Concealing One's Strength

Among the lists Dynamic Image Civilization presented to humanity, Gene Lock was a broad category of technology. It included various types such as Anti-Submissiveness, Submissiveness, aesthetics, anti-memetic assimilation, and more. They were like the various functional slots of Gene Lock Technology, priced and sold separately by Dynamic Image Civilization.

Among these Gene Lock technologies, humanity set its sights on Anti-Submissiveness. This technology came with a general explanation: it was a Gene Lock Technology designed to prevent one's race from being genetically enslaved by another race.

In other words, even if individual lives from a civilization possessing this technology were captured by another civilization, the captors could forget about making that race serve them loyally until they cracked its Gene Lock.

The other entries lacked general explanations, but humanity understood what they meant. In short, they were all good things. Unfortunately, their prices were steep as well. Even a single-function Gene Lock Technology cost one hundred million tons of Antimatter. Of course, that was only the listed price. In practice, Dynamic Image Civilization did not accept Antimatter as currency.

They only accepted technologies they deemed worthwhile as trade-in value.

With one-sixth of a Dyson Sphere, they produced Antimatter far more efficiently than humanity. Therefore, whenever Antimatter was involved in a trade, it was not humanity selling it, but the other way around.

That was a real scam. No matter how one calculated it, they came out ahead.

Fortunately, the pricing of technological data was not entirely up to them. Humanity's scientists had a say as well. Since they priced Gene Lock Technology so outrageously high, humanity could price its own technologies—those it possessed and they did not—outrageously high too. In the end, everyone could only stare at each other helplessly.

After all, they knew nothing about technologies they lacked. Wasn't the