4
Picking Losers
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
—Thomas Jefferson
Standing in the women’s restroom in the White House where she’d planted the vidcam, Trixie wriggled out of her clothes, as was de rigueur for her contacts with her real boss, the Russian Union Premier. She thrust out her chest, swayed her hips, and started her report. “Things are still really tense here. As I reported earlier, they’re bringing the California governor here to be tried for treason, and we’re rounding up his most fervent followers as well. So Chiefy may survive this after all if the Secret Service doesn’t shoot him themselves.”
She paused. “I saw your message asking if I should get out. It was very sweet of you.” She blew him a kiss. “I appreciate the thought, but I’m still good. I think if it goes badly, the Secret Service guys will help me.” She laughed. “As you know, they’ve been pretty sure all along that I’m a spy, but considering the role I play here and who I play it for, I think they feel a little sorry for me.”
Indeed, she’d had a surprisingly candid conversation with the leader of the Advisor’s detail shortly after the Riot. After she had, with considerable circumlocution, communicated the reasons why she was a spy here, he’d pretty much offered, with considerable circumlocution, to watch her back.
However, Trixie did not tell the Premier about that little tête-à-tête . No, no reason for the Premier to know all her secrets.
She continued, “So, I’ll stay for the moment. If things change, I’ll let you know.”
She licked her lips with luscious pleasure and wriggled her hips for him. “Kiss my sister for me.”
Trixie shut down the transmission. She looked into the mirror as she always did after her communiques. For one moment, she lost control, and the look of a hungry, streamlined shark passed over her features.
Then she schooled her face once more into the delicate lines of a blonde bimbo and went back to work.
Dash studied the results from the latest simulations for her rejuvenation therapy with such excitement, she had to clamp down on her enthusiasm with considerable force. She thought she was finally coming to understand the deep issue that made her procedure so unreliable.
She was probably wrong. But the possibility that she was right was strong enough, she would now redesign her molecular factories and try the new versions on some patients who, prior to now, would simply have died had she given them rejuv.
Ben Wilson, one of her early rejuv patients who was also her largest venture investor—and was also now a friend—rolled into her office in a wheelchair pushed by a bot.
Dash looked at the wheelchair in dismay. Her second effort at rejuvenating him had given him a couple of extra years, but those years were running out. This new version of the therapy was probably her last chance to keep him alive. “Ben. It’s good to see you.”
Ben coughed, a wheezing, gasping sound. “It’s good to be alive.” He chuckled. “Even if it’s only sort of alive.”
Dash had nothing to say; it would be premature to offer hope based on the new simulations. “How can I help you?”
Ben rolled to her small round table and scooped up the jade Ganesha that rested thereon. “Do you have any idea how profitable the BrainTrust Consortium is?”
Dash shook her head. “I haven’t paid much attention. I’ve been rather busy.”
Ben rubbed his gnarled fingers over the Ganesha. “Well, they own a stake in everything invented here. Ted’s copters, your rejuv, Matt’s new rockets, Sophia’s vat-grown body parts—everything.” He chuckled. “Even your new cure for the common cold.”
Dash smiled at that. Before the final combat with Khalid, Ping had asked why she didn’t, with her latest tech, take a few days off, cure the common cold, and make a zillion dollars.
So when they got back to the BrainTrust, Dash had hired another intern to take charge of developing the cure, working with Simon and Velma and a few others, who also got shares in the new product. Curing the cold was pretty easy given all the new things they’d developed to fight the Rubola plagues.
Dash and her investors and the new product shareholders, including Ben, hadn’t quite made a zillion dollars yet, but they’d certainly done well. Dash observed, “I think the Consortium has earned their share as much as anyone, don’t you?”
Ben frowned. “That’s not the point. The point is, I’ve been missing out on all that profit.” He paused to catch his breath. “So I’ve finally bought a seat on the BrainTrust Consortium. Now I get a piece of all their action, even as they get a piece of mine.”
Dash laughed. “Congratulations.”
Ben held up a finger. “There is a problem.”
Dash raised an eyebrow.
“Truthfully, I’m not in good enough shape to tend the board meetings reliably. So . . . ” He gave Dash a hawklike stare. “I would like you to be my proxy. Be a Board member for me.”
Dash stared at him. “I’m not at all qualified.”
