The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans

by David A. Ross

  A chant arises from the crowd gathered in front of the stage: “Give us back our gold! Give us back our gold! Give us back our…gold!”

  “Wait! Wait!” Sharky begs the hecklers.

  “Give us back our gold! Give us back our gold!” the mantra continues.

  “Wait! I have something better,” the former Chairman barks into the microphone. He opens his fat briefcase and produces a thick wad of bills. “Here!” He holds the roll above his head for all to see. “This is real money,” he declares. “American dollars backed by the US Government! What could be better? Take them!” he implores as he flings the bills into the air. “They’re all yours!” The bills rain down upon the crowd. His laugh is pure gravel. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty more where these came from,” he assures the masses. “Spend them on anything you want,” he tells them. “Anything at all!” His expression is smug. “Just spend, spend, spend!”

  The Mastermind’s speech has apparently ended abruptly; the repercussions of his policies, on the other hand, remain obvious and strangling.

  “The populace may be unhappy—maybe even to the point of civil unrest or even revolution—but there’s no turning back now,” Daedalus explains. “World governments have been blackmailed by bankers and by huge corporate entities into embracing globalization, and Harlan Geltspinner’s concept of ‘Constructive-Deconstruction’ is now the standard of globalization. Of course the process has caused considerable turmoil in the financial markets. One million workers are either hired or fired each week. As we have seen, mostly fired. One economic bubble after another is created: high tech, telephony, housing, and derivatives. As each bubble inevitably bursts, the world’s bankers flood the market with liquidity—new paper money fresh off the printing press, backed by absolutely nothing, which increases the M1 money supply and creates inflation. But as long as this phony money flows into the banks, which in turn loan the money to finance the oligarchs and derivatives swindlers, all appears well. Investment portfolios show casino economy gains, goods remain cheap and plentiful. But it is a bottomless pit. Think about it: one quadrillion in derivatives losses, and still nobody seems to have found the true bottom…

  “The real problem is that most of the goods manufactured in Asia are consumed in the West and paid for not with real money, but with IOU’s in the form of government-backed Treasury Bills—financial instruments that require eventual payment with interest. That is the trade deficit. Half a billion dollars a day in interest: that is the US Government’s current obligation to China alone.

  “Of course an inflated currency—or even a virtually worthless one—makes the debt easier to service. Does the US Government ever really expect to pay back all this money it has borrowed? Of course not! At least not with money that actually has real worth. And what about the Chinese? Do they expect the loans to be repaid? I doubt it. The Chinese are not dumb. Nor are they naïve. They know the money is virtually worthless, and they also know that they are, for the time being, stuck with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency—the single currency used to settle debts on the world commodities exchanges. Still, this trading of worthless paper keeps their factories running at capacity. And it keeps their middle class growing. Which is the true nature of the game. Sooner or later, the Chinese will simply write off all this American debt, stop shipping products to countries that can’t pay for them with a meaningful currency, and then tap the new Chinese middle class as a market for their production. If you think about it, that’s exactly what made the American economy so strong for so many years. Now, our infrastructure is either dilapidated, or it has been dismantled altogether. All those lost jobs are nothing more than birds migrating to a more favorable climate.”

  “George Bush was an open reactionary Imperialist,” defines Kiz. “Obama, on the other hand, campaigned on the platform of change. ‘A change we can all believe in’ I think it went…”

  “Don’t get me started on him,” says Daedalus. “At least with Bush we always knew the score. We knew we were co-opted. Audacious? Yes. Sneaky? Never needed to be. His mandate came not from the people—we all know that—but from big business and the banking elite. He never even tried to hide it.

  “Of course once W’s term was up, the oligarchs needed to find a candidate that would not only play ball, but one that could actually win an election. And Obama fit their ‘implode and consolidate’ purpose perfectly, because he was the exact cosmetic opposite of George W. Bush. Even better, he was Black! Now, how’s that for pseudo progress? Make no mistake; Obama is a team player. And don’t you just love his basketball metaphors? Fake to the left; move to the right. If Magic Johnson had been a ‘madman’, then his entire career would have been spent on the bench as Obama’s substitute.

