SWNOVELS Chapter 18: Knowledge Transfer
Chapter 18: Knowledge Transfer
“Look: I have to be honest with you: I discussed this with Sam. If you publish anything, he will cut you off. From now on, you are a fully owned subsidiary of his Entourage. Deal?”
“Buck, you know I don’t give a shit about publishing anymore. Deal.”
Mel and Buck had worked out a list of options for Sam: The soup was cheap, but the raw materials for talking to it and the computers and sensors for talking to it were not. They had already hit on the idea of making it a carnival stunt: a travelling Science demonstration – while they figured out how to simplify the interface.
“The most compelling thing about educated soup is you can siphon some off without it loosing memory. A cupful knows as much as the whole pond.”
“Now, we’re getting somewhere! Sam nearly shouted. “We could sell this like Cup-o-Noodles?”
Yes. But it’s kind of like a Pet Rock. What would people do with a cup of smart soup?
“Good point. But never underestimate Marketing.”
“So, what do you have in terms of a press release?”
Alberto grinned, “You’ll love this, but we have to lay the groundwork: we are going to use the effluent from the shit eating machine to feed the soup, like you suggested. The soup is our Earthbound model of The Scum. We will learn from the soup how to talk to the scum, or even better, we will send a spoonful of soup as an emissary to the Scum.”
“You’re joking. Who would buy that?”
“NASA, for one!”
“Seriously: no one else has a clue. All these mystics want to divine what the scum is all about. You are just asking to recycle garbage. Who could object? By the time the fad wears off, we can think of a real product.”
“Excellent!”
“Who knows, this might even turn on Carluccio.”
“That Bastard?”
“Don’t you see? He just wants his cut,” Mel ventured, “but in his case, it’s not money, but power and adulation.”
“You mean let him take credit for this?”
“I guess you could take it that way. Let him get a Nobel Prize for inventing the Internet, for all I care. And if I don’t care, neither should you.”