Fulmen Grancolline closed the fridge again. Another ice cream. The how many on this day? He had lost count. It didn’t matter. Everything didn’t matter. He was frustrated. Things didn’t go as planned. Poor Antonia. She had been quite busy by Yefimov. She hadn’t imagined it that way either. But what happened?
The anniversary day should be special. The old space station VERI’S BASTION should go into operation. again. There was a hyperspace radio relay on it. Through this radio relay the transmissions of the ASTROCOHORS CLUB were to be sent through the ether and distributed all over the world. Actually not a big deal. Super easy. Barely an inconvenience. In fact, the relay also worked with all the sub-divisions of the CLUB. Only with the transmissions, which went through the headquarters in Iceland, something went wrong. Antonia Bagliarotto, Yefimov’s assistant, was forced to transmit each and every one of these broadcasts by hand. This was not what they had imagined.
Fulmen had a suspicion. The shipments of the departments were processed via an external system. The system belonged to the CUYEL group. The relay also belonged to a corporation. With the troubling events taking place on Earth and in the solar system, the solar division of ASTROCOHORS had now begun to take over systems themselves. They even bought the land on which the various bases stood, such as the ATLANTIS. That guaranteed they were in control. Of course, the corporations didn’t like that. Fulmen suspected that automation via the relay was being slowed down on purpose in the hope that ASTROCOHORS would then continue to use the services of the corporations. But that shouldn’t be the case!
The corporations continued to siphon off profits that ASTROCOHORS made. The independence of the head office was bought at a high price. Fulmen hoped Antonia would persevere. These were bad times, ASTROCOHORS had to remain stable.
While he was pondering these dark thoughts, Fulmen had returned to his office from the kitchen. He also had work to do. Then he saw the text on the screen: “Warning, transmission from headquarters”.
Oh dear, he thought, Antonia is still working too.