market?"

The CSR and Russy Confederation lodged a diplomatic complaint after Akitsushima Dominion's new jet planes overflew both communists' lands, accusing the Akinese of violating their sovereign airspace for photo reconnaissance and the Germanian government of providing high speed, high altitude jets to the Akinese. It is believed that none of the jet planes have been shot down.

"Some company called Tata Industries gave us a business proposition to print and sell the books before we even started looking at that country. They offered to translate the book in all of the local languages in South Bharat, and to assist with book distribution to cooperative neighboring countries. They also mentioned that there is a large number of people that are illiterate, so they would like to have the option of offering oral presentations of the material that your book covers to reach that type of audience, or even create a film for people to watch, based on your comics."

Francois Republic reported that they had suppressed violent revolutionaries in Frankish Algeria and implemented a complete ban on locals owning computational orbs, with harsh punishments for anyone that was suspected of not informing authorities of illegal orb usage. We had been unable to send a journalist to that region to confirm the story due to the Republic's strict ban on foreign journalists.

Tata Industries. First cars, now books and media? Wait, is this the Tata Group that I knew about in my previous life?

I cleared my throat before speaking. "Unless their terms are too much in their favor, I don't see an issue with signing an agreement with them."

"I agree with that. We have zero experience with that country so we would've had to send agents to that country to find suitable publishers to partner with or establish our own operations, which would have been a lengthy and expensive operation."

In the Allied Kingdom, the mathematician Allen Turing was arrested on the charges of homosexuality.

1950, May 3rd, in Hambruck:

As Visha and I walked back to our apartment after finishing the last of the speaking tours in Germania, I opened up our apartment unit's mailbox to see what was in it. A few letters here and there, but one of them caught my attention. It was addressed from the Unified States.

When we got back to our apartment, I opened up the letter.

"What's in it?" Visha asked.

"It's a joint letter from the New Amstreldam University and Harvard University requesting speaking tours on their campus in the Unified States. It also includes a note from the now former President Frederick Rosenvelt."

"Well, I've always wanted to tour that country from the perspective of a private citizen." she shrugged. "Less chances of them putting up a show."

With the continuing worsening of politics in Germania, we could really use something to get away from that. Maybe putting an ocean between us and Germania would help distract me from politics back home.

1950, August 14th, in New Amstreldam:

I remember the first time I visited the Unified States. Everyone put up a show and all that, such as the brass band that was playing when I stepped off the ship.

Even though we're just private citizens on a personal trip, that hasn't stopped the media from still being able to intercept us. They were waiting right at the gates instead of the arrivals terminal, but I guess this world hasn't yet dealt with their share of airport attacks and airline hijacking for them to go overboard with security.

"Good afternoon ma'am! What do you think of the Alsace-Lorraine referendum's recount yielding an independence result?" one of the news reporters barged in.

"If they voted for independence, and it's confirmed that the voting was honest, then I don't see how that should be a problem for the Francois Republic or Germania."

"What is your outlook of the Germanian government allowing Malagasy's residents to vote for independence?" Another reporter barged in.

"Germania allowed Osterry to join them with a referendum. It would be fair for Malagasy to have the same opportunity to leave. Besides, if a majority of the population doesn't want to be part of Germania, that's a powder keg waiting to go off. The communists would definitely be interested in exploiting colonial rebellions."

We made some headway of walking to the exit when the news reporters continued to bother us. One of them did catch my attention when he said, "While you were on the flight, there was news from the Allied Kingdom about Allen Turing being sentenced to house arrest and chemical castration for homosexuality. Given your stance on homosexuality, do you think the Albish has gone too far?"

"Who is Allen Turing?" I asked.

"A mathematician who had been working on 'machine computation' and 'data storage' operations." the reporter flipped through his notes. "My contact over in the Allied Kingdom said they had trouble understanding Allen Turing's work, and it seemed that there were some projects that the mathematician could not provide specific details, citing government restrictions."

If the Albish was going to throw away a useful asset in such an amoral way, well, what's one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

"Regardless of what Allen Turing has been doing, the sentencing is barbaric. Why should I visit the Allied Kingdom if they treat their citizens like that? If I step foot on their land, it would be hypocrisy if they suddenly decide not to castrate us."

I looked at the curbside and blinked my eyes. It was the former President Frederick Rosenvelt waiting for us next to his chauffeured car.

