As the announcements directed people toward their seats, Wilhelm selected a few entries out of the contact book on his PDA, then returned the device to its socket. Three plain, white, plastic chits popped out of a port in the right palm of the carapace, each bearing only a name and a QR code. Herr Phillips, Herr Förster, Herr Lothar. Wilhelm presented the chits to Phantasm, simultaneously using his mind to combine carbon dioxide and water from the air to make the high density polyethylene required to refill the chit printer's hopper. He vented a puff of oxygen from a nozzle on his suit as a side effect.
"You'll be in contact then, I trust."
Opening up a compartment on his leg, Wilhelm withdrew a stack of metal cards. Some of the cards were copper colored, some a shiny silver, others gold, and a very few iridescent. All of them had an RFID tag in one corner, but were otherwise unadorned. Wilhelm took one of the copper cards from the stack, handed it over to accompany the chits, and returned the rest of the cards to the compartment.
"That will allow you to withdraw 50000 pounds from a numbered account at Conister Bank, my banker in Doolish. That ought to suffice until LAWBOT-5900 can draft a more permanent agreement. Don't spend it all in one place."
His business transacted, Wilhelm watched the remaining portion of the presentation dispassionately. He was getting more and more suspicious of the motivations of the people involved in this enterprise. It was probably the involvement of Russians. He bought military hardware from them and, inevitably, the more you dealt with the Russians, the less you trusted them. Well, there was an easy way to find out if he was being too paranoid or just paranoid enough. With a regular clicking gait, Wilhelm walked out to where his helicopter was parked, taking up several dozen spaces. He had filmed the entire proceeding. It was time to see if the facial recognition/data mining system he had paid so much for was worth it. If all had gone according to plan, KHI's computers should already have spat out identities, credit reports, Amazon purchase lists, Google search histories, checked out library books, and the like for everyone in attendance. It really was amazing the breadth of information available if one subscribed to the right databases. The KHI computers had access to everything this side of a stool sample from 65% (and counting) of the world's population. If one's hospital kept its electronic records on KHI Power Obelisks, even the aforementioned slender restriction could be disregarded. Wilhelm would need this information to evaluate the trustworthiness of the Russian's proposition. He'd also need to speak to his attorney. Fortunately, he always traveled with a sub-drone of LAWBOT-5900 on-board for just such an occasion.
"Computer. Display conference attendee identities. Brief view."
Scanning the list, Wilhelm waited for alarms to go off in his head. Who were these people?
Spoiler text: (Highlight or hover over the text to view)
Let's see what 4 successes does for total information awareness, though it's probably mainly fluff, so it probably doesn't matter.
21:55, Today: Hell Kraken failed (no successes) using 1d10 with the Target Number system with a target of 7 with rolls of 5. Mega Int for Computers.
21:54, Today: Hell Kraken rolled 4 successes using 8d10 with the Target Number system with a target of 7 with rolls of 9,10,4,4,10,6,8,1. Computers.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:52, Tue 07 June 2011.