Chapter Forty-Five: Everyone Goes Ballistic

Howard receives a report on the huey rollout campaign, which has triggered massive backlash from Luddites, FAITH, skeptics, and authoritarian governments. Huey LLC faces dozens of restraining orders, lawsuits, and threatened audits. Hector reveals the company has already prepared an extensive legal counteroffensive and secured over two million orders, positioning them to weather the opposition.

Howard sits in the Trantor apartment reviewing the Hawking Institute's report on the huey marketing campaign. Despite the extensive promotional blitz across civilized worlds, the rollout has provoked significant opposition: Luddites and FAITH have reacted extremely negatively, media skepticism is widespread, and roughly half the UFS governments—particularly the more authoritarian regimes—have expressed concern. This opposition has manifested in fifty-two restraining orders, sixteen class-action lawsuits, and four threatened government audits against Huey LLC. Howard contacts Hector via internal comms, initially concerned about the company's viability. Hector reveals he has been proactively preparing for this legal onslaught for weeks, taking strategic inspiration from the Bobs' tactics. He has filed numerous injunctions, counter-injunctions, briefs, and preemptive lawsuits to bog down opponents in legal entanglement for months before any substantive court meetings can occur. Despite the opposition, Huey LLC has secured over 200,000 firm orders with deposits and close to one million tentative orders queued up—each customer representing a potential class-action participant if delays occur. Howard reflects on the broader economic implications: rental companies will add generic hueys to their mannies lineups, storage companies will expand services, and new vacation industries will emerge as people can visit other worlds via hueys without stasis sleep. He notes the Bobiverse owns most of these emerging industries, and acknowledges unspoken secondary markets will inevitably develop.