STAR OF EPIPHANY

by OMAR FINK

  Arty remained silent, so Zorba resumed, “We had assumed that the space elevator project would need bases at the equator, so Arty has been busy procuring real estate in key positions. Being near open water is also an advantage for both safety reasons and ease of transportation. It seems that being able to move the Earth base end of an elevator tether may also be an advantage. Arty has picked up some islands and some ports and also some deep water platform resources. We think these will all become critical resources very shortly. We think rocket related resources will appreciate shortly, and so we’ve been buying fuel supply related infrastructure, and also some desert real estate in key locations. Just as launching rockets over a water down-range is desirable for safety reason, unpopulated desert can serve the same function. Peter Anderson and a few others seem to have cornered the market on actual rocket technology, but we’ve been concentrating on everything else that will be required to create a rapid expansion of rocket launch capability, and construction of the needed infrastructure. We are also looking at some interesting areas in robotic manufacturing and mining equipment. Arty has also been liquidating any resources that were previously in demand that we can’t connect to the changes in the immediate future, and using the results to fund the purchases.”

  Zorba shifted in his chair, paused for a second, then spoke into the phone, “And now we need to make a few changes in the plan. Billy, I need you to cc Arty on any new reports you come up with from either Geneva or Zurich. Arty, likewise, I need you to cc Billy on the daily digests you’ve been sending me.”

  Both voices acknowledged the instructions. Zorba continued, “We are going to begin selling about eighty percent of Omega Industries to Humanity United and converting all our monetary reserves to HU coin.”

  Arty said, “Please repeat that for my ears and then confirm by following up with an email later. Did you say eighty percent and ALL monies?”

  Zorba answered, “That is correct, Arty. And I will send that email when we’re off the phone. Here’s what’s going on. HU coin is going to appreciate quite rapidly over the next six months or so, then will likely continue to appreciate for many years to follow, although at a more gradual rate. There is no general move we can make that will provide greater returns than HU coin in the near future. There may be a few small circumstances where that is not true, such as the group of islands we recently purchased near Singapore. I expect their value to HU will escalate even faster than the cyber coin for the next month or so, then we intend to sell them to HU. If we can identify other similar situations, we may sit on some resources for the short term, but the intention is to eventually sell Omega Industries completely to HU.”

  Zorba leaned back in his chair and spoke to the phone again, “I need you both to start paying attention to what the other is working on and keep your minds open to how you can help each other. Arty, I need you to know what Billy knows about the project developments and Billy, I need you to focus in particular on areas where Arty has actions pending.” He leaned back forward toward the phone.

  Zorba paused then continued, “Your jobs are to coordinate with each to make this go as smoothly as possible. Both of you already have generous profit sharing based compensation packages and I can assure you these will increase dramatically as we make these moves. So, you’re not just working for me and the company, but also for yourselves. We all will end up becoming quite rich before this is over.”

  +65 days, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  Ulrich Giger punched a button on a remote control, and the face of Gitane Levesque began to move on the big screen on the wall. He said, “We now know more about what is being discussed by the group of scientists who are trying to determine the fate of humanity. First of all, the group has been identified as a subset of the International Institute of Space Studies, or IISS as it is widely known. They have been meeting in secret here in Geneva inside the CICG conference center for just over a month now. Their task is to find a solution that allows us to survive the horrendous impact of the Martin comet train that will strike Earth in ten years. Our inside sources have now revealed that they have been discussing the possibility of using a space elevator to lift people off of the planet into space where they will be safe. As usual, this news raises more questions than it provides actual answers. Is it possible to build a space elevator? Will it be safe? How many people can be lifted into space? Where will they live? What will happen to the rest of us? We have none of these answers yet. We don’t even know if the scientists think this will really work. All we know at this point is that they are considering space elevators, and seem to think that there is no other possibility.”

  Giger punched the button again, and the face on the screen froze. Ulrich said, “We knew this story would leak, and it will continue to leak even more. We need to get in front of the news cycle soon by telling this story ourselves, or the news media will begin to distort it. But first, Sam has some good news for us.”

  Sam Hoffman nodded at Ulrich and spoke, “Rosenfeld of the U.S. was in with Jordan, but we failed to note that. Guillemot at the EU is in. Okada in Japan is in, and we expect his influence to bring in Nakagawa shortly. Likewise, Hua in China is in, and we expect him to bring along Zeng. Agropov of Russia is in. It has been pointed out that we should also consider some religious leaders, and that is being done. Our primary holdouts continue to be Diamond at the U.S. Fed, and Milbrandt in Germany. That’s all I have for now.”

  Ulrich acknowledged, “That’s excellent. I don’t think we could have expected the recruiting to go more smoothly than it has so far. Thank you. Tony, how about the corporate side?”

