At the earth-based HQ of the IOS Corporation things were looking far from rosy for those gathered around the table, where the order of the day was to maintain the corporation's status quo, which was total dominance of the Solar Systems interstellar business. The boom or bust model, used by a succession of conglomerate CEOs, was about to implode, or the unthinkable alternative would erupt into an all-out Solar Business war. The latter outcome was an alternative without winners, as it could cascade drawing in the smallest and most power-hungry corporations. The escalation would result in a civilisation-ending warfare of overwhelming magnitude. And if not avoided, it would lead to the destruction of humanity and everything that it had achieved and the life you know destroyed in a fraction of the time it had taken humanity to evolve from the apes. Now numbered in the trillions your species has succeeded in re-engineering the space surrounding its home planet and populating the Solar System and beyond.

To any sane person, it is obvious the concept of war is nothing short of madness, but this is an age where CEOs have replaced the despotic leaders of earlier centuries and any outcome was possible. Because sadly, today's CEOs still bear a strikingly similar lack of compassion for humanity, driven by the same insane desire for power, and the threat of losing their omnipotent, godlike status is untenable and their psychopathic mentality drives them to make choices irrespective of the collateral damage. A mentality that would lead them on a journey to the edge of extinction, where without intervention, it would lead them to believe there is no other option but to sacrifice everything and everyone, rather than face the shame of an ego-sapping defeat. And if the truth were known they are so deranged that their impact on humanity and the Solar System's web-like infrastructure is of little insignificance, for they are more concerned about losing the opportunity to depart this world whilst reciting the family's centuries-old motto on their deathbeds.

The current CEO of IOS Interstellar Orionids was no exception to the rule, he was called Oscar Zillion, a megalomaniac with a surname to match a name his family adopted when their wealth exceeded normal means of measure. Oscar was the product of successive generations of genetic engineering, he epitomised a process begun by an excessively ambitious gynarchy, determined to develop the perfect male and female humans, all of whom were inspired by the ancient family motto. A motto which was quoted on the deathbed of the company's first genetically modified CEO. Her words were meant as an ironic jest about her earlier life and her titanic struggles with the pre-IOS Board, not the rest of the corporate world. But although misunderstood, the words were incredibly powerful and have been religiously recited by each of her successors on their deathbeds.

"It will be wonderful to die, knowing I had a marvellous time, ruining everything my competition had to offer."

However, elevation to CEO was not your atypical inherited position, but one earned only by the most devious and heartless of the elite who trod the route to the top, navigating a conglomerate riddled with corruption and conspiracy. Even with the aid of genetic engineering, life expectancy among the upper echelons of the corporate world was lower than you might think, therefore the elimination of compassion was a given essential for any CEO worth a pinch of salt, in this dog-eat-dog world.

Oscar Zillion had called an emergency board meeting to discuss the latest scientific revelation emanating from sources within the research facility of their main competitor ZPT, Zero-point Tech. ZPT were a rapidly growing company that had been founded by his elder twin siblings, who were classified as retrograde during puberty when they began to develop an alarming degree of empathy toward the plight of the Solar System's trillions of modern-age wage slave peons, who unlike their overlords did not have either the resources or opportunity to become a candidate for the genetic modification program. As was the norm in the corporate world, Oscar considered the workforce as nothing more than disposable slaves to whom he paid a pittance and used merely as steppingstones in his quest to fulfil a business dream of interstellar supremacy, a far cry from that perceived by the family's founding gynarchy. Oscar also had a twin sister, who had mysteriously vanished when on a trip to an outer planet, a misfortune that was surprisingly still commonplace during space travel and therefore barely got a mention in the Solar Media, which wasn't surprising as Oscar's corporation owned all the significant solar media. However, within the corporate elite it was assumed that Oscar had done the right thing and facilitated her death or her incarceration at some remote space facility, the latter was considered unlikely as evidence was rarely left to be uncovered and a body ejected into the void of space was unlikely to be found in Oscar's lifetime, if ever.

It had been reported that Zero-point Tech had cracked the Quantum Physics dilemma postulated by the ancient physicist Albert Einstein, leaving behind an enigma that apart from laboratory simulations had stubbornly remained unproven for several centuries after his death. It may seem unbelievable but there were countless abortive attempts to produce viable clones of Einstein and his first wife after the illegal and secret exhumation of their remains. The reasoning behind his ex-wife's exhumation was that it was widely believed that Mileva Marić had been the spark which ignited his genius and that any viable clone would need the same support if it were to develop and excel at their donor's earlier speciality, a branch of physics concerned with a quantum theory which stated:

"Quantum physics allows for particles to be in two states at the same time."

A theory which was commonly accepted as a fact although no real-world practical means of determining it to Einstein's satisfaction had been developed, to the point where it had all but been discarded by the mainstream scientific community. However, although Oscar's elder siblings lacked the insensitivity gene, they made up for the shortcoming with buckets full of determination and a level of intelligence which outstripped their younger siblings and enabled them to see what others, including Einstein, could not.

Based on the twin's superior knowledge and their thorough review of the scientific facts and theories it had long been a concern that Oscar's claims of transporting people to the edge of the Solar System and beyond had been grossly exaggerated. But the lack of insight and bribery within the scientific community allowed his conglomerate to proceed with their venture unhindered, enabling them to lay claim to all the Rock Zone's valuable resources. This gave them an overwhelming head start, allowing them the time to mine and reprocess its resource and use it to develop a growing trail of Space Stations, it was hoped would become the bridge used by humanity to cross the cosmic void, to find and exploit other solar systems.

So, the focus of the sibling's combined genius was to develop a truly harmless and more efficient means of travel that would allow the journey between Space Stations without the need to live out one's life isolated from the rest of humanity in interstellar space.

On the face of it, this would appear to be mutually beneficial to both conglomerates, but IOS had broken every rule in the book to reach the Rock Zone, years ahead of their competitors and the only reason their crimes remained hidden from detection was the fact that it was impossible to travel there, to gather the evidence required. And, if his siblings were successful in developing a means of travelling between two given points in space and time, in the blink of an eye, all his conglomerate's wrongdoings would be revealed, and his company stock would nose-dive into oblivion on the Solar Exchange, despite all the skulduggery they had used to reach the Hand of God.

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