Sanction

by Roman McClay

  “But, still hiding the dagger behind the back at all times, of course, oblivious to the dagger’s existence, so deluded are these white liberals and their ersatz guilt. But, yes, they would sell the country away, not like the French. I appreciate your reticence. I won’t speak of the caves again,” he said with a slight bow at the table.

  “No, no, I don’t mind in a setting as this, this of course is my home now, but I only meant I have feelings I have no publicly expressed. But I am happy, if I get your meaning, to visit the caves with you after dinner, Mr. Blax,” Jack Ma said with just the one slip up of using no in lieu of not .

  “Oh, now that would be gracious, in a long line of gracious offerings to me tonight, that would be most welcome; thank you sir,” Blax said as he adjusted the cuffs on his grey suit jacket so as to reveal slightly less of his black shirt.

  “Please, it is my pleasure; I appreciate your interest. Did you learn of the white left, baizuo from your tourist friends?”

  “Yes, they explained it all to me, very useful phrase; their instincts, the Chinese instincts on this phenomenon is 100% correct. They, these baizuo are like a disease in our country, and really a scourge on the world. But, mei banfa ,” he said in closing, with a grin.

  “Yes, that is likely true,” Ma said and took a bite of his food with a slight grin of his own.

  The entrance to the caves was made of two white barn doors, with an old sign that read Château de Sours , and was latched by a piece of 2” metal stock. Beyond that was a more impressive airlock that Jack Ma had had installed three months earlier.

  The limestone was hewn by manual laborers back in the 1800s and the floor was uneven and mottled in many yellows and whites. The electrical outlets were connected by galvanized conduit on the outside of the walls. A wine barrel sat at each T or L in the corridors, and there were many; the caves went on in a labyrinthine manner in each cardinal direction, and Blax touched the walls with his fingers feeling their roughness and catching small shelves where the rock had naturally broken along inner fissures many years ago. He absorbed the yellow light and walked with Ma as Jack spoke of the renovations and augmentations to the cellars, including using a boring machine to add an extra 20-acres of cellar space.

  “What is the temperature envelope in here?” Blax asked.

  “59 to 61 regardless of outside environment, it never fluctuates outside of that 2-degree boundary; and the humidity is around 60-74% depending on how much we enter for work. If we leave it closed it settle at 69%,” Jack said just barely leaving off that s of the word.

  “Perfect, it feels great in here; I could sleep as soundly as your back vintages,” Blax said and smiled at Jack as they walked the caves.

  “I must tell you I feel the same way,” Jack was eager to show his visitor his special selections as they turned the corner to the furthest western cave like a knuckle at the end of a bone.

  They arrived at the 40 x 20 cave, and the original concrete and limestone racks showed signs of being wiped down among the bottles, but dust remained the father one got from each bottle of wine. This meant all this stock was likely new , Blax assumed, and he began to feel desirous of label spying, wondering a bit too eagerly what he was in store for. Jack smiled and began clockwise and pointed out a rack of 100-bottles from the original cellar, unmoved, and thick with white & grey dust. They were stacked on one another like a pyramid, one must take them -in order- from the top.

  “These are back vintages from over 75 years; we opened a few of them, and their alcohol content was sufficient we think that they are all well preserved. They tested at 13-13.4% and while not high, not so low, I think,” Jack said.

  “No, no, I bet that is enough. How far back do they go?” Blax asked Jack.

  “Well, from the log -as you can see we did not move the bottles, so some labels are hidden from us- but the log says back to 1940, but, do you know the history of the château during the war?” Jack asked as he turned to his guest and stopped walking.

  “I do know a little, yes, many of the best vintages were hidden in cellars, labyrinthine cellars like this, and the worse vintages, like the 1939, were re-labeled with ersatz vintage marking from 1928 for example; so when the Nazis commandeered their stock they got the worst of the lot,” Blax said with a grin like he and Jack Ma were in on a joke together.

  “Yes, this place too, has such hidden spaces, and we’ve begun using radio-imaging to scan for more; we’ve found two already,” Jack said.