Ben nodded. “And the only way to become qualified is to be on the Board.” He coughed again. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
Dash started to object again, but Ben held up a hand. “In addition, there are special obligations for Board members who are aboard the BrainTrust.”
Dash peered at him suspiciously. She had a feeling she was being snookered in some mysterious fashion. But how?
Ben apparently changed the subject. “You remember, during the UVR Rubola attack, the way you had to implement Condition Zebra?”
Dash nodded.
“Well, as a Board member, you have a more direct line to the emergency systems. As a Board member, you could implement Condition Red for the entire fleet from your cell phone.”
Dash paused. The way they’d done the Condition Zebra had been straightforward, but she had to confess, having a direct line to emergency operations could be a good thing if disaster struck.
The doctor had the nagging fear that the time of disasters for the BrainTrust had not yet passed.
Ben watched as multiple expressions passed over her face. When she’d settled, he continued, “So, you’ll do this for me? There’s a manual, and a module in Accel you’ll have to take. Trust me, that’ll be the easy part.”
Dash closed her eyes, knowing she would regret this. “Very well, Ben.”
Ciara stared at her results while her mother watched patiently from the wallscreen.
Finally Lenora broke the silence. “Still nothing?”
Ciara picked up her tablet as if to throw it, then set it back down. “I don’t understand. Neither does Dark Alpha 55.” She shook her head. “The soil samples don’t have anything special. The water samples don’t either. The air is a little clean for that part of the world, but nothing special.”
Lenora offered encouragement. “So, the Baotong secret is not environmental. Like I said at the beginning, it is probably some combination of genetics and early socialization.”
Several years earlier, Jam had plopped an extraordinary phenomenon in their laps. She had learned that the entire village of Baotong, which was located in a desolate section of northern China, was populated with people who would qualify among the top one percent in the world as scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. Both Ciara and Lenora had been trying to figure out how that was possible ever since.
Ciara blew out a breath. “It doesn’t look like genetics either. Dark Alpha 55 can’t spot a single distinctive composition of DNA that distinguishes Baotong from the nearby villages.”
When Lenora tried to counter that claim, Ciara glared. “And no, I’m not depending on the small sample of genetic materials we got earlier.” She smiled. “I persuaded Fan that the people most likely to benefit from anything we found were the Chinese, so she flew up there and demanded cheek swabs from just about everybody within a fifty-mile radius.”
Ciara blew out a breath. “So, how’re you coming on finding something in the early years of nurturing?”
Lenora shook her head. “The people of Baotong make good parents, but nothing amazingly different enough or good enough to explain this. I’ve sent over my recordings and interviews, so you can examine them yourself.” She paused. “We might need techniques of investigation we haven’t figured out yet.”
Ciara ground her teeth. “One way or another, we’ll figure this out. I’m going to nail the answer to this puzzle if it’s the last thing I do.”
West of the Nile River, the lands of Egypt quickly turn into desert. The widow lived in that desert, close enough to the lands cultivated using irrigation from the river that she could see that lusher world every day from sunup to sundown.
She laid out lunch. “Come eat.”
Two children, laughing and pushing each other, came into the kitchen and sat down.
The widow looked wistfully at the food. Her children were still well-fed, although she had been on short rations since her husband died during the plagues. Ironically, he hadn’t died of disease. Rather, he’d been murdered. The police thought he’d been killed by someone working for the plague-maker because he had refused to work with him. They’d terminated the investigation shortly after the plague-maker had been killed.
Someone knocked on the door, gently but insistently. The widow went to see who it was.
A person in a black burqa taller than she was stood before her. “Can I help you?”
The woman in the burqa spoke in a melodious voice filled with grief. “I am hoping I can help you. May I come in?”
The widow wordlessly pointed her toward a chair.
The woman placed two sheets of paper on the table. “I have come to make reparations on behalf of the person who murdered your husband.”
The widow gave her a hawkish look. “They say Khalid murdered my husband. Do you know differently?”
The woman hunched over. “Khalid had him killed, but he was not the one who wielded the knife.”
“The police think the murderer wore a black burqa, not unlike yours.”
This near-accusation brought forth a lyrical laugh. “I am hardly the only woman in a black burqa walking these streets.”
“I repeat, how can I help you?”
