novelslam Chapter 326 Three Types of Assets
Chapter 326 Three Types of Assets
Satsuki pushed the teacup aside and picked up the folder again.
She turned to Weber's personnel list and pointed to the first name.
"The first category—humans."
Her speaking speed was faster than before. Endo sensed it—Satsuki had switched from "gathering information" mode to "breaking down the problem" mode.
"Gruber, Langer, Hoffmann..."
"After reunification, these three individuals became citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany under their legal status. As ordinary citizens, they were naturally free to move around and, of course, free to choose their professions."
She pushed the list a little closer to Endo's side.
"We can choose to apply for work visas and sign formal employment contracts. We can then bring them to Japan as foreign citizens for employment."
Therefore, the legal risks are not significant.
She paused for a moment.
"The only competitive risk is whether West German Zeiss will also want to keep Gruber."
Endo nodded.
"Yes. Gruber's ability to perform ultra-precision grinding of aspherical surfaces is too dazzling. If West Germany's Zeiss had noticed it earlier, no matter how high our offer was, we might not have been able to acquire it."
Gaoyue took a sip of tea, her brow furrowing slightly at the astringent taste of the tea, before she quickly returned to her upright sitting posture.
"not necessarily?"
She repeated the word, emphasizing the last syllable.
Endo immediately changed his tune.
"We need to confirm whether they have already added Gruber to the reservation list."
"very good."
Satsuki placed the teacup back in the saucer and pressed her fingertips against the corner of the document page.
"Use the company in Frankfurt."
Endo looked up.
"SA Precision Optics GmbH?"
"Um."
Satsuki tapped on the company names on the list.
"When it was registered last year, its purpose was to provide Weber with legal status to operate in Europe, but now it can take on a little more work."
"We'll set up an office in Jena," Satsuki said. "The official name is—'East German Optical Talent Re-employment Support.' We're actively responding to the federal government's call to 'rebuild the East' and providing overseas employment opportunities for unemployed optical technicians."
She held up three fingers.
"But in reality, we only make precise contact with these three people, and we just symbolically recruit a few capable people as cover for the rest."
"Pay attention to the scale of the recruitment fair; it's best to hold it in a semi-public format, without alerting West German Zeiss. Offer salaries at 1.2 times the level of West German counterparts, plus a complete family settlement package—housing, children's education, and retirement security."
Endo quickly calculated the costs in his mind. The resettlement expenses for all three people, plus their families, to relocate to Japan, plus the guaranteed salary for the first three years, would amount to approximately two to three hundred million yen. On SA's books, this figure was negligible.
Endo closed his notebook.
"The Frankfurt office can be operational today, and the Jena office can be set up as a branch using an existing shell company, with signs up as early as within a week."
……
"The second category is knowledge."
Satsuki turned to the page of the Jena Glass Factory's formula notebook.
"More than thirty handwritten notebooks. Legally, they are state-owned assets belonging to the Jena Glass Factory."
"After unification, they will be transferred to the Short Group along with the company."
She looked up.
"Putting the notebooks in a box and taking them away is stealing federal property."
Endo stood motionless, waiting for her to continue.
"But what we really need," Satsuki turned the page face down on the table, "is what's recorded inside."
She leaned back in her chair.
"I have prepared two plans for this situation."
"The main approach is to acquire knowledge through people."
"Langer worked at the Jena glass factory for over twenty years, and he had the composition ratios, firing curves, and annealing parameters all in his head."
"If we successfully recruit Langer, and he joins the company under the guise of 'rebuilding the experimental database,' he can use his professional memory to reorganize the entire formula system—"
She paused for a moment.
"Legally, this is called 'personal skills transfer.' There is no law that prohibits a person from using the professional knowledge they legally possess."
Endo mentally went through this chain of logic.
As long as Lange himself signs the new employment contract and does not take any physical media such as paper, disks, or films from the Jena glass factory, then the knowledge in his mind is his own.
But he also noticed a problem.
"Young Miss," Endo spoke, her tone cautious, "twenty years of formula data—even Lange himself would probably find it difficult to guarantee complete and accurate reproduction. The component ratios are accurate to two decimal places, and the annealing curves involve time parameters for different temperature steps... Human memory has its limits after all."
Satsuki gently swirled the tea in her cup.
"I know."
She pressed her temples, as if the hangover was still affecting her.
"Therefore, the 'people' in the phrase 'acquiring knowledge through people' is not just Langer alone."
She turned back to the page with Weber's notes and pointed to a line of annotations.
"Weber mentioned in the footnote that Lange had at least four technicians under his supervision. Two of them worked for him for more than ten years, and the other two for five to seven years."
