"Welcome everyone," said Forge. "For those who don't know me, I'm the prime on this project. I have been with BigCorp for eight years in various technical and cooperative settings. My specialty is Value Discovery with a focus on TransGeneration.
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| Forge |
The humans all smiled back politely. The shurpas remained expressionless.
"I believe Forge is making a joke," communicated EagerShine.shurpa privately to Eager.
"Good catch EagerShine," replied Eager. "Better respond with some minor appreciation." EagerShine laughed, nodded and looked Forge in the eyes.
"Well, that's enough about me," said Forge. "Why don't we just go around the table so we can all get to know you? Starting with Mother," said Forge, nodding to the shurpa on his right, displayed in a style suggesting Mother Teresa of Calcutta. "Mother will be our corporate protocol monitor."
Mother.shurpa looked out from thas white and blue headscarf, eyes black and beady as a crow's. Raising a knarled right hand as if about to deliver a benediction, tha said "Let me help you stay on the right path. There are 4,672 Corporate Protocols covering personal deportment in every circumstance, and you may need guidance from time to time. In difficult cases we may request that your shurpas cooperate with the corporation," said Mother calmly.
"Can tha really do that?' Eager asked EagerShine.shurpa on the private communications channel.
"Tha can certainly ask, but shurpa data stream encryption is practically unbreakable," replied EagerShine.shurpa silently. Tha has no way to listen to our communications unless we allow it."
"Thank you Mother," said Forge. "And now Lyre. Tha was Progress Guide in a previous BigCorp project. Thas performance was so strong we've begged tham to join this project. Isn't that right Lyre?"
"Thanks Forge. And I'm very happy to be back," said Lyre, "especially on a project like this, which is so cue to the Corporation's core vision."
"Exemplar," said Forge, smiling widely. "Next to Lyre is Sarba, our User Experience Contender. Tha is going to keep our users happy. So important these days, right Sarba?"
"Think of me as an advocate for users," said Sarba smiling. "I'm on this team but I'm one of them."
"Right. Ok then, down at the end of the table is Lincoln. Tha is our direct liaison with Central. Lincoln, would you like to say a few words?"
"Thank you Forge," said Lincoln. "And thank you for inviting me to your initial meeting. Of course, this an autonomous project team and we at Central take a 'hands-off' approach. We're putting all our trust in you. I just want to stress one thing: the outcome of this project is absolutely critical to the future of BigCorp. I don't want to alarm you, just keep it in mind. And good luck."
"Thank you Lincoln. EagerShine, can you tell us how you're going to contribute?"
EagerShine stood and smiled confidently. "Behind me stands the best wave form analysis team on the planet. We have been leading the field for the last three years running and have many more innovative ideas in the works, even as we speak here today."
"Go Shine Go!" cheered Eager on the private channel.
Lincoln raised a hand and asked, "By the way, EagerShine, what is wave form analysis?"
EagerShine.shurpa smiled engagingly until Forge broke in, saying "We don't need to get into details here, Lincoln, I'll give you the executive summary later. And Walf, what do you have for us?"
Walf.shurpa's lower jaw displaced vertically like an old fashioned ventriloquist puppet's mouth, revealing a visual bit generator, protruding like a broken water pipe. The generator whined softly and issued a stream of bit characters, ones and zeros, on a holographic ribbon that arched out of the mouth and coiled on the board room table like a rope.
"Walf!" said Sarba loudly, "your audio has been bumped back to primitive."
"Ok, thanks Sarba, but I think Walf's shurpa is operating in full-auto unattended mode. Unfortunately," said Forge. "We can take up the presentation problems offline. And Sarba, I didn't realize you and Walf knew each other."
Mother's beady eyes shifted back and forth between Walf and Sarba, obviously doing some extra processing.
"Contenders, that's all I have for today. We'll get to the nuts & bolts in the next meeting. I only have one announcement:, and this is directly from Central: our delivery deadline is September 22. Hardstop. This is non-negotiable. We must deliver on that date. Am I making myself clear?"
"Crystal clear," said EagerShine.shurpa. "By the way Forge, I must have missed a detail you mentioned earlier. What is this project about? I mean, what is it we're trying to accomplish?"