The Strengaud Conspiracy

“You know I hate these budget meetings, Djondou,” said Merceria Hood, the leader of the Strengaud Team Research Agency as they walked down the hall to the conference room. “And where is Samuel? He should be here by now.”

“He is on his way,” Djondou replied looking down at her tablet. “Should we wait for —–”

“Excuse me ladies,” an attendant interrupted. “You should enter the conference now.”

They walked to the conference room. The room was large with a circular table in the middle. Most of the seats around the table were filled with Strengaud executives and leaders of the other departments in the corporation.

“This way to your seats,” motioned the attendant. After they sat down the attendant left and closed the door.

“Now that the leader of the STR is here we can get this meeting started,” said Marcus Danbury, the CFO. “We will now begin the budgetary meeting.”

“Let’s get started then, Mr. Danbury,” Djondou said sarcastically.

“OK,” Mr. Danbury continued. “Either you or Ms. Hood or your aides Mrs. Aligant and Mr. Voulez will have to answer our inquires. The first question is: What is the latest project that your department completed?”

“STR project #6147302 codenamed: X-Eye is the latest project that was completed.”

“I see here that you were the head of that project. Were you not?”

“Yes, I was the lead scientist on it.”

“What is the nature of the project Mrs. Aligant?”

“The X-Eye is a tactical information system that displays critical information and updates to units in the field. The most recent development of it is in the form of a contact lens.”

“During the testing stages were there any incidents?”

“To my recollection there were three incidents. I am also included in one of those reports. The device would get too hot , searing the retina and pupil causing blindness. We fixed this by adding a lower power consumption CPU, a temperature inhibitor, and use of cloud processing.”

“Are there any units currently deployed in the field?”

“Currently there are seven units deployed. Ms. Hood, Mr. Voulez, and other leading scientists of the STR have units. I am also wearing one.”

“How much do the devices cost?”

“We have 3 different models. Low end: $6,374.50. Base: $18,624. High-end: $56,980”

“Excuse me,” interrupted Ayana Stokes, the head of the Stengaud Sentry. “I have been looking at the specifications of the X-Eye and I think this will be a very useful tool for the Sentry to utilize. We will do a trail run with 3,000 units. 1,000 from each model. Whichever works best we will buy in bulk.”

The door to the conference room suddenly burst open and a tall man in a lab coat came in.

“Sorry that I am so late. The traffic here in South City is terrible and why do we have so many Strengaud building on one street?” He continued, “And the security here why do they have to check you 50 times before you come in? Then they go and ask you all these questions. After that they ask you for your ID,then they scan your your eyes, take fingerprints, and take a DNA sample. I don’t have time for this bull—–”

“Mr. Voulez if you’d stop talking for a minute we should be able to get on with this meeting,” said Mr. Danbury. “Mrs. Aligant thank you for your presentation oin the X-Eye. Now Mr. Voulez please will you please enlighten us about the HASP project?”

“Yes it is the HASP project. It stands for Humans to Artificial Shades project.”

“I understand that you are not the head scientist on this project. Why is Arus Conant, the head scientist for the project not present?”

“Right now Arus’s location is unknown. We tried multiple times to contact and track him by GPS, but we couldn’t locate him.”

“OK. Explain the project for us.”

“The project is mainly based on taking a regular human and making them into a shade.”

“How far are you on the project?”

“We have one working sample.”

“Did you use humans for the testing?”

“No, we made a clone of Ms. Stokes, ” Ayana looked surprised. She was about to see something when Mr. Danbury motioned for her to be quiet.

“Please go on”

“We call her Anaya. She looks exactly like her, but we ran into some problems.”

“Would you elaborate on the problems. ”

“Of course, Anaya is smaller than Ms. Stokes. From what we learned from research her temper is bad. We found this out when an attendant brought her food and it wasn’t the way she liked it.”

“What happened to the researcher? ”

“She snapped her neck like a twig. ”

“Did you do anything to Anaya after that?”

“We moved her to a high security facility after some some abilities started to show up. ”

“What type of abilities showed up? ”

“Her strength, teleportation, speed, reflexes and most other shade properties already surpass most of our best shade agents.”

“Can you control her?”

“That is uncertain. We were thinking to get Ms. Stokes to meet her and make a subordinate in the Strengaud Sentry. We have also studied Ms. Stokes’ life too see if we can predict what Anaya will do.”

“If you can get Anaya under control we will approve your budget request for 3.25 trillion. Ms. Stokes you will hereby work under contract with the STR in order to further their research. The STR will provide all associated costs. The Sentries budget will be increased by 5% during this project.”

Ms. Stokes looked furious, but nodded her head.

“Does everyone agree with the proposed budget?”

“Yes,” multiple voices replied.

“Now this meeting is adjourned.”