Chapter 299 Politics and Profits and Losses, Oh My!
"What?" all three people at the table asked in unison, but in different decibels befitting of their personalities.
"Yes, just flip the board since you can't win," Aron said without missing a beat.
"I understand you think that Clinton can't win, but why ask us to support their candidate?" Rina asked.
"We all know that they have a plan, and will do nothing but cause you troubles in the future. So by secretly supporting their candidate by the time they realize what's happening, they'll have no choice but to continue supporting him. After all, he'll be the only candidate they have that still has a chance of winning. But at the same time, they'll be hesitant and their trust in him will wane since they'll be sure that you aren't doing it out of charity, but for a deeper plan.
"With the trust between them already hanging by a thread, it'll provoke internal conflict," Aron explained. He truly thought it would be the best move to avoid unexpected upsets in the future, while also putting the might of the Rothschild family to work for his own benefit.
"And what do you have that you can use to prevent him from causing problems for us?"
"There's way too many things we can use against him to force him to do some things for us, like footage of his golden showers in Russia, his tax returns, his footage with Stormy Daniel, the audio from his backstage conversation with Billy Bush about sexual assault, and so on. But keep in mind that although they should be enough to make any candidate do what you want, there's a possibility of him doing the opposite if he's pushed too far. So you should use it at your own discretion and be careful," Aron said, though the warning in his tone was offset by a glint of mischief in his eyes.
"I'm going to need to take a look at the evidence before I make my decision," Rina's father said, and both women at the table were surprised.
"Sure, I'll send it to you later. Take a look at it, but act with your own discretion, not because I suggested it as I'm still new to politics," Aron said. He wasn't too worried, as if things didn't go to plan, he still had backup plans for most possibilities, or at least those within the realm of foreseeability.
After that, their conversation moved to lighter topics, but Aron sensed that he had left a good impression on Rina's father that offset his act of hacking them and keeping hold of their secrets, so the meal continued and ended on a good note.
...
While Aron was fostering his relationship with his girlfriend's family, Biogen had made it through the regulatory process and started showing up on the market. The first buyers were people who saw the ads on their Pangea accounts and fell 'victim' to the targeted marketing driven by Big Data.
Although Pneuma hadn't been approved in America, Russia, or the EU yet, it had been approved nearly all across Africa and most of South America, where they were enjoying a drastic decrease in childhood asthma sufferers. It was being hailed as a miracle cure, as it took effect within 24 hours and there were almost no side effects. Asclepius Biotechnology had become an overnight giant in the field of pharmaceuticals, and the governments in the African and South American countries it was approved in were already making concessions and all but kneeling and begging for more.
And they weren't shy about publicizing it, either, as the louder they were about their efforts to cure asthma in their countries, the more political points those leaders won.
The successful record Pneuma was displaying put a lot of pressure on regulatory bodies in those countries that hadn't approved it yet, and Pangea again played a major role, as people who couldn't get access to it at home and couldn't wait any longer were already booking flights to Eden. And a third-world country being a medical tourism destination was absolutely unheard of!
......
"How the hell is he walking once again?" a researcher at Johnson & Johnson exclaimed as he watched a shaky cellphone camera recording of Ryan's presentation at the recent medical conference Asclepius Biotechnology had hosted in Hawaii. He knew the newly minted president and was sure that he had been crippled in an accident... but there he was on video walking without any trouble at all. And no one had ever been healed of quadriplegia that severe.
The ringing of a phone in his office interrupted his thoughts and he immediately answered it.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"Unfortunately, we're still trying to reverse engineer it, but it'll be difficult since the structure of the medicine is something I'm seeing for the first time in my thirty-seven years as a researcher. It's fascinating, and I've got our share of Folding@Home working overtime on it to hurry up the process," the man said.
(Ed note: Folding@Home is an opt-in program that uses personal computing sources, like unused game consoles and a portion of unused processing power in PCs, as a distributed supercomputer to simulate protein folding and structures to develop drugs to fight various diseases. More info here: https://foldingathome.org/ )
"So, how long will it take to have our version ready for internal testing?" asked the voice on the other side of the call.
"At least six months, and that's an optimistic estimate," the researcher replied as he massaged his temples. He knew that, if he wanted to come up with a test version of Pneuma in that time frame, neither he nor his team would be seeing their families very much over the next six months.
"Make sure you finish it, the faster the better. I'll delay the FDA as much as I can on my end, but there's some serious weight at the top trying to fast-track it so there's only so much I can do. If you can get me a working version by the time the FDA approves Pneuma, your bonus will choke you all the way to early retirement. But if you can't get it that fast, at least get us a working version by the time their patent expires."
A click announced the end of the call, and the researcher sighed and then got back to work. He could call his wife later.
"What happened to you?" He said after putting the phone down and returning his focus back to the phone that still had the video showing Ryan playing.
He immediately picked up the phone and dialed a number that he hadn't dialed in a long time, Ryan's number he had during the time they worked together.
The call didn't even connect as the automatic teller informed him that the number had been deactivated, so he immediately ended the call and dialed his secretary.
"Yes sir," his secretary said after answering the phone.
"Find a private investigator and tell them to find every bit of information about a person known as Ryan Walker," he said and ended the call before the response.
"Let's see if you can help me shorten my time frame in reverse engineering and become the golden goose," he said to himself as he immediately stood from his chair and headed to the hanger to pick up his white coat and headed to the elevator on his way to the lab to continue leading the reverse engineering of the medicine.
