Fortunately, the international conflict didn't end too badly. Country A agreed to my terms, with a few major conditions attached. Firstly, they were to fire all the Central Intelligence agents who were responsible for the assassination attempt on me. The current head of Central Intelligence resigned and was put on trial for attempted murder and assassination. I would accept nothing less.
Secondly, I demanded that the politicians who ordered the captains of the three Destroyers to open fire take responsibility and be brought to justice. I doubted I would get what I wanted, but Country A was amenable to compromise. They pinned the blame on the Central Intelligence head, claiming that it was their agents who posed themselves as governmental officials to give the order to open fire on me. And these were the culprits who were being brought to light and sentenced to imprisonment (just to appease me, if I wasn't mistaken).
Needless to say, I had my doubts. I suspected there was a huge cover-up happening, but I had no evidence. And unlike all those unrealistic super-rich CEOs in those dumb Cinderella-styled romance stories, just because I was a CEO didn't mean I had a secret group of agents who could help me investigate saboteurs and governmental organizations. First off all, I wasn't that rich, and even if I did, that didn't necessarily meant I had the license or knowledge to run such a group.
Seriously, those authors appear to believe that if you have the money, you could do everything. Reality didn't work that way. Of course, loads of money undeniably gave you a massive advantage, but it didn't solve problems just like that. Anyone who told you that you could solve anything just by throwing money at a problem was incredibly naïve. Even the people's army, who was offering me support, couldn't possibly run an investigation on the government of another country and reveal the secrets behind the cover-up.
We had intelligence here and there, and some information, but not enough evidence to take it up to court. It was unfortunate, but in real life, bad people sometimes got away with what they were doing. Especially if they were politicians or the rich. It was sad but inevitable.
Sighing, I decided to leave it at that. For now, they would leave me alone – there was no longer any benefit to assassinating me, not when I was willing to sell them the technology. Also, they had seen what had happened to their vaunted Central Intelligence. There was no point diving into the fire and burning themselves for no real benefit. And in reality, people weren't that petty to want revenge over every failure. That wasn't how real life worked. There was simply too many things for them to worry about. Where would they have the time and energy to obsess over revenge for the most trivial things, like one-dimensional caricatures (I couldn't even call them characters) in CEO and cultivation stories?
No, if they had time and energy, they would spend it gathering more money and power, not fussing over a trivial grudge or hiring assassins because they were petty and jealous. You think assassins come cheap, is it? That you could waste several hundred thousand dollars or even millions of dollars to kill a guy just because he "offended" or "humiliated" you?
Yup, only CEO and cultivation story antagonists would waste that sort of money on such absurd nonsense. No one was that petty in real life. Well, perhaps in Indonesia, where gangsters would beat you up over petty grudges, but CEOs and rich people had too much to lose when committing such blatant crimes. That was more gangster territory. And if you had money, you could buy them off anyway.
Whatever the case, I made more money than I thought possible. Mostly because I ripped off Country A as much as I could. It was only natural. After all the nonsense they put me through, I might as well gain as much benefits as I could.
Of course, there were many existences beyond the fourth wall who would rage and scream at me for selling it to Country A. they would insist that I stupidly not sell the shield technology to Country A at all, and that I was an idiot or a weakling or a loser for doing so. Such idiots didn't understand the politics or reality of the situation. Firstly, they would eventually develop their own shield technology anyway, which would end my monopoly in the market. At least this way I earned a lot of money. But if they developed their own shield technology, then wouldn't that mean they didn't need to buy the shield technology from me? I was losing out on an opportunity to make billions of dollars (which was how much they paid me after all the negotiations, by the way).
At least this way, I would have a great monopoly on the shield technology and could control the sales and production of it. Like I said, I would simply sell the obsolete versions to Country A (while making tons of money) while keeping the most advanced ones for myself.
Not only that.
If I refused to sell, until they developed their own shield technology, they were going to continue sending assassins after me or pressuring me. The longer this dragged on, the more desperate they would become. I wasn't into machoism. I had no intention of playing this stupid game of cat and mouse with them. It only took a single wrong move and I would lose my life. I didn't want to live under home arrest forever, stuck at home while being guarded by dozens of soldiers. I wanted my freedom and independence.
Such an atmosphere wouldn't be healthy. I wasn't sure I could even call that "living."
