Tunnel Rat

Milo's list of things he needed to do was getting longer and stranger.

Research the party.

-Identify possible dangers of attending the party.

-Find out if they will have food at the party. (New things to try.)

-Find out why the group running section H is holding a party.

-Get stuff ready for a swap meet.

Research 'Gaming Gloves'

-Create a design for gaming gloves and set up fabricators.

Research Anime.

-Pick a favorite somehow.

Research ways to legally make money, store money, and use money.

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Overhaul programming and fix the food system. Why is it breaking down so much?

-Find out how to add pancake batter to the food system.

-Find out why the pneumatic delivery system in the hab was turned off or not working in most of the hab.

Fix the fluid leaking from Section H, level 56, into Section G.

-And find out how fluid from Section G is getting into Section E.

Find out why the excavators are stalled and not responding.

The party event was in a week, and the gang was going to attend. They'd heard it would have free food, games to play, and even a chance to win a gaming pod for GENESIS. It was open to anyone under 18 years old, and priority would be given to children of Manpower employees first. Everyone was excited about it, and Butch wanted Milo to go. Even if they didn't get in, a huge swap meet would happen nearby, and it would be a great time to trade games and pick up broken ones to compare. Milo tentatively agreed to go but wanted more information. The normal swap meets with a couple of hundred people made him nervous. This event would be in the thousands. Once he knew exactly where he would be, he could also plan escape routes out of the area. If he started feeling anxious because of too many people, the best place for him was a crawl space or service tunnel.

The best place to get information would be right from the source. He set up a program to review all of the Manpower Corporations' communications and flag references to the party. Then he got on the data net, used an anonymous link, and looked for the gaming gloves that Brad and Butch had discussed. Several brands came up immediately. Most were knock-off brands. They were just very comfortable and sporty-looking gloves that slightly aided a user's circulation. The originals were a much more complex item.

While his system was running through mountains of files looking for party references, he gathered information on 'gaming gloves.' He hadn't expected anyone to question the gloves he was wearing, but they had all assumed that Ghost was wearing some type of new gloves. Now he needed to find out what they were. He needed to wear his gloves if he was going to an event like the party, and the best way to disguise them was to have the whole group wearing them. But what were they?

He found references to gaming gloves going back decades. The term was used for anything you wore on your hands that had something to do with playing games. Milo found that annoying. The early ones were just an aid to keep your palms from getting sweaty. He looked at newer products from the last five years. That narrowed the search and broke the products into categories. The largest group was just copies of older gloves that gave a better grip, managed sweat, or kept your hands warm in cold rooms. He deleted all of those.

That left several more expensive products. Some had internal temperature and humidity controls and massaged a player's hands subtly to relieve fatigue. This was probably the 'gnarly gaming gloves' that Butch had referred to. 'Gnarly' had sent Milo down a rabbit hole trying to define the term and see how it applied to gloves. The term dated back to the 1800s in both what used to be the United States and Great Britain. It had a resurgence in the 1980s as a term used to describe ocean waves and then became an adjective that could be used in many ways, both good and bad. It was a versatile word for many occasions. But it had nothing to do with gloves.

The third category was dominated by one product: The M-1000 Pro-Gaming Handware from Ubergear. Advertisements promised that a pair of these ultra-expensive gloves could cut reaction time for hand-held controllers by up to 23%. Independent testing mostly agreed, but outside tests were closer to 21.5%. There was much debate about the new gloves and whether they should be allowed in tournaments. But many commenters pointed out that the top gamers already used better gear than 99.9% of their opponents. Chairs that reduced fatigue and supplied nutrients. Special dietary supplements to increase reaction time through a better diet. M-1000 was just the latest in a long line of tech that was being adapted to use by gamers. Once everyone at the professional level used them, things would even out. And Ubergear would be raking in the profits.

The original tech came from a defunct military project. Milo found this out when he downloaded schematics of the technology from one of Ubergear's competitors. Gearhead Corp has spent ten million dollars to get the schematics from someone who had hacked Ubergear's servers. Milo got them from Gearhead for free. As he went through the technology, he recognized sections of the design. When creating his own gloves, he had looked at all of the available military tech he could find. Many corporations were trying to design 'smart armor' and make a profit from military hardware. So far, the designs had either been expensive and not worked well or worked well but with a price tag that no one wanted to pay. An army that was 20% more effective but cost 100 times as much was a bad deal. It was more profitable to send 20% more soldiers and recruit more when casualties mounted. Corporations and governments had the same outlook.

Milo had retro-engineered all the viable tech, improved on them, and then created his own designs. For himself, a huge amount of money was well spent. He was creating an entire suit of interlocking microscopic pieces that moved as fast as he did. There was only one of him, and casualties mattered.

