Chapter 6637 Barrow Rakovshchik Barrow Rakovshchik dismissed the latest report about the financial condition of one of the subsidiary companies of EJF HardWorks. The event known as the Great Severing had caused the largest financial crisis to occur since the start of the Age of Mechs. Many magnates, groups and businesses that invested heavily into the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy lost their investments overnight. The devastation caused by this abrupt shutdown rippled throughout the Milky Way Galaxy at a rapid speed. At first, the damage remained relatively limited. People still clung to the hope, however fleeting it may be, that the Greater Beyonder Gate in the Maryan Ultima System could reconnect to its counterpart in the Red Ocean. Then more and more sources confirmed that an entire dwarf galaxy had disappeared from the Milky Way's orbit! This more than anything proved without a shadow of a doubt that there was no way for the Greater Beyonder Gates to open up a passage anymore. When further news revealed that the native aliens of the Red Ocean actually managed to transport their entire dwarf galaxy to the orbit of Messier 87 of all places, it sounded the death knell of many investors who bet big in the Red Ocean. Although the amount of institutional investors and retail investors who adopted a high risk profile was not too exaggerated, their sudden collapse caused many disruptions and other consequences throughout human civilization in the 'old galaxy. Far too many gullible idiots with little to no financial literacy had completely violated the rules of sound investment and tried to leverage themselves up to the limit in order to earn huge fortunes. These investors did indeed manage to earn amazing returns in the initial years. As long as the pioneers entrusted their money to successfully colonized a few lucrative star systems and managed to get their settlements up and running, the booming frontier economy rapidly drew in further immigrants and investors. Those that were late to the party only carned a fraction of the profits that could be made in the new frontier. This exacerbated the frenzy and caused more and more people who were jealous at the insane luck enjoyed by the initial investors to borrow as much money as they could to increase their payouts! Unfortunately for all of them, when the basket where they put all of their eggs had been whisked away, everyone lost. The investors went bankrupt en masse. The financial institutions that loaned money to these suckers accrued mountains of bad debt on their balance sheets. If they were large and prosperous enough to absorb these enormous losses, then they most certainly suffered painful haircuts that set them back decades if not centuries! Companies that had retooled their operations to service the needs of the new frontier became bankrupt. Trillions upon trillions of people got laid off, causing entire states to enter into deep recessions. Though human civilization had suffered much more severe shocks during the turbulent years of the Age of Conquest, this crisis was especially bad because far too many people and institutions had grown complacent. Yarad Industries was no exception to this rule. As the CEO of a regional industrial powerhouse, Barrow Rakovshchik found himself stuck at work for an entire half year. He could not leave anything to chance. Yarad Industries had admittedly been a little too slow in ramping up its investments in the new frontier. This allowed the company to avoid losses that would have been devastating enough to plunge its share price and cause ripple effects that would have doomed one of Genser Federation's industrial mainstays. However, the same could not be said for companies that were upstream and downstream of its supply chains! Banks were having trouble supplying liquidity to major corporations. Logistical companies were unable to meet their transportation obligations. Manufacturers that produced goods for export to the Red Ocean lost access to their customer base. The crisis engulfing all of these other companies affected the bottom line of Yarad Industries and its many subsidiaries. There were times when Barrow had grown deeply concerned whether he could keep his company afloat. Fortunately, the first-rate state situated in the galactic center had built up a healthy reserve over the centuries. Its leaders had quickly decided to enact unprecedented degrees of financial assistance and other forms of aid. This not only saved its economy from plunging even further, but also provided enough support to save Yarad Industries from suffering worse consequences. Even so, his company had still been forced to sell off some of its prized assets and subsidiary companies in order to plug the remaining holes. At this time, the C-suite of Yarad Industries had already begun to entertain the notion of selling off EJF HardWorks. The subsidiary company was mostly responsible for operating dozens of shipyards. The demand for starships had skyrocketed as more and more pioneers and colonial states required starships to explore alien locations and connect the sprawling colonies of mankind together. Yet now that pioneering in the Red Ocean had become defunct, demand for starships had plunged to the lowest point in two centuries. While there were still a lot of potential customers in the old galaxy who had need of starships as well, there were a lot of competitors in this cutthroat industry! Other shipbuilding companies had expanded their operations shortly after the opening of the Red Ocean. They too thought that they could make an insane killing by selling starships at inflated prices to the pioneers and the colonial states of the Red Ocean. Now that this was no longer possible, the additional shipyards had instead begun to divert their output to the old galaxy, causing a glut of starships to enter the ship market. Certainly, a lot of shipbuilding companies had already adjusted to the new reality and either sold or mothballed their excess orbital shipyards, but this did not happen frequently enough to stop the average price of starships to plunge by a whopping 60 percent in the past three years! Since most of the executives at Yarrow Industries saw little hope that the price of starships would return to their old levels, selling off EJF HardWorks became an increasingly more sensible decision. While it would cause Yarrow Industries to lose the ability to produce starships for its own operations, there were so many cheaper and more efficient alternatives on the market that the