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The Beginnings of a Trade Guild of the Galaxy?

Though most colonies of the Foundation were still in their infancy, the tycoons were spreading throughout the galaxy seeking after trading partners to further their own wealth, and to fulfill a dream shared by all tycoons. They wanted the galaxy in their grip, without having to forcibly make it that way.

Discipline maintained contact and traded with the virtual race it had contacted before, with slightly more militant ideas than others, while two explorer tycoons discovered trading partners of their own.

Three sovereign empires had contact with some part of the Foundation, but all three liason ships kept contact tightly controlled, so for the majority of Robotian society, no aliens existed.

Some citizens began noticing odd imports brought in by trading vessels, but most just shrugged it off.

The Foundation had a vast information gap, surpassing even the wealth disparity. In exclusive clubs, citizens in the know talked about the aliens and the spoils, the knowledge, while on the roads and in the factories, life went on as though nothing would ever change.

The explorer tycoons envisioned a future where they knew everyone, they knew the weapon systems, the homeworlds, everything about everyone else, while keeping the location of the Foundation homeworld in complete secrecy. They felt they could protect the Foundation by being so active no one felt compelled to find out just where they hailed from.

They wanted the Foundation to be invisible as a military and sovereign force, and yet everywhere as an economic force connecting empires together and binding them all to the tycoons of the Foundation.