  Tony Azaria smiled, “We continue to buy out more companies day by day, and the pressure is growing on the laggards to join before they become the last to get in. We now have around nine trillion dollars in resources under our control. We will need much more of course, but just like the political side, our dominoes are all falling in sequence, and we can expect this to continue.”

  Ulrich said, “That’s great. I mentioned the need to get in front of the news cycle. Sam and Bill and I have been discussing that, and we feel there is a need to present our side of the story through a team of special ambassadors. To that end, we have nominated the following three people: Manuel Ramos, Secretary General of the United Nations and from Argentina, Chen Tianki Foreign Minister of China, and K.T. Rosenfeld, Secretary of State from the U.S.. All three of these demonstrate both a complete understanding of what we are attempting and a strong belief that this is the only way to accomplish it. We plan to organize a world tour with each of them traveling in different parts of the globe to tell our story and muster support.”

  Peter Anderson murmured, “And three Magi came bearing gifts.”

  +67 days, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, USA

  Keel O’Donnell stepped out of the Pinball Museum into the night air. An airplane was climbing into the dark sky out of McCarran airport. As the sound of its engines began to fade in the distance, he heard a muffled cry. He turned and looked into the darkness around the side of the building he had just left. Some figures moved and there was another high-pitched cry as though someone felt some distress. Keel began to move toward the figures in the dark and as he did, they became clearer. He kept walking, and saw two men grappling with a woman.

  One man held her hand and arm stretched out while the other had his arm around her and seemed to be groping her breasts. She cried out again, “Stop! Stop it now!” She was twisting and turning, trying to break free, but failing.

  Keel took several quick steps and cried out, “Hey! Stop!”

  All three figures now looked toward Keel. One of the men said, “This ain’t none of yer business gringo, go away.” He dropped the arm of the woman, and took a step toward Keel. Both men, and the woman appeared to be in their late twenties or early thirties. The man who stepped forward was several inches shorter than Keel, maybe around six feet tall with a medium build. The one with his arm still wound around the waist of the woman was shorter and thicker. In
the dark, it was hard to see more details. The woman resumed her struggle to get free but still failed. She let out a shriek, and tried to bite the arm that held her, but the man holding her pushed her head back roughly, and laughed at her like he was drunk.

  Keel kept moving toward them quickly, and when he came within reach, the taller man launched a wild swing at Keel’s head. Keel ducked under it and moved toward the other man and the woman. He grabbed the arm that encircled the woman, and pulled it away, and at the same time gave the woman a rough shove causing her to stumble backwards.

  Now Keel was in the middle between the two men. He yelled at the woman, “Run!” and turned to face the taller man who had recovered from his wild swing, and now was rushing toward Keel leaning forward. Keel stepped to the side, and helped the man rush right into the midsection of his shorter partner. One of them let out a whoosh of air, then a deep grunt. Both staggered, but stayed on their feet, and turned toward Keel. The girl stepped backward away from the conflict, but was still watching.

  Keel got into a relaxed but balanced stance, “You should both leave now.”

  The taller man said, “Gringo, I warned you.” and rushed forward. His partner began to circle around to the side of Keel. Keel stepped backward, and sideways toward the shorter man. The taller man tried to adjust his attack, and nearly stumbled. Keel drove his fist hard into the middle of the shorter man who was not prepared, offered no defense, and issued another whoosh of exhaled air. The shorter man stopped his movement, and bent over. The taller man had regained his balance, and was coming toward Keel again. Keel crouched down below his waist, and the man fell forward over Keel trying to grab anything but only getting empty air. Keel began rising up as the man fell, and helped the fall rotate, and pushed the falling man into the other shorter one, also knocking him off his feet. Both men ended up in a tangle on the ground.

  Keel moved forward, and stomped his boot down hard on the exposed ankle of the taller man, who cried out in anguish, and grabbed at his leg. The shorter man was still trying to get up, and struggling to do that. Keel took a menacing step toward him, and he regained his feet and began scrambling to get away. Keel looked back down at the man on the ground, still in agony and said, “Maybe I should have said this might hurt a little.”

  He looked back up. The shorter man was fading into the darkness. The woman was gone.

  +70 days, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  On the big screen, Gitane Levesque was in the middle of a sentence, “… and now after all the other surprises, there is talk of a unified world government.” He raised his eyebrows, then continued, “We can’t yet confirm these rumors, but our sources say existing governments and the United Nations are not capable of getting done the massive job of evacuating the entire planet. This means a new organization that is a combination of all existing governments will need to be created.”

  Ulrich Giger pressed the button to mute Levesque. He said, “We are only managing to stay a few steps ahead of the press, and they are beginning to catch up with us. This is not good.” He glanced around the table, “Tony, how do we stand with the cyber currency?”

