The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 42 : Restructuring Techredulous

Dusk was tired. She had a bad time ever since Luke had left for Regis.

The pressure of the studies, the Military Trainings, the work on the VR projects at Techredulous, all started to crowd into her day. She had not seen Luke for 8 weeks. She rarely even got to talk to him anymore. She had herself started to behave somewhat like the spoilt rich kids she used to detest. Most of the nights, she had dinner with Susco and Rosemary at the Lounge on the top floor of Dorm 6 or in one of the fancy places at Students Square.

She now had money to pay for her food, though Rosemary insisted on paying most of the time. Either Rosemary or Susco drove her new pink Hover-Car around for her. They mostly went together to the office of Techredulous. There was so much to be done. Deciding on the hardware, equipment, taking interviews of employees, planning the architecture of the product, even planning what products they should work on.

Susco seemed to like the work and found all of it fascinating. Though her contract required her to come only for board meetings, she went almost every day. Many of the days, Daniel came over also. Dusk found that Rosemary worked with a feverish passion, always wanting more and more work, decisions, action. But the problem was that neither Dusk nor Rosemary had any experience of managing a company. They constantly messed up the planning and scheduling. It was Susco's planning and management skills that actually saved them.

Even during interviews, Dusk understood technology and could tell if the person sitting across knew their jobs. At times they requested Professor Elton to come along. Sometimes Daniel was present if it was an area of expertise required of him. They were of immense help. But they had a problem - neither Dusk nor Rosemary were any good in understanding people. There again, Susco was their life saver. Without her help, they would have been lost and would have taken on board the wrong set of people.

That particular day, Daniel had come into the office just as they were packing up. He looked harried.

"I have spent the whole day in Regis today." He commented. "But I have grand news. We are buying the HRT engine! It belongs to us now."

All three of them looked confused. Rosemary was the first to react, "Why do we need to buy it?"

Daniel looked at her like she had gone mad. "What do you mean? All of our products for the military are dependent on HRT. All the new gaming systems we are planning to integrate into VR from the gaming companies, they run on HRT. That's why they are giving us that work. Because Dusk made the HRT and they now want it integrated into the HRT. How can we do without buying it? How will the products work if we cannot use the HRT? If it belongs to someone else?"

"Sorry, you mean we cannot use the HRT if we do not own it? I wrote the program. I have a copy of it with me anyway." Dusk said with her chin jutting out like a rebellious child.

"Oh God! Don't you people know anything about Intellectual Property Rights?" Daniel groaned. He looked up the relevant summary and passed it to them.

Reading it, Rosemary and Dusk got worried. They had not considered the concept of Intellectual Property Rights (called IPR) and its impact on them.

"If we didn't own it, we couldn't use it?" Dusk asked again.

"We would need to take a license and pay the royalty..."

"Well, good thing you bought it. Then the problem is solved." Rosemary replied with relief.

"Not so fast. It costs $1.75 Million. In a way, it just smashes our budgets out of the window. The Shareholders have to approve it because the amount is huge. If it was smaller, the entire Board is here, we could just say yes. The problem is that our total budget for the year is $ 3.5 million, for which we have a million in equity already and Princess Rosemary has arranged $2.5 million. Plus we will get money from sales during the year and some advances too from Ministry of Education. But the HRT was not factored in?"