loss should not be big. Just four years ago, people would have considered Barrow to be insane for thinking about selling off a shipbuilding company with many orbital shipyards under its control. How times changed. Now, the post-Great Severing economy of the old galaxy had caused everyone to develop a negative outlook on shipbuilding companies. After Barrow wrote and transmitted a quick message on the matter of selling off E.JF HardWorks, he handled his remaining work and eventually left his office in the early evening. He soon boarded an armored shuttle and flew to the outskirts of the city where Yarad Industries established his headquarters. This time, his shuttle under escort did not fly to his estate. It instead flew towards the academic district where a large number of universities had made themselves home. The Genser Federation was a first-rate state that had remained stable in the galactic center for a long time. Its military strength was relatively average, but the state had persistently invested in its R&D sector. The local mech industry had become especially large and developed due to favorable policies and other reasons. The Genser Federation had chosen to stay neutral in the old rivalry between the Greater Terran united Confederation and the New Rubarth Empire. This allowed it to become one of the few truly neutral centers of learning and technological development. One of the advantages this brought was that the New Mech Research Initiative had chosen to base its headquarters and primary R&D facility on this very planet! As the shuttle carrying the off-duty CEO finally entered a hangar and finally made a landing, Barrow Rakovshchik distinctly relaxed his somewhat stiff and formal posture and adopted a more easygoing bearing. He left most of his security guards behind as he passed through a checkpoint and entered the white-coated halls of the NMRI. Inside the NMRI, Barrow was no longer a CEO, but instead the treasurer of a non-profit research institution. The people that worked or volunteered their services to the NMRI were completely different from the ambitious career climbers back at Yarad Industries. There, everyone was out for themselves. They only paid lip service to the notion of putting the company ahead of their individual priorities. Here, Barrow could relax and express himself without fearing that he would paint himself as a fool. This was because he was among like-minded enthusiasts. "Barrow! You've come! Come here and take a look at this research report. It details the latest findings on Project WR-13." "Project WR-13?" Barrow skeptically asked as he accepted the digital file transmission and rapidly skimmed through the contents. As a businessman, Barrow did not pretend to understand the science of this research project. He instead read through the introduction and conclusion in order to gain a quick understanding of the gains. An older gray-haired man replied with an optimistic smile. "It is the latest project that explores whether it is possible to artificially alter the brain structure and chemistry of a norm to resemble that of a potentate. The latest set of cloned brains that had been operated upon have yet to elevate their genetic aptitudes above F, but there are slight hints in some cloned brains that their responsiveness and capacity for digital data processing have improved by up to 4.9 percent." "4.9 percent? That is big." The treasurer answered. It was far from the 1000's of percents that was required to meaningfully raise a person's genetic aptitude to a more acceptable level, but it was a start! Chief Scientist. Idni Zenokon certainly saw hope of further progress with the latest results. "I can feel it, Barrow. After 100 years of continuous research, the NMRI may finally be able to prove to the mech community that we have not been squandering billions of MTA credits worth of donations on worthless and ineffectual research. I am becoming more convinced that Project WR-13 is on the right path to enable us to pilot a mech in our lifetimes." "Are you not being premature in your judgment, my friend?" Barrow carefully asked. "Your predecessors formed similar opinions in the past. They diverted far too much of our limited funds on research projects that eventually went nowhere." "This is different, Barrow!" Idni insisted! "All of our other research projects have made too little progress in comparison. The ones that investigate whether we can pilot a mech by heavily digitizing our brains have never solved the loss of humanity problem. The awful project that seeks to develop an alternate control interface involving biomechs is too terrifying for me to describe." "Hm, you do have a point, but just because Project WR-13 has delivered slightly positive results at the start does not mean that this pattern will persist." "It will." The older chief scientist insisted as he stared right into Barrow's eyes. "I am willing to bet my life on it. Project WR-13 only attempts to replicate an existing phenomena, The Chosen Human has repeatedly used his God Kingdom to transform norms into mech pilots. What he can do with the power of his divine will alone, we can do with the power of science and technology. If not for the fact that we understand way too little about what brain conditions can actually produce the phenomenon of qualified genetic aptitude, the researchers assigned to Project WR-13 will not have to resort to trial and error to randomly modify hundreds of thousands of cloned human brains." Due to humanity's inadequate understanding of genetic aptitude and how it tied to the physiology of the brain, the NMRI had no choice but conduct research in such a stupid and incredibly wasteful manner. There was no guarantee that the same treatment on the brains that had displayed slightly better performance than before could be replicated! This was because the cloned brains randomly changed over time to become different. from their exact genetic copies. A slight change in brain chemistry or other variables could easily invalidate any potential gains in genetic aptitude! Barrow inwardly sighed. Though Idni sounded optimistic, the reality was that Project. WR-13 hardly brought them any closer to developing a solution to the genetic aptitude tyranny. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺 How much more money did they need to spend on fruitless research? How many more years must they wait for a research project to hit the jackpot? Would Barrow ever be able to fulfill his long-held goal of piloting a mech in an authentic manner in his lifetime?