The next morning arrived with the world still reeling from the Transparency Report Lucy had posted the night before. Social media platforms remained flooded with reactions, financial analysts continued publishing emergency breakdowns, and tech journalists scrambled to contextualize numbers that defied conventional business logic.

While chaos consumed the digital landscape, Liam sat in his Hombly Hills mansion, finalizing preparations for his departure from Earth.

The process took less time than expected. After reviewing everything twice, he realized there wasn't much to actually prepare. His interstellar trip didn't mean exile or isolation. If something urgent arose—truly urgent, not just inconvenient—he could return by jumping into the Dimensional Space, and to wherever he's needed.

Still, one thing remained. His friends deserved to know he'd be unavailable for a while.

Liam picked up his phone and opened their group chat. The conversation history was sparse. After they'd all left Dubai, the group had gone quiet. A few work-related messages scattered across the past month, but nothing substantial. Everyone had apparently been busy with their own lives.

Liam smiled and typed out his message: "Heading off on an extended trip. Won't be reachable for the next few months."

He hit send and watched the message appear in the chat. His friends would see it eventually, probably wonder where he was going, maybe ask a few questions he might or might not answer. That was fine. They didn't necessarily need to know he was leaving the solar system.

He has no idea what they have been busy with but he wishes them all the best.

He set the phone down and lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts drifted back to the Transparency Report and the reactions it had triggered.

Nova Technologies had posted impressive first-month numbers. $130 million in revenue without a single advertisement, purely from user engagement and in-platform spending. For most companies, that would represent a spectacular success.

But Liam knew the truth behind those numbers. Nova Technologies wasn't profitable. Not even close.

The expenses had been staggering. The Molecular Assembler alone had cost a fortune. The Molecular Analyzer added to that bill. Raw materials, industrial facility purchase, the empty headquarters building in—all of it added up to nearly $200 million in initial investment.

The purchase for the industrial facility and the headquarters building had been necessary then, because the Dimensional Space wasn't available.

But Liam hadn't been chasing profit from day one. If he had, the strategy would have been simple: release more units. Ten thousand Lucid devices instead of one thousand would have generated a potential $1.3 billion in revenue. Even five thousand units would have brought in $650 million, comfortably covering all expenses with room to spare.

But profit hadn't been the goal for the first month. Not really.

Liam had been testing something more valuable than immediate returns: market response. He wanted to see how the world would react to something genuinely revolutionary when access was severely limited. Would artificial scarcity create the kind of prestige and desire he'd anticipated? Would users become evangelists for the product organically?

The answer had been a resounding yes.

The term "Digital Aristocrats" had emerged without any prompting from Nova Technologies. The community had created its own hierarchy, elevating the thousand Lucid owners to a status that transcended typical consumer electronics. These weren't just early adopters. They were royalty in a new digital kingdom, and everyone else knew it.

The strategy had worked better than Liam had dared hope. Lucid wasn't just successful—it had become a cultural phenomenon. The device carried prestige that made even iPhone ownership look pedestrian by comparison. And that prestige existed purely because Liam had made it rare enough to matter.

Now, with demand proven and the foundation solid, he could scale without worrying about market adoption. The Dimensional Space currently held more than ten billion Earth-version Lucid devices, all manufactured and ready for distribution. Stock wouldn't be an issue for years.

The second wave of one thousand units would ship within days. By the middle of next week, the Digital Aristocrat circle would double in size. Then the following month, another wave. Gradual expansion, controlled growth, maintaining the prestige while slowly opening access.

Liam smiled to himself. He'd given Lucid users something money usually couldn't buy: genuine exclusivity. Not the fake scarcity of limited editions that companies produced by the hundreds of thousands, but real, mathematical rarity.

Only two thousand people in the entire world would own Lucid devices by the end of next week. In a global population of eight billion, that was a ratio that actually meant something.

But Lucid's capabilities extended far beyond what he'd currently activated. The device could do so much more than gaming and LucidNet access. Calls, photography, video recording, full internet browsing, VR conferencing, movie streaming, music libraries—all of it was possible. The hardware supported everything a smartphone did and more.

If Liam chose to activate those functions, phones would become functionally obsolete within months. Not metaphorically obsolete, not "disrupted" in the way tech journalists loved to describe incremental improvements. Actually obsolete. Why carry a phone when Lucid could do everything better while also providing access to experiences no phone could match?

But he wouldn't activate those features yet. The timing wasn't right. For now, gaming industry disruption was sufficient. Game studios and console manufacturers were already feeling the pressure.

Every Lucid unit sold meant one fewer customer for traditional gaming platforms. As Nova Technologies released ten million units, then a hundred million, the existing gaming market would simply evaporate.

The industry would try to compete, of course. They'd announce next-generation consoles with improved graphics and processing power.

