Part 83 (2/2)

One look from his blazing eyes was enough to send the Imagineers scurrying. They didn't even take their prototype with them. Hackelberg closed the door behind them.

”h.e.l.lo, Samuel,” he said.

”Nice to see you. Can I offer you a gla.s.s of water? Iced tea?”

Hackelberg waved the offers away. ”They're using your boxes to print their own designs,” he said.

”What?”

”Those freaks with their home-made ride. They've just published a system for printing their own objects on your boxes.”

Sammy rewound the conversations he'd had with the infosec people in Imagineering about what countermeasures they'd come up with, what they were proof against. He was p.i.s.sed that he was finding out about this from Hackelberg. If Lester and Perry were hacking the DiaBs, they would be talking about it nonstop, running their mouths on the Internet. Back when he was his own compet.i.tive intelligence specialist, he would have known about this project the second it began. Now he was trying to find a compet.i.tive intelligence person who knew his a.s.s from his elbow, so far without success.

”Well, that's regrettable, obviously, but so long as we're still selling the consumables...” The goop was a huge profit-maker for the company. They bought it in bulk, added a proprietary, precisely mixed chemical that the printer could check for in its hoppers, and sold it to the DiaB users for a two thousand percent markup. If you tried to subst.i.tute a compet.i.tor's goop, the machine would reject it. They s.h.i.+pped out new DiaBs with only half a load of goop, so that the first purchase would come fast. It was making more money, week-on-week, than popcorn.

”The crack they're distributing also disables the checking for the watermark. You can use any generic goop in them.”

Sammy shook his head and restrained himself from thumping his hand down on the desk. He wanted to scream.

”We're not suing them, are we?”

”Do you think that's wise, Samuel?”

”I'm no legal expert. You tell me. Maybe we can take stronger countermeasures with the next generation --” He gestured at the prototype on his desk.

”And abandon the two million units we've s.h.i.+pped to date?”

Sammy thought about it. Those families might hang on to their original two million forever, or until they wore out. Maybe he should be building them to fall apart after six months of use, to force updates.

”It's just so unfair. They're ripping us off. We spent the money on those units so that we could send our message out. What the h.e.l.l is wrong with those people? Are they compulsive? Do they *have* to destroy every money-making business?”

Hackelberg sat back. ”Samuel, I think it's time we dealt with them.”

Sammy's mind was still off on the strategies for keeping Lester and Perry at bay, though. Sure, a six-month obsolescence curve would do it. Or they could just charge money for the DiaBs now that people were starting to understand what they were for. h.e.l.l, they could just make the most compelling stuff for a DiaB to print and maybe that would be enough.

Hackelberg tapped the tip of his cane once, sharply. Sammy came back to the conversation. ”So that's settled. Filing suit today. We're going to do a discovery on them that'll split them open from a.s.shole to throat. No more of this chickens.h.i.+t police stuff -- we're going to figure out every source of income these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have, we're going to take away their computers, we're going down to their ISPs and getting their emails and instant messages.

”And as we've seen, they're going to retaliate. That's fine. We're not treating these people as a couple of punk pirates who go down at the first sign of trouble. Not anymore. We know that these people are the compet.i.tion. We're going to make an example of them. They're the first ones to attack on this front, but they won't be the last. We're vulnerable, Samuel, but we can contain that vulnerability with enough deterrent.”

Hackelberg seemed to be expecting something of Sammy, but Sammy was d.a.m.ned if he knew what it was. ”OK,” he said lamely.

Hackelberg's smile was like a jack o'lantern's. ”That means that we've got to be prepared for their discovery on *us*. I need to know every single detail of this DiaB project, including the things I'd find if I went through your phone records and your email. Because they *will* be going through them. They'll be putting you and your operation under the microscope.”

Sammy restrained his groan. ”I'll have it for you,” he said. ”Give me a day or two.”

He saw Hackelberg out of his office as quickly as he could, then shut the door. Hackelberg wanted everything, and that meant *everything*, including his playmates from the advertising industry -- everything. He was becoming the kind of executive who emitted strategic intelligence, rather than the kind who gathered it. That wouldn't do. That wasn't the natural order of things.

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