STAR OF EPIPHANY

by OMAR FINK

  Peter asked, “What about controlling the rate of mining? Is that something we should worry about?”

  TYCHE responded, “No. It might be possible to influence speculative value by slowing down the mining rate or speeding it up. This is a simple supply and demand formula. But a steady and consistent mining rate is important for building trust in the new coin, and this outweighs all other factors. Speculative growth is not the goal. The goal is to create a common currency that reflects real value. If production and efficiency grow steadily, the coin should reflect this in the growth of value in the coin.”

  Tony asked, “Have you run any growth projections? Can you tell us how much of an initial investment we need, and how fast we need it in order to create strong and steady growth?”

  TYCHE responded, “I have run the projections. You will need to go over the curve yourself to decide if you can find an optimum combination of initial investment and long term growth.”

  Peter said, “This is excellent. Can you dump some of your numbers into a spreadsheet with graphs ready for presentation?”

  SYNCON responded, “I will do that.”

  +54 days, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  Peter Anderson was already seated at the large circular conference table as the other team members were still coming into the room and taking seats. He tapped his earpiece, “Music, pause.”

  Ulrich Giger waited until everyone was seated, then pointed the remote in his hand at the wide video screen on the wall, “We knew this was coming.” He pushed a button.

  Gitane Levesque appeared on the screen and spoke, “This is Gitane Levesque, of Europa Alliance Press, coming to you from Geneva, Switzerland with breaking news. We have confirmed through multiple sources that the remnants of comet Martin are predicted to strike Earth directly in ten years. I’ll repeat that. We have known that comet Martin broke up as it circled our Sun, and then left the Solar System. We have known that it would return in ten years, and will come close to Earth. But now scientists are telling us that when it returns, most if not all the pieces of the comet will impact Earth. The predictive models can’t tell us accurately if any particular piece will hit us or miss us, but they do tell us that enough of the large pieces will hit us to end all life on Earth. I’ll say that again. In ten years, the comet pieces will bombard Earth, and destroy all forms of life on our planet.”

  The view went to a split screen with Gitane on one side and a series of graphics on the other showing the comet trajectory around the Sun, and the return path ten years later and closeups of an artist's concept of a bombardment of rocks hitting Earth and destroying it. Gitane spoke again, “This is no joke. It is not a hoax. We have carefully confirmed every word of this with multiple scientific and governmental sources around the world. Our world will end in ten years.” Tears welled up in his eyes and he paused.

  Giger punched the mute button on his remote and the screen silenced but Levesque resumed moving his mouth and the graphics cycled. Giger spoke, “The shit and the fan have just encountered each other intimately. We are working as fast as we can on our plan, but we now must find ways to speed up the process. The entire administrative staff in AGT is at your disposal, both here in the headquarters building, and around the world. Ask and you shall receive. If we don’t have the needed resources already on our staff, we’ll find what you need, and hire them. I’m serious about this. Whatever you need to accelerate our progress.”

  Ulrich walked over to a chair and sat down. Then he said, “Let’s begin with a progress update. Sam and Bill, where are we with the domino plan?”

  Bill Decker glanced over at Sam Hoffman, “Sam has taken point on this but I’ll start us off. We have our top priority list as we previously described it, with no major changes. We have a list of suggested first contacts from this group. The plan is that if you know somebody personally, or have some strong connection to them, you will initiate contact in an attempt to schedule a conference call with our group. We will name-drop as needed. If we can schedule the call, we have a script and checklist to work from. We will vary who initiates the conversation according to connections. If we encounter any resistance scheduling the call, the entire group will call whoever is stalling the process and apply pressure until we achieve forward moving influence. Because of our new time pressure, the idea of flying folks around the world to talk to people is out. We need to recruit several top leaders in the next few days, so we can start to drop their names with the rest of the list. We will begin with Laura Jordan, President of the U.S. and her adviser, K.T. Rosenfeld. Sam and I know both of them, and will make the initial contact in a few hours attempting to schedule the conference call as soon as possible. This means you all need to be on call around the clock for the next several weeks. Singh from India and Milbrandt from Germany will follow right behind Jordan. Then we need to talk to Babatunde Dogara from Nigeria.”

  Bill glanced back at Sam Hoffman again and Sam took over talking, “Bill is right about being on call and ready to go. We all need to be well-dressed, at least from the waist up. I’m sure Ulrich could provide us with a dressing room next door to hold shirts, ties, and jackets that we can put on at a moments notice, even in the middle of the night. I don’t care if you’re wearing shorts and sandals under the table, only what shows above the table. Our audience needs to get the perception they are dealing with an ultra competent group of executives here. And as Bill mentioned, we are going to kick start this process in a few hours. Be ready.”

  Sam now looked over to Ulrich Giger, “Ulrich has his legal team working on the charter framework. How is that going?”

