Turing

Lex made her way to her office and met Amanda along the way. Amanda had an arm full of files and folders which Lex just sighed at upon seeing. "Mandy, just give me the brief overview of these so I know what I'm signing."

Amanda nods, "most of these are from the accounting department, needing your signature to sign off on some expenditure requests. One is a resume for a potential department head for accounting, to lower the amount of direct work you'll have to oversee with them obviously." She set them on the desk as Lex sat down and quickly read through them.

Even though she just asked for the brief overview, her reading speed had always been faster than most people, but she learned quickly that others won't believe that she actually read as much as she did as quickly as she did. So she asked for the overview while reading and would typically be done reading it by the time the person talking was done.

The requests were for more, or different supplies and materials. All of which were pretty standard but just happened to go above their allotted budget, Lex signed off on those. And she went through the resume "set up a meeting with this person for this afternoon, or tomorrow. Or whenever is possible for the earliest we can get them in. I'd like for the accounting department to be somewhat self sufficient as quickly as possible. Let's do the same for the R&D, though those guys don't need as much direct supervision, just someone to keep them on track and not go off on wild and crazy ideas, they will need some structure, but I don't want to stifle them either."

Amanda nods and takes down a couple of notes. "Now onto the topic of todays meeting. One of the potential investors, according to information and rumors is not coming with good intentions. It seems that company is eyeing ours and wants to preside into a takeover"

Lex laughs, "oh there welcome to try. But we aren't even a publicly traded company. And frankly, I only agreed to have potential investors here so that it didn't seem like I was snubbing them, but I have no intention of taking any of their money. The bank loans and government grant were more than enough for us to get the company off the ground. Im certain we won't need any more influx of money once the factory is fully operational." She looks out the window "what are the sales reports looking like?"

Amanda smiles "frankly better than anyone should think. Especially with a new technology, but your pricing them at only 50% above what the going market value is for current phones and computers. However people seem to think it a steal for the supposed tech behind it. So we are on backlog for orders to even six months after the factory is fully up and running." She flips through some papers "if you wanted, there's enough from the pre-orders that you could have the bank loans paid off right now if you chose. Though I suggest waiting till the end of the year at the very least."

Lex nods "I don't intend to pay off the loans too quickly, let the banks build up some goodwill towards us. Paying off the loan too quickly might harm us in the short term and affect the long term. Let's make sure everything is functioning properly, and orders start getting shipped out before we focus on paying off the banks."

Amanda nods in agreement "speaking of orders being. Shipped, the first order to the government has been sent off. So has a shipment for the space agency. They were overly enthusiastic about the devices and the people that came to pick them up," she laughed "well, they are probably going to be back. Many of them were as interested in the goings on here and the manufacturing of the devices as the were about seeing what the devices could do on the space probes."

Lex smiled at this. "Yes, the prospect of being able to not have to be concerned about bandwidth or power consumption for communications of the probe and satellites right now is very attractive to those scientists. Not to mention, I'm fully expecting them to take a couple of those and take them apart

Completely just to satiate their curiosity about the science behind it's workings. The research papers published are one thing, but seeing it in front of you, and knowing that it works, but understanding that it blows your concepts of what was or should be possible, well, they are fascinated about them having been so wrong about certain concepts, now they can't sleep at night until they do understand them."

Once all the morning paperwork was signed Lex and Amanda made their way to the meeting room. They were the last ones to arrive but still about five minutes earlier than the scheduled meeting time.

"Good morning everyone, I hope you all had a pleasant evening." Lex states with a professional tone as she takes a seat at the head of the table. The room filled with businessmen, a pack of ravenous wolves of she ever saw one. They all had professional smiles on their faces, but it was all a mask. Each of them were calculating and controlled. One wrong step here and it could spell problems.

This was a room of people who smelled money, and they saw a glorious cash cow, and they'll be damned if they were going to let it slip away. They wanted to find some way to get there grubby claws into it and milk it for all it's worth. Unbeknownst to them however, Lex allowed them to attend the meeting, give their proposals, and then shoot them all down remorselessly.

However, one thing she could not do, was appear to be less than willing to work with them. Even if she was completely unwilling to have any official dealings with them, unwilling to let them in on any portion of the business. She couldn't come off as unfriendly, because Lunaris systems was a new company, and no matter the technological advancement that she is bringing to the table, if she made them upset, they could ruin her company.

No, she couldn't do that, but what she could do is play their game, but then flip it and make them play by her rules. A battle of wits was about to ensue, one which she was going to be up against people who truthfully did outclass her in this field, so she wasn't going to win by brute force, she would have to play to their assumed perception of youthful ignorance.

Conceal your dispositions, and your condition will remain secret, which leads to victory; show your dispositions, and your condition will become patent, which leads to defeat. She knew that they viewed her as nothing more than a young girl. Smart for sure, so they wouldn't offer fake platitudes in this regards, but they knew Lex to not be a veteran of the boardroom. So they would in all likelihood play to this when dealing with Lex, after all the business world can be in some ways more cutthroat than other things.

No they knew Lex was not stupid. But they knew smart people, and smart people in the business world. They knew one failing of smart people, specifically the ones who knew that they were smarter than most people, they knew that was their hubris. It was both their strength and their weakness. Their self ideal that they were too smart to be fooled.

This is the thought process that Lex had when going into the meeting, preparing herself for the battle to come. But the one thing they didn't know, was that Lex didn't consider herself to be smart. She felt herself to be lucky, that's all. Lucky to have had an idea that when it was out to paper and on a whim, she built the device that they were all fawning over. That it was pure luck that got it to work. She just happened to stumble across a new aspects of theoretical physics, that turned out to be a little more than just theory and hypothesis.

As she sat down one man spoke up, he was seated at the opposite end of the table, a hawkish man, grey hair, and a calculative look in his eyes. His face was sharp in appearance, but he wasn't particularly attractive in his age, the facial features just tended to be too sharp. If he had a beard, it would make his face look more appealing. If just about on the average side of looks, why he chose to be clean shaven was a question only he would know. "Good morning Miss Voss, so pleased that you were finally able to join us." He spoke in a polite tone, but if one paid attention to his body language, you could tell that the battle had already commenced on his part.

If Lex had to take a guess, she would have said that this was the man who came not out of good will, but as a means to try and pressure her, and the others there that Lex wasn't the one suitable for this venture. Even without the warning from earlier, she would have seen through this man's antics. This man didn't know his enemy, as such he was destined for defeat.

Lex smiled at him "Yes, I would have liked to have arrived a few minutes ago, however," she shrugged and waved her hand "business matters came up that required my attention, you understand I'm sure. I am however pleased that you so graciously took time of you you busy schedule to come here, all of you" she said to the room.