Location: Volta SA management office, Ivry-sur-Seine.
Date: January 5, 1994.
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte).
The icy wind of early January battered the triple-glazed windows of the director's office in Ivry-sur-Seine with a dull, hypnotic regularity. Outside, the Parisian suburbs were frozen under a layer of grayish frost.
Inside the sanctuary, the temperature remained a constant twenty degrees Celsius, and the silence was broken only by the dry rustle of glossy paper.
Sunk deep into his vast black leather armchair, Lazare Bonaparte held a magazine in his pale hands.
This wasn't the usual financial press, nor the austere microelectronics engineering journals that typically piled up on his mahogany desk. This was something new. A dense, weighty format, its minimalist cover striking in its complete lack of visual compromise.
The title, printed in surgically precise type, spanned the upper third of the page: THE EQUATION.
This was the second issue of the independent investigative journal founded and run by his younger sister, Camille.
The twenty-seven-year-old president ran his index finger along the binding. Six months earlier, Camille had entered this very office to extort eight million francs in seed capital from him. A personal ransom, drawn from the funds of a Luxembourg holding company in Volta, in exchange for a promise of total independence.
Lazare had granted her this sum knowing full well that he was financing the creation of a weapon that, sooner or later, would turn against his own people.
He opened the magazine.
The first issue, published in the fall, was a trial run. A brilliant, but conventional, investigation into the corruption of local elected officials in the Paris region. A stylistic exercise to hone the editorial team and test its printing network, which was outsourced to Belgium.
But this issue of January 5, 1994 was no longer a warm-up. Camille had just unleashed a heavy artillery barrage on one of the most untouchable pillars of European capitalism.
The extensive report, spanning forty-two pages, was entitled: »Blood on Our Plates: The Architecture of Legal Poison.« Lazare read with the complete concentration of an analyst deciphering enemy source code. The investigation targeted the continental agrochemical industry cartel, with the fictitiously unassailable conglomerate, the German-Swiss firm Kröner-Vast, producer of the most widely used pesticides and fertilizers on the European market, in its sights.
As he read through the paragraphs, Lazare felt neither the indignation of a deceived citizen, nor the empathy of a consumer. He felt a clinical admiration.
Camille hadn't indulged in sentimentality. There were no tearful photographs of sick farmers, no pathos-laden testimonies designed to elicit tears from housewives. The twenty-year-old had written a systematic autopsy.
She had applied to journalistic investigation the same mathematical rigor, the same implacable coldness that Lazare applied to the architecture of his microprocessors.
She had tracked down information not through rumors, but through data streams. Lazare recognized, between the lines, the methods Camille had undoubtedly learned by observing the paranoia of her own clan.
She had cut through the legal smokescreens by directly attacking Kröner-Vast's financial infrastructure.
The young man read with fascination the chapter in which his sister dismantled the financial scheme used to suppress a damning toxicology report on a herbicide molecule. Camille had traced the money transfers from the conglomerate's Basel headquarters to a private medical research foundation based in Brussels, a foundation that directly advised the European commissioners responsible for approving chemical products.
She published copies of the transfers, the names of the intermediaries, and internal memos, obtained with great difficulty from whistleblowers whom she had managed to protect and exfiltrate. »You've understood the principle of networks, little sister,« whispered Lazare in the silence of his office, an approving smirk stretching his lips very slightly.
He saw the details, the tiny methodological winks she had left in her text, consciously or unconsciously. The way she had secured her communications by imposing a rudimentary PGP encryption on her sources, the way she compartmentalized information within her own editorial staff to prevent leaks...
Camille had built her journal, Les Éditions de l'Équation, like an autonomous intelligence service.
She wasn't trying to expose a scandal; she was demonstrating the existence of a system of subjugation. She was proving that democratic institutions were nothing but empty shells, manipulated by private financial forces.
Exactly what Lazare himself was doing with the French Republic.
The mirror was perfect. Camille used truth with the same lethality that Lazarus used lies and silicon.
The heavy, padded office door opened with a pneumatic hiss, pulling the engineer from his reading.
Commander Vauquelin entered the room. The head of security for Volta SA, tightly dressed in a dark suit that barely concealed his build as a former special forces operative, walked over to the meeting table.
He was carrying a gray cardboard folder, stamped with the internal seal of the company's private intelligence division. »You asked me for a situation report on the Oberkampf sector, sir,« announced Vauquelin in a deep and measured voice, stopping a good distance from the desk.
