One Trillion Dollars

by Andreas Eschbach

  They hauled two chairs over to the metal railing to put their feet up on while they looked out to the sea, brought a table over for the glasses, the wine bottle, and the lanterns. A cozy, warm, fragrant wind was coming in from the Mediterranean and the crickets chirped in the dark.

  “To be honest,” John said after a while — he realized there was indeed truth in wine, “I have not the slightest idea what I should do. Not just about the prophecy, but in general. What am I to do: move into that mansion, walk once through each of the rooms just for the sake of it, then what? What do I do next? How am I going I spend my days? Give me your opinion.”

  “Oh boy,” Eduardo said and poured some more wine.

  “I mean, I can’t keep going shopping all the time.”

  “Right.”

  “I could give the money away.”

  “To whom? You have boxes full of candidates.”

  “Sure, but I have the feeling that that’s not the answer either.”

  “In any case, even your money might not last too long at that rate. Miss. Vanzetti is keeping a tally; the letter writers are requesting quite a bit. I think you could get rid of around five hundred billion that way already.”

  John took his glass and poured the extremely expensive Chianti down his throat, as if he had to drown something. “You know, I ask myself what wealthy people do all day. What do you do when you aren’t forced to work but still need the feeling that life must have some kind of meaning?”

  Eduardo took in a deep breath. “Well, you could do volunteer work; pro bono. That’s what we do. I find it reassuring not having to work for a living.”

  “But you are educated. You have knowledge. I don’t even have a real qualification; the only things I learned were to deliver pizza and to iron shirts.”

  “You can learn anything you want now. You could study and get a diploma if you wish. The whole world is there for you.”

  “Yeah, sure, but I never wanted to study anything, and I still don’t want to. It would seem so artificial and forced now, as if I were looking for a toy.”

  “You used to paint; what about that? Become an artist.”

  “I started to paint because I had a girlfriend who painted. The longer it’s been since we split up the less I understand why I ever started. No, I’m no artist. I have no talent for art.” John sighed. “I have absolutely no talents at all. I don’t even have the talent to be rich.”

  “Oh brother,” Eduardo said, and then they stared out into the dark-silver sea saying nothing for a long while.

  The wind blowing inland gradually got cooler. The stars twinkled far above. An animal rustled in the bushes.

  “Do you feel wealthy?” Eduardo asked suddenly.

  John got startled out of diverse thoughts. “What?”

  “It may be nonsense, but I just wondered if you really felt rich.”

  “Hmm, do I feel rich?” He thought for a moment. “How do I feel? No idea. This whole thing just overwhelmed me, you know? A month ago I was a poor pizza deliveryman, and right now I don’t feel that much better. Okay, I know how caviar tastes and have suits that make Brooks Brothers look shabby hanging in my closet. But it still seems like such a dream. It’s all so unreal, I feel like it could all end tomorrow.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Eduardo guessed and let the wine swirl in his glass, as red as blood in the candle-light. “You know, for my whole life I‘ve been dealing with things like this — wealth, poverty, having money and not having it. Since childhood. I’ve learned that wealthy people think differently than other people. They aren’t better people, — they aren’t worse either — but they think differently. I don’t know why, maybe because they don’t have to think about surviving on a daily basis. Making monthly payments, buying Christmas presents. When you’re rich, money is simply there, like air and water.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that rich people never think about money? John looked at him skeptically.

  Eduardo frowned. “You’re right, that isn’t what I tried to say. Some of them think of nothing else, but they are still poor in a way. If, deep inside, you feel like you don’t have enough, then you keep working hard to get more. Some have twenty million but try to make forty million, and so forth. There are more than enough of those types of people, right.”

  “But this doesn’t have anything to do with how much a person really has,” John said. “There are fears and hopes to be taken into account, issues of character. Someone who still feels poor with twenty million should go to a psychiatrist.”

  “Exactly.” Eduardo put his glass down and stretched. “But not everyone is like that. There are people who deal with their wealth very well. But something else just occurred to me. You are wealthier than the next hundred wealthy people in the world combined. You are in a class all of your own. It just struck me that maybe one day — when you’ve really got used to being rich — you’ll come up with something, something really out of the ordinary, something that no one has yet thought of; and that will be the fulfillment of the prophecy.”

  John took a deep breath and exhaled. “Do you think so? I can’t even start to imagine what that could be.”

  “If it only were that easy, then I’d know it too,” Eduardo admitted. “After all, I’ve been working on this my whole life. But who knows — maybe Giacomo Fontanelli’s vision was nothing more than a less frightening nightmare and there is no such solution. Maybe he was just eccentric, and all my ancestors were too, and we’ve all been working simply to make you rich — pointlessly rich.”

  “That’s just great,” John sighed and suddenly he had to laugh. It was a deep laugh that somehow forced its way out him. “You know, never in my whole life would I have ever guessed that a day would come where I sit around depressed because I’m too rich! Isn’t that the epitome of ingratitude?”

  “I guess so,” Eduardo said with a wry face.