  “Meanwhile, as the president practices his distinctive form of mass hypnotism, as his image as a cult savior is carefully crafted and cultivated, and as he weaves and maneuvers his way into our hearts and souls through bait and switch—not to mention hope—Wall Street gets the big bailout bucks, and the people get the crumbs. Public perception is forever being manipulated, and investors are pacified with convoluted earnings reports and bloated balance sheets detailing fictitious speculative assets. Indeed, how many who thought they’d played the game by the rules have come to realize that they never actually had money, and that now, even on paper, they are dead broke?

  “But, as the ‘Mastermind’ was so kind to point out, it all goes back to Bretton Woods. By signing that treaty, and putting monetary control into the hands of independent bankers, President Wilson virtually ensured the eventual collapse of the dollar. At the time, however, just after the end of World War I, the idea of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency must have seemed like a stimulus sent from Heaven. The only problem is that the treaty itself is unconstitutional. The forefathers purposely and thoughtfully wrote into the constitution that congress, and only congress, had the power to coin money, and then only if it were backed by silver or gold reserves. So, Bretton Woods, in force and in practice since 1914, is essentially illegal. Which in turn makes the Federal Reserve illegal. All too late, Wilson realized his mistake, and on leaving office he apologized to the American people. Talk about the farmer closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped!

  “One might like to excuse President Wilson for the ever-so-costly mistake by making the claim that the circumstances of the times were unprecedented and that he was navigating uncharted waters. But this was hardly the case. Many astute American politicians in the past had recognized the dangers of turning money creation and supply over to central bankers—personalities no less auspicious than Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Here’s what Jefferson wrote in a letter to Treasury Secretary Albert Gallitan in 1802:

  ‘I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around (the banks) will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.’

  “Admittedly, that was a long time ago,” Daedalus concedes, “but like so many other governmental issues, our third president had it right on the money!”

  “And what about Lincoln?” I ask. “What did he have to say about all this?”

  “Ah!” says Daedalus. “Honest Abe was even more to the point, if that’s imaginable. Which might very well be what got him assassinated. Here’s what our sixteenth president had to say about private bankers controlling the money supply:

  ‘The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace, conspire against it in times of adversity; it is more despotic than monarchy, more selfish than burocracy. I see in the near future a crisis unfolding that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been ent
hroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the moneyed power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed.’

  “Sound familiar?” Daedalus asks.

  “I’m sure there are a few people in that crowd who would agree,” I grant him.

  “Look,” says Daedalus Dunworthy, “this is not government by the people, for the people; this is a wholesale hijacking—government by Wall Street, and strictly for the benefit of Wall Street. The American president sits as an iconic figurehead—or as a convenient scapegoat, depending on the situation—at the behest of the world banking elite. To ensure not only his election, but also his cooperation, he is given money, bundling, vote fraud, media whores and goons. In accordance with the prevailing social climate, he might seem sympathetic to the needs of ordinary people, or he might appear to be indignant and indifferent; that really doesn’t matter, because it is all scripted to serve the present mood of the nation. Not since John Kennedy has an American president dared to govern in defiance of the highest echelons of the worldwide financial community. Executive Order #11110, which put in motion a plan to eventually dismantle the Federal Reserve System, and which Kennedy signed, might have been the real reason for his assassination. Certainly that order came down from a very high place. How high is high? Take a guess, gals.

  “Who are these people, this consortium of criminals? They are a secretive and very illusive organization called the Bilderberg Group. These men are not your average millionaires living down the street. You have to be a multi-billionaire to sit with this club. Bilderberg is a select group of one hundred and twenty-five of the world’s richest people.

