by Hammond, Ray
The board had so far sat through his presentation almost impassively, muted because of the rare experience of their founder’s son, and their honorary chairman, being present. There was a quietness in the room and then the legendary Richard J. Rakusen spoke for the first time.
‘You’re telling us that for the thirty-second consecutive quarter the Tye Corporation’s profits are going to rise, and this time it will be by over sixty per cent?’
Joe nodded apprehensively.
‘Are we to believe that gravity no longer exists?’ asked the Old Man.
Joe swallowed. He had taken the board through each of the Tye corporate divisions and subsidiaries and, for the benefit of Richard J. Rakusen and, perhaps, to show off a little, he had explained why historical data were no longer a reliable guide to future performance.
He had also reminded them that the plethora of corporate currencies on issue, the pegging of the US dollar to the Euro and the end of the appallingly wasteful thirty-day business settlement period had flattened economic cycles so much that the booms and busts that had afflicted the markets so severely in the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first were now modulated to provide little more than periods of respite between increases in global value-generation. Therefore, he argued, the risks suggested by the old policy guidelines on concentration were out of date. He had done some homework and, with a flourish, he had told them that these guidelines had last been updated over a quarter of a century earlier, in 1989.
He had then listed the most important of the 387 patents that Tye-related companies had filed during the year. He had lifted copies of the original filings from the World Patent Database and he skipped through them as the board watched in silence. He had reminded his audience about the record number of patents the company had secured the previous year and he had tried to explain the implications of some of the research being undertaken in the group’s various R&D labs.
‘No company in history has ever filed so many important patents in a single year,’ he had stated finally.
‘Which company has filed the second-highest number of patents in the year?’ Morgenstein had asked during that section.
How typical of the bastard! Asking a pointless tangential question like that in the hope of catching him out. Not for the first time, Joe wondered whether it meant plain old embedded racism. His was still the only black face in the firm.
‘GenCode, the European-based group,’ he had responded swiftly. ‘They’ve filed one hundred and sixty-four.’
There was a deeper silence now as the board waited for Joe’s response to their most senior partner.
‘No, sir, gravity still exists, but there’s no sign of the Tye Corporation’s curve flattening yet.’
‘Are we still happy with the quality of Tye Corp’s reporting?’ asked Jill White quickly. Thank God for a friend, thought Joe. She had thrown him one of his specialities.
‘The company has never wavered,’ he confirmed. ‘Although they could have changed their accounting methods when they moved their registration of incorporation from Delaware to Hope Island State, they’ve stayed firmly with the EUUSA and International Accounting Standards principles.’
Since the main stock markets of the EU and the USA had merged seven years before and moved to permanent twenty-four-hour trading, standards of financial reporting had finally become trustworthy and transparent. The massive scandals that had repeatedly rocked the emerging regions more than a decade ago had pushed the regulators to develop better and better standards of accounting, asset valuation and liability accounting. Although this had initially depressed corporate valuations, the sudden appreciation of stored knowledge value, the instruments developed to rate it and new internationally agreed accounting standards for intellectual capital had quickly pushed corporate valuations and the markets back up.
‘If anything, their accounts are misleadingly conservative,’ Joe suggested. ‘They’re sitting on three hundred and ninety billion US dollars in cash and, frankly, that’s only the visible part. They’re laying off enormous sums against real or imaginary future liabilities. Also, our chief economist says . . .’
He searched through the media and projected the figure. ‘They could issue a further six hundred billion T-euros without it affecting the value of their currency. The Global Bank reports separately from the main group. Last year it had assets of one point seven five trillion US dollars.’
There were mutterings around the table.
‘I turn now to the future,’ the fund manager continued.
Jill looked up quickly. Joe’s tone had taken on a harder edge.
‘Let’s return to the consumer division. The LifeWatch has now sold . . .’ He brought the media up – a moving collage of the various models with a running counter at the bottom of the screen. ‘One point two billion units around the world. As you can see, six new customers are strapping on a LifeWatch every second. Is anybody here without one?’
He held out his wrist. His Rolex LifeWatch glinted in the ceiling lights. There was no response from his audience.
‘We all wear them. You can buy a standard model for the price of a meal and it could well save your life. Heck, they’re even available in vending machines in the subway.’
Joe flicked his media forward.
‘The World Health Organization estimates that personal health-protectors have saved over two million lives in the last three years, and that’s just from early intervention in heart attacks. When the statistics for diabetics, epileptics, anaphylactics and narcoleptics are added the figures go through the roof Tye Corp has a ninety-three per cent share of the market for PHP systems, even though it allows other brand-owners, like Rolex, to co-market individual styles under licence. The Tye Corporation fully understands that the word “brand” has become today’s collective and corporate noun for integrity so it is pleased to co-market with other well-established designer names. But it remains the Tye Corporation’s software and systems on the inside and the company itself administers all the updates and maintenance. They have a real monopoly and they are, of course, outside the reach of any anti-trust action.’
He paused, looking around the table to ensure that he still had everybody’s attention.