A hand flickered out from beneath the shapeless cloth. The woman pointed at one sheet of paper. “Here is hopefully enough money to give you a fresh start.”
The widow stared. “That’s a lot of money,” she confessed.
“Not enough to make you rich or anything. But . . . ” the hand shifted to the second sheet of paper, “if you’re interested, I have called in many favors and negotiated a place in New Medina, the fleet created by the Palestinians near the Prometheus archipelago. You’re familiar?”
The widow sat back. “Goodness. I thought they were full.”
“They always have new ships coming off the line at this point. With my letter of recommendation and this money, you can buy a profit-share in a ship launching three months from now. The share includes a berth, and your children will immediately be enrolled in the Accel educational framework, the finest teaching system in the world. And you will always have room and board, even if you can’t find a job there.” She laughed lightly. “But you can certainly find a job. They’re always short-handed, even now when the whole world is out of work.”
The widow stared at her in astonishment. “But I’m not even Palestinian.”
From deep within the burqa, a guttural laugh emerged. The woman therein started quoting the Quran. “He who emigrates in the path of God will find frequent refuge and abundance. The people of New Medina take some parts of our faith seriously, especially hijrah that have been forgotten by too many others.”
The woman continued, “You’ll be well-fed. Not just your children.” Her voice took on a fierce tone. “You too.”
The widow sat quite still for a moment. “Thank you.”
The woman stood up. “Good luck to you.”
The widow stood as well. She spoke hesitantly. “Could you tell me why my husband was murdered?”
The woman responded with a comparable hesitation. “His murderer had to establish trust with Khalid’s men so she could track him down and stop him.”
“I see.” The widow stood straighter. “So, his life was not wasted.”
“Quite the contrary.”
The widow’s expression turned shrewd. “Tell her, then, that I understand. I will try my best to forgive her.”
The woman bowed. “That is all anyone could ask.”
Jason Garrett loved his life and hated his government.
Not the national government, mind you. Jason was a proud Red and had full confidence in the President for Life. Well, since the President was dead, God rest his soul, it was the Chief Advisor in charge. The Advisor wasn’t great, but he was better than a bunch of socialists.
Anyway, Jason still supported the national government, but the entire California government had been hijacked years ago by the Blues. The people in his community around Blyton all voted Red, of course, and their reps always voted against the crap the California Assembly thought up.
But Blyton sat on the eastern edge of the state, so far from the coast that even the Joshua Tree National Park was closer to the sea. The Blues universally disregarded the votes of Blyton’s reps and paid even less attention to the people of Blyton, except when they broke the laws that rained down in an unceasing torrent from Sacramento. Jason couldn’t even build a swimming pool in his backyard without filing an environmental impact statement, for heaven’s sake.
Which was ridiculous because, aside from the occasional palm tree maintained with considerable care and at considerable cost, Blyton was mostly built on dead gray rock and gravel. A mountain sheep would probably break an ankle on the golf ball-sized chunks of stone that comprised the landscape of the town.
Why couldn’t those assholes just leave him and his alone?
“They” said democracy was all about serving the people, but somehow he was never among the people served. He was always the dog being wagged by the tail.
After hearing the reports of the Governor taking his Cavalry to Washington, and the Chief Advisor’s Marines intercepting him, it struck him that it was time to get some government for himself.
He thought about leading some people up to Sacramento, but the top dog politicians were already under siege by the Chief Advisor. He had the Governor locked in his own limo and was taking him across the country, collecting his most enthusiastic fans. That was going to be some reckoning when the Advisor put the hammer down in DC.
What was the next important target for a proud Red? It was obvious: the liberal loons in the media. The movies in particular were saturated with left lib poison, stuffed so full of political correctness you’d think they’d burst.
There wasn’t much you could do to earn a living in Blyton, but if you drove your car in just about any direction, you’d find a great place for firearms practice. That was what Jason did for a living—teach police from all over the country how to use their weapons with greater skill.
Almost half his students were Blues, but the rest? He started placing phone calls to his many friends. His first call went to the Blyton chief of police and his men, all buds of his.
They’d start a Cavalry of their own. A Red Cavalry. Next stop, Hollywood.
A popular corporate strategy in the heady days leading up to the Great Recession was to procure loans using the reputation of your company as part of the collateral.