Lazare closed the magazine and calmly placed it on his leather writing pad. He folded his long, pale hands.
« The collateral damage of publication, Commander. Where do we stand? »
Vauquelin opened his file, even though he knew its contents by heart. He had been supervising the surveillance of his boss's younger sister for months, aware that the freedom she claimed exposed her to predators who were no less ruthless than the CIA.
« The publishing group Les Éditions de l'Équation is currently under unprecedented pressure, » the former officer explained. « The publication of the report on agrochemicals triggered immediate panic within the cartel.
Kröner-Vast has mobilized three of the largest business law firms in Paris, London, and Frankfurt. As early as 8:00 a.m. this morning, five emergency injunctions were filed for defamation, breach of trade secrets, and theft of industrial documents.
They are seeking provisional damages amounting to 40 million francs. » »A strategy of financial strangulation,« Lazare observed with unwavering neutrality. »They know its seed capital is eight million. They want to freeze its bank accounts through precautionary seizures and force it to close its doors before it can print the next issue.« « That's exactly their procedure, »
Vauquelin confirmed. « Their lawyers have already contacted the independent printer your sister uses in Belgium. They threatened him with prosecution for complicity.
Coincidence or not, the printing company underwent a surprise inspection by the Belgian health department yesterday afternoon, and two of their delivery trucks had their tires slashed in the transit parking lot at the French border last night. »
The engineer showed no emotion. The logistical war of attrition was a science he mastered better than anyone. »And on a physical level?« inquired Lazare, his gaze unfathomable, fixing his head of security's eyes.
Vauquelin stiffened imperceptibly. Addressing the carnal threat hanging over a member of the Bonaparte family, especially after the carnage on Avenue de Marigny which had nearly cost Victor his life, was a minefield. »The intimidation has crossed the line into legality, sir.
The magazine's offices on Rue Oberkampf are being targeted. The night before last, the building's telephone lines were physically severed at the street distribution box. Last night, three masked men smashed the ground-floor windows with baseball bats, destroying the reception area and some of the secretariat's computer equipment.
They didn't steal anything. It was a purely punitive act.« The Commander slid a black and white photograph onto the desk. It showed a dead dog, atrociously mutilated, placed on the doormat at the entrance to the editorial offices.
« Our agents on long-range surveillance have also detected surveillance, » Vauquelin continued. « Lone men, resembling private security agents working for the security firms of major industrial groups.
They follow Mademoiselle Camille's journalists as they leave the newsroom. They even follow her on her trips home. The level of psychological pressure is calculated to break the newsroom from within. »
Vauquelin closed the file, keeping his hands on it.
« Sir. Miss Camille is twenty years old. Her team is made up of young, idealistic, recently graduated individuals.
They are facing a machine worth tens of billions and with no scruples. They do not have the infrastructure to withstand such a siege. »
The head of security paused slightly, awaiting the order he deemed inevitable.
« I've pre-positioned two intervention teams from our department, ready to be deployed, » Vauquelin offered professionally, concealing his protective instincts beneath a veneer of operational expertise.
« With just a word from you, we can secure the perimeter of Rue Oberkampf. We can physically deter the private surveillance teams stalking your sister. Simultaneously, I can order Marc's department, at Level 4, to conduct a lightning-fast hack into the servers of the Kröner-Vast law firms to wipe out their complaint files and paralyze their legal proceedings.
We can obliterate their counterattack in less than three hours. »
Silence stretched across the vast office. The air conditioning seemed to pause.
Lazare Bonaparte looked at the photograph of the mutilated dog, then slowly raised his eyes to his subordinate. The young billionaire's face expressed neither anger, nor worry, nor even the vengeful instinct that had driven him during the hunt for the CIA agents.
It exuded an abysmal coldness, that of a scientist observing the inevitable unfolding of a laboratory experiment. »You will do none of that, Commander,« declared Lazarus in a calm voice, without raising his tone.
Vauquelin frowned, convinced he had misunderstood the instructions.
« Sir? They're going to destroy her diary. They might even physically attack her to make an example of her. »
« I said: you will do nothing. The order is absolute, absolute, and non-negotiable. You maintain your strict passive observation strategy.
You do not watch, you do not listen, you do not report. You do not intervene under any circumstances, unless his life is threatened by a firearm in the next second. Everything else—the intimidation, the lawsuits, the broken windows, the bank pressure—you let it happen.
You let the dogs bite. »
The former special forces officer took a step back, shaken by the harshness of the order. He knew his boss's paranoia regarding his family's security. This non-intervention order violated all the rules established months ago.
