At the same time the press conference was taking place in the Connect headquarters, an Edenian Navy fleet was towing a massive ship that looked like a toothbrush. They were headed toward the new oil field to begin construction of an offshore drilling rig.

When they neared the location, the fleet dispersed and started the process of patrolling and cleared out everything within twenty kilometers of the oddly shaped ship, which was released by its tug and dropped sea anchors to keep station where it was.

With the large ship now at a full stop, people watching would see it begin tilting as the bow raised and the aft sank. But the people aboard the ship were oddly calm, as they were expecting the movement; it was merely the ballast tanks being filled to adjust the ship's orientation.

Meter by meter, the rear continued dropping faster and faster, until the entire ship was completely vertical. Only about ten meters of the ship was left above the surface of the ocean while the rest had completely disappeared below.

The ship was actually an R/P FLIP, a FLoating Instrument Platform that was designed for scientific exploration of the ocean that could house researchers, workers, or any number of other mission-specific crew in reasonable comfort as they work far from any land mass. This one, however, was designed to perform a specific purpose: the construction of an offshore oil rig.

(Ed note: FLoating isn't actually a typo, that's part of the acronym "FLIP". These ships actually exist; you can find more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP )

Under the calm ocean surface, the underwater part of the ship got to work as an atomic printer was lowered from what was now the bottom of the research vessel. It began by printing a tether as it sank, keeping it connected to the platform it was being lowered from. Once it reached the sea floor, it dug into the sand beneath it until it hit bedrock and the internal batteries ran out of charge. Once that happened, the small fusion reactor in the FLIP began routing power to the printer, which reactivated, and reeling in any slack in the tether cable, effectively anchoring the FLIP to the bottom of the ocean.

With the printer now being provided the necessary power, it started digging further into the bedrock and maintaining the tether as it went. Eventually, the printer reached more than seven kilometers deep and the shaft the printer had dug out was reinforced to act as a pipe; the oil deposit was just a few meters away.

The printer then worked its way back up the newly created pipe for a few meters, clearing space for it to print a drill bit and shaft. Once that was done, the printer was hauled back up into the FLIP as it continued working on the pipe that would soon be transporting oil. Once that was completed, it worked its way back down the outside of the new pipe, building and attaching structural elements to it as it went, spiraling out from there to build the rest of the underwater pumping station. But due to the printer's small size and the adverse conditions on the seafloor, it took two full days for the undersea construction to finish before it was hauled back up into the FLIP and the ships departed the area, leaving everyone none the wiser as to what had taken place there.

Meanwhile, back at the Cube, the massive industrial atomic printers were busily printing prefabricated components that would be shipped out and assembled on site, while workers were being recruited and trained at the Helios offices in the Connect headquarters in Edenia. The platform would be completely assembled within the month, and ready to officially begin operations after the workers had undergone three months of training. If it weren't for Aron's desire to maintain the core secrets of his technologythe atomic printers and his VR podseverything would be done in a matter of days. The months of delay were a necessary trade off.

...

As all of that was happening, Aron was in the lab for the first time in a long while, looking through designs of different devices on a computer.

"Remove the atomic clock from this watch," Aron said, pointing to a smartwatch design. It had an atomic clock in it, allowing it to keep time as accurately as any human would ever need in their lives.

"Reduce the resolution of the camera on this phone by fifty times," he sighed, pointing to the design of a new smartphone.

[What's wrong?] Nova asked.

"I mean... how the hell do they expect me to release products that're a hundred generations ahead of any device that currently exists?" he jokingly complained, though he was rather happy on the inside.

[Isn't that why you're here? You're the one that decides what gets built as is, and what gets downgraded before it can be launched. That's why I told them to go all out,] she responded in the same joking tone, as she quite enjoyed spending time doing this with Aron.

"True, I suppose.... Remove the hologram display from this one," he replied and indicated another smartphone design. Even before his latest upgrade, he could multitask without losing focus at all.

"And the AR control from this, the X-ray camera from that, the DNA reader from that...." He continued for more than an hour removing futuretech from the gadgets one by one until they were bare bones of their former selves.

"Now list the features that I left in," he said. Nova waved her hand and a display screen popped up in front of him.

[Mana batteries]

Aron nodded; those were essentially frozen blocks of magic energy that were released as electricity on demand. They store a lot of energy in very little space and are capable of very rapid charging.

[Smart camera]

Aron was quite fond of those. They interfaced with the AI assistant in the GAIA OS and optimized the camera function on smartphones. They were capable of real-time recording in 4K resolution and 3D scanning, and the integration of the AI would allow for real-time image editing, within limits. The AI assistants would have a strict set of guidelines that determined what they were allowed to do, and how far they were allowed to go when it came to editing of still images and video footage.

Essentially, enhancement was fine, but deep fakes would be prohibited.

[Quantum display]

Instead of the traditional LCD, LED, and qLED or oLED displays, quantum screens were capable of near perfect black levels and infinite contrast. They also had unprecedented pixel density, ultra-fast refresh rates, and virtually eliminated motion blur. Quantum dots were used to allow for currently unheard-of brightness levels, which would let the screen be easily readable even in direct sunlight.

[Graphene CPU chip]

Aron had debated using quantum chips for quite some time. While he was quite familiar with quantum computing, he was still leery of it being "released into the wild", as it were. After all, once it was released, it would be reverse engineered. And due to Moore's Law, it wouldn't take long for others to begin nearing his own level, although they could never catch up to him. But it would still take away quite a few of the advantages he currently possessed even if their reverse-engineered knockoffs were even a third as capable as his.

[Q-com chip]

A Q-com chip was a quantum network adapter that served to deliver fast, stable internet speed. Although it was much faster than any other form of networking currently available on the marketbasically around the 7 or 8G benchmarkit was definitely a power hog. Thus, transferring a full movie to a friend would put a lot of stress on a mana battery. That stress would increase as the distance the information was being transmitted increased, so to counter that, he would launch quantum communication satellites into orbit, thus reducing, or at least standardizing, the drain on the mana batteries in the mobile devices.

That said, the Q-com chip version that Aron would be including in his hardware would be camouflaged within a dummy network chip that would only be a few generations advanced beyond what was currently available. The Q-com chip itself was only a few nanometers across and would only be acting as an exclusive feature for GAIA TECHNOLOGY-made devices, so even pulling the device apart and inspecting it would allow the chip to remain unnoticed. It was also far less capable than even those included in the ARES headgear, or the Q-com chips in the glasses he had given to his close circle of friends, family, and acquaintances.

...

The list was quite long, but after reading through it, Aron was satisfied that it was advanced, but not too advanced to be believable.

"Now to figure out which features to include in what," Aron said, then settled in for a long think about the issue. He was planning on releasing hardware this time, not just software, so any and all smart devices were in the running for a feature-rich release from GAIA Technologies.