‘What I am now going to tell you is price-sensitive information and I have cleared the next part with our compliance department. You therefore understand the limitations on any future investment activities before the official announcement.’
The chief compliance officer nodded his assent for Joe to continue.
‘For the last three years LifeWatches have been capturing ambulatory data – that is, they record and store our vital signs during every moment of our lives. We never take them off, do we? That would defeat the point. Since they were launched they’ve also had ultra-short-range wireless datalinks with VideoMates and compatible communicators and, well, that’s just about every mobile communicator on the planet. On top of that, the potential market for LifeWatches is still nearly two billion, just in the developed economies. Worldwide, it’s nearer five billion.’
He paused again, watching them. Only Morgenstein was making notes or, more likely, doodling to affect disinterest, thought Joe. The other fourteen pairs of eyes were all fixed firmly on him.
‘This datalink is ostensibly for downloading software updates to the LifeWatches. Every time there’s a new feature or software patch, Tye Consumer Electronics transmits the update to our VideoMates, and they then transmit it to our LifeWatches. This all occurs automatically, in background. We don’t initiate it and we’re not aware when it’s happening. Only it also goes the other way. Every week our LifeWatches upload the recordings they’ve made about us to our VideoMates and, in turn, they upload this information to Tye Corp’s customer-relations centres. That means details of our heart rate, our blood pressure, our blood-cell counts, our ECG record and our epidermic conductivity.
‘For those with declared medical conditions – people who are wearing specialized Life
Watches with boosted diabetic, anaphylactic or epileptic defence systems, for example – the data will include specialist measurements such as glucose levels, antigen reaction or epidermic electrochemical resistance. This means that Tye Corp’s Consumer Division receives data on how our bodies perform under every condition: when we’re sleeping, when we’re eating, when we’re exercising.’
Joe paused once more and looked at Jill.
‘And when we’re making love.’
He allowed three beats to pass. He shouldn’t have said that. He was getting cocky.
‘For example, the data show how heat affects us. They can fill a data warehouse with the information being collected, and then compare how people react to the global weather records on temperature, humidity, sunspots – you name it. Tye Corp already has all the climate data from its Halcyon weather network. Suddenly we know how people, and which people, are affected. But to do that they have to know precisely where we are at a given time, and that’s where the VideoMates come in. Over eighty per cent of VideoMates and compatible communicators make use of the various global positioning systems. They need to – that’s part of their brilliant efficiency.
‘Our employers, our families – everybody can know where every other human and every asset is, supposedly only when we want them to – when we agree to swap location modes. That’s how we manage the world’s traffic flows, plane movements, passenger flows at airports, train loads, taxi availability, bus schedules, the shipping lanes, all those satellites and all the other stuff of our busy lives. That’s how business manages its global supply lines. Without the commercial GPS networks and computerized management systems we’d be back in the blind world of previous centuries with all that friction and all those inefficiencies.’
Jill was nodding and Morgenstein had stopped making notes.
‘Now, couple that with our digital identities . . .’ He waited to see if he was going to have to explain that. ‘Every time a LifeWatch uploads to a VideoMate it is correlated to the GPS history. That’s uploaded to Tye’s Consumer Division along with the digital identity certificates that allow us secure and guaranteed communications and transactions.’
‘So he knows who we are and where we are at all times?’ said Jill, inadvertently personalizing Thomas Tye’s corporation.
‘Yes, even when we don’t use location mode or when we’ve switched our autolocate off,’ confirmed Joe. ‘Or, at least, Tye Corp gets a history of our movements. A VideoMate still checks its actual position every few minutes even if you’ve switched it to standby. It needs its precise location for its log and to give us the information we need when we next enable it. Those data are all stored and automatically uploaded to the Tye Corporation.’
‘What’s this worth?’ asked Richard T. Rakusen quietly. Nobody saw a bottom line emerging earlier, or at a greater distance, than he.
‘I’ve put some numbers on it, sir, but they’re only guesswork because we don’t know precisely how the Tye Corporation plans to exploit it.’
He flashed up some figures from the media. ‘If we just consider the impact of those data on the pharmaceutical division and on the health services and hospitals Tye Health-Care manages around the world, I think we’re talking three and a half trillion dollars over five years just from small enhancements to approved drugs – dosage adjustments, new drug-interactions and so on. Essentially, this technology is mapping the physiology of over one billion humans during every moment of their waking and sleeping lives. Customers must provide a lot of personal medical information if they want Tye Health Insurance to accept liability for LifeWatch performance and if that information is coupled with in-field consumer research for statistical verification, Tye’s corporation has got permanent, ongoing, real-time results from the greatest clinical trial ever conducted on the human race. Imagine the impact on prognosis guidance, hospital building programmes, and drug development!’
‘Surely the data-privacy laws will prevent this,’ snapped Morgenstein, aware that there was a serious danger of Joe pulling off a coup. In the last few years the USA had given up its resistance to data-protection laws and had fallen into line with the rest of the world in placing strict limitations on how corporations could exploit personal data.