She removed her finger from the line of text and straightened her posture.
"The glass formulation system is very large, but it can be divided into modules."
She stretched out her fingers and dialed each item one by one.
"Raw material components. This is Lange's core territory, the one he knows best."
"The melting temperature profile and stirring parameters. These are routine operational details that his team of ten years executes repeatedly every day."
"The annealing process—heating rate, holding time, cooling steps—this is the part most prone to memory bias because the correction factors differ between batches. But if two or three people recall it independently, and then cross-reference the results…"
She stopped.
He glanced at Endo.
Endo added, "The error can be identified."
"Hmm." Satsuki nodded. "A person's memory can be flawed. But if Langer writes down a number for the same annealing curve, and his student writes down the same number, then that number is most likely correct. If the two don't match—then mark it as questionable, and verify it through experiments later."
She put the teacup back on the saucer.
"So Langer's four students need to get at least two of them. They're after Gruber and Hoffman, but before the 'cover recruitment' slots."
Endo quickly jotted it down in his notebook.
Satsuki continued.
"The work methods after the staff are in place..."
"The first step is to let Lange himself conduct a systematic review and organization of his memories independently. Divide them into volumes according to glass type—one volume for zero-expansion glass, one volume for optical crown glass, and one volume for infrared transmission glass. Each volume will be divided into four stages: 'composition-melting-annealing-testing.' Give him ample time and don't rush him."
"The second step is for each student to independently record the formulas they have handled. They do not communicate with Langer or refer to each other's work."
"The third step is cross-comparison. Lange's version is compared with the students' versions item by item. If they match, they are directly added to the database. If there are discrepancies, they are marked as disputed, and small-scale firing experiments are arranged later to verify which version is closer to the actual parameters."
Her voice was calm and clear as she read slowly.
"There's another advantage to doing this," Satsuki added, "Even if Langer did forget some details in certain obscure recipes, his students might not have forgotten the same parts. People have different blind spots in their memory. By filling in the gaps, we can restore the whole picture to the greatest extent possible."
Endo closed the notebook, then opened it again.
"Langer's four students were only listed with their job numbers and descriptions in Weber's notes, without their names. Weber needs to confirm this."
"I'll ask them today," Satsuki said. "Let Weber compile a complete list. Names, ages, areas of expertise, and family circumstances."
She paused for a moment.
"in addition……"
"Give Lange a special mission before he officially leaves Jena."
Endo waits.
"Let him reread all thirty-odd notebooks during his final days in office."
Her voice softened slightly.
"Just find any excuse—whether it's 'doing an internal inventory for the handover' or 'cooperating with the trustee to do an asset inventory.' The key is to make him refresh all the formulas in his mind before he leaves."
"Especially those formulas that he doesn't often come into contact with, those that are obscure, those that are from special batches. The memory from twenty years ago is completely different from the memory of seeing them just yesterday."
Endo understood.
The essence of this step is to use Lange's status as someone who has not yet left the company and still has legal access to the files, so that he can complete a "full backup" in his mind without taking any physical objects with him.
He didn't steal or rob. He was just an old employee nearing retirement who, before leaving, was taking one last look at the things he had worked for his entire life.
No one could say anything about it.
"A backup plan," Satsuki continued, "if Lange's window of opportunity before his official departure isn't long enough—for example, if Short completes his takeover faster than we anticipated, restricting access to employee files—"
"Then let's make arrangements in advance. Have SA Precision Optics GmbH and Jena Glass Factory sign an 'Academic Cooperation Memorandum'. The content should state that 'both parties will conduct technical exchanges on the application of special optical glass.' Lange, as the factory's technical liaison, will legally review and discuss the relevant formulas within the framework of the cooperation."
"The discussion process facilitates systematic memory reinforcement."
Her voice lowered by half a octave.
"The current level of chaos—there isn't even a proper management team in the factory, and no one would bother to read a perfectly worded memorandum of understanding."
Endo mentally assigned a risk level to this plan.
Low to medium.
The prerequisite is that Lange himself is willing to cooperate, and that the time window is wide enough.
"There's one last layer of insurance." Satsuki raised her eyes.
"Even if all the above measures are taken, I don't intend to use the final formula system directly in production."
Endo raised his eyebrows slightly.
"The entire process involves advanced experimental verification. Every formula must be tested on a small scale to verify the parameters. Only when the test data of the fired product matches the indicators recalled by Lange can it be considered finally confirmed."
She rested her fingertips on the edge of the folder.
"Memory is an index, not the Bible. Ultimately, what comes out of the kiln decides."