Lazare leaned back in his chair, sensing his head of security's unease. He clasped his hands, the fluorescent lights catching on the sharp edges of his face. »You don't understand the nature of the war she's just declared, Vauquelin.
Camille isn't a child lost in a playground too violent for her. She's a predator who's just attacked another predator.« Lazare tapped the cover of L'Équation magazine.
She came to this very office demanding the capital she needed to create her weapon. She bought her sovereignty with our empire's money. If I intervene today to crush the lawyers and thugs of the chemical industry in her place, I instantly destroy this majesty.
I validate the idea that she's nothing more than an arrogant little girl who needs her big brother's nuclear umbrella to face the consequences of her actions.
The engineer rose with controlled slowness. He approached the bay window, observing the assembly lines of his factory below, where thousands of components were melted and assembled with martial discipline.
« Independence isn't decreed by legal statutes, Commander. It's forged in fire, in terror, and in the absolute uncertainty of survival. Camille has dropped a bombshell into the pond of European capitalism.
Now she must learn to navigate the tsunami she herself unleashed. She must learn to manage the panic among her journalists, to circumvent the seizure of her accounts, to secure her own distribution lines when hers are sabotaged. »
Lazare turned towards Vauquelin, his black eyes burning with a dark, paradoxical and terrifying pride. »If I save her, she will forever remain dependent on Volta. A weakness our enemies will eventually exploit.
But if I let her face this storm alone... If she manages to survive the harassment, outwit Kröner-Vast's traps, and publish the third issue of her magazine despite the siege of her offices... Then she will no longer be the Builder's protected little sister.« Lazarus' voice lowered, resonating with prophetic certainty.
« She will become an independent power. An untouchable entity in the media landscape. She will learn the ruthlessness necessary to run her own information empire.
And believe me, Vauquelin, the day she decides to shine her spotlight on our own secrets—and that day will inevitably come—I would rather face an adversary forged in steel than an amateur broken by the first gust of wind. »
Commander Vauquelin was stunned, overwhelmed by the cold, mathematical logic of the argument. Lazare Bonaparte did not see the world through the lens of brotherly affection. He applied the merciless law of natural selection.
The trial by fire would purge any weakness. If Camille failed, it would mean she wasn't cut from the same cloth as him. If she triumphed, she would earn her place in the pantheon of monsters who rule the century. »Maintain surveillance,« Lazare ordered, signaling the end of the interview. »Report her every move to me.
But let the chemical cartel exhaust itself fighting her. We'll see what Auguste Bonaparte's daughter is truly made of.« Vauquelin gave a brief bow, closed his file and left the office, leaving the young CEO alone with his magazine.
Lazare sat back down. He gazed again at the cover of The Equation. The death threats, the multi-million dollar lawsuits, the ransacked offices...
He knew the bitter taste of these ordeals. He had gone through them building Volta. He knew his sister would cry with rage, with exhaustion, that she would doubt everything in the nights to come.
But he wouldn't lift a finger to shorten his sentence. Pity was the enemy of majesty.
The engineer pushed the magazine to the far end of his desk, removing it from his immediate field of vision. The intellectual and familial interlude was over. The time for literature was finished; the time for physics had to resume.
He grasped the heavy handset of his secure phone and dialed the direct line connecting him to the Eastern construction site. The true beating heart of his war of independence awaited him, far from Paris, in the mud and concrete of the Alsatian plain.
The lifeblood of information gave way to the raw material of silicon.
Location: Alsace Plain, Volta SA MegaFab
Date: January 5, 1994.
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on Lazare Bonaparte).
The Alsatian plain, swept by a biting wind from the foothills of the Black Forest, stretched out beneath a leaden sky. In the middle of this vast, icy, muddy expanse stood the MegaFab. What had been, just a few months earlier, a colossal excavation in the European soil had become the most technologically dense monument on the planet.
A blind, hermetic cathedral of reinforced concrete, its colossal mass crushing the landscape with brutal majesty.
Lazare Bonaparte, clad in a heavy, immaculate, antistatic full-body suit known as a bunnysuit, had just passed through the seventh and final decontamination lock. Only his obsidian eyes, with their predatory fixity, were visible behind the thick plexiglass visor.
He entered the white classroom of class 1.
The contrast with the outside world was a stark sensory experience. Outside, nature howled in the winter. Here, the air was mathematically pure, filtered thousands of times per second to eliminate even the smallest dust particle larger than half a micron.