  Tony Azaria responded, “We are ahead of our projected schedule, and have purchased over twenty-five trillion dollars of resources. This means both businesses and goods we think we’ll need, but in most cases, it seems easiest to just purchase the entire business when we need their goods, because we can re-purpose other parts of the company to produce what we need. We negotiate buying the company, then we make job offers to all the employees that include buying out all their resources, including pensions, savings, real estate, and everything else. Then we can evaluate where people fit best, and align them to their new jobs with whatever training they need. To this end, we’ve purchased several large human resource type companies, and are merging them with software companies to create self paced computer delivered training. This is working well so far and will also be needed for basic literacy and space survival training when the migration begins.” He nodded toward Peter Anderson and added, “Thanks to Peter for helping with some excellent divisions in his companies that were already doing a lot of this.”

  Peter nodded his acknowledgment back to Tony and added, “Yes, several companies under my umbrella were headed in this direction, and our cloud based computer services empire was a big help too. We are essentially revolutionizing the process of education, and once most of the human race is exposed to this new paradigm during the actual migration, I don’t think it will ever return to the previous form. Soon, anybody will be able to train or retrain themselves in any field they want at a very low cost.” He paused, and scratched his cheek absently, then continued, “Think of it this way. Instead of a large mass of teachers with varying skill levels teaching small groups of students using archaic learning techniques, we now find and recruit the few teaching superstars that are out there and package their teaching routines, and make them available to everybody everywhere at low cost or even free in this case.”

  General Decker was nodding his approval, and the rest of the group looked interested. Ulrich Giger broke in, “This is the kind of synergy we need to seek in every process we are working with. In order to succeed with our great plan, it will be necessary to drag the human race forward into new ways of doing things with far greater efficiencies than were previously known.” He turned to Sam Hoffman, “Sam, how about an update on recruiting?”

  Sam spoke to the group, “Our latest additions include Zeng from China, Nakagawa from Japan, Williams from the UK, and more importantly, our two serious holdouts, Milbrandt from Germany and Kevin Diamond at the U.S. Federal Reserve. There is now little reason for any other major leaders to hold out, and if they choose that route, it will be obvious they are holding back their constituent country. We do expect a few tin pot dictators to follow that road, but they are not a major concern.”

  He looked around the table, then continued, “More importantly, Ulrich and Bill and I have drafted the guidance council outline we’ve been discussing as it was laid out in the legal framework. We’ve already agreed on the basic structure. Allow me to summarize. It’s based on the U.N. Security Council with five core members of U.S., China, India, E.U., and Russia. They will initially be represented by their top leaders: Jordan from the U.S., Zeng from China, Singh from India, Guillemot from the E.U., and Andropov from Russia. These five will have full veto power just as did the original big five in the U.N. Security Council. They will be augmented with twenty temporary seats from ten other countries and ten business leaders that will rotate every nine months, allowing everybody to have some form of representation over time. Even though the temporary seats don’t have the same veto power as the big five, any five temporary seats can combine to create a veto. We have a list of suggested initial seat holders for the temporary seats, although we recommend turning that task over to the guidance council itself as soon as possible. I’ve distributed the list to each of you and we’ll entertain any discussion of it.”

  +73 days, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND

  Peter Anderson guided Lee Martin across the open lobby area in the AGT headquarters building, and toward the huge wall of glass that faced out toward Zurich See. Beyond the lake, snow covered mountains loomed.

  Lee Martin exclaimed, “What a beautiful view! And by the way, that security desk process is impressive, very efficient without feeling invasive.”

  Peter smiled at her, “Yes, just about everything here is done in an impressive manner. When you meet Ulrich, you’ll begin to understand why.”

  Lee beamed back at him, “I’ve heard many stories about the famed Ulrich Giger. He’s been a huge benefactor to the sciences over many years.”

  Peter stopped walking as they approached a sitting area just short of the glass wall. It was equipped with two single piece couches, each curved in semi-circle about twelve feet long and bracketing a circular glass table in the center. He gestured at the couches, “We can sit here and talk to get started. Your luggage is being taken up to a suite in
case you decide to stay.”

  Lee chose a spot on one of the couches and sat down, crossing her long tanned legs in front of her and relaxing back into the couch. She spread both arms out across the top of the couch like wings, “Wow, this is comfortable.”

  Peter smiled at her and sat down on the opposite couch across the table. He began talking, “I know you have a lot of questions, but let me go first, and I’ll try to answer most of them preemptively. You’re here because you discovered the comet and participated in the IISS engineering effort, and because you have been effective at speaking about the subject. Our small team here is strictly a Project Management team, but perhaps the highest powered PM team ever assembled. We have created a cyber currency to fund our efforts, and we have recruited most of the top political and business leaders in the world to support and actually lead the effort. We have selected three key political leaders as ambassadors to sell the rest of the world on the need for total cooperation, and we think you can be an important adjunct speaker with them.”

  Lee opened her mouth to speak but before she could, Ulrich Giger stepped around the end of the couch with his hands held out palm down, “Please don’t get up, I’d rather sit myself.” and grinned at her as he sat down beside her, and extended his hand toward her.