Endo nodded slightly.
This entire logical chain is now closed—multiple people memorize modules, cross-compare to eliminate deviations, refresh all data before leaving the company, and finally verify the results through experiments.
Four layers of redundancy. Even if any single layer fails, the overall information loss rate can be kept within an acceptable range.
"The budget for resettlement needs to be increased," Endo said. "Four students plus their families—"
"Include it," Satsuki interrupted decisively. "It'll be handled as a package deal with Lange. Same batch of visas, same resettlement standards."
She turned to the next page of the document.
"The third category—equipment."
Satsuki's voice stopped.
The silence lasted longer than the previous two types. Endo estimated it to be nearly ten seconds.
Her fingers rested on the edge of the folder, her thumb slowly stroking the paper—a habitual gesture when she was thinking about a difficult problem.
"ZSM-2200," she finally spoke, "is legally under the jurisdiction of the trusteeship authority, and there's no room for maneuver on that point."
She looked up from the document and at Endo.
"But the key question is—would West Germany's Zeiss want it?"
Endo didn't rush to answer. He knew that Satsuki was just asking and answering her own question.
"West Germany's Zeiss has its own sputtering equipment production line. It's at least a generation more advanced than the ZSM-2200. When they come to Jena to pick things up, they're looking for talent, brands, and customer relationships." She slowed down her speech, enunciating each word clearly. "A magnetron sputtering machine made in East Germany twenty years ago... might not even be on their purchasing list."
"If West German Zeiss doesn't want it—"
Endo took over.
"Then it's an unclaimed surplus asset in the hands of the trusteeship." (Note: This is because they are Japan, and selling it to them wouldn't be subject to the COCOM agreement.)
Satsuki glanced at him and nodded in satisfaction.
Endo Naoki stood up and began to explain the plan he had conceived while waiting.
"Taking advantage of the political pressure of the trusteeship's 'rapid privatization,' the federal government gave the trusteeship two core targets—to sell as quickly as possible and to create jobs as quickly as possible. If SA Precision Optics GmbH were to apply to purchase the entire three-story workshop in Building B—including all the equipment abandoned by West German Zeiss, including the ZSM-2200—on the condition of 'establishing an optical processing center in Jena and employing fifty local staff'…"
He leaned forward slightly.
"So on the trustee's books, this is a perfect 'job creation' deal." (Refer to the "1 mark factory" example; historically, the trustee would sell assets to the acquiring party for a symbolic 1 mark, provided the acquiring party guaranteed employment.)
Satsuki didn't speak. Her fingers were still stroking the paper.
Endo added the final piece of the puzzle.
"Zeiss Jena is about to cut its workforce from 27,000 to 3,000, and the Thuringian state government is most anxious about the unemployment rate. If we can commit to taking in 50 people before the wave of layoffs breaks out..."
"The state government will not only not stop us," Satsuki continued, "but will also actively help us lobby the trusteeship."
But she immediately raised a finger.
"The premise is that West German Zeiss really doesn't want the ZSM-2200. This information must be confirmed."
Her gaze was fixed on Endo's face.
"Endo, can you obtain the priority procurement list submitted by West German Zeiss to the trusteeship?"
Endo nodded.
"I had people in the Frankfurt office contact mid-level staff at the trusteeship agency. These kinds of lists aren't marked as confidential when they circulate internally; you should be able to get a copy for a little money."
Satsuki closed the folder.
She picked up the cup of black tea, which had already cooled slightly, and took the last sip.
As the tea went down her throat, her brow furrowed almost imperceptibly—the astringency of Darjeeling becomes more pronounced when it cools down.
She placed the cup back on the plate.
"Three to six months," she said.
"Yes."
"That's enough."
She stood up. The folder was tucked under her left arm.
She took two steps and then stopped.
Endo waits.
Weber's last note reads, "Satsuki didn't turn around, 'The accordion thing—make a note of it.'"
"I've already noted it down."
Satsuki nodded.
Then she walked out of the restaurant.
……
Endo remained alone in the same spot.
He took the red pen out of his shirt pocket and screwed on the cap.
Outside the window, October sunlight streamed through the French windows, illuminating the empty bone china teacup on the dining table. A dark brown ring of tea stains remained on the white porcelain.
Endo put away his pen and turned to walk towards the entrance.
There are many things to do today.
Contacting the Frankfurt office, initiating the registration process for SA Precision Optics GmbH in Jena, arranging contact plans with mid-level staff at the trusteeship office, and preparing a budget for the total resettlement costs for all personnel.
And confirm the size and weight of an accordion.