  Giger responded, “They are close to having a working draft, but it won’t be ready today. I’ll have them distribute what they’ve got now, so we can offer feedback on it. In any leader contacts we make today or tomorrow, we’ll have to talk through it and promise a written form soon.”

  Giger looked around the table, then asked, “Peter and Tony, how goes the plan for the cyber currency?”

  Peter looked over the table at Tony and nodded slightly. Tony began to speak, “First we need to explain something. Some of you know that Peter and I have been collaborating for several years on a project to build a software agent trading platform. What you don’t know is that it has been wildly successful. Most of my trading activity for the past year has been done completely by our computer running nearly autonomously. While we have the ability to override or change any actions planned by the computer, we have not needed to do that. For several days, we’ve been adapting the trading software to offer us projections and advice on handling the new cyber currency. We believe this will be beneficial to the project, and we offer our services in this regard.”

  Giger said, “We can use all the expert advice that is available to us. Where are we on the timeline?”

  Peter Anderson answered, “We are on the verge of being able to actually launch: maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. We have all the details of the plan laid out, and available for you to scrutinize. We have established a mining facility, and are negotiating with some mining pools to pick up our coin. As soon as we go live, we’ll be able to execute our first transactions.”

  Peter showed no indication of continuing, so Giger said, “That’s excellent. And in conjunction with that news, I have some more news. I have decided to test our financial and business processes by selling AGT completely to Humanity United. That gives us just over two hundred billion dollars of liquid revenue to work with and all the resources of the company which is worth many times that much. As soon as we have a currency and the legal framework, I intend to transfer full ownership of the company. I will also be moving the remainder of my entire personal net worth into our cyber currency. All combined, with the market capitalization of AGT and my net worth, should be somewhere in the neighborhood of over a trillion dollars. It is my hope that these moves will help give us some credibility in our recruiting.”

  Tony Azaria interrupted, “Ulrich, does that make you the wealthiest person in the worl
d today?” He grinned.

  Ulrich replied, “No it does not Tony. Judging by your smile, I think you know that. The list of the top billionaires in the world is only composed of those who decide to make the value of their wealth public. My name has never been on that list, and I am confident that there are at least a few others who can top my value. There may even be another such person right here in this room. Isn’t that right Tony?” He looked back at Tony who just smiled and said nothing. Ulrich paused then said, “Okay, let’s get back to work.”

  Peter tapped his earpiece, “Music, play ‘Money’ by Pink Floyd”. The sound of a cash register and money clinking was followed by a strong line of bass notes.

  +55 days, JAIPUR, INDIA

  Nabith Mehra turned away from the television toward his Mother, “All they talk about is how the comet will destroy Earth in ten years. Shouldn’t they be talking about what we can do about it?”

  His Mother replied, “Well yes, Nabith, I suppose they should. Do you have any suggestions?”

  Nabith cocked his head a little to the side and answered, “There ought to be a lot of things we can do. The most obvious thing is to blast the comet pieces to the side, so they won’t hit us, but they say that won’t work. It’s probably because they need a lot of force to be nudged and that has to happen when they are still far away, and we don’t have anything out there to do it. Maybe we could move a rock into their path. Maybe we could move the Earth. I don’t know. I just wish they’d tell us more. We should be doing something.” He looked quizzically at his Mother.

  His Mother said, “Well Nabith, if you come up with a good idea, we’ll just have to let them know.” She nodded wisely. She added, “How is that matrix thing you were working on for Dharma?”

  Nabith responded without hesitation, “Calculating results from the matrix is simple, according to the rules of linear algebra. And setting up the matrix can also be fairly simple, but I need to assign coefficient values or weights to some of the parameters and that is not so easy. If I give a higher or lower weight to a single factor in the ethical matrix, it often changes completely the output decision. This worries me because the semantics involved are usually not precise. For example, when I use the matrix to determine who in our family should perform some chore, I get to define the terms I use and when I assign weights, I know I have them right. But when I use the matrix to do an ethical analysis on some issue in society, specially political issues, the terms are usually sloppy and I feel like I’m guessing when I assign the weights. That makes me feel insecure about the answers the matrix produces.” He frowned.

  His Mother smiled at Nabith, “Your chore assignments have been working very well. All the younger children respect the way you do that, and we have not had any disagreements. I am proud of you, Nabith. And even more important, your work is indeed keeping our family on the pathway of righteousness and Dharma. Eventually, you will learn that this may not be obvious in the short term, but many years later it may bring to fruition good outcomes in our entire family. That is no small accomplishment.” She smiled again and nodded at him.

  Nabith smiled back.

