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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Evolution


So much changed over the next few months. The marketing department dove into a hiring blitz—now that we had something to sell to the consumer market, we needed an actual sales force—and they wasted little time. Our so-called “Design 49” wouldn’t entice any customers; if anything, it served to remind people that our first forty-eight designs failed.

The company underwent an evolution of its own. The marketing department, which had doubled in size after the influx of cash, decided that Reptilian Corporation sounded too dry, too technical for the broad consumer market that we hoped to tap into. After many discussions with the executive team—to which I was not invited—they settled decided that the Build-A-Dragon company fit the mission better.

PetWong also died in committee, no surprise there. Instead, the marketing folks named our domestication breakthrough “The Rover” and branded it as a dragon for the family home. The press coverage from the auction had brought in a flood of orders, enough to keep our egg printer running for months straight.

With the push of a button, we could have swung into mass production mode right then and there. But Greaves set a firm maximum quota of dragons so that the production line only occupied half of our output. The rest were reserved, as he put it, for “design and innovation.”

“I don’t understand it,” I said to Korrapati, when we were out for lunch. We’d started going to the food trucks together once every couple of weeks. It wasn’t a romantic thing at all—even though she was gorgeous, I think we both realized that a relationship between designers in our little lab was a recipe for disaster. Or at least, that was the vibe I seemed to be getting, so I saw the wisdom of it.

But we both loved food, so we made the food trucks a little good-luck tradition.

“What don’t you understand?” she asked.

“Why aren’t we churning out Rovers to fill those orders, so that we can make a pile of money?” I shook my head. “Maybe I’m bad at math.”

“I’ve seen your code, and I don’t think that’s it.”

“Oh. Thanks,” I said, and I could feel the heat in my cheeks.

“You’re bad at economics.”

“Ouch.”

“It’s basic supply and demand, Noah. The harder they are to get, the more people want them. And the higher price we can charge for each one.”

“Maybe we could still charge the price and sell a crapload.”

“This is better. It gives the company a solid cash flow, while not taxing our infrastructure too heavily.”

It made sense, though I grumbled to myself that a taxed infrastructure would make my life easier. If everyone was super busy, my unsanctioned side project could hardly attract notice. With the God Machine churning out eggs constantly, I might even print one or two off the books.

I couldn’t argue with that. In the wake of Wong’s victory, the sense of competition among designers grew even stronger. The hog-hunting dragon (renamed “The Guardian”) and the Rover marked important milestones for Build-A-Dragon’s design team, but there were other market opportunities. Other niches to fill. All of us wanted to design breakout model number three. As the newest member of the design team and with no official credits yet, I still had to prove myself before I’d have full access to company resources. I had big plans for them.

The others, as far as I could tell, were swinging for the fences. O’Connell and the Frogman were working on a large flying model. Korrapati had tackled a stouter version of the Rover for police and military use, which would be in high demand since all the police dogs died off. Wong wouldn’t tell me exactly what he was doing, but said it was “big, very big.”

I figured as long as everyone was going big, I might as well go small.


I got to work early and well-caffeinated. With the entire design team actively working on new prototypes and running my simulator, we constantly fought over computer resources. Of course, no matter how early I got in, some people never seemed to leave.

Nihao, Wong Xiansheng,” I called over the cubicle wall, knowing he’d be there.

Wong rolled out of his workstation with his crooked little grin. “Good morning, Noah Parker.”

“How are the blades?”

“Not busy.”

“Good. So, you ready to tell me what you’re designing?”

He shook his head. “Still top secret.”

I laughed. “All right, then I’m not telling you mine.”

He rolled back into his workstation. I logged in and started a new prototype based on the Rover model. Evelyn wanted that to be the starting point since we had proven domestication. I reduced the body size to the smallest setting DragonDraft3D allowed. This dragon would be tiny. Less than a few pounds. The small size freed up a lot of feature points, which I fed into intelligence quotient. A tiny, clever dragon. To my knowledge, we’d never printed something like this before.

Then I reduced some of the other traits—tooth size, claw length, muscle mass—so I could spend some points on wingspan. A tiny, clever, flying dragon. I might as well enjoy this. For coloring, I chose light brown and sage green. Desert colors. It seemed appropriate, somehow.

I hit the Print button. The God Machine whirred, and my conveyor belt squealed into motion. The egg arrived a few seconds later. It had a reddish-brown tint and couldn’t have been bigger than a softball. It rolled off the conveyor belt onto the integrated scale, which took a measure on every printed egg and compared it to the expected weight. At least, that’s what was supposed to happen. Instead, a red error message flashed on my monitor:

printing failure

Strange. The egg looked fine to me. A bit on the small side, sure, but technically sound. Another message flashed beneath it:

Weight: 0.0 kg

That wasn’t right; even this egg should be about half a kilogram. Maybe the scale was off. I moved the egg over against my workstation so that I could give it a closer look. The weight tray looked a tad off-kilter, so I jiggled it a few times. It settled flat. A new bright-red warning message from my monitor demanded my attention:

reprinting

“Shit.” I searched for the abort command, but the God Machine had already swung into motion. Before I could stop it, my conveyor belt whirred. An identical egg slid out. This time, the scale registered the correct weight at 0.50 kilograms. Damn thing must have been jammed before. Now that the weight matched the expected value, DragonDraft3D made a record of the successful printing and sent a pickup request right to the hatchery.

Jim arrived within minutes, when I was still tinkering with the scale to figure out what went wrong.

I glanced up. “Hey, Jim. It’s right here.” I handed them the egg, which I’d set on my lap while I fiddled with the scale.

“Is this a joke?” Jim asked.

I blinked. He actually spoke to me. And here I thought him an egg-obsessed robot. “What?”

“This can’t be within spec,” he said.

“Hey man, good things come in small packages.”

He shook his head but set the egg carefully in the middle of the transport foam with both hands. “Nobody sneeze.”

They rolled it out. My workstation beeped with an incoming message. Evelyn was passing along a custom order. “About time,” I said.

I sat down and got to work on it, which is why I forgot all about the softball-sized egg that had rolled behind my workstation.



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