For advance chapters /patreon.com/HandsomeDuckGod
It was near dusk when he left the detention center.
Ethan had gotten a great deal of useful information out of Renner. The leadership's stance on how to handle Sterling Energy and Liam Rouse was perfectly clear. They had to be brought down, but the damage had to be kept to a minimum. Disrupting the ordinary lives of the public was not permitted, and a whole series of concerns, chief among them the proper resettlement of displaced workers, had to be fully accounted for.
In other words, the timing of the Ministry of Public Security's operation depended entirely on how fast New Future consumed Sterling.
---
Half a month passed in the blink of an eye.
After spending those two weeks in the underground laboratory, Ethan felt increasingly grateful that Hargrove had introduced Yvette to him when he did. With her running things, he could put company matters out of his mind entirely.
But today, he could no longer stay tucked away.
Yvette had given him a firm instruction over the phone: today was the first board meeting since New Future's official founding, and as Chairman, he had to attend.
Looking at the Megatron chassis, now only a little short of complete, Ethan set it aside with considerable reluctance.
He drove to the headquarters, skipped greeting the staff, and took the elevator straight to the twenty-seventh floor.
In the conference room there, Yvette sat at the head of one side of the table, smilingly reassuring everyone that it would just be a little longer. Inwardly, she had already cursed her Chairman to the far side of the moon.
The meeting was set for nine-thirty. It was nearly ten, and there was still no sign of him.
At a normal company, the shareholding directors would have lost their patience long ago. Even for a Chairman, half an hour late was a bit much. Fortunately, New Future was not a normal company. If nothing else, Ethan's reputation held the room in check, and no one present dared show impatience.
Finally, as the ten o'clock hour struck, the conference room door opened.
"Ah. My apologies, everyone. Once I got into it, I lost track of the time. No one's allowed to leave after this. I'll host a proper lunch at noon to make it up to you."
Ethan strode to the head of the table and sat.
The others waved it off graciously.
Sitting in the center of the room, taking in the respect in everyone's eyes, Ethan felt a swell of something hard to name. A little over a year ago, he'd been an ordinary high schooler with nothing to his name, and now he was the head of a ten-billion-mark energy company. Fate was a strange thing.
Then he caught Yvette's murderous glare from the side, and the sentiment evaporated on the spot.
"Since the Chairman has arrived, New Future's first board meeting will now begin."
It was called a board meeting, but only about ten people sat in the vast conference room. Since the company's founding, apart from the twenty percent of shares held by the state, the rest remained in Ethan's hands. So there were, in practice, only two parties of shareholders.
The state took the meeting seriously. Director Holt had wanted to attend in person, but the Energy Ministry was swamped, so he'd delegated a Deputy Director. Beside the Deputy Director sat several officials from the Ministry of Public Security, clearly present for the matter of Liam Rouse.
After Yvette called the meeting to order, Marcus Reyes, the day's presenter, took a sip of water, straightened his collar, and rose.
"Directors, honored officials. It's been a month and a half since New Future was established. I won't waste words. Let me open with the results we've achieved in that time."
The holographic projection shifted in the air, and a large table appeared.
"The Hidden Dragon program has been running for nearly a month. In that time, there has been not a single voltage fluctuation and not a single outage. Furthermore, per our figures, as of yesterday afternoon, the residential electricity rate in Ashford City stands at 0.03 marks per kilowatt-hour. Compared to the rate before the program began, that's a drop of roughly twenty times. And the trend is still declining. We project that within half a month, Ashford's residential rate falls below 0.01 marks per kilowatt-hour. Commercial and industrial rates have come down by varying margins as well."
Ethan and Yvette showed little reaction. They'd anticipated all of it from the program's inception.
But the group from Public Security and the Energy Ministry were struck speechless.
Common knowledge held that residential electricity ran between 0.5 and 0.6 marks per kilowatt-hour, and had for years. And even at that price, it was subsidized annually by the national treasury. If residents were ever charged at the true national cost of generation, the rate would climb well above a mark per kilowatt-hour. And now the price had dropped by a factor of dozens, all at once. This was the power of the Hidden Dragon program.
Reyes continued, and the projection shifted again.
"This is New Future's profit for the month. A few days ago, we formalized a cooperation agreement with the National Grid. They'll continue handling line maintenance and standard billing. After all costs are subtracted, this month's profit comes to approximately eight million marks."
At the mention of money, Ethan, who'd been yawning through the operational figures, instantly perked up.
Eight million might not sound like much, but that was nearly a hundred million a year. And more to the point, there were close to three hundred major cities across the country. Calculated out, the Hidden Dragon program alone could bring New Future annual revenue in the neighborhood of thirty billion. Thirty billion. Even after handing twenty percent to the state, he'd still be holding over twenty billion.
Ethan was, at that moment, exceedingly glad he'd decided to start the company.
Beside him, Yvette was moved in her own way. Science and technology really were the first engine of productivity. In under half a year, electricity costs nationwide would fall dramatically, the public's quality of life would rise, and at the same time, her Junior Martial Brother's net worth would eclipse her own entirely. More than that, there would be a gulf between their standings. She was a merchant who'd made her fortune in real estate. But her Junior Brother was not merely an entrepreneur. He was a scientist who had made an enormous contribution to the whole of the Republic.
The officials from the Energy Ministry ran the same math. Tens of billions in profit, and that before accounting for the invisible dividends, the environmental benefit of clean energy chief among them. Assessed comprehensively, the value New Future created for the country in a single year was likely north of a hundred billion. Which meant that the value produced by this fledgling company, in its very first year, might land it at the top of the entire Republic.