The Unincorporated Man

by Dani Kollin; Eytan Kollin

  The landing was very much like the liftoff. Pat gently herded Justin and Neela back into their respective seats as the pod began its leisurely descent. Again Justin viewed it all through the window, and again he felt the gentle tug on his body as the pod descended. He watched as they made their way first through the atmosphere, then through the cloud layers, and finally into a tube very much like the one they’d been shot out of less than an hour before.

  They disembarked by stepping out the door they’d originally entered through. There was no platform awaiting them, only air. But by now Justin was familiar enough with the protocols that, even though his early millennium mind was telling him not to step out onto “nothing,” he did so anyway. Plus, Neela had done it first, and it was only a matter of following her lead.

  This orport, he noticed, was certainly larger than the one they had just left, and much more colorful. Italian design, thought Justin. Still magnificent.

  They walked out the door directly into a waiting flyer.

  “Car—Sabatini’s,” commanded Neela, and with that they were off.

  “And we’re going to this restaurant because?” asked Justin.

  “It’s expensive,” smiled Neela.

  “Let me guess,” said Justin, taking in the new view. “You’re not paying.”

  “Correct again. The director’s expensed it out. Stuff like this never happens to me. So when it does I’m going to take full advantage.”

  “That’s fine with me. Especially since this meal was going to be on me . . . once I figured out what exactly I’m paying with.”

  “You don’t have to, you know. The center’s got plenty of money and, like I said, all this is covered.”

  “I know, Neela. But it’s something I’ve got to do. Call it pride, call it a bit of payback for all you’ve done for me, call it whatever you want—I’m paying.”

  Neela saw how serious he was and realized there wasn’t much use in arguing.

  “Fine. You’ll be paying with American Express dollars. A very respectable travel currency with roots going back to your era.”

  “I know. We called them traveler’s checks back then.”

  “Oh, good, then this will be much easier to explain.”

  “What will be easier to explain?”

  “Money. Or, at least how our thinking has evolved from the last time you used it.”

  “Right.”

  “We’ll be landing in a minute, so let’s hold off and take in the view. It’s one of my favorites.”

  Justin could see why. While he’d been to Florence before, he’d never seen it in this way, i.e., in hover mode. He could make out the Duomo of Florence, an ancient feat of architecture and the onetime symbol of the Renaissance’s most affluent families’ wealth and civic pride. He could see the famed Ponte Vecchio, the bridge leading across the Arno River, and there . . . there he saw one of his favorite buildings in all of Florence, the Uffizi Gallery of Art. It was a favorite not necessarily for how it appeared on the outside, which was beautiful. No, it was for what it had held within: priceless works of art from Botticelli, Caravaggio, and Michelangelo.

  The flyer finally came to a soft landing on a street named Via de Panzani. And there, nestled comfortably amid the late-afternoon hubbub, was the restaurant, Sabatini’s. Neela and Justin got out of the flyer, walked a few yards, and took a seat on the outside patio. Within thirty seconds an impeccably dressed human waiter appeared at the table.

  “He’ll have the . . .”

  “Pizza,” Justin finished. “Pepperoni pizza . . . with extra cheese.”

  “Pizza?” exclaimed Neela. “You’re in one of the most expensive restaurants in Florence and you’re ordering pizza?”

  “Yes,” he said with a self-satisfied look on his face. “I’ve just had this intense hankering for pizza.”

  “We could have had that in Boulder.”

  “True, but it wouldn’t have been as much fun getting it,” he answered, in jest.

  “Fine,” she said, resigned, “he’ll have . . . pizza.”

  Neela ordered the house special and a bottle of Chianti as Justin took a piece of bread from the basket placed on the table.

  Neela almost laughed at the seriousness with which Justin buttered, then savored, each bite of his appetizer.

  “Tell you what,” she said. “You eat. I’ll talk.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “OK. I know this’ll sound simplistic, but how would you define money?”

  “Easy,” he answered. “It’s a placeholder of value.”

  “Good answer. What does that mean?”

  “Neela. Please. Do we really have to do this? I’m pretty well versed in economics.”

  Neela clapped her hands.

  “Bravo, Justin. Bravo. You have a prink . . . I mean, preincorporation understanding of economics from three hundred years ago. Imagine if someone showed up with, say, an MBA from three hundred years prior to your day and age thinking he knew it all—so if you don’t mind . . .”

  “Duly chastised,” answered Justin. “The answer to your question is this—having a placeholder means I have something you want. You don’t have what I want. Say a shirt for . . .” He held up what was left of the loaf on the table. “. . . some loaves of bread. If I don’t want any bread you’re not getting my shirt. But with money we agree that the value of the bread, the shirt, the orange, somebody’s labor is represented by whatever we agree on. It used to be gold and silver and moved to currency. In my era it was being replaced by electronic placeholders.”

  “Good. And if you don’t mind my asking, where’d you learn the basics?”