  +56 days, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  As Ulrich Giger walked into the conference room, Peter Anderson was speaking, “So, we are launching the cyber currency today.” He looked over at Ulrich and continued, “Now that Ulrich is here, we can begin.” Ulrich took a seat and Peter continued, “All the foundation work is complete. The mining facilities are operational and have performed several test runs. We intend to go live with the coin launch in a few hours unless anybody here has a reason to delay it.” He raised his eyebrows and quickly swept the faces at the table, then resumed, “Good. We’ll begin with the transfer of liquid wealth belonging to Ulrich, then as soon as we get the green light from the legal team, we’ll begin the liquidation and transfer of all AGT resources as well. The legal contracts are likely to cause some delay, but hopefully only by days. Ulrich has done a great job of getting this road smoothed out for us already. By tomorrow, we’ll be able to start selling the coin to anybody else who buys into our sales pitch.” He smiled at the group.

  Peter’s face grew more serious, and he added, “Also, I am committing to sell my company, ‘Knowledge R Us’, to the HU along with several other smaller companies and my entire personal wealth, although it’s not nearly as substantial as Giger’s.” He grinned at Ulrich.

  Ulrich started to respond but Tony Azaria cleared his throat and interrupted, “And I also will be pledging to sell my various holdings and transfer all my personal wealth to HU coin. And my net worth may or may not be roughly equivalent to that of Mr. Giger.” He also grinned over at Ulrich.

  Ulrich smiled and nodded at both men, “Thank you. Thank you both. Our combined resources increase the legitimacy of our project and create strong incentive for others to join us.” He paused and looked down at the table for a moment, then looked back up. “We have scheduled our first recruiting conference call with U.S. President Laura Jordan, and her close adviser, K.T. Rosenfeld, who is now the Secretary of State. The call will take place right here in this room in about one hour, and I hope you all can attend. Bill, can you give us a brief intro?”

  Bill Decker spoke immediately as though he was waiting, “Everybody knows Laura Jordan is the first black, female, U.S. President, and an Independent from Texas, not linked to either major political party. Most of you know simply from watching her deliver speeches on the news about the forcefulness of her personality, and her speaking voice. In person, she is softer, and more friendly, but still remains always rational and decisive. She will weigh facts fairly, and it’s worth anticipating that she will be well-prepared for this meeting with all the facts available to her from her side of the call. She makes up her own mind but also leans on K.T. for confirmation. K.T. Rosenfeld achieved her notoriety as an extremely dynamic female CEO of a large telecomm company. She dropped all of her close ties and investments when she became the closest adviser to Jordan, but still retains a lot of respect and also influence. You can pretty much count on K.T. to know about anything Laura does not and vice versa. They make a formidable team and seem to have a high level of trust between them.” He turned to Sam and added, “Sam and I know both of these women well, and will take the lead during the call. But you are all welcome, and expected to chip in when you have something to add. Sam, do you want to say anything else?”

  Sam replied, “Not really. You’ve covered it. But everybody needs to stay in an on-call state. We expect to have both Singh from India and Milbrandt from Germany on the line shortly after this call.”

  +57 days, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Delize Naidu waited for Zoey and Lincoln to take a seat at the cramped kitchen table. She brought three plates of food over from the nearby counter and set them down at the places set on the table with simple fiber mats, a fork, a glass, and a paper napkin. Each plate held a scoop of a white pasty-looking corn mash like grits, and another scoop of greens beside that. There were already on the table two small bowls: one holding relish and the other yellowish lentils.

  Lincoln surveyed the food, “Oh, yum. Pap and greens again. Just because you added some Chakala relish and curried lentils doesn’t change anything.” He paused, then continued, “Oh shit. That means we’ve got a lecture coming, right? Something about Aikido, and the balance of the universe, right?”

  Delize scowled at her son, but remained standing and began speaking, “I know you’ve seen the news on TV about the comet and all. And I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of talk about it at school. I just want to warn you about getting wrapped up in stuff people will talk about when they really don’t know.” She looked carefully at both of their faces, then continued, “It’s scary stuff and it’s serious. We need to pay close attention to what is going on, but it’s important to stay centered too. You know in Aikido, we call this the one point.”

  Lincoln worked his lips like he was exercising them. Delize dropped her chin, “Don’t give me that look.” />
  Lincoln replied, “Aw Mom, it’s just that you think everything is like Aikido.” He looked down at the table.

  Zoey interrupted, “And now Mom will say that everything IS like Aikido.” She glanced up at the expression on her Moms face and added, “Well, you always say that when he says that.” She raised her eyebrows but said nothing more.

  Delize returned her chin to normal level and spoke, “You’re both smart kids and I know I’ve given you many lectures about Aikido, but that’s because it really is important for you to know. In this case, stay aware of keeping a balanced center in terms of your reaction to the news, and how people will react to it. I’m just saying that many folks are likely to lose their center, and react poorly. Don’t get pulled into that crap. Just be yourself.”