by Hammond, Ray
Joe had even estimated Tye’s likely stock disposals and had programmed the robot accordingly. Each year, Tye sold a little more of his core stock in Tye Corp, but as the corporation had now split the stock two-for-one eleven times in six years, he had suffered a manageable dilution. He also had a habit of taking profits out of other investments that were doing well and buying into small, unheard-of companies. Tye’s intuition about stocks, which had always been good, had become close to perfect in the last few years and TinklerOne’s reports had allowed Joe to track and shadow Tye’s moves with a high degree of fidelity.
The software robot was Joe’s secret weapon and although all fund managers used a number of software monitoring tools to watch over their portfolios, none of them (as far as Joe knew) had refined the self-learning capabilities of a software robot to anything like the extent Joe had with this one. His first degree at Yale had been in computer science, before he’d done his MBA, but Joe had always chosen to downplay his special knowledge of information-technology systems when in the company of his bank colleagues and other Wall Street associates.
When Tye sold stock, his office usually went public within a few hours in order to offset potentially damaging speculation. The world’s richest man was, himself, the most powerful economic indicator on the planet.
But this was something different. TinklerOne was programmed to ignore routine disposals, even up to one billion dollars in a month, but now the agent was reporting over 200 separate disposals in an hour, with a value climbing above four hundred billion dollars as Joe watched. The agent was sending back a continuous stream of data about sales, security commission filings, and a host of third-party encrypted attachments that were useless and were automatically trashed by the system as they were received.
There was nothing wrong with Tye selling stock like this, Joe reasoned. He was doing so after his results were published and there had been no unusual purchases beforehand.
Then Joe’s system sounded another alarm. Joe looked up at the corner of his wall screen. This time it was another of his agents that had also never before sent an alarm. Joe opened the message. The Tye Corporation’s Global Bank had issued two hundred billion in new currency and was already trading Tye-€’s at $1.10. They’d added ten per cent to their capital pool and still the value rose! It was because of the strength of those annual results.
Joe slumped in his chair and watched as his agents adjusted the graphs and figures in real-time. Tye’s personal disposals had reached five hundred billion dollars. With Tye Corp’s cash deposits, the currency issues and Tye’s personal disposals, Thomas Tye and his corporation had raised close to one trillion dollars in cash in under an hour.
But why? Cash was weak compared to paper. Tye Corp’s stock could buy anything and Tye-€’s were gaining in value. What could Thomas Tye or his company possibly need with so much hard currency?
Then Joe sat bolt upright. If this continued, every stock related to the Tye Corporation had to collapse. Then the world’s markets would stagger, and perhaps founder. His hand cleared some papers and opened a shoebox he kept at the back of his desk. He removed what he flippantly thought of as his ‘panic button’. It was an old-fashioned wireless mouse that pointed towards a macro that Joe had created years before. If he clicked the button, the macro would send ‘sell’ orders on every Tye Corporation and Tye-related stock on the planet – and Joe’s fund held more than anybody except Thomas Tye himself. Joe had never previously had to use these commands and that was why he had left it under manual control. He didn’t want some speech-interpretation program to scramble an instruction and start a sell-off accidentally. The market was still holding, despite Tye’s rising disposals. How long before it was noticed and other investors reacted? Joe’s finger trembled on the mouse as he weighed his options.
Chapter Six
Introduction
The world loves Thomas Richmond Tye III. His is the quintessential American success story, transferred to a global stage. He has become the world’s first dollar trillionaire and, in real terms, he is many times wealthier than colossi of previous centuries such as Gates, Rockefeller, Croesus or Tiberius. There are dozens of calculators on the networks that strive to measure how much Thomas Tye earns each hour. Currently the best guess is around US$23 million.
‘Tom’, as he insists on being called, is also the world’s first entrepreneur to gain genuine superstar status. His good looks, boyish charm, casual style, concern for the planet and legendary philanthropy have won him fans from every walk of life – from the hopeless Touchers in their ghettos of networked urban misery to the presidents of the world’s great powers. He is, after all, the first business hero to emerge in our global society and he is the ultimate eligible bachelor. He is also likely to live long enough to enjoy his fabulous wealth. I can exclusively reveal that his doctors currently predict he will live to be at least 300 years old! He has been taking anti-ageing therapy for seventeen years and I provide full details of the treatment undertaken in Chapter One.
This is the twenty-third ‘biography’ of Thomas Tye to be published around the world but it is not simply another authorized hagiography, nor yet another tabloid-style réchauffé of life on Hope Island and the supposed excesses of the Tye Corporation Techies.
Rather, it is a polemic on power; a monograph on monopoly, a dissertation on the dangers of massive personal wealth when it is coupled with a complete and utter lack of accountability. Truly, no one with almost unlimited money has ever been as powerful and as unaccountable as is Thomas Tye. He has no voters to please. He is subject to no laws other than his own. He must please only his shareholders but their interests are so narrow, so restricted, that, by definition, his activities need to succeed in only one dimension.
We all know the basic details of the Thomas Tye legend and I do not intend to regurgitate once again his unfortunate background or his remarkable rise to power and fame. However, some aspects of his life story have a direct bearing on his behaviour today and the dangers it may present to humanity.