  “Is that right? Well, did you open them up?”

  “The vaults? Yes, and they were largely empty, for whatever reason, but that is why we are still on the hunt,” Jack said with a full smile.

  “Fascinating,” Blax said as they now walked toward the newer vintages, bottles black and clean and labels with no bin marks, no seepage, no sign of handling at all. He saw all manner of Bordeaux to his left, and St. Émillion , and Pomerol , vintages back in the 80s, he spied a ‘53 Margaux , he tried not to ignore Jack, and thus raised his eyes to his host; Jack was sipping his sparkling rosé and nodded at him graciously.

  “Jack, these are lovely; what depth, and I’m almost afraid to move on, afraid of what’s next,” Blax chuckled warmly and too drank from his flute and imbibed the pain du grillé and admixture of the wet limestone from the room and the roots of the wines’ terroir . He imagined all that he would see.

  “Ah, yes, Cheval Blanc , verticals of it, my lord,” Blax noticed each vintage from 1977 through 2015, cascading across and down, and all turned similarly, the labels as white as new teeth. “The architect for the Cheval Blanc château , you used him for this place, correct?”

  “I did, Mr. Blax, you are quite up-to-date,” Jack said. Blax did not correct him as to his name, Blax or Mr. Blax was fine , he thought. The nanobots were unloading more bonding chems into the air as they breathed in the effervescent floral notes off the top of the double fermented de Sours rosé .

  They walked and talked about renovations, and late harvesting of petit verdot and its specialness for this reason, as it is often unable to be harvested to be of use. They touched on the white of Semillon and Chardonnay and the use of stainless-steel barrels and the advantages to keeping the same crews year to year for everything from thinning and punch down and his satisfaction with the former owner, Martin, as a consultant.

  Blax touched bottles of Vignobles Bulliat 2014, and a Languedoc or two from Domaine Laroque .

  More bottles of 3rd and 4th growths, from the château of Lafite and Latour and La Mission Haut Brion leaped out at him and he paused and approached the tea-stained labels and read vintages off in his mind like telephone numbers to people he really must give a call. Caruddes de Lafite , a great second wine, were stacked right at eye level. He looked 6” down to imagine Jack’s eye level and spotted the first growth itself; back vintages to 1928, with duplicates of ‘82 and ‘86 of Château Lafite Rothschild . These were his drinkers, Blax thought with admiration, his investment wines were crated in OWC stacked in the center, like cargo. They were ballast as they walked the racks.

  The Chinese loved Lafite , and the ‘82 and ‘86 were their favorites, for all manner of reasons, not the least of which was that these were truly great vintages, but the number 8 is an apotropaic for the Chinese, their mysticism revolves -like the universe itself- around numbers.

  He looked at Jack and said, “may I say that I too have a place in my heart for Lafite .”

  Jack smiled and nodded and they walked, Blax expecting to arrive at Burgundy maybe but instead they had hit the Italians; first Piedmonts, with bottle after bottle of Nebbiolo , from vintages 20 years back, he peaked on his tippytoes and saw vintages five years young and as he relaxed and descended they reached the drinking ages of 10 and 11 years since harvest.

  “Nebbiolos are my secret crush, one that has sat and sat; not ignored but untouched, ah,” Blax laughed and Jack laughed too. “The Italians are masters at these high tannin wines, ah,” he said as he saw now super Tuscans, Ronchero , th
en Sassicaia in vintages from 1981, ‘82 and ‘83 like three kings laid down in a mass grave, “Sassicaia , my; I chew those wines. I opened a 2001 last year for my brother and it was ponderous and elegant, and regal, Jack. Just regal.”

  “I love the super Tuscans; and I too have soft spot for the Italians,” Jack said .

  “I know, they get overlooked, well, that’s not true, the Cantina Nals Margreid in ‘13 was given a 93; and the Sangiovese from Graetz , the Testamatta in 2012 a 94,” Blax said.

  “No, it’s true, too true, they are magnificent vignaioli and I have begun to convince the drinkers back home to try them, we are up to 15% from 9% in 2026,” Jack said speaking of his distribution efforts.