The mechanical-nerve interface in Ubergear's gloves came from a Russian-designed combat armor that was stronger than a tank and with more firepower. It also came at a price that could buy twenty tanks. The armor didn't wait for the pilot to move; it read the intent in his nerve cells and reacted immediately. This type of tech was the basis for most smart armor. Rather than a negative feedback system that used sensors in contact with the user's body, the interface reacted as soon as the wearer thought about moving. After the military research department of Alchemarx shelved the technology, it was licensed to Ubergear. When the M-1000 became a hit, Alchemarx instigated a stock sell-off to drive down the value of Ubergear based on claims of faked reports. They bought Ubergear for 40% of its value, did public testing, denounced the stock manipulators, and started work on a factory to produce millions of M-1000 Ultimate Gaming Handware. Other companies had responded with knockoff brands but couldn't achieve the same increase in reaction time of the Ubergear gloves.

Now armed with the knowledge of what the guys wanted, Milo started work on new designs. He wanted to make gloves that would help the guys react quicker when gaming and looked just like his own gloves. They would look like the second category of glove that gave a better grip, reduced sweat and massaged the user's hands. But he saw no reason to make an inferior product. He left in the complete nerve interface and micro-muscular that could interact with a game controller. His gloves used layers of titanium and graphene. The gloves he was designing now would be 99.99% cheaper to produce than the multi-million dollar set he'd be wearing.

The first set he made in the fabricators had problems. The micro-muscles were too strong and could break a controller. He experimented to find the correct strength and modified the design. He also incorporated security into the programs run by the micro-computer. He didn't want someone experimenting with his gloves and accidentally crushing their fingers by resetting the strength of the motors. When he was done, he had two versions. The first was fingerless; the second was a full glove. The full glove was 1% more effective than the fingerless version and gave better fingertip control. Doing his own tests, he found that his gloves were better than the Ubergear gloves, coming in at a 34% increase in reaction for the fingerless version and 35% for the full finger sets. Satisfied with the design, he had his fabricators make four sets of each.

He took some precautions with the gloves. Each set would work for just one person. When each of the guys put them on, the gloves would analyze their DNA. Anyone else attempting to use the gloves wouldn't be able to turn them on. Any attempt to tamper with the glove's programming or integrity would cause the micro-motors to destroy the nerveware and wipe the software, turning them into scrap.

Something bothered him, and finally, he realized it wasn't the gloves but their look. Ubergear looked good. They had a red and black design with the company logo. His were black. Plain, boring black. He needed to make them distinctive. It took him the rest of the night to come up with something he liked, and then he did another set of gloves with a new look, making his gloves sport the same style. The gloves had silver highlights that glinted in the light as they moved. Not something that would distract the user, but obvious to someone watching. The logo on the back of the gloves was four jagged slashes cutting through the word 'Claw Master.' He hoped Butch and the guys appreciated the extra work, not that he could tell them that he had made them.

Milo had been turning that problem over in his mind while he worked. He settled on the idea that he'd been testing prototype gloves for a new company. He hadn't said anything because of the Non-Disclosure agreement he had signed. He had copies of the same agreement for the gang to sign when he gave them the gloves. They could show them off and use them but not loan them out or sell them. The contract even had a generous sum of money that the Claw Master corporation would pay at the end of the short testing period.

Again, Milo paused, sensing a loose end; There was no Claw Master Corporation. Anyone who checked would know that and know that the agreement wasn't worth the plasticard it was printed on. This could lead to trouble for the gang. He needed the corporation to be real. And if it was real? Several thoughts cascaded through his brain. He filed them under the heading 'Find ways to make money.' Later, he filled out the ideas.

Creating and hiding his corporation turned out to be easier than he had thought. Small corporations had fought for laws that would help them protect themselves from larger corporations. Larger corporations used those same laws to protect their divisions from each other. Someone could research a corporation and communicate with them without the corporation divulging where they were located and who its officers and owners were. Many firms handled the front end for hidden research corporations that wanted people to know what they had to offer but didn't want to be a target for Alchemarx, Acme, Solent, or any of the other dozens of large and powerful entities. Milo just had to find someone he thought he could trust to handle that chore for him, negotiate contracts, collect the money, and hold it securely for him.

Milo didn't trust people. So he found someone else.

Wally would say he wasn't surprised; things just happened that he had foreseen but had a very low probability of occurring. Milo contacting him to get help with negotiating a contract for online workers had been one of the few times he hadn't foreseen something. After that, he thought about other things Milo might do. Milo asking him to take 25% ownership in 'Claw Master Inc' in exchange for running the front end of the business and protecting Milo's patents was very far down the list. The work was negligible for him, and the novelty of the situation was high. The AI agreed. Patents were filed but kept secret for now. And Wally had made a request of his own.

Steven Duran was mildly surprised to find a present on his desk. Checking security cameras showed it had arrived at the building, been scanned and approved by Wally, and then sent to his desk. Opening them, he found a sleek pair of think grey gloves with a company logo on the back. "Wally, who is 'Claw Master,' and why did you approve of them sending me a bribe?"

The AI appeared on the large screen across from Steven. "A bribe? No, I don't think so, especially since I bought those for you. I think the company tournament is coming up in two days, and you've barely had any time to practice, you've been working so hard. Those will let you be more competitive."

Steven flexed the gloves; they did feel comfortable. "Everyone else will certainly be wearing a pair of M-1000s; how will giving me a knockoff brand help me compete?"

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Oh, and I need you to sign an NDA before you leave the office. Company policy."