After the repeated failures Chad had suffered in his efforts to reform the corporate structure of Megacorp, he was ready to try anything. When that 'anything' involved quantum supercomputers, he was curious. When they tried to explain 'thermal quantum annealing' and 'quadratic optimization,' he rolled his eyes. When they mentioned the nickname, Eigenweasels, he smelled a paradigm shift.
His instincts had not failed him. Metric after metric, putting his trust in those digital weasels had been his company's salvation.
“I don't understand it, sir. We've been giving away product at a rate that our old models would have called insane, and yet we've got sales out our ears!”
Chad smiled as the talking heads surrounding the table yammered on in confusion. They hadn't studied the Eigenweasels, nor had they taken seriously what the simulations had predicted. After letting the last of them say their fill, he leaned back and cleared his throat. All eyes on him, he put on his executive smile and spoke.
“None of you understand. You're living in the past and our policies are in the future. It turns out that success of one is success of all, even if that feels odd. The math works. With the entire economy in the simulations… Well, you can't argue with success.”
Chad smiled as they stared at him in stupefaction. He let them simmer and then tossed out the bombshell.
“The Eigenweasels say to lower prices and increase employee pay.”
Not a one of them said a word. They stared at him with broken wills. He wasn't going to mention it today, but the simulation said he'd have to fire them next. He'd have to take a pay cut, himself. It was the right thing to do, per the simulation. The weirdest part is, it meant he'd make twice what he would without the pay cut.
Chad smiled. He did a lot of that lately. The scariest part of this was that the Eigenweasels had told him that everyone needed to be doing this. He had approached big names across the world and talked the biggest companies in history to consult the quantum oracle. And each one that did it, inflation dropped, consumer price indexes dropped, and corporate profits skyrocketed.
He'd been warned that quantum physics was incomprehensible. Quantum economics was even worse.
[Chad - I'm not as happy about this one. It felt like a stretch. I might not understand the benefits enough. I finished it without enthusiasm.]