Chapter 34: A Smooth Negotiation

Chapter 34: Chapter 34: A Smooth Negotiation

Daniel’s restaurant stood in the central district, its frontage all black glass, and the sign bore only a single handwritten letter in a flowing curve.

Seen from outside it was extremely elegant, but the moment he stepped through the door, Liam faltered slightly.

Inside it was deserted.

A whole wide hall laid out with taste, lamps hanging in clusters over the tables with their snow-white cloths, service staff standing straight-backed along both walls. And there were exactly two tables of customers. One was an elderly couple drinking tea, the other was a man sitting alone looking out the window.

Four in the afternoon was a quiet hour, that was true enough. But a restaurant of this size, in this location, with only two tables, was no longer a matter of the hour.

Liam looked around once. Beautiful furniture, beautiful lighting, properly trained staff. The problem wasn’t here.

The problem was that in a world where people drank nothing but nutrient fluid, a high-end restaurant selling real food was already a luxury to the point of absurdity. The people with the money to eat there were few, and the people without it never walked in at all.

He remembered what Daniel had said through the screen: [My restaurant doesn’t earn much, but it hasn’t gone bankrupt either.]

So this was what not going bankrupt looked like...

A thought passed through Liam’s mind.

He was quite fond of Daniel. This pampered young master was childish at times, but he was straightforward, he admitted when he was wrong, and he had cried over his brother until his eyes swelled in front of a complete stranger. A person like that was worth having as a friend.

And if he was a friend, then Liam couldn’t leave him running a restaurant as deserted as an abandoned temple.

Daniel had no idea what Liam was assessing, and led the three of them to his office on the second floor. Before going in, Daniel knocked twice on the door:

"Daddy, I’ve brought my friend."

From inside came a low male voice with a certain authority in it: "Come in."

Only then did Daniel open the door, and invite the three Martinez siblings inside.

Daniel’s office was very simply furnished, without any breath of daily life about it. It seemed he didn’t come here often. Daniel went over to the sofa, and bowed his head to the person sitting on it:

"Daddy."

The three Martinez siblings looked that way as well.

It was an Alpha of around fifty, his blond hair already silvering at the temples, sitting in the chair with an unhurried bearing. He wore no suit, only a thin grey knitted sweater, and looked more like a retired schoolmaster than the head of one of the ten largest financial houses in the Lumina galaxy.

Daniel stood off to one side of his Daddy, and introduced each of them to him:

"Daddy, this is Liam, my friend. These are his older brother and older sister."

Mr. Mason turned his eyes on them, and that gaze was sharp as a knife, enough to make a person shiver.

Liam took a step forward: "Hello, Mr. Mason. I’m Liam Martinez, Daniel’s friend."

Mr. Mason looked him over from head to foot, and then pointed at the chairs opposite: "Don’t be so tense, sit down, all of you."

The three siblings sat down. Daniel also picked a spot an arm’s length from his Daddy, and sat.

Mr. Mason didn’t circle around it, but went straight to the point:

"I’m not a man who cares for pleasantries, so I’ll come straight to the matter. When I received the information from Daniel, I still didn’t believe in this thing you call Cryomollis.

But from that day I have been tracking that chef’s readings every day in particular, and I discovered the thing genuinely does stabilize pheromones, to a degree far beyond any medication on the market. He hasn’t eaten any for several days now, and yet his readings remain balanced, with no sign whatsoever of slipping back."

He set a folder of documents on the table, and pushed it toward Liam.

"I agree to buy Cryomollis at the price you named, five thousand silver stars for ten."

Liam raised an eyebrow slightly. He had prepared an entire bargaining speech, and hadn’t expected the other side to agree this quickly.

However, in the very next sentence, Mr. Mason went on: "But I need a very large quantity. Thirty thousand of them a week."

The room was silent for two seconds. Then, Liam heard Benjamin beside him draw in a very faint breath.

Thirty thousand a week, which meant over four thousand a day.

Four thousand.

Isabella sat up straight, her head already switching automatically into calculation mode. Peeling one thorny weed leaf took about fifty seconds, so working a whole day without eating or sleeping would produce one thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight of them. The two of them together would only make three thousand four hundred odd...

And that was the theoretical figure. In practice they still had to pull the weeds and cut the leaf tops before peeling; and after peeling they still had to boil the worms, cut off the heads, pack them...

The two Martinez siblings sat in silence, their faces slowly twisting.

Liam caught sight of their expressions, and sighed inwardly. Thirty thousand was no small number, and Liam guessed Mr. Mason needed it for research or for a large body of users. But this quantity also exceeded what his household could manage, and he was just about to open his mouth to refuse when the blue cat’s lazy voice sounded in his head:

[Host, do you know how much work an ordinary farming robot can do?]

[How much?]

[Twice what both your brother and sister can do together. And it doesn’t need sleep. With high-grade farming robots, they’d have stripped every worm on your planet clean in under a week. And the technology to program a high-grade robot happens to be something I have. Set him a condition, trade for two ordinary robots with no programming installed, and I’ll help you rework them.]

Liam paused for a beat, and then the corner of his mouth slowly curved up. He pushed the folder back to the middle of the table, and lifted his head to look straight at Mr. Mason:

"Thirty thousand a week, I can do it. But I need to revise the price."

Mr. Mason narrowed his eyes: "You want to raise it?"

"No." Liam shook his head: "On the contrary, I’m going to lower it. Three thousand silver stars for ten."