There is little doubt that Thomas Tye suffered massive ‘attachment damage’ as a child. This is a term used by psychologists when they diagnose a patient as unable to form relationships with or ‘attachments’ to other people, whether those are bonds of friendship, love or simple empathy. Frequently, the damage and resulting isolation leads to ‘homelessness’ in adult life (a euphemism society often substitutes for ‘lovelessness’), criminal recidivism and both male and female varieties of sexual abuse. In extreme cases, attachment damage produces the psychopaths who pollute and mutilate our society. (The best [or worst] examples I can point to are the Romanian Rapists, that terrifying pan-European epidemic of middle-aged, orphanage-reared monsters that was created by a dictator’s total ban on contraception and abortion almost fifty years ago.)
Although he was born into a wealthy Bostonian banking family, Tye’s clinically depressive mother committed suicide when he was five years old and this event cast a shadow that has seemingly fallen across his entire life. This piece of misfortune was only compounded by his father’s chronic alcoholism that killed him, a few months after his wife’s death, in a road accident that was almost certainly drink-related.
Few details are available about Tye’s unhappy childhood – the family closed ranks and used its money to ensure silence about his parents’ many failures – but we have all wondered about the impact of his internment in an exclusive psychiatric clinic immediately prior to his parents’ deaths.
This period appears to have had an immense impact on Tye and, as I will argue in Chapter Eleven, it probably accounts for the astounding lack of ethics that marked his early years in business and his apparent lack of personal empathy with those around him. We have recently watched the spectacle of a string of former business partners and disgruntled ex-employees from Tye’s early business dealings giving testimony on American talk shows about their invariably abrupt and ruthless treatment at the hands of the lonely young genius.
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Tye’s experiences in early childhood may also be responsible for the fact that no one has ever claimed to have had a sexual or intimate relationship with him. I will be adding more detail to his childhood biography in Chapter Four.
As some readers may know, this book almost didn’t make it to publication. The attorneys for the Tye Corporation won seventeen injunctions in fourteen territories to ban this work from the shelves and the networks, and it is to the credit of my publishers and the world’s legal systems that you are now reading these words in print or from a download.
The reason Tye and his corporation want to ban this book is that I make a number of serious allegations about Tye’s activities and those of his companies and I will provide proof of my assertions. I have called this book Why Thomas Tye Must Be Stopped because I think the governments of the world must act now to prevent the very nature of humanity being patented and subsumed into a commercial, for-profit corporation.
Haley pushed her chair back from the keyboard and took off her glasses. ‘. . . Almost didn’t make it to publication.’ Quite. And it still looked as if she might never see her words published. She could always self-publish on the networks, of course, but hers was a linear argument, so it belonged on paper or as a commercially published electronic book. And self-publishing would also rob her work of the imprimatur of a major publishing house and, considering the allegations she made, that kind of credibility would be vital. It would also lay her personally wide open to the legal attacks that, she judged, would inevitably follow.
Haley wasn’t wholly sure what she wanted to achieve with this book. It had started out as a complaint about unfettered technology. But, as she had learned more about Tye’s interests in biotechnology, the astonishing experiments already under way, and the breathtaking hypocrisy of his publicly espoused green politics, her ‘biography’ was turning into a simple plea for the world to pay greater attention to the growth and global ascendancy of unaccountable corporate power.
But she must somehow press on. Rosemary said Nautilus didn’t want their first advance payment back, and the new input she was hoping to get from Jack Hendriksen should help her agent attract another publisher. But why hadn’t she heard from him? It was over a week since he had promised to get in touch with her again. Perhaps he too had got cold feet.
She stretched, put her glasses back on and pulled herself back to the keyboard, her triptych of screens and her text. How many times had she rewritten this intro? She had lost count and each time a day or two’s reflection had led her to brand it too hysterical, too emotional or too dry. She was trying to find the middle ground.
‘. . . many times wealthier than colossi of previous centuries such as Gates, Rockefeller, Croesus or Tiberius.’
Not ‘colossi’, a clumsy plural for an opening paragraph.
‘. . . many times wealthier than the commercial or industrial giants of previous centuries such as . . .’
Better.
‘Rather, it is a polemic on power; a monograph on monopoly, a dissertation on the dangers . . .’
The author frowned and launched her thesaurus program. She sorted the adjectives alphabetically and selected the words that best suited her mood.
And a bloody battological abomination of assonantal alliteration from a pretentious prestidigitator, she wrote tartly, mock-sesquipedalian in her self-disgust: perhaps it was the legacy of Greek blood in her veins, or might it be the Irish? She cut the entire paragraph.
She sighed, pushed back from the keyboard again, and went to find a nail file. She was typing so much that her fingernails had become a biological tariff of her frustration with the project: they were growing at an almost alarming rate.
*
Jack Hendriksen knew he must still be somewhere inside the United Nations complex beside the East River, but even he had completely lost his bearings.
Despite Gramercy Park’s status as a twenty-four-hour car-free zone a black limo with a diplomatic plate had been waiting for them at the kerb outside the brownstone. Jack noticed the ‘All-Zone’ windshield digital ID – just like for the cops and the emergency services.
