Week 92, late: Helping someone you really, really don't like

TO: 'Silvia Tsukuda'
FROM: dp275@bgnet.wdn
SUBJECT: Business

Dear Ms Tsukuda,

All enquiries and headhunting thus far have gone smoothly and the project is on track to begin within the week. Please meet me in my office at HQ at one of the times indicated on my calendar so we can arrange formal ownership contracts and further funding beyond your initial investment.

Regards,

Dani Potenza

When the indicated time came, Dani sat in her office, waiting for Silvia to arrive.

Silvia arrived at the office with a certain amount of trepidation - but no more than was usual for a meeting with Dani. She might personally detest the woman, but she was confident in her business abilities.

She reached out and knocked, before pushing the door open. "Dani? It's Silvia. You wanted to talk?"

"Yes. Please, take a seat." Dani gestured to the chair facing her desk. "I've been putting in the groundwork, reaching out to contacts who know how to play the smuggling game and putting that first payment you gave me into deposits on factories and some design personnel. Your new venture, H&Y Cygeneering, will be ready to start business in a couple of days... with the further funding it requires, of course." With a smile, she slid a small, phone-sized datapad across the table. On its screen, a bank transfer request for a very large number of credits from Silvia's account to the business account of H&Y Cygeneering was shown, awaiting chip-and-signature confirmation. "Did I mention we'll be operating our primary staff out of the Interchange? Highly secure, it will mitigate any... unfortunate attention that might come towards a business owned by an Oracle agent. More than worth every credit"

"That...that all sounds good," Silvia replied warily, taking the seat with only a little hesitation. "Security's going to be important, definitely. So I...I guess the Interchange will be a good place to operate from."

She picked up the datapad and quickly skimmed its contents, not even blinking at the number on the screen. Without saying anything more, she scrawled a signature across the screen and pressed her ID chip to the device. "Is there...anything more you need to tell me?"

"Given that operating a business is somewhat outside your field of expertise, and you don't want to have your... excursions interrupted by the day-to-day matters involved in being in charge, the most prudent way to handle things is for you to hand over executive powers to a representative on the board. It's a common thing for agent-owned businesses, I simply tweaked a fairly standardised contract to account for Oracle's hands-off ownership-of-action policy." (and passed by 9 on Int+Business if you want to try and decipher all the legalese) She slid another datapad across the table to Silvia. "If you just sign that, I'll take care of it all for you."

"Uh...right." Silvia blinked and picked up the datapad, skimming it over. As far as she could tell, it all seemed reasonable (pass by 2). "That...that sounds fine." She repeated the signing process and handed the pad back to Dani. "Anything else I have to do?"