LOCATION: VOSS TOWER, 20TH FLOOR
CITY: SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
DATE: OCTOBER 6, 2025 | TIME: 8:00 AM
At eight o’clock sharp on Monday morning, Mallory convened a virtual meeting from her corner office on the twentieth floor of Voss Tower. On the screen were Vanessa, her deputies from the Round Table’s Profession team, and a curated group of CEOs and chief engineers from across Voss Industries’ sprawling private empire. These were the minds behind Project MIST—the Modular Infusion System Transmitters that would quietly seed the world with nanites.
Though few on the call knew the full scope of the project—the System integration—they all understood its urgency.
The narrative—carefully disseminated in recent months—was that Vitalyx and Rejuvenex would be significantly more effective if paired with a low-grade atmospheric infusion of nanites. The medical angle sold well: enhanced cellular support, seamless biochemical regulation, and "long-term biometric harmonization." Not one CEO had asked whether the term biometric harmonization actually meant anything.
Which was exactly the point.
Mallory didn’t need to run the show this morning—she just needed to set the tone.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said, her voice steady but energetic. “Thanks for making time on a Monday. What we’re doing here will be remembered as the backbone of humanity’s next leap. I know we’ve got a lot to cover, and I’ll need to jump off in about forty-five, so I’ll hand things over to Vanessa.”
Vanessa unmuted and prepared to speak. Through the floor-to-ceiling glass behind her, Lake Michigan stretched out like brushed steel beneath a pale autumn sky. The maples lining Lakeshore Drive were starting to turn. There was a stillness outside, but inside her head? Controlled chaos.
She smiled, professional by energized.
“Thanks, Mallory. Morning, everyone.”
She clicked her presentation forward. A clean slide loaded, showing the Project MIST logo and a rotating render of the newest Aethernodes.
“I know most of you have been in the trenches with us for a while, so I’ll keep this brief. But for anyone new to the call—or those who’ve been too swamped to follow the latest internal memos—here’s a top-line summary.”
She tapped to the next slide: a simplified process diagram overlaid with small icons representing corn, sugarcane, and atmospheric CO?.
“The Aethernodes are modular nanite synthesis units. They rely on two major inputs:
- 15% biomass fuels—refined byproducts like corn ethanol, sugarcane pulp, or soy husks.
- 85% atmospheric carbon dioxide, harvested using molecular sieves and processed via catalytic reduction into a stable carbon feedstock.”
She let the weight of that sit for a moment.
“Each unit uses these inputs to synthesize nanites—safe, non-replicating, biologically inert unless called upon. And they do it fast. We’re talking trillions per day per unit, thanks to some incredible work by the design team over at Stratus Applied NanoTech. Honestly, I can’t overstate what you pulled off in two weeks.”
A few faces nodded or smiled.
“We’re targeting rooftop placements, industrial zones, and key logistics hubs for the first wave of terrestrial deployment. But as of last Thursday, we’ve added an aerial strategy to the mix.”
She switched to a new slide. This one showed a sleek, matte-black drone cruising the high atmosphere.
“These are Aetherdrones. The frame is an adapted UAV platform, originally developed for high-altitude surveillance by Kaylon Systems.”
She looked down the screen and nodded to one square.
“And yes—Richard Levens, recently promoted to CEO, has been personally overseeing the conversion process. Thank you, Richard.”
Levens gave a terse but satisfied nod.
“The new design is lighter, fully solar-augmented, and thanks to their expanded internal capacity and altitude-based release strategy, each Aetherdrone can disperse more nanites per hour than even our largest terrestrial nodes. They’re not just mobile—they’re more efficient. Each drone cruises the jet stream, dispersing nanites in a global arc, then returns to a maintenance hub for refueling and redeployment.”
She paused to emphasize the next part.
“Flying so high over international waters also allows us to bypass customs clearances, airspace treaties, and local regulators. Which—if you’ve ever tried to fly a drone across one sovereign border, let alone two dozen—you’ll understand is… invaluable.”
A few wry chuckles.
She clicked off the slides and leaned in slightly, her tone softening but sharpening.
“This network—of both stationary Aethernodes and airborne Aetherdrones—is what will make the next phase of Vitalyx and Rejuvenex effective across the globe. Full efficacy. Seamless biometric synergy. Long-term optimization.”
Most of the heads on the call nodded. That was what they understood.
Vanessa didn’t lie. But she didn’t tell the whole truth either.
The nanites weren’t just for enhancing supplements. They were the invisible scaffolding of the new world. The delivery mesh that would allow skills to function. Spells to manifest. Weapons to activate. Classes and Professions to thrive.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
And the world wasn’t ready to know that part.
Not yet.
For two hours, they drilled into manufacturing schedules for both the terrestrial Aethernodes and the newly adapted Aetherdrones. Vanessa kept the conversation brisk but thorough, guiding each discussion point toward firm deliverables. They mapped out global distribution routes, prioritized key manufacturing hubs, and finalized the location of forward-deployed drone bases.
Initial deployment zones would include only properties owned by Voss Industries and its subsidiaries—sites already pre-cleared and within control. Broader global distribution would come later, after saturation thresholds were met in controlled test regions.
When one of the CEOs from a manufacturing arm raised the inevitable question—“Have we begun regulatory coordination with foreign governments for drone flights and node deployment?”—Vanessa was ready.
She offered a composed smile and answered smoothly.
“We’re preparing documentation where necessary, and our legal teams are reviewing aviation guidelines and emissions standards. But most of our early deployments are on properties already under Voss Holdings’ control—so we’re well within our rights to begin implementation without delay. As for broader coverage, many governments will see these deployments as environmental technology—carbon-reducing, air-cleansing infrastructure. That narrative is already in play. Converting carbon dioxide into oxygen brings its own benefits, after all.”
