?Chapter 6637 Barrow Rakovshchik


    Barrow Rakovshchik dismissed thetest report about the financial condition of one of the subsidiarypanies of EJF HardWorks.


    The event known as the Great Severing had caused thergest financial crisis to ur since the start of the Age of Mechs.


    Many magnates, groups and businesses that invested heavily into the Red Ocean Dwarf Gxy lost their investments overnight.


    The devastation caused by this abrupt shutdown rippled throughout the Milky Way Gxy at a rapid speed.


    At first, the damage remained rtively limited. People still clung to the hope, however fleeting it may be, that the Greater Beyonder Gate in the Maryan Ultima System could reconnect to its counterpart in the Red Ocean.


    Then more and more sources confirmed that an entire dwarf gxy had disappeared from the Milky Way''s orbit!


    This more than anything proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was no way for the Greater Beyonder Gates to open up a passage anymore.


    When further news revealed that the native aliens of the Red Ocean actually managed to transport their entire dwarf gxy to the orbit of Messier 87 of all ces, it sounded the death knell of many investors who bet big in the Red Ocean.


    Although the amount of institutional investors and retail investors who adopted a high risk profile was not too exaggerated, their sudden copse caused many disruptions and other consequences throughout human civilization in the ''old gxy.


    Far too many gullible idiots with little to no financial literacy hadpletely vited the rules of sound investment and tried to leverage themselves up to the limit in order to earn huge fortunes.


    These investors did indeed manage to earn amazing returns in the initial years. As long as the pioneers entrusted their money to sessfully colonized a few lucrative star systems and managed to get their settlements up and running, the booming frontier economy rapidly drew in further immigrants and investors.


    Those that werete to the party only carned a fraction of the profits that could be made in the new frontier.


    This exacerbated the frenzy and caused more and more people who were jealous at the insane luck enjoyed by the initial investors to borrow as much money as they could to increase their payouts!


    Unfortunately for all of them, when the basket where they put all of their eggs had been whisked away, everyone lost.


    The investors went bankrupt en masse.


    The financial institutions that loaned money to these suckers rued mountains of bad debt on their bnce sheets.


    If they wererge and prosperous enough to absorb these enormous losses, then they most certainly suffered painful haircuts that set them back decades if not centuries! Companies that had retooled their operations to service the needs of the new frontier became bankrupt. Trillions upon trillions of people gotid off, causing entire states to enter into deep recessions.


    Though human civilization had suffered much more severe shocks during the turbulent years of the Age of Conquest, this crisis was especially bad because far too many people and institutions had growncent.


    Yarad Industries was no exception to this rule. As the CEO of a regional industrial powerhouse, Barrow Rakovshchik found himself stuck at work for an entire half year. He could not leave anything to chance. Yarad Industries had admittedly been a little too slow in ramping up its investments in the new frontier. This allowed thepany to avoid losses that would have been devastating enough to plunge its share price and cause ripple effects that would have doomed one of Genser Federation''s industrial mainstays.


    However, the same could not be said forpanies that were upstream and downstream of its supply chains!


    Banks were having trouble supplying liquidity to major corporations. Logisticalpanies were unable to meet their transportation obligations. Manufacturers that produced goods for export to the Red Ocean lost ess to their customer base.


    The crisis engulfing all of these otherpanies affected the bottom line of Yarad Industries and its many subsidiaries. There were times when Barrow had grown deeply concerned whether he could keep hispany afloat.


    Fortunately, the first-rate state situated in the gctic center had built up a healthy reserve over the centuries. Its leaders had quickly decided to enact unprecedented degrees of financial assistance and other forms of aid.


    This not only saved its economy from plunging even further, but also provided enough support to save Yarad Industries from suffering worse consequences.


    Even so, hispany had still been forced to sell off some of its prized assets and subsidiarypanies in order to plug the remaining holes.


    At this time, the C-suite of Yarad Industries had already begun to entertain the notion of selling off EJF HardWorks.


    The subsidiarypany was mostly responsible for operating dozens of shipyards. The demand for starships had skyrocketed as more and more pioneers and colonial states required starships to explore alien locations and connect the sprawling colonies of mankind together.


    Yet now that pioneering in the Red Ocean had be defunct, demand for starships had plunged to the lowest point in two centuries.


    While there were still a lot of potential customers in the old gxy who had need of starships as well, there were a lot ofpetitors in this cutthroat industry!


    Other shipbuildingpanies had expanded their operations shortly after the opening of the Red Ocean. They too thought that they could make an insane killing by selling starships at inted prices to the pioneers and the colonial states of the Red Ocean. Now that this was no longer possible, the additional shipyards had instead begun to divert their output to the old gxy, causing a glut of starships to enter the ship market. Certainly, a lot of shipbuildingpanies had already adjusted to the new reality and either sold or mothballed their excess orbital shipyards, but this did not happen frequently enough to stop the average price of starships to plunge by a whopping 60 percent in the past three years!


    Since most of the executives at Yarrow Industries saw little hope that the price of starships would return to their old levels, selling off EJF HardWorks became an increasingly more sensible decision.


    While it would cause Yarrow Industries to lose the ability to produce starships for its own operations, there were so many cheaper and more efficient alternatives on the market that the loss should not be big.