Let’s say a company has an excellent reputation. We know their reputation is excellent because the rating agency they paid to rate them says so. Let’s give our example company a random acronym. Call them, for example, AIG.
Now, if you’re a lender, you can lend them money at a lower interest rate because they’re so reputable.
Then the company can take your money and lend it to someone else, someone not quite as reliable, at a still-low-but-slightly-higher interest rate. Our hypothetical AIG takes the difference in interest rates as profits and sends the rest back to you. You don’t mind having the middleman take a little cut because now your investment is protected by the middleman’s reputation. Everybody’s happy. Indeed, everybody’s so happy that everybody does it some more. A lot more. Enough to make a veritable tsunami.
Alas. Eventually the tsunami crashes into the beach.
Of course, the contracts are written so that if AIG becomes less reputable, the interest rates they pay automatically goes up.
Of course, if their interest rate goes up, it also drives up their obligations, which feeds into the computation, so the extra money owed by AIG lowers their reputation.
Which raises their interest rates and debts.
Which lowers their reputation.
And so on.
AIG goes bankrupt as fast as the computers can crank through the cycles of destruction. Think of it as fully automated suicide.
The President for Life had been a lifelong fervent fan of ever lower interest rates since his own businesses had depended heavily on low rates to achieve the immense leverage ratios needed to make him immensely wealthy—in between the bankruptcies caused by the same immense leverage.
Because of his penchant for lower rates, after ascending to his For Life status, he had waged war on the SEC rules that constrained the collateralization of reputation. After years of quiet economic times, and after the President replaced a number of SEC members, they had relented.
Keenan Stull now faced another business opportunity, the sort which was a tiger he had no choice but to ride.
He needed to find companies that would survive the Great Crash so he had someplace to put a portion of his exponentially growing hoard of cash.
And while he was at it, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to find a few companies that would surely go bankrupt. Some put-options on a few surefire bankruptcies would make a nice enhancement to their current portfolio.
Keenan’s phone sang Cold Hearted Snake. “Larry. You have that list?”
Larry Winters answered, “I sure do. These puppies are all going straight into default.” He whistled. “I hadn’t realized how bad it was until I had my analysts compile this list. Amazing, what a bunch of morons have taken control of Corporate America.”
Keenan had never been much impressed by the executive intelligence of Corporate America, but as a derivatives trader and custom smart contract designer with a degree from Harvard, he couldn’t say he was much impressed by anybody else either. Except, sometimes, some of the folks on the BrainTrust.
Regardless, when he looked at the list the CEO had sent to his wallscreen, he whistled as well.
Larry observed, “If you need more money to short all these companies, let me know. I can send you some of the cash we have here.”
Keenan shook his head. “Can’t short them all. The government can’t let all those companies die.”
The CEO groaned. “Of course.” He cursed. “How do we tell which ones the government will save? The ones with the most employees, which is to say, the most voters?”
Keenan laughed. “Good God, that would be logical. No, I think the analysis will be a little more personal, a little more passion-based.”
He hung up and studied the list. Which ones would the Chief Advisor save?
The Chief Advisor—no, the Acting President, he reminded himself—watched as the Fed Chairman flipped on the immense display in the Oval Office. The display wasn’t a normal wallscreen since you couldn’t really use an oval wall that way, but it served adequately.
The Fed boss brought up several huge tables of data.
The Chief Advisor’s eyes glazed over. He looked away, toward the window. “Just tell me the highlights, please.”
The chairman pursed his lips. “These are the highlights.”
The Advisor continued to stare stubbornly out the window. Numbers always gave him a headache. “Give me something more highlight-y. Talk me through it without pointing at anything.”
The chairman took a shuddering breath. “We’re about to start QE17.” Quantitative Easings 1, 2, and 3 had been performed during the Great Recession decades earlier. In these undertakings, the government printed trillions of dollars and bought big financial assets from big banks to prop up the economy.
Additional QEs had been undertaken over the succeeding years as the economy stumbled in various ways. The original noble plan of paying off the QEs had, over time, died a quiet death. It seemed the country always needed just one more QE to keep running smoothly.
The Advisor shrugged at the news they’d do another QE. He’d assumed it. “So what?”
