The (Re)Invention
"Glad to see you, Sir. I have to say, it took a lot of convincing to finally get a chance to present things to the directorate level."
"Well, that shouldn't be surprising, is it? When one of the folks working in R&D suddenly comes up with a proposal that outright defies science as we know it, in spite of being a noted scientist himself, a lot of people will insist on personally checking it out before openly supporting it. And checking out it did, as a boatload of people assured the board. So ... here we are."
"... for another demonstration, I suppose?"
"Eventually. For a start, I would like to discuss some of the ... limits there supposedly are with you. You see, it's a globalized world, and when a company - even a not-quite-global one like ours - gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to jumpstart an entirely new class of services, it wants to make very sure that any market we consider 'nonviable' is indeed that, rather than the foothold that a competitor can use to end our very much unintended monopoly ..."
"Ah, that topic - yes, I've already been told that that'll be someting that won't sit well with the mercantile POV. But I'm afraid it can't be helped. We did try with all the people we had that do not share our cultural background, whether they satisfied the other formal requirements or not, but to no avail. I don't see a way to address more than a handful nations with this discovery, not to even think about transcontinental campaigns. Quite frankly, we lowered the bar on those candidates to the point that I'm surprised that we were able to still keep everything a secret."
"I'm not. As I said, it defies science as we know it, and the point is that the failing candidates do not hold the beliefs that seem to 'explain' the results in the first place. I'm convinced that they themselves, if they ever told the story to some peers in a bar, would have called your attempts completely delusional. However, once we've gone public, reports by customers will tell them quite clearly that we weren't."
"... and why is that, apparently, worrying you in spite of being a restriction imposed on us externally ... ?"
"Think about it. We're going to start selling an outright game changer, and simultaneously say that it will never, cannot ever, be available to anyone who doesn't share our specific culture. The rest of the world will think that we built a racist limitation right into the product, in spite of such an approach being utterly nonsensical for a profit-oriented organization like ours."
A minute of silence ensued while the technician pondered whether he might have an answer to this entirely non-technical question. Then he spoke up again.
"You see, Sir, while I wouldn't dream of calling it proper scientific reasoning, we do have ... I suppose you would call it a 'narrative' ... suggesting why our discoveries even exist, and why they are limited in such a way, and how that's not our doing. We could advertise this along with the products themselves, to deflect the blame you fear."
"Telling the world that magic is now ours, and ours alone, because our gods happen to be the ones who can and do gift it to their followers, and nobody else? We can prove that the 'magic' works, but we cannot prove this narrative, and it does effectively tell everyone else 'sorry, but your gods are lame'. They won't like that spin, either. And I don't want to even think about the possibility that if our ancient gods are real, theirs could be as well and ... dislike our statements in ... ways as novel as our 'magic'."
"Eh, even if there are actual gods behind it all, what do you expect them to do about it, against the intents of ours? Send a zombie apocalypse our way?"
