Villiers listened to Lanier’s entire story about the Renraku operation to gain access to the secrets of the otaku. About how Babel, not Ronin, had turned against his former employers and put an end to the otaku project, which appeared to have damaged many Renraku cutting-edge technologies being readied for the marketplace. Speculation was rife among the Fuchi execs whether or not Renraku had acquired some of those developments from the otaku and whether they might have been wiped out by the virus by accident.