She didn’t lie. But she didn’t tell the whole truth, either.
There was a short pause as the CEO digested her answer, then nodded. The discussion continued, focused again on production targets and deployment sequencing.
The pressure was immense. For the rollout to succeed, they would need thousands of drones and terrestrial nodes online before the world began to stir. But for now, everyone nodded. The schedule would hold. It had to.
<
LOCATION: CRAYLOCK CYBERDEFENSE HQ
CITY: AUSTIN, TEXAS
DATE: OCTOBER 6, 2025 | TIME: 3:30 PM
Ronan had flown to Austin early Monday morning for a meeting with Colin Mercer, CEO of Craylock Cyberdefense. The next major hurdle in their global rollout was bringing the submerged data arks online—massive undersea installations that held the real-world backbone of The System.
Each ark was a marvel of engineering: a toroidal fusion of tokamak reactor design and modular server architecture. The reactor provided both power and electromagnetic shielding. The servers housed localized instances of The System’s core, ready to execute high-load functions like karmic profiling, stat tracking, identity verification, experience point assignment, and language modeling.
The outer shell of each ark was a pressure- and corrosion-resistant alloy interlaced with passive stealth materials—non-reflective coatings and thermal dampeners that nullified heat signatures. The inner ring housed the AI clusters in cold storage and live compute arrays, wrapped in a Faraday mesh to block all external electromagnetic interference.
Power came from both deep-ocean thermal harvesting and a miniature stable nuclear reactor—enough to run autonomously for decades.
To avoid detection by satellites, foreign militaries, or tech espionage groups, the six arks were buried at extreme depths and hidden under the guise of other operations—marine research stations, cable monitoring hubs, deep-sea mining surveys. They were completely dormant. Invisible. Waiting.
Now it was time to bring them online.
Colin and Ronan had just finalized the firmware upload that would do it. Grim and his team would dive to each location, use a secured controller to bypass the shielding, and insert a physical data spike into a secure port. Once the handshake was complete, each ark would boot up, patch itself through secure satellite pings, and begin operating silently within the network.
That Monday afternoon, Colin and Ronan were holed up in Colin’s office—phones silenced, door locked. On a custom air-gapped workstation Colin had built himself, they reviewed the final patch together. Ronan had brought seven spikes—one extra, just in case.
“All right,” Colin said, clicking the last line of code into place. “I kept the bootloader sequence clean and minimal. No unnecessary calls. Once they’re up, they’ll self-update and synchronize. Getting the core kernel online is all that matters now.”
Ronan nodded. “Elegant and modular. You left almost no attack surface. Nicely done.”
“Appreciate it,” Colin said, pulling off his glasses and leaning back.
They worked in focused silence for another hour and a half, loading the compiled patches onto seven fingerprint-locked drives. Each one was sealed in an electromagnetic case. Ronan slotted them into a titanium biometric briefcase, locked it, and stood.
Colin stared out the tall glass windows of his office, the afternoon light washing over his desk like a tide he wasn’t quite ready to step into.
“You know,” he said, voice lower now, “when Mallory called me back in June… I didn’t just argue. I ranted. Said Voss couldn’t just summon us without a reason. That my schedule and commitments were more important than whatever the old man wanted to talk about.”
Ronan didn’t interrupt. He let it hang.
Colin chuckled softly to himself, though there was no humor in it.
“She let me go on for a few minutes. Then she said I’d be getting a call—and that I should take it. Hung up mid-sentence. Five minutes later, my phone rang. It was Graham Thorne.”
That caught Ronan’s attention. His brow lifted slightly.
“He didn’t yell. Didn’t threaten me. Just said I was critical to something massive. Told me—gently—to get over myself and show some respect. It wasn’t a threat. But it landed harder than one.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Then I heard what happened to Greg Simms at Kaylon. He blew up at Mallory, and she bounced him without blinking. After that... I realized how lucky I was that she and Voss still saw value in me.”
Colin looked down at the case of data spikes. “I still don’t know why I made the cut. But I’m not going to waste the chance.”
Ronan nodded slowly, leaning back with a long exhale.
“You’re not the only one who needed a wake-up call. First time I sat across from Voss after the summit, I was full of swagger. Told him I didn’t understand why I’d been pulled away from my work for some medical miracle that had nothing to do with me.”
He smiled—but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“He let me ramble for two minutes. Then he brought up a presentation about The System and told me the game I thought I’d been developing for six years wasn’t launching on Steam. It was launching in the real world.”
Ronan looked over at Colin.
“I walked out of there not feeling small, exactly. Just… realigned. Like my compass had been pointed at clever for a long time, but never at true north.”
The silence that followed was thick. Heavy with awe. With understanding. With the quiet magnitude of what they were both now part of.
Then Ronan stood, gripping the titanium briefcase—loaded with the final patches.
“You’re next, Colin. You and the others.”
Colin blinked. “Next?”
“You’ll be going into the Tutorial soon. All sixty-four CEOs. Each of you gets to bring someone you trust.”
He paused—not for effect, just to let the truth settle.
“It’s not a reward. It’s a requirement. Because when what’s coming hits, we won’t just need leaders. We’ll need believers. People who’ve seen it for themselves.”
Colin didn’t speak right away. He nodded slowly, deliberately.
Then, quietly: “I’ll be ready.”
Ronan held his gaze a moment longer. Then, just before turning for the door, he added with a small grin, “I’m jealous, you know. I wish I could go through it all for the first time again. It’s… unreal. That much power, that much clarity? You’re going to love it, man.”
He glanced at the case in his hand.
“Alright—time to get these to Graham. Gonna be a long week for his crew.”
And with that, he was gone.