"One more question and I'll need to get going." I told the reporters.

"With Volksauto partnering with a South Bharatian company for car manufacturing, are you concerned about the possibility of driving Germanian workers out of their jobs with cheap imports from South Bharat? After all, South Bharat has far less labor protections and no minimum wages, and already has a growing industry."

I don't have time to do an information dump about globalization, and even that concept is controversial in the 21st century. For this world where Germania was experimenting with container shipping under the basis of more efficient shipping to South Bharat in the event of a second communist invasion, that would just confuse and then frighten people.

"Germanian engineering is the best in the world, and we would welcome the competition to drive innovation! Now if you excuse us, we have a schedule to keep."

As the crowd of reporters disappeared with our car pulling away from the airport, Rosenvelt spoke up. "Must be a handful still getting mobbed by the reporters even after retiring from politics."

"Indeed." I sighed.

"There is something that had been bothering me ever since I was briefed about it shortly before my successor took office." Roosevelt said. "Investment in solid state electronics, does it sound familiar?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't been keeping track of all of the foreign investments that the State Investment Ministry has been dabbling in. Visha can attest to my busy schedule."

"We wouldn't have noticed that Shockley Semiconductor Company was being funded by a shell company." Roosevelt rubbed his chin. "Until Bell Laboratory was curious of Shockley suddenly leaving them and immediately establishing a seemingly well funded company. They suspected a competitor was trying something funny and they hired a private investigator. Then they came crying to us when they discovered it was a nation state backing Shockley's company."

"No laws were broken when we funded his startup, my government simply saw a good business opportunity."

"A startup… curious terminology." He then shrugged his shoulders. "I figured you had a direct involvement with such an exotic field, and saw a large enough potential in Shockley's work to justify a risky investment. I did brief President Taft about it after having my staff create a summary report on the technology, but he had no interest in hearing something about 'solid state electronics' and 'semiconductors'. Although that brings up another question, why didn't you bring Shockley to Germania?"

"Regardless of President Taft's opinion, the Unified States will become a world leader in solid state electronics and computer technology in the decades to come. Shockley has the vast infrastructure, talent pool and other plentiful resources in the Unified States for his business to expand. All I did was bet on a winning horse."

Our conversations continued a bit until I looked out the window at New Amsterdam, the various highway constructions and entire city blocks that were being bulldozed to make way for such constructions.

"Lots of roads that this city is building." I commented.

"It's not the only one. I'm not sure if you were aware, but the entire country is building highways everywhere."

"What happens to the people living in the path of the constructions?" Visha asked.

"Most of the buildings slated for demolition were already decaying." He waved his hand at one of the demolition zones. "They would also be fairly compensated for their troubles."

She paused for a moment before asking the next question, "No tunnels to go underneath the buildings?

"That was an early proposal, but from what I've heard, the highway planners deemed it would have been prohibitively expensive. Even more than the failed underground metro expansion project in this city as building four car lanes is wider than two tracks, and the cars would need to be able to access the surface level roads. They went with the lowest cost options of acquiring land for the highways."

"So the poor are bearing the brunt of the demolitions?"

Ah, bless Visha and her innocent heart. I'm all too familiar with companies abusing their power to seize land from the poor and powerless for their own constructions, and only pausing when they encounter a highly motivated public resistance or they anger someone that has deep pockets for years of legal disputes and political connections.

"Like I said, those buildings were already deemed to be barely tolerable, or unacceptable, for human inhabitants. I was shown the far higher quality replacement housing that was built to accommodate the displaced population. The economic boom from the highway constructions would outweigh the temporary disruptions. Didn't Germania get their economic boost from building their highways?"

"It was more of a job creation program, and almost all of the construction was on the outskirts of cities." I responded. "I don't think I could have afforded any major demolition work and compensation from building highways through the center of cities. And while I did back the formation of Volksauto, it was also meant as a source of well paying jobs and I never planned on having automobiles be the only transportation option. Especially with the uncertainty with oil supplies."

"Ah, that would make sense of why Germania is taking a drastically different approach with their infrastructure projects. If the Allied Kingdom had also joined the Francois Republic's and Russy Federation's war against you, that could have cut off most of the oil supply to you. After all, it's easier to run a train off of coal compared to a car."

