The email informed them that they have passed the assessment and they will be returning to the negotiation table, but they will be negotiating not as America but as Nato. So, they gave them a week of preparation time to prepare for the negotiations.
When Sarah read the email she was happy that they passed the assessment although she was sure they will, but she also felt the pressure of negotiating such a big contract for the first time.
So, she decided to attend the meeting but she will not be the head negotiator, that will be taken by the law Firm.
She will be a spectator and only agree to the deal if they come to an agreement. They must come to an agreement else they will be forced by the government to do so and she didn't want it to reach that place.
....
While the company was preparing for their meeting with the NATO team, Aron was finally ready to exact his revenge.
He was currently in his work room sitting in front of his computer ready to begin enacting his revenge.
'Let's see if you will have the same proud look if you lose everything you proud yourself having' was what he was thinking as he began to type in his computer beginning the first steps of making the professors life a living misery.
He first began by hacking the universities New's bulletin.
When he gained admin privilege of the site he started publishing the professors misdeed from him receiving bribe, writing recommendation letter to making rich kids pass and many more. He also added corresponding evidence to make the announcement fool proof.
After he completed writing the article, he timed it to be published in a week after today, as this was the second step of his many plans to break him step by step by taking everything from him.
Next he accessed the server where the contacts information of every student, teacher and anyone related to the university and programed it so that they will receive a notification the moment the article went live.
"Now, let's see how your wife will react to the news of you cheating on her" Aron said while smiling as he was sending her the intimate messages, pictures and videos between the professor and the secretary. Making sure that she understand beyond doubt that he was cheating on her no matter how dense she might be.
Removing his access to an influential helping hand, which was his wife. That's the reason of this step.
Him removing the professor's wife from the equation will mean that he doesn't have to fight against her influence to get to professor. And what way is better to remove her from equation than telling her that her husband is cheating on her.
Although Aron didn't know why her family or the professors wife was influential he didn't manage to find it from the internet even after he tried digging deeper he still found nothing as he didn't know how to even investigate someone online.
So he decided to remove her from the professor because, an enemy you know their abilities is better than the one you don't know.
After doing that he decided to punish the private investigator who was the one who found his information after being paid by the professor.
Although the man was just doing his job, he needed to pay as what he did caused a series of problems for Aron.
He went to the private investigator's website and after he gained access, he deleted all of the company's business data, email's and every bit of data they had on their servers and their backups making it so they will only have the information only if they had it offline somewhere.
This was all he did to the private investigator he didn't need to do more as this might even make their business bankrupt.
Now the only one who remained was the new scholarship head who approved his maximum interest rate in his payment.
he planned to deal with him after he moved to the second stage of the professor's revenge.
After he finished doing that he returned to his normal job as he was waiting for his plan to move.
Just as he was about to start working on increasing the security measure to BugZapper after he was inspired from hacking the sites someone opened the door and spoke to him making him stop his work.
"Brother can you take me to the super market?" is what his younger brother Henry asked.
Aron turned to him and asked "For what?".
"I need some material for my homework"
"Isn't mother at home?" Asked Aron trying to push the job to his mother.
"Mom went out with dad again today" Replied Henry
"Again..?..... Argh okay let's go" stood Aron as he gave up. Although he was happy about their parents spending time together, they were to euthanasic about it as if they were trying to compensate for the time they lost when they were looking after them. So, he was pretty sure someone new will join their family soon.
His younger brother Henry was too happy to go with him because he can ask him to buy him anything and he will end up agreeing to it while his mother will deny it if it useless.
After a short preparation they went down to the garage and took the car and left for the market to buy homework material.
...
A week after Sarah and the company was informed about the meeting with NATO representatives the day finally arrived and they could be seen sitting in a conference where each side of the long table was taken by each of them.
"Welcome, we really didn't expect the situation to escalate this much" said Sarah as she started the meeting with small talks.
"When the US called for an emergency meeting with the NATO members we also didn't know that there was something this detrimental to our security being prepared for public release." replied the representative of NATO. showing a little bit of displeasure but he managed to hide it faster before many of the people in the room noticed it
Sarah and the senior law firm member managed to catch it by they decided to not bring it up.
"We would have moved to other allied countries after we implemented it with the US government by then we would have someone to point as an example making it easier to persuade your countries but who knew that the government became our sales person" Said Sarah she was smiling feeling happy that the government saved them a lot of time.
"Now let's get to the main topic shall we" Said the senior member of the law firm as he knew if he let them continue to divert the main topic they might cause some problems before they even begin the negotiations.
"Yes, the faster we come to an agreement the faster we can implement it. " agreed the NATO representative and continued "So, After being informed by the US government we as NATO came to an agreement of buying the right to the program as a group and paying it as one entity for the countries involved, also we would like to request for the public version of the program to be less powerful than the one we will receive. As for the price it can be negotiated if the above conditions are agreed."
Sarah shook her head after hearing their demands and replied "Nerfing the program is technically impossible for now as the program is a Blackbox technology, It was created using machine learning meaning it taught itself so we dent know how it works as we are still trying to dissect it.". or that is what Aron told her to tell them if they asked for this same thing.
Aron wanted it to remain the same because he didn't want any country to have any advantage, as it may lead to him being put in danger if they ended up pursuing the original version(meaning the current version if they release a nerfed version to the public).
"As for you paying as a single entity it's not a problem as long as you factor in the amount of courtiers that will be using the program under the single payment. meaning we will count every NATO member as a customer and price them according to their infrastructure and add it up to come up with a single price but since you are our first customer we will give you a 20% discount for it" Added the senior lawyer from the company law firm
"So have you done calculating the estimated amount?" Asked the NATO representative.
"After we factored in everything including the discount, the amount comes to 10.5 Billion Dolar" Answered the Lawyer.
But that price was bulshit. There was no discount in the first place every country was expected to pay about $375million dollars if you divide it by NATO member(28) but if it was a stand-alone price the US would have had to cough about 2.5Billion Dollars for it.
The reasoning to it was that if they paid, they will have bought the program's license for life meaning unless they released a new and better then they might have to pay a little for the upgrade but it won't happen anyway.
"That's higher that we expected" Said the NATO representative making a frown face. But he was lying they expected to cough at least 15 billion for lifetime license, but who said he shouldn't try to bargain the price right.
With that they continued haggling back and forth between the NATO and GAIA representative, this time Sarah was quiet as she left their representative represent them as he was more experienced when it came to haggling.