Tunnel Rat

Chapter 256: John pisses off Milo. Milo goes shopping.

Milo was annoyed. No, he was highly annoyed, and it was pushing him into a dangerous place where his emotions rarely hit. He furiously typed in commands to search through all of the information he had found in Manpower's email and stored data; six screens were showing surveillance video at high speed while his system searched for certain topics of conversation. He had one eye on the screens while he mostly concentrated on following John and Eric's email for the past few weeks, and then digging into the files of the engineers and accountants. Everything else was forgotten as he looked for the information he needed. Along with a steady stream of anime, he was transferring all of his data down to Rusty and making plans to dismantle his systems in the water tank. It had started with a comment in an email from Belinda. She was complaining about her stepdad and his plans to spend her money after she had access to her trust funds...

Two days before, in the offices of Manpower:

"So we keep expanding downward through H, ten levels at a time, leasing them as we go, but with the option to take more if someone tries to steal them from us. Then, we take over Sections G and I. Both have sparse populations in the top 50 floors and nothing below ground in the manufacturing areas. The leases are dirt cheap, and any upgrades will be charged against our lease. Finally, we grab T. That section is a wasteland, and we pay nothing for it. Some of the corporations need workers with multi-year contracts. We can spend minimal time cleaning the place up and installing enough infrastructure to house the long-term pod workers. Any questions?"

Several people hesitated but opted to say nothing. Earl from engineering was looking at his notes and raised his hand briefly, then started talking. "I've got some big concerns about the structural stability of Section T, but my first question is why we aren't looking to lease Section E? It's adjacent to us, as are the other three, and in much better shape."

John had hoped the engineering guys would stay quiet; they also asked difficult questions that only engineers knew the answer to. "Section E has a higher lease. It has three times the population of G or I, which means three times the costs of running it. And with all those people living there, we have less room to expand into it."

Earl put up a dozen spreadsheets on the screens in the meeting rooms and began highlighting numbers. "But, while there is less room, the cost is actually better, sir. Section E is in amazing shape. It's not surprising because it's the main mechanical hub for the entire habitat. There was obviously a decision to put most of the repair funds into that section. The repair costs will be far less, and the revenue from the government will be much higher since it's based on occupancy. Look at the numbers in red and purple. We could take it over for less than G or I and turn a profit, putting our leasing costs below zero. Then we use the income to refurbish G and start moving people from E to G, then to I. And we end up in control of Section E, which makes it easier to control fluid flow, waste disposal, electrical, and air processing. It might even be worth purchasing the property outright."

John was staring at the numbers, but he only cared about the bottom line, which was maximized by acquiring Section E. "What do you think, Eric? We'll have our financing soon."

Eric spent a few minutes asking questions and getting answers, then put his own sheets up on the screens. "It's quite feasible to go with Earl's plan, and it cuts our variable costs way down. Frankly, I'm worried about the other sections. They might have huge hidden flaws that we'd be responsible for. I say we go with Section E first. Between E and H, we have a good base to expand in several directions and stay profitable the whole time. We just need that special financing at the start, and then we shift funds to the acquisition and repair of whichever section looks best, with plenty of time to look for possible problems. I'll get proposals done for both the purchase and lease options by midnight tonight, and we may hear back in less than a week."

"Excellent, knock that out, Eric, I'll visit Belinda and try to cheer her up with the big plans. I'll bet she'll be excited."

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The more Milo thought about someone taking over Section E, the more agitated he became—especially the idiots in Section H. Time and again, they took shortcuts that caused him problems. Stealing water and power, dumping sewage into the wrong areas, and making more work for Milo. They were motivated by cost, not by doing a good job, and he was tired of it. The thought of Manpower stealing all his hard work made him angry, and he stopped himself a dozen times from purposefully causing problems in their systems. That wouldn't be right. He fixed things; he didn't try to break things. He added a 'on purpose' to the last thought as he remembered a few things that hadn't gone as planned.

He thought of talking to Belinda and trying to get her to agree never to give John the money to take over more of the Habitat., but that would mean explaining more things to her and might not stop John. Once he got some of her trust funds, she might be unable to control how the money was used. And if Manpower didn't take over Section E, someone else might. John was already worried about that. The problem had a solution... but he didn't know if it was feasible. He got to work.

Eric had given him the start to his investigation into who owned the Habitat, how the leases worked, and who controlled things. With that as a starting point, he began looking worldwide for information on how Habitats were handled. It turned out that not all of them were as horrible as his. Quite a few had been built in countries that ran them well, and they were much nicer places to live and work. Light industry and office space were integrated with the living quarters, and they were much closer to enclosed cities than a dead-end dumping ground for lower-income people. He started files of the best and the worst, intending to begin a study of all of them.

The problem with the South Philadelphia Habitat was ownership. There basically were no owners. The original group of corporations building the Habitat had slowly gone bankrupt, some by design. Building the Habitat brought in huge amounts of money, but running it brought in less, and the long-term responsibility for repairs and governing was seen as a negative on their account books. By the end of twenty years, the local government had brought a dozen lawsuits against shell corporations that went nowhere, and the state of Pennsylvania was responsible for the Habitat. They, in turn, set up an understaffed and underfunded department to hire contractors to do the work. Hundreds of small companies with little oversight and no coordination had turned the massive building into a patchwork of poorly working systems. As the lights went out, the people moved out. State agencies constantly tried to move homeless people from the streets to the Habitat.