"Speaking of oil, let's say that every American family ends up having at least one car. Maybe two or more. Would the Unified States be able to produce enough oil to meet their own demands and not be affected by unrest in other oil producing regions such as Caucasia or the Middle East?"

Roosevelt had the look of deep thought on his face. "I never considered a future where we would end up being oil importers. And besides, there hasn't been much unrest in the Middle East. A shame about Caucasia's descent into chaos though."

1950, August 28th, in Boston:

Visha and I had originally planned on returning to Germania after a few days of exploring the surrounding areas following our two speaking tours. Traveling abroad was fun, but it's expensive compared to the foreign diplomatic events where the costs are shouldered by the hosts and the Germanian government.

Well, until our hotel informed us that there were letters and telegrams waiting for us. I had suspected that there might have been people stalking us for the letters and telegrams to reach us even though we hopped from place to place. Now I understand how celebrities felt when it came to dealing with overbearing fans.

After opening them, they were all offered for more speaking tours within the Unified States. Universities, non-profit organizations involved with political or economics agendas and businesses.

Well, given the payouts that those tours are offering, it would be foolish for us to turn them down.

I looked over and saw that Visha had her eyes glued on a newspaper from Germania, and when I walked over, I could tell the frontpage did not have good news.

First there was the political crisis in Germania over allowing Malagasy to hold an independence referendum. The GWP has significant internal friction over what direction to take. The Chancellor was in favor of being open to talks with Malagasy for "reevaluating their sovereignty", and stated that he still saw it as a valuable trade partner and ally even if it voted for independence. The President and Deputy Chancellor had nothing public to say. Not that it mattered with the Diet being deadlocked over that issue.

The next big item was the civil war occurring in Caucasia after protestors were gunned down by state security forces. A memo leaked out which mentioned the Chancellor would only agree to back Caucasia's incumbent president if Malagasy is allowed to hold an independence referendum. That would explain why the President and Deputy Chancellor were distancing themselves from the Malagasy issue and instead focused on Caucasia.

"That's a lot of drama that I'm glad I'm not dealing with." I muttered.

Visha nodded and then spoke, "Interesting how the Albish are trying to influence Germania's politics. Well, how would you handle those two messes?"

"Give Malagasy their referendum." I shrugged my shoulders. "We gave one to Alsace-Lorraine and Osterry, and it would be hypocritical of us to not offer something similar to them. Tell the Allied Kingdom to leave our internal business alone. As for Caucasia, I wouldn't have let it get that bad. And if their president continued to be an idiot even if I pulled all of Germania's support from him, I would have just looked the other way when he gets overthrown in a coup or protestors storm his office, and cut a deal with his successor."

"You make it seem so simple. Have you ever thought about returning back to politics?"

"No, I'd rather be spending time with you." I leaned in with a kiss on her cheek, but the proximity had me noticing something on the newspaper afterwards.

"Allied Kingdom issued a diplomatic request to Germania to return a criminal that fled to Germania to seek asylum." I muttered.

"They sentenced him to one year of house arrest and chemical castration for homosexuality." Visha noted. "The President and Deputy Chancellor publicly stated that Germania would not harbor another country's 'criminal', and did not want to establish a precedent that would end up causing "thousands of criminals to flee to Germania to ask for asylum". Protests are occurring in multiple cities, with the one in Berun escalating to a riot. The Chancellor is facing a major backlash from his GDU party's more conservative factions over his position of granting asylum to Allen Turing."

I sighed. "I might have to dabble a bit into politics. Just once."

"And what is that?" Visha smirked.

"Writing a public letter to support the Chancellor's position on granting asylum to a victim of the Allied Kingdom's brutality and complete disregard for human rights before we pack our bags for the cross country trip. Might as well as also include my opinion on Malgasy's independence referendum. Could you call the hotel front desk to ask where the closest newspaper offices are? I think they would like to have some copies of the letter to publish."

1951, March 2nd, south of Santa Clara City (in reference to San Francisco):

Conducting speaking tours and visiting various parts of the US for fun eventually lead us to this city. During our train rides across the US and doing everything from flying through the Grand Canyon to visiting the most remote villages, Visha had been writing a travel log to later publish. We had some skeptical looks from locals, especially those that had no idea who we were. A few places made it clear that we were not welcomed for being a lesbian couple. I would have gone with a "we're friends" argument, but Visha refused to conceal our relationship and insisted on not downplaying it.