    Just four years ago, people would have considered Barrow to be insane for thinking about selling off a shipbuildingpany with many orbital shipyards under its control. How times changed. Now, the post-Great Severing economy of the old gxy had caused everyone to develop a negative outlook on shipbuildingpanies. After Barrow wrote and transmitted a quick message on the matter of selling off E.JF HardWorks, he handled his remaining work and eventually left his office in the early


    evening.


    He soon boarded an armored shuttle and flew to the outskirts of the city where Yarad Industries established his headquarters.


    This time, his shuttle under escort did not fly to his estate. It instead flew towards the academic district where arge number of universities had made themselves home.


    The Genser Federation was a first-rate state that had remained stable in the gctic center for a long time.


    Its military strength was rtively average, but the state had persistently invested in its


    R&D sector.


    The local mech industry had be especiallyrge and developed due to favorable


    policies and other reasons.


    The Genser Federation had chosen to stay neutral in the old rivalry between the Greater Terran united Confederation and the New Rubarth Empire.


    This allowed it to be one of the few truly neutral centers of learning and


    technological development.


    One of the advantages this brought was that the New Mech Research Initiative had chosen to base its headquarters and primary R&D facility on this very!


    As the shuttle carrying the off-duty CEO finally entered a hangar and finally made anding, Barrow Rakovshchik distinctly rxed his somewhat stiff and formal posture and adopted a more easygoing bearing.


    He left most of his security guards behind as he passed through a checkpoint and entered the white-coated halls of the NMRI.


    Inside the NMRI, Barrow was no longer a CEO, but instead the treasurer of a non-profit


    research institution.


    The people that worked or volunteered their services to the NMRI werepletely different from the ambitious career climbers back at Yarad Industries.


    There, everyone was out for themselves. They only paid lip service to the notion of


    putting thepany ahead of their individual priorities.


    Here, Barrow could rx and express himself without fearing that he would paint


    himself as a fool.


    This was because he was among like-minded enthusiasts.


    "Barrow! You''vee! Come here and take a look at this research report. It details the


    "Project WR-13?" Barrow skeptically asked as he epted the digital file transmission


    and rapidly skimmed through the contents.


    As a businessman, Barrow did not pretend to understand the science of this research project. He instead read through the introduction and conclusion in order to gain a quick understanding of the gains.


    An older gray-haired man replied with an optimistic smile. "It is thetest project that


    explores whether it is possible to artificially alter the brain structure and chemistry of a norm to resemble that of a potentate. Thetest set of cloned brains that had been operated upon have yet to elevate their gic aptitudes above F, but there are slight hints in some cloned brains that their responsiveness and capacity for digital data processing have improved by up to 4.9 percent."


    "4.9 percent? That is big." The treasurer answered.


    It was far from the 1000''s of percents that was required to meaningfully raise a person''s gic aptitude to a more eptable level, but it was a start!


    Chief Scientist. Idni Zenokon certainly saw hope of further progress with thetest


    results. "I can feel it, Barrow. After 100 years of continuous research, the NMRI may finally be able to prove to the mechmunity that we have not been squandering billions of MTA credits worth of donations on worthless and ineffectual research. I amn/?/vel/b//jn dot c//om


    bing more convinced that Project WR-13 is on the right path to enable us to pilot a mech in our lifetimes."


    "Are you not being premature in your judgment, my friend?" Barrow carefully asked. "Your predecessors formed simr opinions in the past. They diverted far too much of our limited funds on research projects that eventually went nowhere."


    "This is different, Barrow!" Idni insisted! "All of our other research projects have made too little progress inparison. The ones that investigate whether we can pilot a mech by heavily digitizing our brains have never solved the loss of humanity problem. The awful project that seeks to develop an alternate control interface involving biomechs is too terrifying for me to describe."


    "Hm, you do have a point, but just because Project WR-13 has delivered slightly positive results at the start does not mean that this pattern will persist."


    "It will." The older chief scientist insisted as he stared right into Barrow''s eyes. "I am


    willing to bet my life on it. Project WR-13 only attempts to replicate an existing phenomena, The Chosen Human has repeatedly used his God Kingdom to transform norms into mech pilots. What he can do with the power of his divine will alone, we can


    do with the power of science and technology. If not for the fact that we understand way too little about what brain conditions can actually produce the phenomenon of qualified gic aptitude, the researchers assigned to Project WR-13 will not have to resort to trial and error to randomly modify hundreds of thousands of cloned human brains." Due to humanity''s inadequate understanding of gic aptitude and how it tied to the physiology of the brain, the NMRI had no choice but conduct research in such a stupid and incredibly wasteful manner.


    There was no guarantee that the same treatment on the brains that had disyed


    slightly better performance than before could be replicated!


    This was because the cloned brains randomly changed over time to be different.


    from their exact gic copies.


    A slight change in brain chemistry or other variables could easily invalidate any potential


    gains in gic aptitude!


    Barrow inwardly sighed. Though Idni sounded optimistic, the reality was that Project.


    WR-13 hardly brought them any closer to developing a solution to the gic aptitude


    tyranny.


    How much more money did they need to spend on fruitless research? How many more years must they wait for a research project to hit the jackpot? Would Barrow ever be able to fulfill his long-held goal of piloting a mech in an authentic manner in his lifetime?