Chapter 5
San Jose, California
Blue World Space Industries
Wednesday
9:00 a.m. Pacific Time
Marcus Jeffery Dorman sat in the corner suite of an all-glass exterior walled office atop the Miro hi-rise building. He looked out the side window down at the people scurrying about East Santa Clara Street. The sun was just high enough to cast bright rays of golden light between the alleyways, accentuating the newness of the district. With the new editions to the skyline from the latest multibillion-dollar big tech industries, San Jose was an even bigger hotbed of brainpower than it had been in the previous few decades. Just down the way Marcus could see the edge of Modera San Pedro Square and the top of the Tabard Theatre. Though he preferred the theater at Invicta, he’d helped pay for the Tabard updating and a lot of the recent buildup of the infrastructure for the “Square.” After all, the Silicon Valley billionaire had to keep the local politicians happy and show he was an upstanding pillar of the valley community—and the right politics had to be played in order to achieve his endgame goals. Politics always had to be played out and paid for.
Marcus leaned back in his desk chair, staring off into the city, but he was really not paying much attention. The icons floating about in front of him via his active-glass contact lenses and the conversations going on in his ear implants were holding his attention. The contacts acted as a transparent computer monitor that wirelessly connected to the next-generation computing system-slash-phone-slash-gaming console-slash-everything else that would be his next multibillion-dollar connectivity platform—he was tentatively calling it “Moebius” for now. The contacts wouldn’t come out with the Moebius platform for many years—at least not in the United States until he managed to pay off the right officials at the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Communications Commission. The initial system would be able to connect to any wireless monitor, VR style goggles, and the new Moebius Shades that would be another very expensive item everyone would have to have. After he’d made billions from the glasses through several iterative versions—glasses 2.0, glasses 3.0, etc.—then, and only then, would the contact lenses be released. By then, he planned to have permanent lens replacement done to his eyes. But those were still very experimental—even too experimental for him to implement.
For the time being, audio would be through wireless earbuds, but Marcus had plans for the future to sell the implants that he had put in himself and a few close, um “friends,” over a year prior just behind his earlobes that gave him always-on wireless audio connectivity to the various information networks available. He thought of them as his personal superpower gadgets for now. And, he could “think” to them to do data searches. He was a killer at trivia games. Once he had the eye implants too, he’d be unstoppable, in more ways than one.
Marcus reached out before him and moved some virtual icons about and then leaned forward to type out a message on the virtual keyboard. So far, the morning had been very mundane and ordinary, but he had high hopes, when suddenly a flashing red notification told him that an encrypted email from the dark web many layers deep in the “Onion” had arrived in his highly encrypted and hidden inbox. He tapped the email open and then input his decryption key. The message was still quite cryptic:
M,
We have the Means, now. Make certain the Method will be available as planned. BTW, nice boat.
Regards,
V
Marcus smiled excitedly and then typed in a response.
V,
All is going as crafted. There is Method to the Madness just waiting for the right person to come along and take it.
M
Marcus leaned back with a very big smile across his face. Those politics he needed were getting closer and closer to being achieved. Within seconds of the email from V, the alert flashed again, showing an encrypted message. Marcus tapped it and thought in his PIN.
M,
Here finally! Settling in. The app you sent me stopped the motion sickness completely, but only while wearing the glasses. Very clever, my friend. I’m compiling the data we need along with crew rosters and such. I may need a hand with some encryption breaking in a bit. Forthcoming. In the meantime, the hotel is in great shape and the mounting brackets can be seen from the window view. Build back better, my friend!
K
Marcus smiled at the way K had used the World Economic Forum’s slogan for the Great Reset, as they had called it. They had used the pandemic invasions to destroy most of the world’s previous economic systems and usurped over eighty percent of the world’s wealth, and therefore, power. Marcus, while a part of the WEF by necessity and design, didn’t care a lot for the so-called Party of Davos. But he never let on to them such sentiments because that bunch of oligarchs represented most of the world’s money and power structure. He’d never let on that, when it came to the original Great Reset, he didn’t like how they had handled things. His plan was better, bolder, and he was going to usurp it all from the usurpers. He was going to snatch it right out from under them without them ever suspecting a thing. He worked out a quick response and thought it to words.
K,
Glad the app helped. Will have to market it to sailors or cruise ship passengers somehow in the future. Might be some coinage there. Looking forward to the data you are collecting. Note: V is building back better as we speak! The plan is in motion.
M
Marcus leaned back in his chair and swiveled it around a full three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation before letting his feet back on the ground. He could feel the hardwood of his office floor slide beneath his Armani loafers as they slowed his rotation to a stopping position, giving him a clear view out the window again. He looked up and wondered where his friend was about now. That thought led him to the motion sickness app. He made several mental notes in his notepad and then emailed that to his legal assistant to start on a marketing campaign for it. He’d have to make a low-budget version that worked on a standard monitor, but that was easy enough. Maybe some glasses that displayed just the app would be version 2.0.
Marcus then turned his attention to the news feeds across the Onion, looking for any reports from Russia or other intelligence organizations for anything interesting. So far, there were no reports, but he knew that it was just a matter of time before that changed. He’d have to reach out to his spies in the intelligence committees for more information. Or he could always just call the White House.
Then he tapped into his online stock apps and pulled them up in spreadsheet fashion, showing the growth from all of his aliases and shell companies as well as his actual known and “taxable” wealth. Everything looked like it was supposed to. The buildup of his portfolio in certain services, technologies, and providers continued as it had for the more than six years he’d been building this plan. He had been building very large ownership in just the right industries. He’d shifted precious and standard metals’ and minerals’ futures about and collected major shares in the major mining interests. He’d collected as many of the finite crypto currencies as he could manage, because when fiat money collapsed around the world, crypto and precious metals would become the real global currencies. He approved of his current portfolios. For today, everything was right where he wanted it, but soon, very soon, he would need to shift some investments to match the events that were coming.
His mental focus was broken by an incoming-message alert in his virtual view. His secretary was trying to reach him. He used his mental mouse to click open the channel.
“Yes, Meena?”
“Mr. Dorman, Senator Shamus Kennedy and Congresswoman Roberta Young are here for your 9:15 appointment,” she reported through the audio link.
“Show them in, Meena, don’t keep them waiting.”
“Right away, sir.”
Marcus adjusted his tie just a bit, an old nervous habit, then spun back around toward his desk. He accidentally toppled a small plastic figure of Minecraft Steve that he kept there as a memento. The blue, green, and very blocky action figure was mounted on a plexiglass block with a signature on a napkin displayed within it. The signature read:
To Marcus,
Keep crafting and world building.
Markus Persson
He righted the figure just as the door opened. He put on a fake smile to appear as if he was happy to see his visitors. Politics had to be paid for. In truth, he really was happy to see them, but not in a friendly way. Instead, the visit meant one more piece of his new world map was falling into place. They were, indeed, an integral part of the plan even if they had zero idea of there actually being some plan.
Marcus had long understood something that the Party of Davos had missed. He realized one very important thing. And that thing was that the world’s power ran on, well, power. And politicians craved power, but of a different kind. And they needed money to gain political power. Marcus had money to burn, literally. And the respective chairpersons of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate energy committees had just sat down in his office needing to burn some of it for him in exchange for, well, literally power. And money to burn.
“Congresswoman! Senator! Please, please, come on in and have a seat. Meena! You didn’t keep them waiting long, did you?” He knew she hadn’t.