They'd partner with VR companies to create "immersive experiences." They'd pour billions into research and development, desperately seeking something that could match Lucid's capabilities.

None of it would matter. Lucid wasn't just better—it existed in a different category entirely. Trying to compete with it using conventional technology was like trying to win a Formula 1 race on a bicycle. The gap was too fundamental to bridge.

Still, Liam wasn't naive enough to think Nova Technologies would continue unopposed. The Transparency Report had painted a target on the company's back. Wall Street, in particular, would be sharpening their knives right now.

One hundred and thirty million dollars in first-month revenue. Projected annual revenue of $150 billion at scale. Those numbers would have every major financial institution salivating. And when Wall Street wanted something, they didn't ask politely—they found leverage and applied pressure until they got their way.

The standard playbook would involve forcing an IPO. Wall Street thrived on public markets because public markets gave them access, control, and most importantly, fees. Every share traded, every derivative created, every structured product sold—all of it generated revenue for the financial institutions that dominated the system.

Nova Technologies represented a massive pool of potential fees currently locked behind walls they couldn't penetrate. That was intolerable from their perspective.

So they'd start a campaign. Op-eds about the importance of market transparency would appear in major publications. Think tanks would publish reports arguing that companies of Nova Technologies' size had a responsibility to public shareholders. Financial news networks would host panels discussing the "dangers" of concentrated private ownership.

The narrative would be simple: Nova Technologies should go public. For transparency. For accountability. For the good of investors who deserved access to such promising opportunities.

But that narrative would fail spectacularly, because Liam had already built defenses against it.

Bellemere Family Office existed specifically to handle this kind of pressure and Daniel was excellent at public sentiment manipulation, and he had resources most family offices could only dream of. When Wall Street tried to push their IPO narrative, Daniel would counter indirectly and discreetly with his own messaging: the virtue of private ownership in an era of quarterly earnings obsession, the importance of protecting innovation from short-term market pressures.

And behind Daniel stood JP Morgan's considerable PR machine. The world's largest bank had publicly acknowledged Liam as a client. That endorsement carried weight Wall Street couldn't easily overcome. No matter how powerful individual investment banks or hedge funds might be, none of them wanted to directly challenge JP Morgan's relationship with a client.

The risk was too high. If JP Morgan decided to retaliate—if they started denying prime brokerage services, or pulled back from syndication deals, or simply made life difficult in the thousand small ways that major banks could—the damage would be catastrophic. No financial institution was willing to test those waters over one IPO, no matter how lucrative it might be.

So the IPO push would fail. Wall Street would make noise, generate headlines, apply what pressure they could, and ultimately accomplish nothing.

But Wall Street wasn't actually what concerned Liam. It was what came after.

Because Wall Street wouldn't be alone for long. Once they started making noise about transparency and openness, others would join the chorus for their own reasons.

Government agencies would get involved, pushing their own transparency agenda. They'd mobilize influencers and friendly media outlets to amplify concerns about Nova Technologies' closed nature. Regulatory bodies would start asking questions about the custom payment clearing system, about the lack of standard financial intermediaries, about the company's mysterious ownership structure.

Then the developer community would enter the fray. They'd start demanding access to Lucid's software architecture, claiming that open-source development would promote innovation and benefit everyone. Never mind that the programming language underlying Lucid's systems was something no human on Earth could comprehend, even though it's a programming language more simpler than the simplest on Earth, but that detail wouldn't stop people from demanding access to it.

The attacks would come from multiple directions simultaneously, each group with their own motivations but all united in wanting Nova Technologies to open up in some way.

And Liam would use every bit of it as free advertising.

He chuckled to himself, imagining how it would play out. Every article criticizing Nova Technologies would mention Lucid's capabilities. Every regulatory inquiry would remind people of the company's success. Every demand for transparency would highlight just how valuable access to Nova Technologies had become.

Controversy generated attention. Attention generated interest. Interest generated demand. And demand was exactly what Liam wanted to cultivate as he slowly scaled production.

By the time the noise reached its peak, millions of people would be desperately trying to get their hands on Lucid devices. The waiting lists would stretch for months. And through it all, Nova Technologies would maintain its mysterious distance for as long as it wants to.

It would be beautiful, in its own way. His opponents would spend enormous resources attacking him, only to discover they'd been doing his marketing for free.

Liam stood up from the bed and walked to the window. He knew that somewhere out there, people were arguing about Nova Technologies, analyzing the Transparency Report, speculating about the company's future.

And tonight, he'd leave all of it behind to travel beyond Neptune.

Yes, he plans to leave tonight. Since he has nothing holding him back on Earth, staying any longer makes no sense.

The timing was almost poetic. Just as Nova Technologies became the center of global attention, its owner would disappear from Earth entirely.

The future was going to be interesting. Really interesting.

Liam smiled and turned away from the window. He had a starship waiting for him, and a galaxy to explore.

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