PurpleSimmer455

In truth, he wouldn't let that happen. If this plan didn't work, he'd think of something else, but he currently had no other ideas. Port Promise needed help now, and it fell on his shoulders to try to bring it to them.

To relax his mind in the days leading up to his presentation, he finally finished his first servo. He named the at-home assistant Sir Vo-Bot the 1st and showed him around their splashy penthouse. The place was a lot of work to keep clean, but Sir Vo-Bot was more than ready to do it.

A few days before the presentation, Ash and Pearl dropped by her parents' apartment in the Arts District. Darrell was out of town for a couple away games, so Cristal was staying with her in-laws while she prepared to become a mother of twins.

"Even though I'm a twin and the odds were higher, I still can't believe there's really two in there," Cristal gushed. "And I've only got a couple months left to get over my fears of labour and delivery."

"Everything will be fine," Pearl assured her, leaning down to feel her future niece and nephew kick her sister-in-law. "The hospitals in SanMy are some of the best in the world. They delivered you and your sister without any issue, and they've made a lot more advancements in medicine since then."

Cristal smiled. "We're not that old yet."

"Speak for yourself. I'll be thirty next year."

"Thirty's not that old. Look at great-aunt Nancy. She's eighty this year, and she hasn't even spent that much to look so good."

The money spent was certainly relative - but as tough and as rich as she was, none of them could deny that Nancy Landgraab looked pretty good for her age. But Ash was still bothered by the ordeal with the robots and her toxic business decisions; he didn't want to think about her at all, and Cristal made him think about fatherhood.

For Pearl's sake, he didn't want to dwell on that, either.

"Have you and Darrell picked out names for the twins?" he wondered innocently.

"We have names picked out, but we're not telling anyone beforehand because we don't care what people think of them."

Ash frowned. "Isn't that what people say when the names they picked are a little too interesting?"

Pearl eyed him sternly as she sat next to him on the bed in her childhood bedroom. "Ash, I know you're stressed about the presentation, but-"

Cristal smirked, unbothered by her second cousin's question. "It's fine. This is why we aren't sharing! And I don't know, Ash. I guess you'll have to wait until I've birthed two watermelons to find out just how interesting they'll be."

"Sorry," he said. "My presentation to the board of directors is next week."

"Ooh," said Cristal with a piteous glance. "Ash versus evil corp vibes."

She wasn't wrong about that, and Ash practiced his speech until the day of his presentation. Sir Vo-Bot was a great help, listening and offering suggestions in the mirror to ensure his argument was persuasive.

The day he was supposed to present to Landgraab Corp.'s board of directors, he met his grandmother outside the boardroom with his boss, Jonathan Banks.

"Are you ready?" said Jonathan. "We'll only get one shot to actually convince them to do this."

"As ready as I'll ever be."

"You're a Landgraab," Nancy said confidently. "You'll persuade them before you even finish your presentation."

"You called the plan 'expensive,'" he pointed out.

"Only at first," she said. "And it'll make them look good when it works. That's why I'm letting you present the plan at all."

Ash offered himself a few silent words of encouragement as the trio entered the boardroom. The members of the board sat quietly, waiting for the big idea they'd been promised by the CEO.

Nancy took a seat at the head of the long glass table, welcoming the board with a charming smile.

"Some of you have already had the pleasure of meeting our most talented robotics engineer, my grandson, Ash Landgraab. I'm quite sure you'll understand what I mean after you hear his revolutionary plan to meet our environmental obligations in every port in Simlandia."

"Aren't we always trying to find ways to skirt our environmental obligations?" one wondered.

"That's part of the problem with the current plan," said Ash, taking the opportunity to launch into his presentation. "Skirting regulations is reactionary. Out-of-budget. Even if we can manage to keep costs low, they're unpredictable. And if the land we own becomes unusable because of pollution and waste, we lose our biggest investment, anyway. We have to make our robots cleaner. I found a way to make them run on solar-"

"There's no money in clean technologies," one protested. "They're too expensive, so not enough people buy in to make them profitable. And solar is too cheap. It takes nothing to harness the sun, and then who makes any money at the utility companies?"