  “I grew up poor, and through hard work, perseverance, and a little bit of luck managed to become wealthy. At some point I wanted to know all about this thing called ‘money’ that I had managed to make so much of. So I hired an economist who spoke plain English, and she managed to get some stuff through. And that’s when I finally realized what money was and what it was based on.”

  “Blind faith,” she answered.

  “Exactly, Neela. Faith,” he confirmed. “The certainty that I could take a green piece of paper with some dead president’s face on it, turn around, and give it to someone else, who’d give me what I wanted.” The waiter brought over a large pepperoni pizza, sliced it with a pizza cutter, and disappeared back into the restaurant. “Like this pizza,” Justin said, savoring the smell.

  “Except that we no longer use paper,” Neela corrected.

  “Right.”

  Justin took a bite of the pizza, and about a second later frowned.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Neela.

  A wan smile appeared on Justin’s face. “I was hoping that after three hundred years Italy would have learned how to make a decent pizza.”

  “Didn’t they invent the stuff?” asked Neela.

  “Common error. It was invented in New York. Some say Baltimore; others, Philadelphia.”

  “Who knew?” Neela said, with a shrug.

  “So now, Justin,” she continued, “let me ask you another question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Given what you know about government currency, why would corporate currency bother you?”

  “Corporations are profit-driven organizations that only . . .”

  “. . . that only want profit,” Neela finished. “And that’s why, if you think about it, they’re so much better at running currencies. They won’t devalue currencies to make a political party happy. They won’t unilaterally print more money to make people think they have more money or temporarily affect a balance of trade.”

  “You’re talking about inflation.”

  “Yes, I am, and correct me if I’m wrong, but your rates of inflation bordered on the chaotic.”

  “You’re not wrong, Neela,” he answered.

  “Corporations,” continued Neela, “will also ruthlessly hunt down counterfeiters and embezzlers. And they’ll make sure you’ll use their money over the competition’s by givi
ng you added-value services. For instance, American Express can be used in any city in the solar system, in any personal transactions, and they’re even willing to guarantee all passages bought with American Express credits.”

  “All well and good, Neela,” answered Justin, “but the dollar was a strong and respected currency. Not only that, it was global, stable, and rigorously controlled.”

  “I agree that the U.S. dollar was remarkably like a corporate currency around the turn of the millennium. The, what was it, the Federal . . .?”

  “The Federal Reserve.”

  “Thank you, the Federal Reserve acted very much like a corporation for its day. It protected and didn’t expand the money supply, and was ruthless in its counterfeit defenses. But Justin, it was still a government in the end.”

  “Your point being?”

  “My point being that politics getting in the way of money, not a corporation, brought on the Grand Collapse.”

  “Details, please.”

  “Some politicians came along and promised something for nothing at the beginning of the Grand Collapse, and decided that the best way to deliver on the promise was to devalue and then print the money. It’s true—and well documented, I might add—that in many ways the VR plague was the immediate problem. But they made a bad situation far worse by somehow managing to destroy the currency and the economy of the greatest nation-state in history. By the time it was all over, the corporations were the only organizations left that were capable of providing services.”

  “But what if one of your corporate currencies does the same thing?”

  “Justin, the dollar was by law the only currency you could use in the United States. Does this monopoly sound like a good idea, ever? We have forty-seven major currencies, all of them backed by insurance, and if someone does something stupid consumers are more than free to use the other forty-six. It’s not as if I keep all my credits with one company, though most are with GCI. When your government screwed up your dollar, and it was inevitable that it would, your people had no choice but to go down with that sinking economic ship. I’m not saying that we haven’t had currency troubles, but the truth is, we’re not trapped by our currencies, we’re freed by them.”

  “Fine. I’m beginning to see your point. But what on Earth would you need forty-seven major currencies for? I mean, in my day healthy competition in most products consisted of between three to five major players.”

  “Different kind of product, Justin. Look at it this way: If you needed to buy diamonds, what currency would you want?”

  “In my day, South African.”

  “Timber?”

  “American or Russian.”

  “High-tech?”

  “Japanese or Korean, though the Israelis were moving up.”

  “And all around?”

  “The good old U.S. of A. dollar.”

  “Our corporations do the same thing. Different companies specialize in different things, just like different countries used to. Only back in ‘your day’ those countries would use their currencies for political ends, which almost always hurts the currencies and the people who were supposed to be helped. Today currencies are used strictly for their economic need, and the middleman is out of the picture. If for whatever reason the demand for copper goes up, the commodities currencies become more valuable, and their value rises relative to other currencies, to the exact amount of the new demand. There’s no static.”

  “Static?” asked Justin.

  “You know, like when your government used to overprint money. What would happen was, people would go out and buy more ‘stuff.’ The makers of that stuff thought that there was a new demand, when, in fact, that wasn’t the case. There was just more money. They weren’t getting a real read of market demand; they were feeling, without knowing it, the effects of the overprinting of money. Hence, static.”

  “Got it.”

  “Anyhow,” continued Neela, “everyone understands the economic reality and can therefore plan for it. And it’s why something as important as the running of an economy shouldn’t be left to a politically motivated institution.”

