.. what do we call them? Convertees?"
"Close enough," said Mandi. "Not everybody can be converted. Some people
simply aren't suitable for the process."
"You're saying it won't work on everybody?"
To avoid saying that she simply wouldn't accept everybody, Mandi said, "Some
of the money would go to pre-conversion evaluations. Training would eat most of
the rest of it."
"What kind of training?"
"Imagine that you instantly became ten times as strong as you'd ever been.
Could you immediately shake hands with someone? Hold a child? Could you take a
step and not leap fifty feet? Could you even hold a coffee cup without breaking
it? It takes time and training to adjust safely."
Their discussion had lasted almost an hour, at the end of which time he'd
promised her five million and the use of a decommissioned underground missile
facility in Nevada.
"If your program shows promise in six months," he said, "You'll get more
money. I'm basically giving you this first five million for all you've done
since you've been here."
Five million. It was a quarter of what she'd asked for and almost exactly
what she'd expected.
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