Chapter 27: Dian Mu advances toward her goal
Dian Mu, smock a gossamer film under her banxiu, hair short and swept up into spikes, hurtled through the air above the vast construction site. She rolled the plane to fly inverted so as to improve her view.
The site covered 200 hectares in total, a gleaming mass of aluminum spars reaching upward from the freshly poured concrete base. When done, it would be a crèche for insanely powerful objects, objects which would have been hard to imagine a few decades earlier, objects which were each as potent as the magical rings and devices of ancient stories, but here manufactured in the millions monthly.
And this was just one site of a dozen, all steamrolling to completion, the first batches of puissant devices rolling off of the manufacturing line in three months, gleaming spars of aluminum by then roofed, populated with robots and feed lines, making Ford’s original line look like a coin-operated candy machine for children, dwarfing the largest facility Toyota or Tata Motors had ever conceived of.
Her objects of power would smash them, destroy them, annihilate them. Or they would join her, woo her favour, charm her, give her delicate gifts in intricate cedar puzzle boxes, feed her extravagant meals on costly pleasure barges, feign adoring her in order to be permitted to contract with her, share her power.
No one would be able to ignore her outcomes, although she suspected many would be arrogant enough to try, animated enough to think that they could outthink, outdo, outsell her. They would be proved wrong, but it would be amusing to watch them flail, to watch their characters exposed in aspic, to see them writhe in an agony created of their inability to live and do business in the future.
She smiled, pure pleasure written across her upside down face. Then her head cocked to one side, her nostrils flared slightly. Vanilla. Her smile changed, to one of anticipation. It had started.
She rolled the plane upright, then spun it around its axis twice more for the sheer joy of it. Tiny figures in the lea far below pointed upward at the tiny, noiseless dart performing aerobatics, apparently for their pleasure.
She steadied the plane, consulted her GPS and set a new course. Time to go home.
As the ground below unrolled, fields and rivers and towns and highways and train tracks appearing in front of her then disappearing behind her, she remembered her conversation with the US engineer two months before, Frank something. He was technical lead of power systems for one of her favourite toys, and she’d taken the opportunity to meet him in person to share her enthusiasm for the objects he was so central to the creation of. They’d spoken in the Guangzhou prepping factory, and she’d had an opportunity to lay her hands on the latest version as it ran on a dynamo for a final burn in. She listened to it, felt its power as it cycled up and down, then turned to Frank and told him it could do better.
He looked askance at her, but perhaps used to the whims of apparently insanely wealthy customers, agreed to retire to an office with a whiteboard, led her to one. She sketched furiously for a few minutes, him watching intently, then more intently, his face shifting from someone humoring an excellent if inane client to someone having an engineering epiphany. He pulled out his laptop, started opening spreadsheets and engineering diagrams, bringing her attention to key points, her in turn pointing out attributes where improvements could be made.
Fairly quickly, he’d woken key engineers in his distributed team, conferenced them in, shared pictures of the whiteboard. The afternoon passed in a blur, brilliant minds marching to a common drum beat of intellect, each putting their individual stamp on an emerging innovation.
At the third hour, the South African himself joined the video conference in person, was brought up to speed. At the fourth hour, the technical team was left to their own devices, while Dian Mu and the South African continued to talk at a different and more rarefied level, of finance, of distribution and of manufacturing. They reached an agreement in principle, shared names of lawyers and negotiators who would work on the fine print.
It was good news, all around, a very productive chance encounter becoming pivotal, incoming opportunity groomed into an emergent strategic win. The memory infused her with joy, and she dipped her wings to feel them pulse with her. No agony of indecision for her, she was a lightning bolt to her goal, diverting instantly when serendipity offered advance.
And then there was that subtle scent of vanilla, still lingering in the air. The future was a wonderful place to be, and promised to be even better soon.