  “There’s a certain amount of logic to what you’re saying,” admitted Justin. “But what about the euro? That was a group of governments getting together to start a currency, and before I was frozen I recall that currency doing well . . . better than the dollar, in fact.”

  “You only saw the first couple of years,” she answered. “Then it started acting like every other politically based currency. Since it was bigger, the ramifications were worse.”

  “You’re referring, I presume, to the Grand Collapse.”

  “By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Neela sang.

  Justin smiled. Yet another phrase he’d remembered from his past was still very much alive and kicking. He was finding some ironic solace in this.

  “So,” he said, finishing off his last slice of pizza, “am I to gather that GCI’s currency is the ‘dollar’ of today?”

  “Correct,” Neela answered.

  “GCI,” sighed Justin. “That’s Hektor’s outfit.”

  “Mine, too,” said Neela. She sounded apologetic.

  “Excuse me,” Justin said to Neela, as he perused a list of topics he’d written down on his DijAssist. He scanned the list and then looked up. “What is this SCV?”

  “It’s an amalgamation of all currencies,” she answered, “both major and minor, updated via the Neuro on an hourly basis. It’s systemwide, so everyone can have an idea of how much things cost. But there’s no actual currency called an SCV. It’s just a benchmark.”

  “Let me guess,” said Justin. “GCI’s credits are always higher than the SCV, and it’s the most important currency in the solar system.”

  Neela was impressed. “How’d you figure that one out?”

  “Not hard, really. I remembered that the prices in the pawnshop and now on this menu have GCI’s currency next to the SCV.”

  With something as simple as a sales tag and menu listing, Neela realized, Justin had somehow come up with a keen insight into her world. Her lesson plan was shrinking by the minute.

  “I’m waiting for you to ask your question,” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Which question?”

  “The one that’s purely for personal pleasure and curiosity. And if I’m guessing correctly, the one you’d feel a little guilty even wanting to ask.”

  Neela looked at him open-mouthed, in shock. He’d described her feelings exactly. He was correct in that she did want to ask him questions of a more personal nature, i.e., questions not necessarily associated with his adaptation to society. However, he was incorrect in that she never would have broached the subject. But now he’d given her permission, and she had to assess whether or not, even under that circumstance, it was acceptable to pursue.

  “How did you . . .?”

  “I am,” he said, then corrected himself, “or was, a very good businessman, Neela. Reading people is not only useful but vital at the level of finance I worked at.”

  “What kind of numbers are we talking about here?” Neela asked.

  “Oh, come now, Neela. That’s not what you want to know.”

  I guess I’ll just apply the “nothing’s going according to plan” rule, she lamented to herself.

  “OK, Justin,” she responded, “who are you . . . really?”

  4 Fame

  Irma Sobbelgé was seventeen when she got her first share of a truly valuable stock. Not that those of her parents, brothers, and sisters weren’t valuable, it was just that their value was based more in the realm of psychology than economy. The reasoning was simple and straightforward—owning shares of a sibling made one think twice about doing any undue damage, both physically and emotionally, to that sibling. In fact, Irma was convinced that had she not gotten shares of her baby brother early on, the little bastard wouldn’t have made it to puberty. And given how well not only her family, but most families in general, performed, she considered it borderline
miraculous how anyone at all managed to survive and function before the incorporation movement. She rightly felt that the gaining of her first-ever shares was an indelible rite of passage—up there in importance with the loss of her virginity (a good memory) or the field trip to the Museum of the Virtual Reality (a horrifying one). For Irma, gaining those shares was the start of a process that connected her to society more intimately and securely than anyone had ever been connected before. Because that connection, unlike at any other time in history, was made through the powerful and subtle bonds of the world’s most cohesive unifier—self-interest. And it was in the spirit of that self-interest that Irma managed to happen upon a very valuable share.

  When she was seventeen she had a relationship with a boy from a wealthy family. The boy thought he was a man and she was young enough to believe him. He was also anxious to get into Irma’s pants, and in the spirit of self-interest gave her the share. As he was fond of grand gestures, that single share just so happened to belong to the newly appointed chairman of a powerful, up-and-coming corporation by the name of GCI. If only the boy had known that a simple “wanna do it?” would have sufficed, he might not have forked over so valuable a commodity. But both he and Irma were “in love,” and neither had any idea just how valuable and useful a gift that share would turn out to be. Irma felt, as the gesture was intended, that giving it represented an act of pure and undying love. However, when that undying love managed to do just that some six months later, a person broker, “perker” for short, contacted her, representing the family. It seemed the perker was interested in buying back that single stock and at market value. Even then the stock would have brought a considerable amount of money but, against the universal advice of her family, Irma decided to hold on to it—a prescient move indeed. Because it turned out that that chairman ended up becoming The Chairman. Not only the most famous and reclusive individual in the solar system, but also the man responsible for making GCI the most powerful corporation in human history. The fact that she owned even one share of his stock made her unique among her peers, like someone lucky enough to have inherited a rare work of art made a person of standing unique among theirs.