Monroe

Chapter Two Hundred and Thirty-Four. Agreements.

The water was clear, the white sand of the beach unsullied, and Monroe was curled up under the umbrella, having baked himself under the tropical sun for only half an hour before seeking shade.

Bob was alternating between taking short naps, swimming, and applying sunscreen. He was settling into the napping phase now, while Dave and Amanda were splashing around in the water.

He could understand why people flocked here to vacation. It was beautiful and relaxing. Despite the heat, there was a stiff breeze that blew in from the ocean that, when combined with a bit of shade, was just right. He hoped that the system integration wouldn't destroy this place, as he wouldn't mind making a return trip or twenty.

He was just getting settled down when his phone rang, startling him. He looked at the device suspiciously. It was his Earth phone. He didn't recognize the number, but the area code placed it in California.

He slide up on the screen. "Hello," he answered the call carefully.

"Mr. Whitman," the female voice on the other end of the connection sounded sure and confident. "You're a very difficult man to reach. My name is Elizabeth Nalenthal, with the University of California, Los Angeles, and I have a rather urgent legal matter that requires your attention."

Bob closed his eyes and counted down from ten, then opened them again. "As I explained via Detective Hanson, I'm not interested in speaking with anyone from the University," Bob replied coolly.

"I can understand and empathize with how you must feel," her voice was calm but devoid of compassion. "I'll be as concise as possible. When it was believed you'd died during the explosion, a lawyer, Mr. Lieberman, tracked down your mother and convinced her to file a lawsuit. Not wanting to face a spectacle in court, the University settled out of court, and we'd believed that we had put the entire unfortunate matter behind us. Your reappearance has rendered that settlement null and void, and rather than pursue legal actions to recover the funds that were distributed fraudulently, we would instead prefer to draft a new settlement, one which would allow the funds previously dispersed to remain uncontested, while at the same time providing you with compensation as well."

Bob shook his head. He could read between the lines well enough. "I have no interest in pursuing legal action against the University," he began. "I've put all of that behind me, and while I doubt I'll be recommending UCLA, I'm not looking to lash out."

Mrs. Nalenthal let out a quiet sigh. "I believe you, Mr. Whitman. You've had two years to file a lawsuit. That being said, we would be remiss if we didn't insist on legal assurances that put the matter to rest once and for all."

Bob raised a hand to forestall Dave and Amanda, who had left the water and were headed to the lounge chairs under the umbrella. "What are the terms?"

"Indemnification for the University, a settlement of one million dollars for the physical, mental, and emotional damages you suffered, and a non-disclosure agreement. The wrongful death settlement will be rolled into it, with no changes in the agreed upon and dispersed amounts. In short, you agree not to disclose the terms of the settlement, absolve us of responsibility, and you walk away with a million dollars," she finished.

"If I agree to this, you won't contact me, nor have anyone following me or tracking my phone?" Bob asked pointedly.

"We won't have any reason to," she assured him. "Please understand that at the moment, you represent a potential embarrassment to the University. We want to put this issue to rest once and for all."

"Alright," Bob agreed, "I'll meet you at the admissions office tomorrow morning at eight."

"Thank you, Mr. Whitman," she replied, "I'll look forward to seeing you tomorrow."

The call ended, and he motioned for Dave and Amanda to come over.

"What was that about?" Amanda asked curiously.

"The University has been intensely interested in making sure I don't sue them," Bob sighed.

"The explosion thing?" Dave sounded unsure.

"Mostly," Bob hedged. "It turns out that the theft of my work wasn't a secret from the head of the department but was condoned, encouraged even." He shook his head before continuing, "a lawyer tracked down my mother, and they sued, but the case was based on my death. The University settled out of court, and with my being not-so-dead, that settlement is in question. I agreed to take a payout, indemnify them, and sign an NDA if they let the wrongful death settlement stand. Oh, and they're throwing in a million dollars as well, not that I really need it."

Dave shook his head. "You should have a lawyer with you," he reached down and pulled his phone out of his beach bag. "I've got a couple of friends who owe me a favor or two."