“We’ve run out of traditional assets to buy. Nobody really needs Treasury bonds anymore.” Actually, no one wanted Treasuries at the moment since everybody figured the government would pay them off with corrupted currency—an annoyingly correct assessment. “And there aren’t enough mortgage-backed securities.” Of course the Fed Chair didn’t really want mortgage-backed securities either since they were all going to default. What was the point?
The Advisor put his fingertips together in an arch. “And the solution?”
The chairman took a deep breath, preparing to face the Advisor’s wrath for taking a new approach. He didn’t understand that the Advisor’s terse tone came not from anger but from disinterest. “We’ll have to follow the Japanese example from the Lost Decade and start buying private equity. Corporate stocks and bonds.”
The Advisor turned from the window and gazed at the chairman. “So, you’ll be intervening directly in the stock market, propping up prices?”
The chairman nodded.
The Advisor pounded his desk so hard the chairman jumped. “Fantastic! We’ll set new records for the market!”
The chairman’s silent failure to endorse this statement eventually interrupted the Advisor’s reverie. “We will set new records, right?”
The chairman sighed. “A lot of these large corporations are going to go bankrupt in the next couple of days, regardless of their stock price.”
That brought the Advisor’s reverie to a full stop. “Which ones?”
The chairman wiped the screen clean, removing a source of pain from the Advisor’s world. A much simpler list appeared with the names of corporations.
The Advisor looked at the list with a sinking feeling. “All of them?”
“Probably.” The chairman exhaled hard. “We could print enough cash to bail them all out, of course.”
The Advisor nodded. “Excellent.” His eyes gleamed as he had another thought. “So I can go through the list and pick which ones survive and which ones disappear?”
In another era, another Fed Chairman would have insisted that those decisions be reserved for the Fed. The Fed had, for a long time, been an independent entity, largely free of the petty passions of politicians, able to engage in fiscal policy using the best technical analysis they could determine. But this too had been fixed years before. The chairman now served at the pleasure of the Advisor. “I’d be happy to make those decisions for you if you desire.”
The Advisor rose from his chair. “Nonsense.” He rubbed his hands together. “GM?” He stared in puzzlement. “Why are they going bankrupt? I thought the companies going down were ones with badly structured debt.”
The Fed Chair shook his head. “There are lots of different reasons for companies to fail with the economy frozen the way it is. GM has negative sales for the month.”
The Advisor stared. “Negative sales? What does that mean?”
“It means more people have canceled auto purchases than have signed for new ones. There is no more appetite for new cars at the moment than there is for real estate. Everyone’s afraid of big-ticket purchases. Nobody’s buying anything they can’t pay for with cash on hand.”
The Advisor grimaced. “GM has lots of strong union voters there. Save them.”
The Fed Chair made a notation.
As the Advisor studied the list, his eyes alighted on a special name. He laughed with hearty malice. “Amazon? Let them die.”
The chairman gulped. “They have an enormous workforce. If they go down, the rise in unemployment from both direct and secondary effects will be . . . horrific.”
The Advisor waved it away. “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to kill that company for years.” He laughed again. “Now all I have to do is sit back and watch them self-destruct.”
When the common people around the world saw what was happening with the Crash and grasped the contrast with what was happening with SmartCoin, they consumed massive amounts of bandwidth downloading SmartCoin apps to their various devices. As those folks proceeded to move out of government-controlled currencies, different governments reacted with varying levels of hostility.
All of the governments were angry, of course—no power structure likes watching their control evaporate in competition with a fully decentralized non-jurisdictional system over which they no longer had the slightest hint of authority—but the intensity of the rage varied.
China, in its spiritual embodiment through the person of its President for Life, fell at the low end of the range of anger. Sure, the President was angry about SmartCoin, but he was much more angry that the number two member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo would not listen to reason and come home so he could remind her that she was not only Number Two, she was also his girlfriend.
Liu Fan Hui sat in her office on board the Taixue isle ship of the BrainTrust Fuxing fleet/archipelago. She stared impassively at the wallscreen where her ex-boyfriend, the recently inaugurated President For Life of the People’s Republic of China, droned on the same way his father had droned pre-plague. Really, the resemblance was as uncanny as it was annoying.
As Guang Jian’s list of reasons for her to return to Beijing drifted into the nonsensical, her mind drifted into a disbelieving memory of how they’d wound up here.