The whole room went instantly silent.

Benjamin stared at his younger brother with his eyes round. Isabella’s mouth fell open, and a "what" very nearly escaped her. Even Daniel sat up straight, his face blank.

Only Mr. Mason didn’t move. He propped his chin on his hand, looked at Liam for a long moment, and then said slowly:

"Go on."

Liam tapped a finger lightly on the tabletop: "In exchange, you provide me with two ordinary farming robots. The kind with no programming installed, still on the original operating system."

Mr. Mason frowned: "Robots with no programming? You know how to program them yourself?"

Liam nodded: "I do." The blue cat knowing was equivalent to him knowing, so it wasn’t a lie at all.

The two of them looked at each other across the table.

Mr. Mason looked at the eighteen-year-old sitting opposite him. The young man’s face still carried a little of the softness of someone newly grown, but his eyes were calm to a degree that was nothing like a child’s.

Men seasoned in business sometimes faced him carrying a few degrees of fear, and yet this child was strangely calm.

And from the beginning until now, the brother and sister sitting beside him had served only as background, while the one who decided everything in that household was Liam. Mr. Mason suddenly found himself interested in this boy.

He was curious as to how a farming family could raise a child as clever as this.

Mr. Mason privately gave Liam his approval, and then nodded decisively:

"Two ordinary robots have no functions to speak of, so I’ll provide you with two high-grade ones. I’ll have them delivered tomorrow."

For the Mason family, two farming robots without programming were hardly worth mentioning, and there were whole rows of them sitting in the family’s surplus warehouse. But that forty percent price reduction, calculated across thirty thousand a week, saved a hundred million silver stars a year.

The contract was drawn up on the spot.

The signing party was recorded as Martinez Farm, represented by Benjamin Martinez. Benjamin signed the contract with his hand shaking so badly he could barely write. Isabella leaned close to his ear, and whispered: "Brother, Daniel is watching."

Benjamin paused for a moment, and then put the pen down firmly in the signature box. A signature of flying dragons and dancing phoenixes was immediately entered into the electronic contract.

Isabella believed she had spoken very quietly, and that nobody would hear. However, those words of hers did not get past Mr. Mason’s ears. He glanced discreetly at Benjamin. Benjamin only felt a chill run down his spine. He rubbed the back of his neck, privately thinking he must be too tense.

The contract had barely been signed before Daniel sprang to his feet: "That’s business done! Everyone stay for dinner! My head chef has been waiting since this morning!"

Liam didn’t stand on ceremony either, and nodded straight away: "All right. Thank you."

That meal was eaten in a private room on the third floor. Daniel had hired a human chef to cook, so the food tasted even better than Liam’s own. Liam nodded in approval, and quietly asked Daniel about the restaurant’s clientele and how it was run.

Once he had heard Daniel’s explanation, several suitable business models surfaced in Liam’s head. He said:

"When I get home I’ll put together a new business plan and send it to you. With this location and a chef of this standard, for the place not to turn a profit really would be a great pity."

Daniel’s eyes lit up, and he began chattering away about everything under the sun. The other three people in the room ate in silence, occasionally raising their heads to look at the two Omegas with fond eyes.

Both host and guests enjoyed that meal enormously.

Once the main course was finished, the staff cleared the table and then laid out dessert and fruit juice. This world was poor in cuisine, so the dessert was only a few cakes made from jelly and fruit juice. Even so it was already very high-end.

The cakes were made rather well, but for Liam they only served to cut the richness. By the time dessert and drinks were finished it was already seven in the evening, and the three Martinez siblings asked to take their leave.

Before they left, Daniel had people carry out a load of fresh food filling two preservation crates:

"This is a gift for you."

Liam was taken aback: "This is far too valuable, I can’t accept it."

Daniel puffed out his cheeks: "If you don’t accept I really will be angry! Besides, this isn’t a free gift. You haven’t livestreamed for several days now and my soul feels utterly empty. Take this lot home and cook a meal for me to watch!"

Liam laughed. He opened the spatial bracelet, took out five kilograms of Australian mandarins that had been packed earlier and set them on the table, and pushed them toward Daniel.

"These are for you. They’re mandarins, no mental energy in them but plenty of vitamins."

Daniel picked one up and turned it this way and that, his face full of bewilderment. Just as he opened his mouth to bite into the whole thing, Benjamin reacted fastest, and hurriedly caught hold of his hand.

"That isn’t how you eat this."

He took one himself, pulled off the stem, dug a fingernail into the top and peeled the skin away. A sweet, cool fragrance spread instantly through the VIP room, and every one of the service staff in it turned to look.

"Peel it, separate the segments, spit out the seeds." Benjamin very naturally lifted a segment to Daniel’s mouth: "Don’t eat more than five at a time or you’ll break out in spots."

Daniel stared at the segment, and then stared at Benjamin with a look that... was difficult to put into words.

Only then did Benjamin realize what he had just done, and his face flushed scarlet on the spot. He pushed the mandarin into Daniel’s arms, and then turned and fled, and even ran straight into the door before vanishing around the corner of the corridor.

Liam and Isabella helplessly covered their faces, hardly daring to lift their heads to look at Daniel and Mr. Mason.

Liam coughed, hurriedly swept Daniel’s gift into the spatial bracelet, and then said goodbye to the two Masons. He and Isabella left the VIP room, and only once they were a good distance down the corridor did they look at each other, and burst into giggles together.

Who would have thought their older brother had such an endearing side to him...