  “Below them sits the Trilateral Commission, whose job it is to implement monetary policies and practices, as well as political agendas, through regional round table groups in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Operating within the American government, and more or less out of view of the average citizen, is the Council on Foreign Relations, which manages these policies and agendas in the United States. The CFR is a polycentric, oligarchic system. Presently, virtually every member of the Executive Branch is either a member of Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission, or the Council on Foreign Relations. Shall we name names?”

  “Are you sure you should?” Kiz asks.

  “Come on, this is Virtual Life, not PL. They can’t just off an emulation, can they?”

  “Would we even recognize these names?” I ask.

  “Let’s give it a try,” says Dunworthy. “How about Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury? He is a member of the Bilderberg Group and a member of the Trilateral Commission. Or how about Hilary Clinton, the current Secretary of State: Bilderberg and the Council on Foreign Relations. William Jefferson Clinton: Trilateral Commission. Susan Rice, Ambassador to the United Nations: Trilateral Commission. General James L. Jones, National Security Adviser: Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, CFR. Henry Kissenger, State Department Special Envoy: Bilderberg, Trilateral Commission, CFR. Paul Volcker, Economic Recovery Committee: Bilderberg, Trilateral, CFR. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense: Bilderberg, Trilateral, Council on Foreign Relations. And last, but certainly not least, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Mastermind himself: Bilderberg, Trilateral, Council on Foreign Relations.

  “There! I’ve said it! Anybody out there listening?”

  “Doesn’t it make you uneasy to point a finger at people in such high places?” I ask.

  “Not really,” says Dunworthy. “They know who they are. And they know that I know who they are. What are they going to do, kill me? Haul my ass off to one of those foreign torture chambers? Maybe so… After all, gals, there’s nothing more dangerous than tangling with an opponent who has nothing left to lose.”

  Looking up, I notice that Sharky Overbite has now left the podium. Presumably, his briefcase is now several pounds lighter than when he arrived. The crowd, too, is beginning to disperse, the traders going back to their business on the floor of the VL Stock Exchange, the VL bankers retreating inside the safe confines of a fortress built with greenshoots, not dollars. I finish my coffee, Kiz finishes her cheesecake, and Daedalus Dunworthy loosens his necktie and unbuttons his shirt collar. “Where are you two ladies off to next?” he asks.

  “We have a night on the town planned in VL Las Vegas,” Kiz tells him.

  Daedalus smiles as he stands to leave. “Never a dull moment in Virtual Life,” he says. “I’m headed back to D.C. I’ve got a radio program to present. No rest for the wicked, as they say. But I thank you both for the invitation. This has been interesting, maybe even profitable. I wish you both a pleasant evening, and good luck in Virtual Life.”

  Same to you, Daedalus. Same to you!

  Whoosh!

  From the moment we set foot inside the Free Zing casino in VL Las Vegas, it is obvious to me that Kiz (or is it Cassie?) is in her element—at least one of them. Across the voluptuous carpet we walk to meet the owner of Free Zing, Vamp Bordello. Already well acquainted with Kiz, the casino boss kisses her on each cheek and then extends his welcome to me as well. Turning back to Kiz, he says, “What’s it going to be tonight? Craps? Poker? A little Blackjack?”

  “Definitely Blackjack,” Kiz tells him. “And I’ll want a table with a high limit.”

  Vamp looks back to me and says, “Obviously Kizmet is feeling lucky tonight.”

  “Lucky or not,” I tell him, “she certainly has a purse full of greenshoots.”

  Vamp’s eyebrows rise. “I see. Then allow me to escort you ladies to the table of choice. No betting limits whatsoever.”

  “Great!” says Kiz enthusiastically as we follow Vamp Bordello across the room. Arriving at the ‘no limits’ Blackjack table, we are introduced to the dealer, Pipo Latzo.

  “Pipo, take excellent care of these ladies,” Vamp instructs. “They are special guests of Free Zing, and they are my personal friends.”