"We should invest in clean technologies for our own properties," he pressed. "Lead by example. And our properties are large enough that they'd make an impact everywhere we own. Once people see how easy it is, we'll sell them solar panels, wind turbines, and make money on their green investments! The long term financial impact is the real benefit, but in the short term we'll save on legal actions or lost productivity due to smog."

"We've run the numbers," said Jonathan from his laptop. "The guy's a genius, and the projections speak for themselves."

The board members each took a look at the numbers, considering the plan among themselves while Ash stood, awkwardly, above the long table. Nancy eyed them all, reading their expressions with a grin.

"Should we take the time to vote? Ash, Mr. Banks, if you could both leave the room? I'll come find you when the board meeting is over."

Ash felt his heartrate slow as he and Jonathan left the room. "How do you think that went?"

"I learned a long time ago that I can only predict when rich people are going to say no, so maybe that's a good sign."

They waited for what felt like an hour until Nancy emerged from the elevators. She saw her grandson and smiled, pulling him in for a congratulatory hug. "They went for it. And better yet, they think you'll be a fine CEO someday."

"Not soon, I hope."

"Sweetheart, as smart as you are, you can't have my job until I'm six feet under."

"Well just do me a favour and stay alive for a while."

Jonathan laughed under his breath. "Aren't witches immortal?"

"You better hope not," she sniffed, before ignoring him to congratulate her grandson. "The investors will vote on the plan at the AGM next month. You and Jonathan will go with me while the ballerinas go to Del Sol Valley."

Ash frowned. "Pearl and I were hoping I'd get to go with her to DSV."

Nancy chuckled. "She'll be busy enough, and the investors need to know you. They need to know the company's future is in good hands before they vote on your proposal."

With a nod, Ash relented. He understood why it mattered, and his grandmother was right. Building their trust now would make a difference later.

The investors needed to know him - especially if he was going to turn the entire corporation inside out when he finally took control. Most of the ideas he'd come up with in the past six months, he'd kept to himself. He didn't even bother to mention them to his grandmother.

But he had big plans for the future of the company, and after the successful board meeting, he started putting them into action.

He booked a red eye to Evergreen Harbour and arrived without letting anyone know he was there. Pearl knew where he had gone, but she didn't know who he was meeting. No one could know, but no one would suspect it, anyway.

The abandoned warehouse in Port Promise was quiet and nearly deserted when Caiden Huntington walked in. The two men hadn't seen each other since the dramatic end of their time in high school with Caiden's now-wife, Scotti Holiday, and Ash didn't raise a smile when he spotted him.

"Does Scotti know you're meeting me."

"I didn't tell her, like you said. I didn't think you'd ever reply to that 'sorry' text from eight years ago."

"I never wanted an apology. But I do need something from you now."

"What do you need from me? I just load cargo onto ships in the port."

"I need you to make sure the company keeps the cleaner bots maintained and running down there. If it looks like they're cutting costs and skirting their obligations to save money, don't run it up the chain and risk your job for telling the truth; tell me. Let me be the one to figure out what to do about it."

"What happens if they find out I'm going around them to blow the whistle to the grandson of the CEO?"

"Just try not to be obvious about it, and it'll be fine. The company will be mine eventually, and it'll be up to me whether or not you run this port someday."

"Like, manage the entire thing?"

"If you prove you can help me manage the environmental impact of the entire operation, why wouldn't you?"

Caiden was surprised by the offer, but flattered. Even if most people thought he was an idiot, he certainly didn't think it of himself. "Alright, I'll do it. But if this goes wrong and I lose my job, I want some kind of assurance that you won't let me and my family starve."

"The same family you tried to pretend was mine to blackmail me?" Ash rolled his eyes. "At least this time you're asking for fair compensation. If you lose your job, I'll give you enough to cover your salary for a year."

Caiden laughed. "It never really dawned on me just how rich you were until now. But a year of my salary is me just getting by, and you could write me a cheque and not even miss it."

"I didn't ask for this. I'm just trying to clean up this town and fix the shipping robots."

"I know, it's just an observation. If I see anything that looks like they'll cut more corners, I'll let you know."

"So we have a deal?"

"Did you want to hug it out?"

"No thanks." He bristled at the thought. "I'm going to drop in to see my sister, then get out of town before anyone else finds out I'm here." ->

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