All in the Name of Profit

[Radion]

Quarterly budget meeting for USI- Executive conference room of USI Manhattan headquarters.

Peter Tomson: Alright, and now on to the next issue: Platinum Incorporated budget issues. Expected profit has fallen short 30% for the last quarter, and while not losing money, is still worrying for our stockholders. If possible, I would like to avoid reworking the membership policy again, due to how time consuming it was to do the last time. Any suggestions?

Susan Palmer: We can begin work to bring manufacturing to the base.

Peter: In the long term maybe, but right now, due to the expansion, it would be difficult to fit that in as well.

David Chalmers: We could try advertising.

Peter: As if everyone didn’t already have an ad-blocker on their neural-net browser?

Will Howard: We could discourage mining that is not done for the base.

Peter: How?

Will: Well, we can attempt to buy rights from Liberty…

Peter: Would take too long.

Will: We could resort to force?

Peter: I like the sound of that. Do we still have our contact on Eagan?

Will: He probably is. I’ll have someone in Security look into reestablishing contact with him.

Peter: Good. Now for the next item on the agenda, sick day use is up 20%...