I heard a knock on our hotel door, and when I opened it, I blinked my eyes.

Anna was here. I silently spun up my orb but detected no magic illusions.

Visha peeked over my shoulder. "Anna! What are you doing here?!"

She smiled as I let her in before shutting the door. "Elya was concerned and had the BND tail you two. She was afraid of a situation where the two of you just disappeared off of the face of the world due to running into some crazies."

"You didn't report to Elya what we've been doing in bed, did you?" Visha asked with a light laugh, half-joking, half-concerned.

Anna laughed with her, "We didn't invade your rooms or do other intrusive stuff." She put her hands up in the air. "Although some of your destinations, such as visiting the middle of nowhere in Mississippi, did confuse us and complicated our attempts at tracking the two of you without being obvious about it."

"What brings you to show yourself in person?"

"Eh, I wanted to just talk to you two about a tour that I could set up for the Shockley Semiconductor Company since you were so interested in 'solid state' electronics."

I hummed, "When is the tour?"

"In three days." Anna said and then smiled, "But in the meantime, I can show you around the rest of the Santa Clara City and the surrounding area, if you'd like! We could visit Akitsushimatown and Market Street. There's also lots of fresh seafood at Fisherman's Wharf."

Three days later:

As we walked into the Shockley Semiconductor Company's lobby for a scheduled visit, the receptionist called out to us.

"Good morning darlings. I'm assuming you three are here for the scheduled tour of the facility?"

Visha smiled and said, "Yes, we're a bit early but we can wait."

"Hold on a moment." The receptionist said as she picked up a phone to call someone. A concerned look appeared on her face, and she put down the phone. Shaking her head, the receptionist delivered the bad news. "I'm sorry, I don't think it's a good time for you two to visit."

"Did we get the date or time confused?" Visha asked before Anna could say something.

"No. No… Something going on this morning." The receptionist responded. "Maybe another time. I'm sorry."

After promising to contact us as soon as they could, we bid the receptionist goodbye before getting back to the exit. There, an employee rushed after and greeted us briefly before handing us an envelope, claiming it had details about rescheduling our visit, before promptly going back into the office.

After we stepped outside and walked a few blocks, I opened up the envelope.

"We will be having dinner at The Oasis Beer Garden. Meet us there at 6pm."

Later that night:

Anna wasn't able to join us for dinner due to other tasks requiring her attention, but she did ask us to let us know what is going on within the company as the BND surprisingly had a hard time keeping tabs on what was going on in the office. As we stepped into the small restaurant, I could tell something was off. There were no signs of random locals dining here, and it appears everyone might be from the Shockley Semiconductor Company. Perhaps they reserved the entire restaurant for the night?

A few men saw us and waved us over.

"Good evening Tanya von Degurechaff and Viktoriya Serebryakov." One of the men spoke while I concealed my pain of hearing them completely butcher the pronunciation of our names. "I apologize that the scheduled visit was canceled due to events going on in the office, but we're happy to have a talk with you two. Please, take a seat."

After sitting, we introduced ourselves to each other and placed orders. Many of them men at the company were relatively fresh college graduates in their mid 20's, with a few in their 30's.

"Where's Shockley?" Visha asked.

There was an awkward silence between everyone, then one of them, Franz Kleiner, spoke up. "Mr. Shockley was trying to force everyone to take a lie detector. Which wasn't surprising given his paranoia and tough management style."

"He threatened to fire people if we refused, and only backed down when all of us refused to take the lie detector. The one person that could have curbed Shockey's outrageous demand, his business partner, decided to quit that afternoon." another one added in.

A company coup in the works. It's been a very long time since I've heard of something like this, and had only read about it or heard it as gossip back in my previous world as a businessman. I might need to let Rosenvelt and Anna know about this.

"If your boss is making all of your lives miserable, have you looked at other companies?" I asked.

One of them glared at me before Franz Kleiner cleared his throat. "Many companies that are involved with electronics or computers are more interested in improving vacuum tubes, such as Radio Corporation of Unified States. The ones that do have an interest in solid state electronics see a very niche role for them,would restrict our research in other ways, or are focused on germanium based transistors instead of silicon based transistors."

Right, I should have expected many people to be skeptical of theoretical technologies.

"What's holding all of you back from leaving?" Visha asked.