  Pipo nods graciously to his boss then offers us each a seat at the table. “Buy-in begins at twenty-five thousand greenshoots,” he tells us.

  My emulation’s eyes nearly pop out of my head. I whisper in Kiz’s ear, “That’s way too rich for my blood.”

  “Don’t worry, Fizzy,” Kiz informs me in a low voice. “I’ve got you covered tonight.”

  “What are you talking about, Kiz? I can’t take your money,” I tell her.

  “What are you talking about, Fizzy? I made this money lying around on the beach, while Cassie was with a bunch of Indians sweating her ass off. Take some greenshoots and have a little fun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Pressing a wad of money into my hand, Kiz instructs me to buy twenty-five thousand greenshoots worth of chips. Reluctantly, I push the money across the table, and Pipo Latzo issues me five tall stacks of chips in exchange. With the transaction completed, my discomfort multiplies. Now, if only Kiz’s bankroll will do likewise. But I sense a disaster developing here. I’ve never been a gambler. So maybe it’s not in my nature. Or maybe I’m just chicken.

  “Do you do this often?” I ask Kiz.

  “I come here now and again,” she tells me. “But Cassie has been a regular in Las Vegas for years.”

  “Really? I would never have guessed,” I tell her honestly.

  “She started playing the Blackjack tables at the Desert Inn back in the days of the Rat Pack. She was all of twenty-one then, but she had a keen sense of the game (lol).”

  “And how is that?” I ask.

  Kiz clears her throat and discretely tells me to disable my voice mechanism. Apparently, she wants to chat privately, and out of earshot of the dealer and the other players sitting at the table. Once we have deactivated our voice modules and achieved privacy she types: Cassie holds two graduate degrees: one in Statistical Analysis, and the other in Theoretical Physics. Even as a kid she could cipher complex arithmetic problems instantly in her head. She also has a more or less photographic memory. Blackjack seemed l
ike a ‘simple little game’, one that was mathematically possible to beat. With a little help from Professor Hoyle, who wrote the famous book on card counting entitled Beat The Dealer, Cassandra was, as they say, off to the races. Over the years she’s won hundreds of thousands of dollars in casinos up and down the Strip. Nowadays, they all know (her) in PL Vegas, not to mention her skills, and she’s not allowed to play there anymore. Once you get banned from one casino, the word spreads fast. She still knows many of the PL Vegas dealers, and they treat her sort of like a retired pro. It’s a mutual respect thing. But, here in VL, Kizmet is free to ‘ply my trade’. As you’ll soon see, I can count six shoes without a glitch. So what do you say we make a little fun money, Fizzy? Just follow my lead and watch what happens.”

  (Voice modules back on.)

  “Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen,” says Pipo Latzo. “Minimum one thousand greenshoots.”

  One thousand greenshoots! That is roughly equivalent to a month’s rent for the Open Books shop. In my head, numbers spin madly, like a digital counter, or like the big sign in Times Square in New York that keeps a running count of the national debt. With a freshly shuffled shoe, Kiz places two chips, the minimum bet, on the table. As instructed, I follow suit. I think about the many donations placed in our container at Open Books—dozens each month just to pay the rent—and I grimace at the high stakes I’m encouraged to wager on this asinine game of chance. Indeed, what might Crystal say about this? I know she would be affronted, not on some immature moralistic level, but at the shear frivolousness of it all. Then again, so am I!

  At our table are two other gamblers, Alpha Guardian and Lover Luckless. They seem to be partners, romantically speaking. Lesbians… Why should I care? I don’t, really. Pipo Latzo deals out the cards. I know the game of Blackjack, but only the basics. I have no idea concerning its subtleties. Kiz allows me to look over her shoulder. She is smiling the entire time. Meanwhile, my face must surely show the anxiety I’m feeling, the VL gesture bank notwithstanding.