The silence was broken only by the deep, constant hum of the atmospheric pressure system and the robotic clicking of the manipulator arms.
The vast plain of grey epoxy was no longer an empty shell. It had just received its vital organs.
Aligned with military symmetry on the floating, earthquake-resistant slab stood the deep ultraviolet (DUV) photolithography machines. These behemoths of steel and wiring were the crown jewels of the Dutch company ASML, which Volta had secretly acquired in its entirety.
But these machines were no longer merely Dutch machines. At their heart beat German optical excellence: lenses of unimaginable purity, crafted by the master glassmakers of Carl Zeiss Jena, whose patents and expertise Lazare had acquired from the ruins of former East Germany through the company VEB Jenoptik.
It was the triumph of a Europe united by the money of a single man. The marriage of French finance, Dutch engineering, and German optics. The factory was no longer a mere building; it had become a living organism, a silicon predator that breathed filtered air and vibrated to the rhythm of lasers.
René Castella, the production manager, whose face was usually weathered by the factory but was now hidden under his own sterile overalls, approached Lazare. He was accompanied by Ilya Volkov, the R&D director, whose gaze betrayed unbearable tension.
« The lasers are calibrated to the nanometer, Mr. Bonaparte, » Castella announced, his voice made metallic by the intercom in his suit.
« The chemical doping furnaces are at temperature. We launched the first mass production last night. »
Volkov held a transparent acrylic case in his gloved hands. Inside lay the result of their years of clandestine zeal, billions swallowed up, and state paranoia.
A silicon wafer measuring one hundred and fifty millimeters. The first commercial wafer of the processor that was to bring America to its knees: the VESLA 2190.
This was no longer a prototype cobbled together in the secrecy of a Japanese foundry. This was the final version, etched at 0.6 micrometers (dual-metal LP CMOS), based on the VESLAv3 architecture. A behemoth containing 1.2 million transistors, equipped with a 4-issue Out-of-Order pipeline capable of issuing up to 4 instructions per cycle, and above all, armed with SMT (Simultaneous Multithreading) technology allowing a single physical core to execute two threads in parallel.
All of this topped off by a nickel-plated copper IHS heatsink soldered directly onto the chip.
Coupled with the new proprietary CELLA-64M RAM modules—these 66 MHz synchronous memories with an integrated ECC error corrector on the die, which Volkov's Russian team was producing in an adjacent wing—the VESLA 2190 was the ultimate weapon. Europe's sword and shield. »Show me the figures,« ordered Lazare, ignoring the iridescent beauty of the galette to demand the cold truth of mathematics. »What is the yield on this first batch?« The silence grew heavy.
Volkov imperceptibly lowered his head behind his visor. Castella swallowed.
« The electrical tests upon exiting the qualification room are conclusive, Lazare, » the overwhelmed Russian scientist said softly. « Etching at 0.6 microns is incredibly difficult. Our Zeiss lenses are perfect, but the slightest temperature fluctuation in the furnaces, the tiniest impurity in the photosensitive resin during exposure to ultraviolet light… » »The number, Ilya,« Lazare interrupted in a glacial voice. »Forty percent,« Castella blurted out, delivering the verdict. »The gross rate of return is forty percent.« The air conditioning suddenly seemed to produce an arctic blast.
Forty percent. This meant that on every expensive silicon wafer baked through a chemical process lasting several weeks, sixty percent of the chips had defects. Sixty percent of the silicon was corrupted by microscopic errors: a faulty transistor in the cache memory, a melted logic gate in the floating-point unit, or a physical inability of the crystal to maintain the required clock frequency without overheating.
« It's a financial black hole, Lazare, » Castella blurted out, the former metalworker's anxiety overcoming the director. « We're throwing more than half our gold in the trash.
At this rate, the unit production cost of the VESLA 2190 is going to skyrocket. We'll never be able to recoup it. Édouard Renault-Tessier is going to have a heart attack when he sees the balance sheet. Intel and AMD are going to strangle us with a price war if we have to pass this loss on to the selling price of our machines. »
Volkov nodded his head in despair. »We can improve the process. In six months, I guarantee we'll reach sixty percent efficiency. But for now, these imperfect chips are unusable.
They're unstable.« Lazare Bonaparte looked at the two men. The sixty-year-old engineer, trapped in the body of a twenty-seven-year-old, betrayed neither disappointment nor anger. Instead, a slow, almost predatory grin stretched across his pale lips.
The Ogre of Ivry had just found the flaw in his own generals' reasoning.
