Biolith Chemical Products

Trope-a-Day: Mega Corp

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Mega Corp: Oh, quite a few.  (Well, bearing in mind the cultural, demographic, and technological differences that mean that while an Earthly multinational might hit millions of employees, its Imperial counterpart probably has a couple of dozen executives, a large computronium core, and millions of jobs being done by subcontractors, sub-sub-contractors, etc., or “on-bounty”.)

The canonical list in the Empire and nearby, the “Big 26” starcorporations, are usually given as:

All Good Things, ICC – retailing

Artifice Armaments, ICC – firearms, heavy weapons, military vehicles, and defense technologies

Atalant Materials, ICC – mining, refining, and nanoslurry production

Biogenesis Technologies, ICC – neogenic organisms, biotech products and bioshells

Biolith Chemical Products, ICC – bactries and organochemicals

Bright Shadow, ICC – computers (including expert systems and thinkers), telecommunications equipment, and infotech

Cognitech, ICC – cognitive science, psychedesign, nootropics, and sophotechnology

Consolidated Mutual Mitigation and Surety, ICC – insurance underwriting and ancillary legal services

Crystal Flame, ICC – immortality (noetic backup archiving and insurance)

Databeat, ICC – major cycle brokerage and information furnace rental org

Ecogenetics, ICC – ecopoesis, living systems, environmental services, and bio-architecture

Enjoyment Unbounded, ICC – entertainment and luxury goods

Experia, ICC – entertainment and media (watchvid, InVid, slinky, and virtuality)

Extropa Energy, ICC – energy production and distribution, antimatter production, and fuels

Gilea and Company, ICC – banking, investments, and futures markets

Llyn Standard Manufacturing, ICC – cornucopias and industrial-scale production

Prosperity Nexus, ICC – investment, fund management, and commercial banking

Ring Dynamics, ICC – stargates (construction, maintenance and leasing)

Riverside Eubiosis Foundation, ICC – pharmaceuticals and health and medical services

Service Gate, ICC – contract matching and labor allocation

Stellar Express, ICC – delivery services, interstellar logistics, supply chains, and shipping

Systemic Integrated Technologies, ICC – robotics, automation, and infrastructure technology

Telememe, ICC – news, statistics, demographics, data mining and information research

Traders in Ideation, ICC – information brokerage, rights management services and data warehousing

Ultimate Argument Risk Control, ICC – security services, military contracting, and mercenary brokerage

Vermilion Harvest, ICC – agriculture, silviculture, carniculture, and bioproducts

…but there are several others that compete close to these leagues – exactly which are named depends on who precisely you’re talking to.

Given the nature of the setting, of course, the traditional unremittingly negative portrayal of business in fiction is utterly averted, and the Big 26 receive the respect they deserve as the mighty prosperity-generating engines that they are.  But then, in their home markets, the free market actually is a free market, so they never had the opportunity to discover corrupt business strategies of monopoly, rent-seeking, and regulating the competition out of business, even if they didn’t tend to be run by people who are every bit as ideological as everyone else in the vicinity.

(Well, not that this opinion is shared by everyone.  Gilea & Co. and UARC, in particular, tend to attract some opprobrium elsewhere in the Associated Worlds, particularly in places that don’t appreciate the absolute sacredness of contract in Imperial ethics, Gilea & Co.’s policy of not recognizing any special difference between “states” and its regular commercial customers, and – especially – its willingness to pursue “asset realization” after a sovereign default with however many of UARC’s finest mercs it takes to impress upon the customer that when they do the job, they always get paid.  But that’s not the mainstream opinion at home.)

As a side note, while it is by no means a conventional corporation, the Imperial Charter makes use of much of the traditional structure of a joint-stock corporation in the Imperial government, such as it is – its citizens, for example, are citizen-shareholders in the technical lingo, and the traditional style of the Imperial Couple includes “Chief Executive Officers of the Imperium Incorporate” – so you could make a convincing argument that the Empire is, in quite a few senses, the biggest Mega Corp of them all.

Brand Maintenance

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TANEV (QUAVE REPUBLIC) – The government today refused the extradition of Ferlyn Kazesh, the Crescent Bioproducts executive responsible for the Taniris chemical disaster, to the Empire.

[The disaster at Taniris earlier this year was the result of a faulty control computer in the Crescent Bioproducts factory outside Taniris City misrouting chemical flows in a manner leading to an explosion, which subsequently led to the venting into the local atmosphere of 300 tons of toxic intermediate products, including nanomotile catalysts.  Despite a rapid response from both local emergency services and specialist hazmat teams provided by Biolith Chemical Products, ICC, the owner of Crescent Bioproducts, this venting led to over 4,000 direct fatalities, and over 100,000 injuries with potential long-term consequences.]

In giving his judgment against extradition, Enforcer Parlaq of the Republic Court denied both the validity of the application, since the offences committed by Kazesh were committed entirely within the Quave Republic and therefore were subject to its sole jurisdiction, and cited the Quave Republic’s long-standing opposition to the death penalty.  Kazesh’s sentence of 85 years imprisonment under the Quave law of willful negligence therefore stands.

The Imperial ambassador to Quave, Sir Valeth Anandonos-ith-Anaxios, commenting, said “We regret the decision of the Republic government today to refuse the extradition of Citizen Kazesh.  While we respect the sovereign right of the Republic to exercise its jurisdiction in this matter, we believe that in this specific case we may have been able to better able to address the wider interests at stake while still ensuring that justice is done for the dead and injured citizens of the Republic.”

Anonymous sources close to the ambassador offered the following clarifying statement: “The records are clear, both those of your government’s investigation and those of Biolith when they got through investigating what the raicvef their subsidiary had been up to.  Kazesh killed those thousands of people just as surely as if he’d murdered them himself, by ignoring maintenance procedures, bypassing safety measures, and falsifying the plant records to let him embezzle the difference.  While we respect your legal system, that’s not willful negligence under Imperial law.  That’s something much worse.”

“Set aside the justice of it for a moment, although 85 years is a penny-ante punishment for anyone with either immortality.  We have to protect our brand.  The Empire’s thought of as a premium citizenship because we always clean up our own mess.  And we’ve got five trillion citizen-shareholders with investments all over – many of whom are themselves all over – the Associated Worlds.  None of them deserve to be – and none of them ought to be – associated with that shit-fucker.”

“So if you guys don’t want to do it, let me assure you that my government will take it as a personal favor if you can find a political way to send him back to us and let us shoot the bastard for you.”