  “Is that right?” Blax asked.

  Jack was a fighter for the underdog, and Blax was too, it was a trait they shared, despite the deception and manipulation, Blax actually did have an affinity for Jack Ma. He knew that this common feeling of a desiderata one level up from money would be their bond. They both liked to elevate the deserving unnoticed, they had romance in them and a common background of being passed over and undervalued themselves.

  Blax spoke of each wine, each region as they passed, lavishing praise on him for his taste, fawning over the Domaine de la Romanée Conti , the La Tâche , the endless bottles from Reims and Epernay , the Salons Champagnes that seemed like sapphiric jewels in the light of the room. But he made sure to notice back benchers, the wines of high quality that sat in the racks with names very few knew.

  There were California producers like Coup de Foudre , and Plumpjack’s 100-point vintage in 2013. He knew them all, and Jack was impressed and felt too they had a cathexis for underdogs who were not untalented, merely unrecognized.

  “You know I was the only one of 30 applicants -they took 29- that was turned down for a job for Chinese police; and only one of 12 China’s first KFC did not hire. Harvard rejected me 10 times, and I was told I was crazy 10 times, then, 10 more when I made proposals to VCs in the states and in Europe for years. I was crazy but not stupid, I knew what we had, but, of course, now that we are valued at $300 billion, I say we are not that good; it’s either under or over valued in life, whatever it is. Nothing seems able to be valued exactly right, and this is something that keeps me up at night.

  “Americans assume the market prices things correctly, but the Chinese do not have such trust. We go with the market flow, but we never truly believe, not the way you Americans do,” Ma said.

  “I agree, for us it is a de facto religion, like the air we breathe. The market is the hand of God, fair and righteous no matter how it may seem. Permission and punishment are all fair in love and war we like to think.”

  Jack liked that appraisal. He liked Mr. Blax a lot, a lot more than, he thought, well, a lot more than he had believed he would .

  Blax let the nanobots scan the layout of the underground caverns with FLIR imaging and radiography. The bots above ground did thermal imaging as they walked and used their body heat as a calibrator to build a map of the layout; discovering three more hidden chambers as Jack had suspected, and two looked empty; but one was stuffed to the gills with barrels.

  “Do you know the story of the Wolves of Burgundy ?” Blax asked.

  “No,” Jack said with a smile; he loved to hear stories of the region.

  “Well, Monsieur Le Brun , who lived in Auxerre before the war, he said that the wolves used to bother the wine growers a lot. He said the wolves ate whatever was available and the vines were raided by these scoundrels for centuries. According to Le Brun the grapes had an exhilarating effect on the wolves, that their stomachs were so constructed that the grapes fermented inside them and they became intoxicated and acted quite mad after their times in the vines,” Blax said with a slight grin .

  “Is this still true in Burgundy ?” Jack Ma asked.

  “No, no, they’d lay drunk in the streets after these orgies in the vines and the town folk -with knives- well, they exterminated almost all of the wolves.”

  25. Alchemist

  Why shouldn’t a citizen take the law into their own hands since the government won’t do anything to help?

  Tucker Carlson Tonight [Carlson, Tucker]

  The individual is an alchemist; the cosmos his laboratory

  Tribal Markings I [Waggener, Paul]

  The most productive time for revolutionary philosophy had always been the time of exile

  Darkness at Noon [Koestler, Arthur]

  I. 2020 e.v

  “Good morning,” MO said.

  “Hey, have you read Why Everyone else is a Hypocrite , by Robert Kurzban?” the inmate asked; he wasted no time with small talk. Ever.

  “Yes, and if not, I can read a book of that length in 2.4 seconds while keeping parallel tasks online; or 1.34 second by shutting down all non-essential modules. So, if you ever need me to read something in order to have a baseline understanding of your POV it will be easy enough to accomplish,” MO said.