"Finding stable funding for our research." Kleiner said. "Even if we find one or two sponsors, It would be difficult to run a startup with no guarantee of the timeline when transistors could enter the market and be competitive against vacuum tubes, and that would jeopardize our funding."

"I see…" I said, and I really did see what these men who are looking for an out of their current employment are asking of me. "Excuse us for a moment." I got up and motioned Visha to follow me to somewhere out of sight..

After we stopped, Visha turned towards me and asked "What's going on?"

"How much do you think we could contribute to their startup if they were to establish one?"

"Hmmmm." Visha pondered. "We do have a few hundred thousand Marks and dollars of savings from speaking tours, book sales and our government pensions. But that probably won't be enough."

"True." A few hundred thousand would mean a lot to an individual, but would not mean enough for a startup that's likely to be viewed as 'risky' by any potential investors. "But If we could contribute enough for them to get started for the first month or so and make our investment public, we could get other interested parties to join in. I'll be reaching out to Rosenvelt about this."

When we got seated at the table again, the waitress was serving the dishes.

"Let's say all of you leave and establish a new company. What would it take for the first month of operation?" I asked before taking a bite of my burger.

That kicked off multiple quiet side conversations among everyone, and I saw at least two people appear to be doing math using napkins and pens.

I tapped my glass of water with a spoon to get everyone's attention for an impromptu speech.

"I know the journey will be long, hard and uncertain. But I have confidence in all of you to lead the way on silicon based transistors and integrated circuits."

I saw a few people take notice of the phrase 'integrated circuits', but I continued on. "Your work will lay the foundation for a computer revolution that will eventually shrink a mainframe to put a programmable computer on a desk for office work and personal usage."

The men silently digested my word for a minute, some likely already envisioning themselves being a part of a world-changing breakthrough, until Kleiner eventually spoke up:

"Ah, thank you for your confidence, Miss Degurechaff. Now, regarding the numbers that you asked for, I estimate that we would need about one hundred thousand dollars just to start our operation, with most of the costs in just getting the building lease, equipment and supplies. Shockley would certainly hold onto all of the equipment and supplies even if everyone leaves him." He then looked at his numbers again. "The first month would probably need about a quarter million."

Sounds right around the ballpark of what I'd expect for a startup. "I know some people I can contact." I smiled. "You will get your funding."

And even if Rosenvelt or Germania didn't want to invest, they would be pressured to do so when I make my initial investment public.

1951, June 5th, Santa Clara City's airport:

I stretched out my legs on one of the seats as Visha read the newspaper. Our plane won't be arriving until another hour. We had finished up the last of the speaking tours in California, along with our hiking adventures up and down the west coast, and sent our draft of our travel book back to our publisher in Germania for them to look over while we head to Hawaii to visit the island chains for about two weeks, then head to Akitsushima Dominion.

"There was an attempted coup in New Granada. Their president, Juan Guzmán, and his wife were killed in an ambush. Brasilian agents were captured in the aftermath of that." Visha said as she flipped through the newspaper. "The two countries have been exchanging essentially diplomatic insults and are beginning to seek allies with other countries in the continent."

"What a coincidence." I rubbed my chin. "Remember one of the discussions we had with people after our speaking tour in Boston mentioned New Granada's political situation?"

Visha nodded as I continued. "They asked us if we were concerned about communism spreading to that country or the rest of South America, and when I told them that the best fuel for communism is large numbers of desperate and angry workers, that was when a Vaccaro Fruit Company's representative started an argument with us."

"You're saying that the fruit company might have been the puppet master behind the coup?" Visha asked.

My memory from my previous world was vague at this point, but I do recall the United States had a very complicated relationship with their southern neighbors, and there was a reason why 'banana republic' was a thing.

"I don't think the fruit company would have conducted the coup without the blessing of the Unified States' government. If the coup failed even harder, the fruit company would have been revealed as the culprit and thus cause a diplomatic nightmare for the Unified States."

"I thought they had an isolationist foreign policy?"

"They had the Monroe Doctrine far longer than that isolationist doctrine. Latin America is their own garden for them to play with, not to be shared with any other countries."

"Well, at least the CSR and Russy Confederation have no easy way to back any possible communist forces in Latin America." Visha said. "They would need a navy to contest both the Akinese and American Pacific fleet, or at least have a way to slip past both fleets. Any merchant vessel carrying weapons would be easily subjected to search and seizures."