  John devoted so much time to his studies over the next few days that it surprised even him. One day he got Eduardo to show him the secrets of the computer printouts, which were stored in the cellar of the house that looked something like a control center from a James Bond movie. Just to get inside they had to deal with a formidable array of locks. Then they sat underneath neon lights by a white table with a small modern computer on it. The computer screen showed rows of colorful numbers with many, many digits. They were the bank account balances from all over the world, Eduardo explained. This computer terminal drew the data from all the banks in similar fashion as the old one over at the law firm, only here a single gray cable leading from a wall outlet sufficed for the data transfers.

  From the way Eduardo typed on the keyboard and handled the mouse, it was clear he knew his way around computers. “Data backup,” he explained while he shoved a data card into a gadget with an LED light that went from green to red. “If we were to lose all the passwords and so on, you’d have to travel all over the world to the banks, identify yourself personally at each one and fill out mountains of paperwork. Can you imagine the time required to do this for two hundred and fifty thousand bank accounts?”

  John was impressed. “You know your way around computers, don’t you?”

  “Dad insisted that I learn all about this,” Eduardo told him. “Computer operating systems, programming, business applications, long distance data transmission — ask me for something and I can sort it out. This was even more important than my law studies. The others agreed somebody in the family had to be able to do it.”

  John looked at the computer screen with awe. “Did you program all this too?”

  The computer hummed and blinked. Eduardo gave it a slap and the blinking stopped. “No. Most of the programs are original. They’re pretty sophisticated programs too, by the way. I only transferred some of the more useable and newer ones from the old IBM unit to this one, adjusted the monitor, improved a few graphic applications. Nothing that a real pro would be the least bit impressed with.”

  “And who did the original programming?” />
  “Someone from IBM. I’m not sure — that was before I was born. I think there were a few problems with this guy back then. He started to ask questions and things like that. That’s when they said someone from the family had to take over.”

  “And now you do it?”

  “Yes, I took courses that cost a hundred thousand dollars, did on the job training for a network company, and helped to do programming during a winter in some smoky hacker hole — and now I can do it,” Eduardo grinned. “But it’s actually not that difficult. When the security company is finished with the safe in basement of your new home and all the phone lines are installed, then we’ll move everything out of here and set it up in your place, then I’ll show you how it works.”

  John gulped. He wasn’t as enthusiastic about all this as the young lawyer. Then he remembered something. “What’ll happen to the old unit at your law firm?”

  “We’ll junk it.”

  “And what if … my house collapses? Will I be poor then?”

  “Nonsense,” Eduardo said. The gadget peeped and he took out the data card and locked it back in the safe. “All the accounts are in your name. If you need money then you go to the bank and identify yourself. The rest, well you’ll see.”

  “And how do I know to which bank I have to go to?”

  “That almost doesn’t matter, because you have millions in practically every bank there is in the world. But you were given documents that contain the lists.” Eduardo looked at him derisively. “Maybe you should take a look at your paperwork some time.”

  John blinked his eyes. “So what do I need the computer for then?”

  “So you can wake up every morning and see how many millions richer you are. To get a warning when in one country the inflation is higher than the interest rate, so you can put your money elsewhere on time. To…“

  “So I can transfer money with the computer?” he interrupted. “And whoever breaks into my place can do it too. He could transfer a billion dollars onto his account without me ever knowing it.”

  Eduardo leaned far back and folded his hands behind his head. “No, he can’t. I already told you that it’s a sophisticated program. You can transfer money, but only between the accounts that belong to you. This limitation is put in place by each bank, so that even the best hacker doesn’t stand a chance of stealing money that way.”

  “Hmm,” John said as he watched the huge number on the lower part of the monitor, growing bigger and bigger with the last digit changing as fast as the beating wings of a fly. “You guys thought of everything, right?”

  “We at least did our best.”

  A few moments of silence followed. Cool, nice silence. John had to think about the interior designer, a petite blond woman virtually glowing with enthusiasm when she showed him some of her ideas for the more important rooms of his new house. All he had done was point at the illustrations that he liked the most, which in fact was all of them — the woman is a genius — and then said, “Like this!” And then he signed the list authorizing the required materials. Since then an army of craftsmen had been at work to create what he had seen on paper, turning the house into what would be the ultimate in elegance without him ever having spend another moment thinking about it.

  And whatever it cost, the number on the bottom of the computer monitor would still constantly continue to grow.

  The setting sun hovered just above the horizon and made the sea shimmer in a soft golden tone before Portecéto as the yacht came into view. To see it plowing its way through the sea, gleaming white and with elegant lines as graceful as a sailboat almost took John’s breath away. Even Eduardo, who had thought out loud about having a yacht built for him too, pat John on the shoulder with gusto.

  “Here it comes!” he cried out.

  “Yeah,” John whispered. It was beautiful, and it looked even bigger than he remembered when it was moored in Cannes. It seemed endlessly long as it moved past them to moor nearby. Now the Italian flag was fluttering from the backboard instead of an English one. In the back they could see a small motorboat underneath a tarpaulin, and above on the highest deck sat a helicopter, looking like a giant insect ready to fly away. A young man in an elegant uniform waved at them from the second deck and they waved back.

