"Breaking news! The internationally recognised CEO, Jerald Krane, of Vanguard Systems — an AI start-up valued over $1 billion — has just been arrested on charges of child trafficking, child endangerment, solicitation of sex with a min—"
Ludo cut the news feed, not needing to hear about the long list of charges that had dropped on Jerald's head.
A night had passed since he'd received the email from Jerald, and contrary to how Jerald may have been thinking, Ludo had no worries whatsoever.
In fact, he didn't even need to turn on his TV to find out the news, as he'd already had Blue give him a report of everything that had happened while he was sleeping.
For one, he was quite satisfied with how quickly Jerald went from a figurehead leading a billion dollar company, to one of the most hated men in the country with just a simple command from him.
Even with all his connections, Jerald couldn't weasel his way out of this situation. By exposing everything online to the public, with all the damning and irrefutable evidence to add, he was set to receive a hefty punishment in court.
None of his compatriots would be willing to help him out with all the publicity surrounding him.
Though Ludo knew that his hand in all this was only revealing that information to the public; all he did was expose the truth, and Jerald was over.
For any ordinary person it would be impossible to obtain the dirt on Jerald like he did, or at least not without leaving any traces — but with Blue, this was just the push of a button for Ludo.
And while he didn't plan for any of this to go down the way it had, it did bring some unexpected benefits to him.
For one, it sent a message to all of the other executives in the bidding war that he was not to be trifled with — unless they were willing to suffer the consequences.
With how well connected they all were, the executives of the various tech companies trying to buy Blue 1.0 had received the news of Jerald's arrest hours before the public did, and this startled them quite a bit.
It would be ignorant to assume that Jerald was alone in his threat against Ludo — that much could be seen by how not a single offer had come through after Jerald's all the way up to his arrest — which meant that they had all tacitly agreed on a 'wait and see' approach with how Jerald's situation played out.
With how there was little to no information they could dig up on Blue Star technologies (since there literally was no information in the first place), they were basically just testing the waters.
And boy, were they tested!
The moment news of Jerald's arrest was confirmed amongst the group, a flood of offers came through to Ludo's email — though he remained fast asleep like a baby the whole time.
It was only now after waking up that he saw just how much of a bloodbath there was in his emails, and he was still receiving more and more as the minutes ticked by.
By now there were thousands of them, even though there were just over 80 executives who were in the 'auction', which clearly showed how desperate they all were.
And honestly, Ludo couldn't blame them — the moment this technology was sold and released to the public, there was a bleak future ahead for the remaining companies who were left behind — with some even going out of business.
If Ludo were in such a situation he would be desperate too!
Not that he sympathised with them anyway; even if all but one of these companies went under the next day, the executives would be fine with all their diversified investments and numerous trust funds — this whole thing was just pure human greed showing itself in its simplest form.
However, despite seeing the desperation of all of these people vying for his technology, Ludo completely ignored it.
He gave them 24 hours to decide, and that hadn't passed yet.
Not to mention that he had far more important things to worry about at the moment.
[Your items will be delivered in 2 hours 12 minutes Earth time.]
[Please select a pick-up location.]
With just over 2 hours left before his most anticipated alien technology arrived, Ludo's heart was pumping harder than ever just to keep up with his excitement.
And the new option that had showed up now that the delivery time was close only got his blood pumping even more!
'This is so cool!'
He expanded the option for his pick up location like the Galactic Terminal had asked, and what unfolded before him was an extremely detailed hologram of the entire Earth still expanding before his eyes!
Thankfully all of the blinds were closed on his office windows, so nobody would had the delight of experiencing this with him.
And right smack dab in the middle of the North American continent lay a blinking red light, which Ludo knew instantly that it indicated his location.
He zoomed in on that, and was shocked to see that the high fidelity of detail still remained no matter how far he zoomed.
"Is this thing real time…" He subconsciously blurted.
[No. This is simply the scan of your planet that was completed at the time you set your location and civilisation. In your terms, it can be considered a 'screenshot' taken of your planet at that exact moment in time.]
Ludo was amazed, unsurprisingly.
His curiosity got the better of him and he kept zooming in, trying to see if there was a limit to how far he could go before he was forced to stop.
Eventually, he found that he could zoom in on a single blade of grass practically on the other side of the world from him in Australia!
'This amount of detail is crazy!!!'
Sadly, the one thing it left out was all the life forms that were roaming the Earth at the time he set his location with the Galactic Terminal.
This was likely done on purpose, though Ludo wouldn't know why.
Maybe it had to do with privacy or something?