"Good thing the CSR had their Albish ships sunk." I smiled. "They probably got their hands on some old ship design for their recent 'miniature' destroyer construction, but that shouldn't be a problem for the Akinese navy."

"Before we arrive in Akitsushima Dominion, what are some things that you had in mind?" Visha asked. "There always seems to be a purpose in the trips that you take, and I just want to have some advanced notice."

Uh… Lots of things to do? The food? Historical culture and places that I haven't seen for decades now? Maybe run into the alternative parents of my Japanese self? Wait, what is she talking about?

"What do you mean I always seem to have a purpose?" I gave her a confused look. "I just go with the flow."

"Oh, I don't know - maybe you being in the right place and time for establishing new semiconductor startups?" she shrugged innocently.

I sat and pondered for a bit, worried that my unexpected injection of a business meeting had ruined what was supposed to be our vacation. Visha soon noticed though and scooted closer to hug me and whisper into my ears. "I still want to have fun though once we arrive there. Since you seemed so interested in Akinese culture, tell me what you know. I mean I did some research on what to explore in Hawaii, so it's only fair that you had also done your own research on the Aki."

"To be honest, I don't think I'm the expert on that topic." I pushed her slightly. I was previously surprised by Oda being the Shogun, and even though I had done some reading on Akitsushima Dominion, the last thing I want to do is to get my previous life experience mixed up with this alternative Japan.

"Tanya… You're the only person I know that tried to hide an Akinese book like it's some particularly saucy novel!" Visha tisked. "Name a Germanian that knows more about the Akinese culture that you. You are the expert in my opinion."

Ugh, not that again. Damn it Elya, you're supposed to be good at keeping secrets! "Fine, fine, I'll tell you what I know." I sighed as Visha laughed and hugged me again.

AN:

wiki/Streisand_effect

wiki/Algerian_War

watch?v=PfNIB2b90WY

wiki/Alan_Turing#Conviction_for_indecency

wiki/Shockley_Semiconductor_Laboratory

Shockley became convinced that the new device would be just as important as the transistor, and kept the entire project secret, even within the company. This led to increasingly paranoid behavior; in one famed incident he was convinced that a secretary's cut finger was a plot to injure him and ordered lie detector tests on everyone in the company. This was combined with Shockley's vacillating management of the projects; sometimes he felt that getting the basic transistors into immediate production was paramount, and would de-emphasize the Shockley diode project in order to make the "perfect" production system. This upset many of the employees, and mini-rebellions became commonplace.[10]

Eventually a group of the youngest employees – Julius Blank, Victor Grinich, Jean Hoerni, Eugene Kleiner, Jay Last, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Sheldon Roberts – went over Shockley's head to Arnold Beckman, demanding that Shockley be replaced. Beckman initially appeared to agree with their demands, but over time made a series of decisions that supported Shockley. Fed up, the group broke ranks and sought support from Fairchild Camera and Instrument, an Eastern U.S. company with considerable military contracts. In 1957, Fairchild Semiconductor was started with plans for making silicon transistors. Shockley called the young scientists the "traitorous eight" and said they would never be successful.[11][12]

Early transistors were based on germanium instead of silicon: wiki/Alloy-junction_transistor#Post-alloy_diffused_transistor

wiki/Fairchild_Semiconductor#1950s

In 1957 the Fairchild Semiconductor division was started with plans to make silicon transistors at a time when germanium was still the most common material for semiconductor use.

The planar process made most other transistor processes obsolete. One such casualty was Philco's transistor division, whose newly built $40 million plant to make their germanium PADT process transistors became nonviable. Within a few years every other transistor company paralleled or licensed the Fairchild planar process. Hoerni's 2N1613 was a major success, with Fairchild licensing the design across the industry.

In 1960, Fairchild built a circuit with four transistors on a single wafer of silicon, thereby creating the first silicon integrated circuit (Texas Instruments' Jack Kilby had developed an integrated circuit made of germanium on September 12, 1958, and was awarded a U.S. patent, however Kilby's method was not scalable and the semiconductor industry adopted Fairchild's process to manufacture integrated circuits). The company grew from twelve to twelve thousand employees, and was soon making $130 million a year.

wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d

wiki/Lockheed_U-2#Initial_overflights_of_Communist_territory