Amanda grinned and nudged Dave with an elbow. "Carl went to Stanford, and he hates UCLA, even though he's in LA now. He'd probably do it just see them payout a settlement."

"Good idea," Dave said as he started tapping on his phone.

"I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have a lawyer look over it," Bob agreed with a sigh. "They do have a history of trying to fuck me over."

Steve's job alternated between ridiculously easy and incredibly stressful. Nine hours out of ten, he spent reading and replying to emails, making decisions that weren't difficult, and could have been made by the person requesting the decision. In fact, the majority of those decisions were precisely what was suggested, which wasn't unusual, as they were experts in their field.

No, it was the one hour a day when something landed on his desk for which there wasn't an easy solution that had led to his second ulcer, and the grey at his temples, despite being on the sunny side of fifty. The past few days hadn't followed that pattern, though.

The cure worked. No one could explain how it worked, but anyone dosed with that serum inevitably pissed and shat out the necrotic remains of every cancer cell in their body. He'd had over two hundred researchers digging through the aforementioned piss and shit, but they couldn't come up with any explanation at all.

It was beyond frustrating.

Beyond not being able to grasp even a basic understanding of how the cure worked, let alone how to replicate it, a long-standing question had finally been given immediate attention.

You couldn't be a pharmaceutical company and not work on a cure for cancer. Fund and personnel had to be devoted to it, and moreover, those efforts had to be real. The public would crucify you otherwise.

The question, which had rained a veritable ocean of shit on the company that allowed it to leak, was this; if a cure for cancer were to be found, would it be a financially sound decision to produce it?

The answer was a solid 'maybe.' If Pfizer were the only company to have to cure, then yes, assuming they could prevent others from duplicating it. Patents were all well and good, but there were countries that didn't care about international patent laws, and some of them had the necessary infrastructure to support the manufacture of advanced medicine. Ultimately, patients would pay for a knock-off version if it was available.

Things could slide solidly into the 'no' column if Pfizer wasn't able to patent the cure.

Steve had spent far too many stress-filled hours explaining that yes, the cure worked, and no, they couldn't replicate it yet. His meeting with the creators of the cure hadn't gone as well as he'd hoped. The nurse had exhibited a regrettable distaste for Pfizer, although he suspected it likely extended to all pharmaceutical companies. The two men had seemed almost naive, although they were all too willing to follow the lead of their friend. He hadn't been able to secure a contract of any kind, and he had gotten the sense that pressuring them wouldn't have gone well.

They'd balked at the manufacturing process, which didn't make any sense. He'd spread the word, quietly, that an unused dose of the serum was worth a lot to Pfizer. He'd focused on the hospices, although he'd contacted hospitals as well. A ten percent discount on everything they currently purchased from Pfizer, for one year, was enough to make administrators salivate, and a one million dollar reward, in cash, without questions, should have motivated the nursing staff.

So far, he hadn't had any success, and the upper echelons of the company were beginning to panic. He'd just gotten off the phone with the head of PR who had explained to him, like he was an idiot, that whatever company pushed this into clinical trials would be lauded, and if they rolled out an actual cure, the prestige would grant them an advantage in public perception that would last for years.

Steve opened a fresh roll of Tums. He'd gotten an email from an old friend a few minutes earlier, letting him know that someone was taking a meeting at J&J about some kind of miracle cure.

He chewed two of the chalky tablets and grimaced, consigning them to the roiling waves of acid in his stomach, then started typing an email. He had to notify the powers that be of the meeting, even if it turned out to be something else. He hadn't made it this far up the corporate ladder without learning how to cover his ass.

"I think we should just keep doing what we're doing," Elli argued. "We're up to what, four hundred people now?"

"Four hundred and twenty," Harv agreed, "and I agree. They're all taking the necessary skills to harvest the ingredients and cast the rituals. Honestly, all we need is a few local contacts at each of the hospices and hospitals."

Carol-Ann shook her head. "At some point, you're going to run into a nurse who is a stickler for regulations, and they'll being in an administrator who will shut us down, at least in their facility, and they'll get the government involved."