‘Those laws don’t apply because every customer signs a waiver,’ explained Joe patiently. ‘You all recall what happened when the early versions of LifeWatches came out. Some of them went off accidentally and injected adrenalin, epinephrine or other drugs when they shouldn’t have. Sometimes they failed to intervene, or failed to send an emergency signal when something had gone wrong in the wearer’s body. The Tye Corporation settled those claims out of court but as the technology improved Tye’s marketing people also got smarter. When we buy one of these articles we have to sign a form that provides basic information – name, address, height, weight, sex, doctor’s name and address and so on, if we want to receive legal insurance and medical cover against malfunction. What’s the point of buying an uninsured LifeWatch that misses an arrhythmia or an acute allergic nut reaction occurring, so doesn’t intervene? People still want coverage even though LifeWatches have become so reliable that there has not been a single reported case of failure, or of accidental intervention, for many years. Tye Corp got round the liability issue by providing their own insurance policies through THI – Tye Health Insurance. It was a really neat solution. We also have to declare any medical conditions we may have and the medication we are on, and we sign a partial data-privacy waiver. Sure, THI agrees not to sell the data on, but it doesn’t need to. Its own divisions can make more than enough use of the information.’
Joe stopped to draw breath. ‘In the emerging countries the Thomas Tye Foundation has already given away three hundred and eighty million LifeWatches and Tye Consumer Electronics has started to subsidise basic LifeSwatches for those on welfare and for certain needy groups in the developed markets.’
‘The great tree-hugging philanthropist, again?’ asked Jill, arching her eyebrows. Perhaps he hadn’t upset her after all. Those deep brown eyes were smiling.
‘Not really; those data are the most valuable because those people suffer the most diseases, they need the most drugs, even if we end up paying for them through our taxes or our donations. And then, of course, there’s the feedback that is supplied to Tye Life Sciences and its cloned-organ farms for the super-rich. Everything is part of a positive-feedback loop – a virtuous circle. The potential for growth is staggering!’
He looked around all the faces. He had them now. He bent, pretending to look at his notes. After a suitable delay he coughed, changed position and tone.
‘And there’s a small marketing coup promised for announcement at Comdex this fall.’ Once again he paused, making sure he was producing maximum impact.
‘The first PetProtectors will go on sale this Christmas. They’ll be twice the price of LifeWatches because the collars will be breed-specific and adjustable for coat thickness. They’re going to be marked under the tag line “Never Lose Your Pet Again”, with a focus on pet location, but physiological data will be the second part of the sales message. I forecast six million sales in the first eight weeks alone.’
‘With the data on individual pets being collected too?’ asked Jim Manzies, senior partner in Corporate Currencies.
‘Of course. Uploaded via their owners’ VideoMates, and multiplexed within the location transmissions.’
Joe decided to show off his depth of research and flipped up some pages from the Nature archives. ‘Of course, PetProtectors won’t actually be a new concept. Tye Corp ran animal trials with early versions of protectors before the LifeWatch was launched. It’s just that, now LifeWatches are such an important human accessory, many animal-owners will want one for their pet too. They’re just digging out the old designs and repackaging them with updated electronics.’
Everybody at the table was nodding, including Morgenstein and even the Old Man. Since Tye Life Sciences had launched its PerPetual service in the United
States eleven years earlier the craze for cloning pets for replacements had spread to all developed territories. TLS had quickly sold international franchises for PerPetuation Centers and millions of expensive but identical replacement animals were now routinely provided to order. Pet Pamperers had thus become recognized as a global market of vast potential.
‘And I suppose pet paramedic emergency teams will respond to alarm calls from the PetProtectors?’ laughed Jill.
‘You bet,’ smiled Joe. ‘That’s what I call a start-up opportunity!’ He allowed them to enjoy the joke, even though he knew of at least three planned start-ups that had got wind of Tye Corp’s launch and had developed precisely that business plan. He was thinking of investing personally in just such a Miami-based venture, if he could clear it with Compliance. But on with the close.
‘Although PetProtectors will undoubtedly be big business, that market will be nothing compared to other ways the Tye group can exploit what they are gathering from the LifeWatch data. Take financial products – pensions, health cover, life insurance. Guess what? Tye Financial Services Group builds a data warehouse to mine for those individuals revealing signs that are negative indicators of long-term health – such as poor heart-rate response to heat, essential hypertension, the electro-conduction of stress, and not sleeping well, since heart rates do provide a clear correlation with sleep patterns. This means that the vulnerable are weeded out, and the salespersons will know the healthiest people to target for selling an expensive policy that they probably won’t need. They’ll also know exactly when to load the premiums for some poor jerk whose physiological performance doesn’t meet actuarial standards.’
‘And you think this is legal?’ queried Harriman, the bank’s senior counsel. ‘I’d like to see those waiver forms.’
Joe nodded and slipped a set of copies from his pilot’s bag. He moved to the table to distribute them, then paused looking down at the elegant Longines LifeWatch on Harriman’s wrist. Except for two extra buttons on the side of its slender gold case, it was virtually indistinguishable from the classic analogue time-piece of the previous century. Its electronically active strap was cased in leather and, when required, its digital data would appear in a transparent display layer sandwiched within the watch-glass.