Chevannes had stowed Jack’s bag in the trunk and gone up front to ride with the driver. Deakin and Jack rode in the back. As they turned north on Third Avenue, Jack’s VideoMate and viewpers had returned to life, a low tone alerting him to waiting messages. At Deakin’s request, he switched the system off completely.
‘Better if you don’t supply your whereabouts, Jack. Erase the location buffer immediately you switch it back on.’
During the fast drive uptown the older man had gently deflected Jack’s questions about the purpose of their trip, saying that everything would be explained when they arrived. Instead, the two men used the time to catch up with the news on mutual friends, former colleagues, family and acquaintances. They soon worked out that it must have been over three years since they had last met. At Helen’s funeral.
On their arrival at UN Plaza, the UNISA idents had prompted a young major in the black uniform of the German army to escort them away from the public security checks and scanners and lead them through a private entrance. A turbaned Gurkha at the door came to attention as they entered.
They had descended three escalators and been led through a maze of brightly lit corridors until they came to another security point. Here Deakin and Chevannes allowed their IDs to be copied even though they were obviously known to the guards. Jack guessed this procedure was for the benefit of the database records and the security cameras.
‘Will you leave all comms and storage here, please, Jack?’ said Deakin, as he and Chevannes handed their communicators and viewpers to the guards. The group waited while Jack unclipped the VideoMate and fished his viewpers case from his inside pocket. He had pulled on a sports jacket over his open-necked shirt and he checked to ensure that he hadn’t left lapel cameras in place. Confident he was clean, he placed the equipment in the tray provided and stepped through the scanner.
The guard handed Jack an electronic badge and they were waved on. At the end of the corridor was a plain white door, beside which Jack noticed an iris scanner. Deakin halted to allow his eyes to be scanned, and the door slid open. As they stepped through, Jack saw that the thick door had a sandwich filling of lead running through it.
The conference room was large and high-ceilinged, the central space occupied by a table capable of seating thirty or forty. Beyond it was a large Holo-Theater and an older wraparound videoconference system. They were alone in the room – Chevannes and the armed German major had remained outside.
Jack whistled. ‘I had no idea the UN complex was so large,’ he said, turning to his one-time instructor.
‘It extends over thirty-eight acres – we’re right under the river here,’ grinned his friend. ‘The Midtown Tunnel lies on the other side of that wall, Jack. The UN faced a tough choice about ten years ago: either relocate, or expand underground. This is what they chose.’
Jack turned and saw a giant electronic world map on the wall. He ran his eyes over the clusters of illuminated red dots scattered through Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
‘That’s everywhere UN troops are involved currently,’ explained Deakin. ‘The Security Council meets privately in this room. They like to keep track of how many peacekeeping actions are going on.’
Jack smiled grimly. There had to be at least a hundred lights. ‘Our peaceful century,’ he observed.
Deakin snorted.
The main door slid open and four men and one woman entered. All were in business suits; all but one carried briefcases. Jack recognized the first face: it was very famous and very distinguished and it belonged to the one individual without a case. His black visage was framed by a huge crop of curly white hair that seemed even more unruly than on television. Jack thought he also knew the swarthy face of the short, podgy white man at his shoulder. The others were unknown to him. Behind them Jack saw Chevannes and the German officer resume their positions as t
he door closed silently.
The small group walked into the centre of the room to greet their visitor.
‘Commander Hendriksen?’ said the Secretary-General of the United Nations. ‘I’m Alexander Dibelius.’
‘Well, I’m retired from the Navy now sir,’ said Jack as he shook a large powerful hand. He had to tilt his head up slightly to look into the Secretary-General’s warm dark eyes.
‘This is Doctor Yoav Chelouche, President of the World Bank.’
Of course. The ‘economic genius’, they called him. The man who had finally managed to soften the gyrations of the global economy, and who had been awarded a Nobel Economics Prize for his efforts, a new form of quasi-scientific award created specifically to mark his achievements.
The banker’s hand was dry, its pressure brief. His lugubrious brown eyes and heavy jowls reminded Jack of a basset hound’s face.
Dibelius turned to introduce the other three.
‘Professor Rima Berzin, Director of Science at the World Health Organization.’ She was about fifty, attractive, though she did little to emphasize her looks. She smiled briefly as they shook hands.
‘Doctor Alan Mathison, Cambridge University.’ Jack shook hands with the tall, pallid academic and Dibelius turned to the last man.
‘And Jan Amethier, director of UNISA.’ He pronounced the acronym ‘eu-nese-a.’
‘Thank you for coming to see us, Mr Hendriksen,’ said Amethier. The accent was Dutch, or perhaps Belgian. Dutch, Jack decided.
‘I’m intrigued to know why I’m here.’
‘Let’s sit down,’ said the Secretary-General, leading the way to the conference table. He chose a place a short distance from the head and gestured for Amethier to take the chair. ‘It’s your show, Jan,’ he said.
Deakin indicated for Jack to sit opposite Dibelius and then pulled out a chair and sat beside him. Jack noticed that the place sign in front of him read Australian Republic.