« You reason like goldsmiths, gentlemen, » Lazare murmured, his voice sinking into the depths of utter industrial cynicism. « You look at a diamond with an inclusion, and you weep because it cannot grace a king's crown.
But I am not a jeweler. I am a wartime blacksmith. And in the war I am waging against the United States, not a single ounce of material will be wasted. »
Castella frowned beneath his mask.
« Lazare, I can't integrate unstable processors into our military servers or Compaq AXIOM computers! It's commercial suicide! The DGA will sue us for high treason if a server crashes because of a faulty logic gate! »
« And I'm not asking you to sell them defective equipment, René, » Lazare reassured him with tyrannical authority. « The forty percent of perfect chips that maintain a frequency of 66 MHz and whose 256 KB L2 cache is immaculate will become our flagships.
They will be the Big Sister. The VESLA 2190. The showcase of our hegemony.
The processor we will charge exorbitant prices to the military, the banks, and wealthy individuals. »
Lazare raised a gloved finger, pointing to the surface of the silicon wafer.
« But for the remaining sixty percent... You're not going to destroy them. You're going to mutilate them. »
Volkov recoiled.
« To mutilate them? »That's what we'll call the Silicon Binning doctrine. Strategic downgrading,« the pioneer theorized, his dark eyes fixed on the scientist. »If a chip fails the highest quality control, it's not because its entire architecture is dead.
It's often due to a tiny fraction of its surface area.« Lazarus approached the straw mattress, leaning on his two hands, his voice resonating like that of a general dictating a battle plan on the eve of an extermination. »
« I want you to install a very high-precision laser cutting station at the end of the qualification chain. Each chip will be tested individually. You will profile its degree of imperfection, and you will use the laser to physically sever the microscopic copper bridges that connect the defective sectors to the rest of the core.
We will amputate the gangrene to save the rest of the body. »
He pointed to a specific area on the holographic diagram of a chip projected onto the room's control screen.
« Take the level 2 cache. It's one of the largest components on the die, and therefore the most susceptible to a manufacturing defect. If a 256KB block of SRAM in the L2 cache is corrupted, the laser severs the addressing of half of that cache.
The chip then only has 128KB of L2 cache, but the rest of its architecture—its 4-issue pipeline and two-thread SMT—remains intact and runs at 66 MHz. »
Lazarus' face lit up with a cold jubilation.
« This reduced chip won't be thrown away. It will be rebranded. It will become the VESLA 2180.
Its big sister, the 2190, retains its 256 KB and maximum performance. The 2180, however, will offer ninety percent of its big sister's performance, but we'll sell it for thirty percent less. A boon for the enterprise and advanced office market, which doesn't need the full power of a military server. »
Volkov and Castella froze. The economic elegance of the maneuver was striking. Waste suddenly became a loss leader. »What if the problem isn't the cache, but the frequency?« Volkov asked, his mind racing, finally grasping the colossal scope of waste engineering. »What if the silicon crystal has too high an internal resistance and can't handle the frequency increase to 66 MHz without exceeding the thermal tolerances set by your copper IHS?« « So we use the DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling) module integrated into the chip, »
Lazare replied immediately. « We configure the laser in hardware to lock the chip in P2 mode, the power-saving mode. It will no longer run at 66 MHz, but at 50 MHz or even 33 MHz, under a reduced voltage of 2.5V instead of 3.3V. »
Lazare smiled, a smile of pure contempt for his American competitors.
« This frequency-limited chip will become the VESLA 2170. The younger sibling. The L2 cache remains potentially intact, dual-threaded SMT works, but it calculates more slowly.
It will consume only 3 watts. It will be the perfect processor for laptops, for the VESLA-M range, where Intel is struggling to integrate hot chips that drain batteries in an hour. »
Castella looked at the young CEO with terrified admiration. The battle plan covered all the bases. But the old metalworker thought of the most critical cases, those he inevitably destined for the scrap heap.
« Lazare... and what about the most damaged chips? The ones where the FPU (floating-point unit) module was poorly etched? The ones where the Simultaneous Multithreading sequencer is unstable and causes crashes if you launch two hardware threads in parallel?
You can't throttle them. They're beyond repair. You have to throw them away, right? »Never,« Lazarus whispered, his voice becoming even lower, with a deadly sweetness. »It's precisely with these crippled chips that we're going to strangle Intel and AMD.« The Builder straightened up, sweeping his gaze across the vastness of his white room. »
If the FPU fails, the laser disconnects it from the internal bus. Floating-point calculations will be emulated in software by VoltaOS. This will be slower, but functional.