The federal government paid a set amount of money per person in the Habitat that went toward the basics of life. It was supposed to cover food, power, air, and education, but again, the money went to hundreds of agencies with little accountability. Fixing the food processing system in Section E every month had shown Milo how efficient those agencies were. It frustrated him to see so much inefficiency. Taking a break for two tacos with an extra cheese sauce made him feel better. He loved the food Frank had delivered. Fortified, he got back to work. Screens cleared and then began to fill up with numbers and projections. He worked for two more hours and took another break. He could see the shape of a possible solution, but he could feel himself slipping into a state of hyper-focus. Before he did, he set up three screens that used his security cameras to watch John, Belinda, and Victor. If something started to happen, he'd be alerted to it. Then he got back to work crunching numbers. Twelve hours later, he stopped and set up a video call.

Sydney was surprised to have Milo pop up on her screen. She had been thinking about Milo, or rather, the coffee that he had sent her. A truck had parked in front of the building, and four delivery people had wheeled in special freezer boxes, each with twenty pounds of gourmet coffee beans. Steven and the rest of the people in the building had gathered to watch as more and more parcels were delivered. Sydney had danced from one to the next, opening them, hugging the packages, and opening some of her favorites to smell the aroma of the beans. She'd been in heaven for several days, and the smell of exotic coffee filled the building.

"Hi! Oh, I see you got the coffee. Awesome, I was worried about it getting there. Did I send enough? I wanted to thank you correctly."

Sydney looked at the thousand packages that filled most of the room. "Oh, yes, it's awesome. Thank you!"

"Let me know if it runs out. Wally mentioned you liked it the way I like cheese, and running out of cheese is terrible. Are Wally and Steven around? I need to talk with them."

Sydney agreed running out of coffee or cheese would be horrible. "I'll transfer you to Steven's office, and Wally will join in." He disappeared from her screen, and she decided to brew another pot; if Milo needed something, she'd be busy for the next day.

Before Wally could say anything, Milo started talking. Wally could see that his eyes were slightly dilated, his pulse was rapid, and his breathing faster than normal. "I have a project I wish to pursue. I will need to have Claw Master officially in charge of it, and I need to know how much money I have left."

Steven looked up the number and gave it to him. "I meant to talk to you this week. You are five billion dollars richer than you were two weeks ago. We have one of the top research labs in the world wanting to work with your technology. They think they can do some amazing things to help people with injuries to nervous systems and in cloning replacement parts."

Milo read the contracts quickly, flipping through a page a second, making Steven dizzy. It was one thing to have Wally read that fast, but Milo looked like a small boy, and he could almost forget that he wasn't quite human. He finished and smiled, his eyes glassy and thinking. "Great. I like helping people and can think of some neat applications for their cloning technology. I looked at it last year, and it was interesting. I have some ideas I'll write up for integrating my tech with theirs and send them to you. And I have a use for the money." He sat back in his chair and looked at them.

"I want Claw Master to purchase Section E of the South Philadelphia Habitat with the intent to repair and maintain it, taking over all of the management of it."

Steven had barely begun to think when Wally replied. "Buy or lease? You gain control either way, but with far less long-term commitment if you decide to do something else."

Milo shook his head. "It needs to be a full purchase: Top floor all the way to the sub-basements and everything below that. I'm not going anywhere, and I don't want anyone trying to take my home from me. I have plans to make improvements and turn it into what it was supposed to be. If it works, I want to take over the entire Habitat, fix it, and rent it out."

Wally smiled. "Coincidentally, your corporation will need a large area for manufacturing and research facilities. You can rent to yourself." The A.I. was frantically crunching his own numbers, gathering data a thousand times faster than Milo could, and doing a cost and profit analysis. It would be hard to make a profit with the Habitat, but that wasn't the point. Milo would have money coming from other things, and this would keep him busy and not causing trouble.

"I can gather information for you and send it over for your research—also a list of preferred contractors and specialists. I think buying that section may come with some strings to assist with managing more of the habitat, but that's your long-term plan anyway. But looking at that building specifically, there are some restrictions. I'm hoping that none of your plans involve digging deeper. There is a moratorium on any further excavation under that habitat. All rail lines, power, and communication lines are routed around it. While it was pronounced safe, the studies showed that digging further with the river that close could make the supports unstable."

Milo blinked. "No digging. That's good. I agree with that completely. I promise not to do any digging. In fact, I want to pour an extra layer of concrete into the sub-basement. Some cracks worry me, and those rooms aren't used. Another fifty feet of reinforced concrete will help the support structure."

Wally noted that and was happy Milo was already thinking of improving safety. Maybe thinking too hard, the A.I. could tell that he was thinking with at least two streams of thought at once, maybe more. After a minute, Milo nodded. "Great. Send me all the information you can, and the contracts. I have to get to work." The screen went blank.

Steven looked up at his friend on the screen. "So Milo is making his Habitat his life's work. That seems appropriate. But I wonder what started him thinking about it."

Wally was shuffling papers on his desk and handed a stack to someone, then turned back to Steven. "Sorry, I just sent off the contracts I negotiated to buy Section E. In doing so, I found something out. Someone currently renting in that Habitat had a similar thought to Milo. I think they spooked him. Luckily, the government was swayed by the Claw Master corporation to accept their offer and not that of Manpower. Buy trumped Lease, and they liked the idea of a lump sum of cash. Milo is four billion dollars poorer—one billion to purchase the section and clear things up legally. Three billion is in a dedicated bank account and earmarked for repairs to the building. He can get started whenever he likes.

Steven blinked. "So he already owns the section he lives in?"

Wally nodded. "A small square of land from the top of the roof and the airspace one hundred feet up, and technically, all the way down for ten miles. Now I want to see what he does with the place."