  In no time the yacht was moored and the gangway put out. The captain met them as they came aboard. He was about forty years old and a Frenchman named Alain Broussard, whom they had already got to know in Cannes. He saluted them and then they shook hands.

  “Do you want to go for a short trip?” he asked in English with a strong French accent. “I’ll have your bags brought on board, and then we can sail into the sunset.”

  The captain gave a signal, and the young man who had waved to them earlier appeared as if out of nowhere. John handed him the keys for the Ferrari so he could get their bags out of the small compartment that would be called a trunk in a larger car. They followed the captain on a tour of the ship.

  John didn’t think that seeing the yacht again would overwhelm him the way it did. Everything was so spacious. When they came into one of the tastefully lit salons he just couldn’t help but run his fingers over the wallboards made of fine-grained wood, and over the backrest of one of the sofas, which was part of a set with easy chairs and glass tables. Throw pillows in matching colors and with Indian looking designs were scattered on the sofa. There were valuable looking Tiffany lamps with heavy golden bottoms standing on end tables made of light-gray marble. The dining room had walls with inlaid mahogany, and they were so highly polished that the antique table, set with silverware and crystal dishes, reflected perfectly upon the surfaces. Large windows allowed an unobstructed view over the sea, where the fire-red ball of the sun was now slowly sinking behind the horizon.

  In short, it was a floating palace that could have been a movie set for a tale from One Thousand and One Nights.

  When they went up to the bridge — their hands gliding along the gold-plated staircase railings since, according to the captain, brass needed to be polished more often while gold always shines — they passed a spot where they could still see the old name of the yacht, given by the previous owner, an English businessman: Shangri-la. The letters had not been removed from the wall, but simply painted over.

  “I want this completely removed,” John said as he tapped against it.

  “Pas de problème,” the captain assured him. “I will have it removed. You wish to re-name the ship?”

  “Yes,” John said, nodded and peered out over the darkening sea. “I want to name it PROPHECY.”

  $12,000,000,000,000

  THE UPS MAN rang the doorbell, dragging Marvin out of his bed early in the morning, and then he even wanted to see a form of identification.

  “A driver’s license, passport, anything with a photo of you and your name on it,” he told him distractedly, holding the package wedged underneath an arm.

  “Man!” Marvin mumbled, who still couldn’t open his eyes all the way. “I live here. Don’t you see?”

  “Sorry, I gotta see something … insured parcel … rules, you know.”

  Marvin thought for a moment of just slamming the door on the guy, but his curiosity to know who sent him something won out over his moodiness. The mere sound of it: insured parcel! He shuffled back to his room and got his driver’s license, afraid that the old photo on it wouldn’t look like him, and he might be wasting his time. But the deliveryman was satisfied just to have an ID number to write down and to get a signature before handing Marvin the package. By the time Marvin managed to decipher whom the package came from he heard the delivery van’s engine rev up and drive away.

  “John?” he read stumped. “John Fontanelli. From Florence, Italy. I’ll be damned.” The thought of going back to sleep vanished. He closed the door and took the package to the kitchen table. He dug around in the drawer to find a sharp knife so he could slit the wrapping and box open. Inside, carefully wrapped in Styrofoam, was a mobile phone.

  “What is that
supposed to mean?” Marvin uttered. He checked the addresses of the sender and recipient and it all seemed okay. It was his name and his address. No doubt. And in the notes it said delivery by 9 a.m. “Does he want to torture me or what?”

  He took the phone out. Attached to it with tape was a small folded card. It was a note in John’s handwriting reading:

  Hey Marvin,

  The battery is charged, the SIM card is in the phone. The PIN number is 1595. Please turn it on and wait for my call.

  Best regards, John

  “What the hell?” Marvin glanced to the clock. One minute before nine. “I wonder what the heck he wants.” He pressed the green button. The phone made an audible beep and turned on. He tapped in the code number and the gadget beeped again and said “Ready” on the display.

  It rang at nine o’clock on the dot.

  He pressed the “accept call” button and put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Marvin!” John greeted him cheerfully. “It’s me, John.”

  Marvin took a breath. “What’s going on, dude? What are you trying to prove with all the theatrics?”

  “I couldn’t get a hold of you any other way,” John explained with a laugh. “Your phone is disconnected, as usual. So, how else am I going to talk to you?”

  “Man,” Marvin muttered still puzzled. “I feel like James Bond. Okay, who am I supposed to kill?”

  “Did you check underneath the Styrofoam? There should be an envelope with a thousand dollars and a plane ticket.”

  “This is getting better all the time!” He lifted the Styrofoam packaging, and grabbed the envelope. “Yeah, man, got it. Wait a sec.” He put the phone down and tore open the envelope. He looked in and saw a bunch of dollar bills and a first class plane ticket to Florence with Marvin’s name on it. He took the phone and asked, “Looks like you want me to come for a visit, huh?”