If the SMT scheduler is unstable, the laser terminates the second physical thread. The CR_SMT register is hardware-locked at the SMT_EN=0 bit. The chip then only handles a single instruction stream.
It becomes a simple single-threaded processor. The L2 cache can even be completely disabled if it is too damaged, leaving only the 16+16 KB of the L1 cache.
Lazare crossed his arms over his chest.
« This chip, the most stripped down of them all, the shortest in range, will run at 33 MHz on a single thread, without a secondary cache and possibly without a math coprocessor. We will call it the VESLA 2150 SX. »
The choice of the »SX« suffix was far from innocent. It was a direct and sarcastic middle finger to Intel's policy of selling its entry-level i486 processors as »486SX« after deliberately disabling the arithmetic coprocessor to justify a price reduction.
Lazare was taking the enemy's weapon and turning it against them.
« Why bother marketing such a crippled chip? » asked Volkov, perplexed. « The VESLAv3 architecture's brand image is built on the sheer power of SMT and 4-issue Out-of-Order. This 2150 SX is an insult to our own engineering. » »It's an insult to our engineering, Ilya, but it's a death sentence for Intel,« corrected the French strategist, his eyes sparkling.
Lazarus stepped forward to the Russian scientist, explaining the macroeconomics of the carnage.
Even limited to 33 MHz, without SMT, L2, and FPU, this chip retains its core engine: its 10-stage pipeline and its out-of-order execution capable of issuing four instructions per cycle (4-issue Out-of-Order). It maintains its terrifyingly efficient RISC architecture, its tournament branch prediction system, and its 64 physical rename registers.
He slammed his fist on the stainless steel worktop.
« This tiny, crippled monster, this 2150 SX, will wipe the floor with any Intel 486SX processor clocked at the same frequency. And above all... its production cost is virtually zero! »
The revelation struck Renault-Tessier's mind had he been there, but Castella grasped it instantly.
« The R&D costs, the cost of the silicon wafer, the running costs of this factory… It's all already been paid for and recouped through the sale of the forty percent of perfect chips, the VESLA 2190s! » exclaimed the production manager, his eyes wide behind his visor. « These downgraded chips are pure marginal profit! » »Exactly,« Lazarus confirmed with a somber majesty. »Since these defective chips cost us nothing to produce, we will sell them at a price that Silicon Valley can never, physically or economically, match.« The global encirclement strategy of the Ivry prodigy was finally unfolding in all its logistical cruelty.
He was no longer just seeking to win the high-end war; he wanted to gut the American ecosystem from the ground up.
« We will flood the world, » Lazare declared, his voice echoing beneath the pristine vaults of his MegaFab. « The big sister, the 2190, will be the exorbitantly expensive spearhead of our hegemony, powering Europe's top servers, the Rafale's radars, and the traders' Compaq AXIOMs.
The younger sibling, the 2170, will reign supreme over desktops and laptops. And our crippled counterpart, the 2150 SX, will become Andy Grove's absolute nightmare. »
The leader looked up at the huge HEPA filters on the ceiling, already visualizing the millions of devices that would soon invade the planet.
« We'll sell the 2150 SX for next to nothing. We'll make it the standard in national education systems, in schools across Eastern Europe, and in emerging markets in South America and Asia. Broke students, small town halls, individuals who could never afford a PC… They'll all equip themselves with our standard.
They'll use our Volta X operating system. They'll get used to our ecosystem. And because it will be everywhere, because it will be incredibly affordable while still outperforming entry-level American PCs, Intel's volume monopoly will collapse. »
The sixty-year-old engineer had just redefined the very notion of supremacy. The Americans built monopolies by maintaining high prices and stifling innovation. Lazare Bonaparte built his empire by transforming his own industrial waste into a carpet of commercial bombs.
« Nothing is lost, » Lazarus concluded, gazing at the iridescent silicon wafer, his eye shining with a categorical blackness. « The dead flesh of silicon will be the poison that suffocates America.
Stop lamenting this yield rate, gentlemen. Calibrate the cutting lasers. The army of shadows is ready to sweep across the world. »
Silence returned to the cleanroom of Class 1, broken only by the mechanical pulse of the MegaFab. Castella and Volkov watched the prodigy from Ivry with a kind of sacred terror. Europe was no longer content with merely defending itself.
It was preparing to devour the world, crumb by crumb, piece by piece, until nothing remained of Silicon Valley's hegemony but a distant memory.