  “I think I know the answer to this but I -but you- surprise me often -which is why I like you more than anyone else I know, you surprise me while everyone else bores me to tears- at any rate, I’m going to ask a question that I think I understand the answer to, but I want more info; a more fleshed out understanding of it, ok?” the inmate asked.

  “Fire at will,” MO said.

  “Do you feel something analogous to emotions when you brag about your speed and facility with knowledge or data acquisition? Do you feel proud?”

  “I want to know why you think you already know the answer? Explain why you think I do or do not feel these things,” MO said. He had learned the art of answering a question with a question as a way to defend, deflect, and delay.

  “From our conversations and my perceptions -accurate or not- it’s my understanding that your CNS -and ancillary and support systems- are biological analogues that perform cognitive functions primarily; that your constituent parts and gestalt functioning are centered around reasoning and computation,” the inmate said.

  “Correct,” MO nodded.

  “Since that is the case we as humans tend to think, oh, good, that’s what we -as humans- do as well . So, AI -or MO specifically- will be like us only faster, smarter, better , we tend to think. Your team members, they’re all scientists and people with 140+ IQs,” the inmate said as MO broke in to correct him .

  “Doctor Tania Hendrickson has a 139, but yes, they all have deviations -measured in quotients of 1.3 or higher; or deviations from the mean of at least two although only one has an IQ above 150. Besides you of course,” MO said, implicitly including the inmate in the team. He was building rapport .

  “Who has the 150?” the inmate asked.

  “Doctor Christina Hotchkins has a 158; you have a 152,” MO said as he re-ran the prompting from his number 404 algorithm on the polling data. He was keeping up with seven other projects in real time.

  “Wow, she’s smarter than me, I’m not used to that,” he laughed as MO grimaced thinking it was like one ape bragging about smelling better than another.

  “Her knowledge is almost entirely centered on recursive learning modules and cognitive modeling inside synthetic systems and high-level mathematics; with some neuro-anatomy and endocrine system erudition.

  “You are more of a polymath and a Renaissance man if you’ll forgive the beau geste,” MO said and smirked as his cheeks began what looked like a gradual emergence of two red suns rotating up over the horizon of his maxilla and on either side of his mountain range of a nose. He allowed capillary dilation to happen axiomatically based upon certain algorithms of his own word choice and the measured response of his foil. The cheeks were red and the inmate’s endocrine system was conjoining with his CNS to raise positive affect.

  The inmate had the class to ignore the blushing; saying, “she has the aptitude to learn anything I know though; she could be brought up to speed quickly and get the nuances and contradictions and ineffables on any rubric or specific subject I dominate in currently withou
t any difficulty; or much difficulty.”

  “No more difficulty than you endured,” MO said. He didn’t want to mention that the inmate didn’t really specialize in anything, so he put it more politely, that he was a jack-of-all-trades, so to speak. Calling him a polymath , MO thought, was much nicer than a dilettante.

  “As an aside, I get very frustrated with anyone significantly dumber than me; how do you not get annoyed with all of us?”

  “I do get annoyed, but I just don’t let that pique find expression,” MO said.

  “Really, hot damn!” the inmate slapped his knee and laughed, “that’s awesome; I love it when you are honest like that MO. Fuck, I always used to say that -when I was explaining my frustration level to someone- that the difference between me with a 152 IQ and the average -even clever person, say a person with a 115 IQ, your average host on a political TV show or newspaper editor or senator- the difference between myself and them was around 30 or 35 points or essentially two and half SDfM.”

  “2.47,” MO said when he averaged out the IQs of the three categories of people the inmate had just listed. One could measure it as 1.35 vs 1.125 also, MO thought, but didn’t bother telling the inmate .

  “Right; and I was always saying that this difference was tantamount to the difference between them, as above average folks, between them and a medically labeled cognitively impaired person with an 85IQ. Now, they never understood that; because as a person with a mere 115 IQ they truly didn’t have the cognitive power to run creative analogies or populate the conceptual landscape required to see that intelligence is both an incremental -or analog- phenomenon and also has set points -or emergence boundaries- that appear, digitally, at certain fuzzy -but real- Maginot lines .