"So?" Harv asked. "We'll just ignore them. It's not like they can stop us from healing people."

"They kind of can, though," Carol-Ann replied grimly. "They can refuse to let you into the hospitals."

Harv chuckled darkly. "That would make them unfit to be there, wouldn't it? Removing them from my path is a public service at that point."

Elli grinned and clasped Harv's shoulder. "I'll be right beside you," he beamed.

Carol-Ann frowned. They'd been dancing around this issue ever since the meeting at Pfizer. The problem was that Harv and Elli came from a place where right and wrong were pretty clearly and simply defined. Thayland and Earth were just different and this was a shining example of those differences. From Harv's perspective, he had created the cure to a deadly ailment and was distributing it for free to anyone who needed it. This was the right thing to do. From the perspective of a jaded nurse and a hospital administrator, they were stopping a snake-oil salesman who was dosing the patients under their care with an unknown, untested substance.

She could see both sides clearly, and while she firmly sided with Harv and Elli, she knew that at some point, there was going to be an incident. She honestly didn't know how they'd managed to avoid one so far. They were up to three thousand, one hundred people cured, and she'd gotten a few messages already from friends who were also nurses, telling her a story about how a friend of a friend had discovered that all the cancer patients in their hospice had been miraculously cured overnight.

She decided to take a different angle. "What about all the places we don't know about?" She asked. "I mean, I can find all the places here in the United States, but once we get into the second and third world countries, we won't be able to just google up for the nearest hospice." She snorted, "There are places that don't even have hospitals, they make do with visiting doctors. Which, despite how much I dislike them, is the reason we need to deal with the pharmaceutical companies."

Harv and Elli exchanged a look, then Harv replied, "We'll meet with the Johnson and Johnson people and see if we can work something out with them, but we need to make it clear to them that they're a convenience, not a necessity."

Carol-Ann nodded. She was happy to have gotten that much of concession out of them. The contracts had been... enlightening. Or maybe enraging was the better term, given the reactions of the two men. She hadn't been surprised by the terms, but Harv and Elli hadn't reacted well to the proposed profit margin when it came to pricing the cure. She'd been proud of the fact that her friends hadn't objected to the pittance they'd receive in the terms of the agreement, but rather the cost to the patients.

Checking her watch, she hurried to finish her coffee. They'd decided that she needed to level up, so she was being included in their new batch of freshers. It was monster slaying time.

"We need more overwatch," Raul argued. "Those Dungeons aren't deep enough to pull all the mana in, and there's a couple of spawn points somewhere inside the walls. My men are having to provide for their own security, which is slowing everything down."

Jack grimaced. He'd miscalculated the time necessary to drive the Dungeons deep enough to draw in the ambient mana from the area. The mistake was in using Bob as a benchmark. It turned out that the man was a machine, one which regular people simply couldn't compete. It was going to take them almost three times as long as he'd projected to complete the Dungeons. That wouldn't have been too awful if it had just been a single delay, but it was impacting other parts of the project as well.

"I'll see about hiring some protection," Jack promised, which soothed Raul enough that he headed back out of the spatially expanded tent that was being used as the office for the project.

Jack had heard that the Old Guard had pulled in a couple of million veterans, thumbing their nose at the government. He could probably hire some of them to keep watch over his construction crews. He wasn't sure how many people he'd need, but apparently, Mike was up on the glacier with them, and Mike would know not only how many he'd need but could probably recommend them individually.

He nodded to himself, then picked up his phone and added it to his calendar. He had to stop in Glacier Valley and check in on Angela anyway. She hadn't been squeamish about killing monsters and had been gleefully slaughtering them by the hundreds, rejoicing in her newfound youth.

He checked his schedule for the rest of the day with a sigh. Building a city on a completely green site was challenging but ultimately rewarding. The key was to have every phase planned out, with everything arranged so that once the dominos started falling, nothing interrupted the process.

The monsters who kept popping up inside the walls were slowing things down, not causing an actual stoppage. Stepping out of the tent, he looked out toward the walls and smiled. Life was good.