At least this way, the people from Country A had no reason to kill me now. If anything, from what I had seen so far, they were eager to put themselves in my good graces, getting rid of the idiots who tried to assassinate me just to appease me. Instead of having to look over my shoulder every time, watching out for people who might kill me, I had gained a powerful ally who was more than happy to conclude lucrative business deals with me.
In the end, with all the money I gained from this incident, I could expand my company aggressive and proceed to my next dream.
"You want to…what?!"
William Wang was staring at me in disbelief. I nodded, a grin spreading across my face, and folded my arms.
"You heard right. I want to create a subsidiary focused entirely on space exploration."
"Space exploration? Why?"
"Why not?" I countered. "That's the next frontier. Space exploration…asteroid mining. Colonization of other planets. Mankind was made to conquer the stars. This galaxy will be ours!"
I would allow no heretics, mutants or xenos scum to threaten my Imperium. The Imperium of Man will rule the stars and claim dominance over all other races!
William made a face. "Space exploration is a waste of money, if you ask me."
"Why?" I was surprised to hear such negativity from him. William sighed and shook his head.
"We should stay grounded on Earth. Faster than light speed is impossible. We will never be able to leave our solar system and colonize other planets. Plus the expenses for such endeavors are astronomical. We will be making losses with nothing to show for them. Honestly, this project is a waste of money and time. We should be dealing with the problems on Earth, not trying to explore the heavens."
This guy…
I shook my head. "I have a nanotechnology firm in place. Perhaps I should leave that to you."
"Yeah, the nanotechnology will be more practical. It will definitely make more money." William nodded. "I can already see the potential for it in medicine and engineering. If you succeed in nanotechnology, you'll revolutionize the construction and medical industries."
"That's the plan." I didn't tell William that I hadn't given up on my space project. I was still going ahead with it.
If he didn't like it…well, he didn't have to like it. I was the boss, not him. The company belonged to me. I made the decisions.
So William left to take care of the nanotechnology firm while I quickly established my space subsidiary. I had arranged for this to be an international organization, recruiting the brightest minds from all over the world. The E Union, Country A, Country R, Country J and more. I wanted all of them to work together to develop a working faster than light spacecraft.
Not only that, I also had an eye on terraforming.
"We will first try to colonize Mars and terraform it," I explained to a group of terraformers. Well, I doubted they could call themselves terraformers right now. They had to succeed first. "We'll need to thicken the atmosphere to prevent oxygen from escaping, retain water in the atmosphere and perhaps unlock the water frozen in Mars's polar caps."
"That's generally the idea," a scientist agreed.
"We'll also have to check for alien bacteria," an astrobiologist added. "I have no idea how they will work on our human systems."
"Only one way to find out," I said jokingly. Everyone smiled and nodded.
Then I approached the team of scientists developing the faster than light travel.
"I'm thinking of developing an Alcubierre Drive," I explained, making use of the theory written by the astrophysicist, Miguel Alcubierre, in the late twentieth century. It was sort of like a warp drive in some of the early sci-fi movies and drama series. "You guys know what I'm talking about, right?"
They did. All of the scientists here were familiar with Alcubierre's theory.
The Alcubierre Drive worked on the principle of creating a bubble around the ship so that it could technically travel faster than light. Even though Albert Einstein's theory of relativity stated that nothing could possibly travel faster than light – which was why William believed it impossible – Miguel Alcubierre found a way around it by having the ship travel at a speed that didn't exceed light speed within the bubble. Instead, we would expand the space behind the ship and contract the space in front of it.
Ever since the Big Bang, scientists had noticed how rapidly space spread across the universe (or how rapidly the universe was formed). The expansion of space took place many times the speed of light. This was what inspired Alcubierre – if we expanded space at the same rate behind the spacecraft, it could theoretically reach its destination light years away in a short period of time. At the same time, the ship would be traveling at less than light speed within the bubble, thus not violating the laws of relativity at all.
The problem, however…
"The energy concerns," one of the engineers explained. "In order to develop such a bubble, we'll need energy equivalent to the mass of Jupiter. There's no way we can produce such energy here on Earth."
"We can decrease the amount of energy required by making the bubble doughnut shaped," another astrophysicist suggested. "But we'll still need astronomical amounts of energy. We'll have to keep working on it."
"About that…" I raised my hand. "Have any of you heard of zero point energy?"