While Blue had completed everything and Bluestar Technology was essentially ready to start making sales, Ludo couldn't do that yet.
He had to wait for his application to go through, as the company was technically not officially in business yet, and therefore not allowed to begin selling anything until it was…
This wasn't a problem though.
In the meantime, it actually allowed him to get started with his marketing plan.
And contrary to his original idea of slowly pushing it out into the market for consumers to discover and come across themselves, he had another idea in mind…
***
In a top floor Business office located in the centre of Metro City, there stood a man who quietly stood there, looking down at all the hustle and bustle of the city below.
He was cloaked in a sleek black suit, clearly tailored to his measurements.
His face was obtuse, and he kept looking down at his expensive watch from time to time, as if time would flow any faster if he kept doing so.
The office itself was rather minimalist, lacking any particular decorations and only a single office desk in front of the floor to ceiling window, flanked either side by ergonomic office chairs to match the theme.
As the CEO of ChatCGT, Rowan Mavik was an unassuming man. His entire business philosophy involved putting competitors out of business. Over the last few years his company alone had absorbed several promising upstarts, and for those that didn't agree to be bought out, they gradually faded into obscurity behind the scenes before quietly declaring bankruptcy later on.
Others would describe him as a harsh man, devoid of human compassion or empathy for all the thousands of people who's jobs were lost as a consequence of his actions.
But Rowan would describe himself as a simple businessman, and nothing more. Sure, he'd taken several others out of business, which led to people losing their jobs. But that was nothing personal, it was just business.
Knock. Knock.
Suddenly, the door behind him opened, breaking the silence that reined in the room.
"Sir, the meeting's about to begin." His assistant, a strikingly beautiful young woman with all the curves in the right places, addressed him.
"Tell them I won't be accompanying them today, Beatrice." Rowan said with a wave of his hand.
"But sir—"
"Leave."
His cold responses prompted Beatrice to leave without causing much of a fuss. Sure, the shareholders wouldn't be happy with Rowan missing another meeting, but that was his problem, not hers.
Back in the office, Rowan stood in silent contemplation.
Normally, he wouldn't break his routine like this. It was only on special occasions, or when something serious happened, that caused him to be like this.
And something like that had disrupted his routine today.
On the desk behind him sat his laptop, with its screen still glowing faintly, open to his emails on one particular email he hadn't cleared yet.
He glanced toward it again, unable to suppress the small but persistent curiosity crawling along the back of his mind.
A single, unassuming email sent by an unknown sender.
Normally, he wouldn't even spare such a thing a second glance, but this situation was different.
It was sent to his personal email, something that very few people had access to.
This immediately set off alarm bells in his mind.
The email itself was rather simple — too simple, in fact.
The subject line was left blank, and only a single file was attached.
The name of the attachment wasn't something he recognised, but the bold claims it made did gain his attention.
Blue 1.0 - The Next Generation of AI (Demo).
Such a claim was a bold one to make, especially in front of him, the CEO of the company currently at the forefront of AI development.
But as it was sent to his personal email, his curiosity got the better of him, and he felt like he'd regret it later on if he came to ignore it.
And after opening the attachment, his suspicions proved to be right.
Even now, while staring out of the window at the constantly moving city below, he struggled to believe that the program was real.
10 years, that was how long it had been since he founded this company. Those 10 long years of developing ChatCGT from a fledgling nobody believed would make it, into the top dog of the AI world. Billions of dollars had been poured into this project to make it what it was.
Yet, in front of this one single program, all of that amounted to nothing.
He suspected that this was some sort of elaborate april fools prank that one of the shareholders made, or maybe a competitor, but with it being the middle of summer, that didn't make sense.
He had played around with the program for half an hour, and it did everything as described in the instructions of use after downloading it, to his complete shock.
Only, he was left stumped when the program crashed all of a sudden, with only a single error message stating 'Demo over' appearing where it once was.
He tried to fish through all of his system files, but every file pertaining to the program had already been deleted, gone as if it was never there to begin with.
The more he delved into what this program could do, the more shock he was left with.
Everything he had seen so far was beyond anything his own company could do.
Ding!
Suddenly, he was brought out of his trance like state by another notification on his laptop, one that he recognised all too well.
A unique notification sound that only played when he received a message on his personal email.
"Another one?" He mused.
He'd already checked to see if he could download the program again, but the email was deleted along with everything else.
So this new notification brought him some home.
Again, the subject line was blank.
But there was no attachment this time, only a single name.
"Bluestar Technology… I've never heard of it?"
Rowan felt a little confused at first, but recognising that it was once again sent by an unknown sender, he knew it had to be from the same source.
"Beatrice."
"Yes, sir?"
He called for his assistant, and she soon appeared.
"I need you to do some research on this company for me. Oh, and clear my schedule for the next week."
As a businessman, he could sniff out an opportunity from a garbage dump. And seeing that this 'Bluestar Technology' had taken the initiative to send this groundbreaking program to him, he knew they must have a reason.
But he didn't care whether he was being played or not.
This was something his company needed, at all costs.