Technical Difficulties

Meeting

The Sparkfire office building was bustling with voices, people running around the rooms, gathering papers and pieces of information on the like, preparing for the massive inter-company meeting taking place in 10 minutes. It was an extremely common piece of knowledge that these meetings had a legacy for going awfully, so the preparation was extremely necessary. Every possible fact or statistic on the product was gathered by everyone, just in case any major fight or argument needed to be disproven or stopped. It was a very chaotic atmosphere, everyone running around, typing on keyboards, etcetera. Julian, on the other hand, was storming all other the place shouting at the top of his voice towards his employees, demanding orders and even firing a certain individual for 'not panicking enough'. Not a moment of silence was spared, the sound of muttering or simply scattering around the room being present in the background. Everyone running about had many papers clasped to their chests, most now heading off towards the conference room.

Barry was one of the last to leave the room, doing some last run-throughs on his laptop. As he had been appointed as the main speaker, he obviously had the most to remember and do. Julian had unfairly stuffed everyone with an overload of information, way too much for anyone to be able to comfortably learn in the space of a week. Barry had barely managed this himself and was fairly confident in himself, however knowing the history of these conferences, it was entirely unpredictable. As he printed off his last document, he logged off his computer and stood up, looking to the window on his left. He looked down onto the streets, where he saw the many employees from Snowtech walking through the streets and over to this office building. The CEO, Thomas Snow was clearly recognisable, walking at the front of the group, next to a girl that looked a similar age to him, with a large amount of paper in her hands. Seeing this, he assumed that this was Caitlin Snow, the worker that he would be talking with. It was at this moment he heard a large shout coming from behind him, turning around to see Julian.

"ALLEN! Conference room, NOW," he exclaimed, looking Barry in the eyes with an angry expression rest upon his face.

"Sorry," Barry muttered, walking off towards the conference room.

He opened the door to reveal the room, everyone already sat in their seats, waiting for the Snowtech employees to arrive. The room consisted of a large circular table, half of which was already filled up, except for the four heads of the table, two being for Barry and Julian, the other two being the two main speakers of the other business, most presumably Thomas and Caitlin. Everyone who wasn't sat at the main table were sat in slightly elevated booths surrounding the table, looking down slightly towards the table, with a set of microphones in each booth so they could be heard. Everyone in the room was whispering to one another, the subject of which wasn't exactly hard to guess. However, the constant chatter came to an immediate end as Julian stormed through the room, the doors swinging and bouncing back off the doorframe as he walked in from the force he pushed them open at. He marched over to his seat and sat down, looking all of his employees in the eye.

It wasn't too long after this that the door opened again, Thomas Snow barging into the room and immediately taking his seat, followed by the rest of his employees. Everyone took their places in the room, no one uttering a word in the process. Julian had enforced his workers to wear extremely vibrant badges with the Sparkfire logo on them, and it turned out the other group had done the exact same. Around a minute of silence proceeded, just filled with many tension-causing glares from around the room.

"So, Mr Alberts, what do you have to present to us?" Thomas said, breaking the silence, his voice echoing around the room.

"Well, my good friend and co-worker Barry Allen has a speech on the matter," he replied, causing Barry to roll his eyes at the gesture.

"Go on then," Thomas continued, turning his attention towards Barry.

"Well, our prototype is due in around a weeks time, however, we already have the full-fledged plans rendered digitally," he said, causing a model of the battery to appear on a screen above him.

"We are hoping for completion within a years time. The battery will be eight times more powerful and last for ten times the time, all whilst being a quarter of the size in comparison to modern day energy sources. An example of its use would be in phone batteries. The average phone will last around 40 hours before recharge, and the battery would only take up a quarter of the space it does now. To the logical extreme of using 4 batteries in the phone, over 100 hours can be achieved. Not only that, the entire thing takes a simple hour to charge," Barry finished, many eyes still on him.

"I have to admit, Allen, I am impressed. You too, Alberts. However, it is now our turn to present, Miss Snow, if  you will."

"Okay, well, as a matter of fact, our Battery is very similar to yours. It lasts for 10 times the amount of time, as well as around 8 times more powerful. However, the difference is that ours is double the size of an average modern-day battery, but takes only half an hour to charge to full,"

The meeting continued like this for around twenty minutes, remaining surprisingly calm and controlled for the most part. This did not last long, however, as at a certain point in the meeting Julian started getting into a debate with Thomas over which was more important, charge time or battery size, and as the two never really seemed to get along, a massive argument broke out, people from either side shouting out their points and opinions. Both Barry and Caitlin remained rather quiet, just letting the whole thing blow over in the background. Unsurprisingly, the meeting was cut short, ending with Thomas and Julian both storming out of the room, instructing their employees to leave with them. Everyone scrambled out of the room and went their own ways, however, both of the head speakers were the last to leave, still sat at the table gathering their things.

"That was something, wasn't it?" Barry said, deciding to break the awkward silence now present, which was ironic as all he really wanted during that entire meeting was just that, silence, but it now felt unneeded and just awkward as a pose to nice. 

"Mhm," she stuttered, not really paying much attention to him.

"I have to admit, your product actually looks pretty decent," he continued.

"Thanks," she said, the tone of her voice not exactly showing much emotion, just sounding flat and uninterested.

"Good luck with the development of it," he said again, now slightly worried that he had made the situation more awkward, but still trying to start some friendly conversation.

"Why are you talking to me? We are meant to be rivals," Caitlin said, standing up with all her things.

"I was just starting some conversation," he replied, panicking slightly.

"Work on that," she said with a smirk, walking out of the room with all of her things clasped to her. Barry followed not long afterwards, heading over to his desk to finish the piles upon piles of paperwork he had been set to complete within the next hour, before a large announcement that he had tomorrow. No one in Sparkfire actually knew what this was, however, they did, in fact, know that it was happening tomorrow and was by Julian, so it was most likely something that they didn't want to miss.

For the sake of their jobs.