Chapter 210: Connections

Chapter 210: Connections

Hide! Seen. Trapped. Can't run. Gang=me? Gang seen? Belinda? Belinda=Belinda but Belinda=Victor! Run. Trapped. Seen. Hide? Fix?

Fix.

Fix!

Milo's mind whirled, several trains of thought screaming at once. He had pushed himself too far. The fatigue of social interaction had been building up all day, as had the stress of thinking so hard in SC6 and the video game tournament. He loved the feeling of pushing himself to think faster and devise strategies, but it came at a price. He was paying it now as the connection between Victor and Belinda sent his paranoia into overdrive.

Part of him was screaming that they never should have left the tunnels. A year ago, he'd been safe, and no one had known about him. No one had even suspected that he existed. If no one knew you existed, then no one came looking.

Now he was exposed. And it was by his own actions. He knew that. He'd triggered events, and failed to recognize all of the consequences.

He recognized that the temptation to do new things and taste new food had been traps that the world had set for him. But food was tasty!

The pod was the first trap! It tempted him, showed him he could get better, showed him the game, and allowed him to get petty revenge on Kaminski. Stealing the pod had triggered everything.

The game was a trap! It showed him cheese! And tasty food. It made him want more things in the real world. It led to being noticed by Sidney and then Wally. Wally knew where he was. But he needed the game! He needed the escape and the friends he'd made. He needed a place he could go where no one knew who he was.

The money was a trap. Money solved problems. It was a tool. He took someone else's money. Victor's money. There was no guilt. No guilt at all. Victor and his people had made him a slave, killed his family, killed so many people. Now Victor was an enemy, and Milo had to hide from him.

He had friends in the habitat. He was learning to be near people. But they made him vulnerable. Just like the Hollow. Were friends a trap? Family? He couldn't run if people were threatened.

Andrei married once and had two children, Nicki and Ekaterina. Twenty-five years after Boris's death, the deaths of both Nicki and Andrei brought what was left of the family closer together. Father and son were killed when a freak storm forced their private jet land at a small airfield. The icy conditions and short runway led to a bad landing and an explosion as the airplane shot past the barriers at the end of the runway. A somber Victor attended the double funeral. He and Ekaterina reconciled. If not close, they at least spoke often, and he served on the board of trustees for the Seimovich Corporation as an unpaid advisor.

Ekaterina met Vigo Johansson at a technology conference. She was fresh from University with dual degrees in International Business and Finance. Vigo was there showing off the latest products from his company, Bio-Solutions. They met when both of them were talking on the same panel. They had drinks and dinner three times and began dating. The picture of the two of them holding hands had sent a ripple through the tech industry.

Vigo's official biography said he had started with nothing and studied computer programming and information systems early. At ten, he coded his first small video game. Smashy-Dwarf was a cute little phone game where players selected a troll or ogre as their team and took turns hurling other races at a rack of ten pins. He made enough money to attend a better school and then college at the age of fourteen. Vigo attended four colleges over the next eight years while simultaneously building his first company. Computers were the first step; his end goal was cybernetics, human/computer interfaces, and working artificial limbs. Bio-Solutions was, first and foremost, a research lab. Vigo and his employees created, patented, and sold the technology to other people.

After the two married, Seimovich Technology bought Bio-Solutions for the price of 127 Billion dollars. Belinda Seimovich was born seven years later. News reports said the birth had been complicated by birth defects. The family refused to discuss her medical problems and asked for privacy. During this time, protests and riots culminated in the removal and imprisonment of all but one A.I. Technology companies saw a huge drop in their stock, protests held at their factories, vandalism, and acts of terror.

Bio-Solutions was the target of one radical group, Never Skynet. Ironic because artificial intelligence was not something the company had delved into. A bomb was set off, severing a fuel line and engulfing the labs in fire. Twenty-seven researchers died, including Vigo Johansson. Ekaterina attended his funeral on the arm of her Uncle, Victor, and then dropped out of public life altogether. Milo saw that within a year, Ekaterina remarried, choosing a childhood friend, John Sabbatino. He was immediately named CEO of the company and made the guardian of Belinda. Within a year, Victor was no longer on the board of advisors. Eight years later, when Belinda was ten, Ekaterina died of 'undisclosed medical issues.'

Milo could find no record of Belinda's name being changed to Sabbatino. In court documents, she was always referred to as Belinda Seimovich. Nor did he find a record of adoption. But what financial information he did find was interesting. Nearly all of the corporation had been sold piecemeal during the years after Vigo's death. A large amount of money was invested conservatively, and a corporation was set up to manage the funds, ST Investments. Seimovich Technology was a shadow of what it had been at the time of her death, but the investment group held a staggering amount of money. All of it was put in trust for Belinda when she turned eighteen.

Exact numbers were unknown, but financial experts conservatively estimated the value of the trust fund at over a trillion dollars with the possibility of up to quadruple that amount. John Sabbatino did not have access to that money, except to care for Belinda. He continued to manage the corporation and renamed it Manpower Inc. Victor Seimovich was not involved in either Manpower or ST Investments.

That sounded like a lot of money to Milo. Far more than he had. With that much money, you could buy all the SC6 machines left in the world and all the cheese you could ever eat. Manpower was a powerful corporation, but nowhere near what it would be as soon as Belinda turned 18. That worried him. Who would control it?

Milo liked the idea of Victor never having money ever again. He wasn't happy with John Sabbatino having it, either. With that much money, he could tear the hab apart faster than Milo could fix it. What would Belinda do with it?

He shook his head, clearing the speculation. He had things to do. Next on his list was upgrading the security system. The whole thing was a mess. The habitat system was nearly defunct and unusable. Manpower had replaced part of it and upgraded other parts, but in a piecemeal fashion that upset Milo as being highly inefficient. On top of that, Milo had found cameras installed by the engineering firm that had done work in the hab. And, of course, Milo had added his bits to the jerry-rigged system. He needed something better. It would be a lot of hard work, but he would upgrade and replace most of the systems and cameras so that only he had complete access to all of them. If people were moving around in his habitat, he needed to know. Manpower wouldn't know what had happened, and would enjoy a security system that worked all the time, and didn't need repairs.

As he placed orders with thirty-seven security specialists, his brain tossed out a chilling scenario. Who was Belinda's heir? Her only living relative was Victor. Was Victor looking for a way to get past Belinda to her money? And if so, had Milo triggered this event by stealing all of Victor's money? He needed to know more. Either Belinda was working with Victor, or she wasn't. If she wasn't, then Milo may have put her in danger. He had planned to stay far away from the girl, but now he needed to do the opposite, and get to know her.